Ibiza

The last 3 nights in Ibiza have been pretty crazy. I´m really not looking forward to having to get up at 8am tomorrow and leave the island. Monday night was Release Yourself at Pacha featuring Roger Sanchez. Good crowd, club decore was a bit lacking, but the architecture was pretty cool. Pacha has so many rooms and dark corners that it takes awhile to find them all. The terrace is a nice change of pace too. The next night it was an all nighter hanging out on the West End of San Antonia, starting with sunset at the Cafe del Mar. San An has to be the best place to just grab some drinks, a table on the street, and watch the strange people go by.

Then last night it was time for the Fiesta del Agua (water party) with DJ Sammy at Es Paradis. The music was kind of cheesy, pop trance for the most part (there aren´t many big clubs in Ibiza where the DJ can drop the old Zombie Nation anthem and get a really good reaction), but definitely a lot of fun. Es Paradis is a beautiful club with sort of a tropical garden theme. The crowd was very touristy, of course, and more excited than the crowd at any other club I´ve been to here. And the water... just crazy. They fill up the middle dance floor with about 3 feet of water by spraying it from overhead and blasting it from fountains in the floor. Sure the squish squish squish soaked to the skin walk to a bus stop, ride back to Ibiza Town, and walk to the hotel was kind a pain, but it was definitely worth it to do at least once.

I´m trying to decide whether to go out tonight.

Barcelona to Ibiza

The nightlife in Barcelona was better the 2nd night, if very touristy. That´s okay. I got my culture during the day. Our tour manager showed us to a couple blocks of bars and clubs with a better atmosphere than the night before... ie. somewhat cleaner, cooler, and not so rife with pickpockets. She also got three different little clubs to give free shots to the entire group for coming to their club. Nice. Good time... got about 5 hours of sleep which I guess has been about average for the tour, then hopped on the bus for the ride to the coast and the ferry to Ibiza. It´s great to be back on the island. Short update... we´re going to hit some bars in Ibiza Town and probably get some tickets to Pacha for tonight.

Pamplona, Zaragova, Barcelona

We had a long drive yesterday, stopping in Pamplona and Zaragova along the way to Barcelona. The short stop in Pamplona was to see the streets where the running of the bulls will occur later in July. Our crazy tour manager made horns with her fingers and ran around the plaza, running into people in the group. She´s nuts, but in a good way. Apparently many of the fatalities during the running of the bulls have nothing to do with the bulls. There´s a particular pub with a rooftop several stories up along the route. People get very drunk, go up to the top, and deliberately jump off, hoping others will catch them. Sometimes they just go splat. Darwin would smile.

Zaragova was an absolutely beautiful city, or at least the main plaza we saw was. Unfortunately we didn´t have time for anything else. The plaza is a huge stone laid open area at least the size of a couple of football fields with some statues and fountains, but mostly just open area. A cathedral and some other main buildings surround the plaza, home to about a zillion pigeons.

Then it was on to Barcelona. We arrived in the evening. After dinner we were dropped off downtown to see the fountains. Barcelona has one of the most spectacular water fountain displays in the world. I hope the pictures come out. They were a bit tricky, requiring some fairly slow shutter speeds, as did the pictures from the cathedral I took today. Without a tripod I´m concerned they may be blurry, but we´ll see.

I enjoyed today, taking in the cathedral, the Picasso museum, and this wonderful park with an extensive network of pathways and buildings all designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi. After the fountains last night though was a different story. We´d gone as a group, over 40 of us, and then took the subway from there to a stop near La Rambla, the heart of the downtown nightlife, and the gothic quarter for a late night tour followed by some bar hopping.

