Ethan G. Salwen

Look, I’m not going to use my blog as any type of news punditry platform, commenting on comments of comments or reports about the