Well we´d been warned to watch for pick pocketers, and to give one thing away, no one in our group got picked. But right after seeing the fountains, we waited to board the subway at about 11:30, and spotted 4 men scoping out the group in the subway station. One of the men had already been spotted by a group member near the fountains trying to steal some lady´s camera. The other 3 were together and very clearly checking everyone out, seeing what they might find. That put everyone on edge. Then while our manager led us through some of the streets in the gothic quarter to see the architecture, we heard a woman scream and saw a man across the square run off. We saw the woman a few minutes later and fortunately she´d just manage to stop him from making off with her purse. After the gothic quarter tour, our manager led us to some pub she wanted us to go to for sangria. It was off the main drag, down a couple narrow, dirty, graffitied streets, which I later saw are very common here. The pub itself was a grungy almost cavelike structure. In fact one slang term for barhopping here is caving. It was crowded and hot as hell. Most of us looked around, saw still more very shady looking people, and left right away. Even out on the main street in La Rambla, there are many very shady looking people and serious pickpocket problems. Ridiculous. I don´t see what the appeal of nightlife is here and most of the group didn´t either. About ten of us took a long walk looking for a nice pub while most people went back early, couldn´t even find a good pub, had a drink outside a tolerable establishment, and left.

So... I loved seeing some things in Barcelona during the day, but the nightlife sucks. The atmosphere, the overall vibe, of the nightlife in Ibiza is so many times better.

That´s about it for now. I´m leaving with the group shortly to go to a dinner and Flamenco show. We have a fairly long drive followed by a ferry ride to Ibiza tomorrow.

Amnesia, back to Madrid, San Sebastian

I went to Cocoon at Amnesia, another big club party in Ibiza. It was great! the first hour or two were a bit slow, but after that the trance was really slamming most of the night. They had a cool dry ice type cannon thing that blasted the crowd with a cold fog every now and then, some nice lighting, beautiful decore, and it´s hard to go wrong with dancing girls. When I finally left near closing time the sun was up. The next night it was the San Antoni scene for a somewhat more laid back time. I did find a pretty good no cover charge club for awhile though. Also drinks were much cheaper around the pubs. There were a number of Irish, English, and Scottish pubs. I ran into a group of loud, drunken Scots at one pub, which isn´t bad as it might sound. They were just out for a good time... friendly bunch. There are many Londoners in Ibiza as well. Also the sunset at cafe del mar is not to be missed.

I had to change my schedule back to days, get up in the morning, and head back to Madrid to meet my group. They´re a lively group, seem to be a lot of fun so far. We left Madrid yesterday and spent a couple hours in Segovia (the Alcuzar is beautiful), less time in some other town, the name of which escapes me right now, and then headed on to San Sebastian, arriving in the evening. There was some good food here for us, which was nice. Almost everyone went out to the pubs later and had a good time. A few of us had a long walk back to the hotel along the river, hoping we were going the right way. We were...

tomorrow we head to Barcelona.

Live from Ibiza

I´m on the Spanish island of Ibiza in a little internet store by my hotel. After some very long flights and layovers, I finally got here. My hotel is right on the edge of the beach, which is very nice. Now I just have to head for the Space nightclub for the We Love Space opening party. I´m looking forward to an all night party. It´s barely past 4pm right now though. It doesn´t feel weird going to a nightclub while the sun´s still shining.

Some old guy spilled his beer on me on the flight over here. Nice. I didn´t want to wear that shirt anyway, right? The hotel is alright. They don´t seem to have heard of carpeting. The room floors are all tile. At least it´s clean and air conditioned though. That´s better than some of the dumps around here where many of the clubbers stay on the cheap.

English has been very common during this trip so far. Like when they give instructions on the airline, they are typically given in English and the native language. The other thing that I´ve been pleased to spot is Live Strong yellow wristbands. Lance Armstrong´s foundation evidently isn´t just an American thing, as I´ve seen several on Spaniards already. Anyway, off to Space. More updates later.

SOB... more Schiavo shiat

With the publishing of the autopsy results, the headlines are once again dominated by the Terri Schiavo debacle. Damn it. The most important point I can make here is that the whack job protesters and the fucking media should have LEFT THAT FAMILY ALONE. The family had been dealing with a tragedy for years. It wasn't the fundamentalists' business. It wasn't the media's business. It wasn't our business. The courts had already decided the matter through many appeals, and the doctors and courts involved knew a hell of a lot more about it than any of us did.

But to summarize the news that's almost impossible to avoid, here's an article about the autopsy. Main conclusions: Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, was blind, had literally half a brain left that was missing vital functions, had pieces loosely floating around, etc.

Here's the full length text of the autopsy report.

Farker Flavivirus provided a summary of the report in a thread on Fark. Here's his summary:
i'm not a brain surgeon, but I am a resident studying neuropsychiatry. Of note, in the 'technical information' from page 1-34:

#1 - Terri's brain was 200g -less- than another patient who died in PVS, and less than half the expected weight of a woman her age.

#2 - there was marked atrophy (shrinkage) of the brain globally, to the point that certain areas of the brain that are expected to be 'packed together', were, in fact, loosely floating about

#3 - she had a thalamic stimulator installed (an electrical device designed to stimulate the brain) in an attempt to revive some of her function. This stimulator prevented the ability to do an MRI, due to overheating of the electrodes being reported in previous cases of MRI's on stimulators.

#4 - she had smaller than expected optic nerves, otherwise her cranial nerves were normal. Optic nerves are the nerves responsible for receiving optic information from the eyes and passing it to the occipital lobe, along with other lobes of the brain. The clinical implication of this is difficult to understand, but it is likely indicative of non-functioning eyesight/vision.

i'll post more if anything else jumps out at me... but i figured some translation could be helpful. -a lot- of the report is minutia. 90% of the information is descriptive of a normal death. It's exhaustive and complete, and overinclusive.

If you don't trust his summary, check the autopsy report for yourself.

Of course, the fundamentalists whackos are already claiming that the autopsy report changes nothing and that Terri was murdered. So much for admitting when you're wrong...

Now get this damn story out of the headlines already!

Homegrown religious whackos

Lest we think the really crazy religious people are confined to fundamentalist Islam, I give you the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) from right here in the United States. They claim that a man must have at least three wives to get to the highest level of heaven. Let's do the math. If every man going to heaven needs at least three wives and given that birth rates of males and females are near equal, aren't there way too many men? Yep! The solution as explained the article linked above? Expel the excess young men for various imagined infractions aginst the faith. Now there are more young women to marry off to the perverted middle aged men that run this sick, farked up cult. Here's a little excerpt from the article about the cult's leader --
Mr Jeffs inherited the leadership of the FLDS three years ago after the death of his father, Rulon. Since then, he has ruled its enclaves on the Arizona-Utah border, in Texas and Canada with fearsome discipline. At the age of 49 he has reportedly fathered at least 56 children by 40 wives.
Forty wives... who wants to bet most of them are a lot younger than him too? This power tripping a-hole runs a twisted cult that ruins lives so that he can fark lots of women.

Isn't it beautiful?

The Irish have given us so much...

Everclear concert

Everclear was in town last night. I was into them back when "So Much For the Afterglow" came out, so I figured what the hell, it should be a good show. It was, but it was too short. There were two opening bands, both of which were okay but nothing too impressive. I'd never heard of either of them. Then Everclear took the stage and people were really into it, but they only played for around 80 minutes. That included two encores. A band that's been around for over ten years and has so many good songs could easily play longer. It's too bad they didn't play Amphetamine or So Much for the Afterglow. Oh well, it was still a good time.

Create your own South Park character

Create your own South Park character here. I made this one.


It seemed appropriate since I'll be in Ibiza in a couple of weeks.

Bored? Create your own. Host it somewhere, such as Imageshack, then leave me a link in my comments.

Note, the only way to save your South Park character is to use the Print Screen key, paste it into your graphics editor (MS Paint is fine), and then cut out the picture and "save as". Save it as a jpg if you want to use it online.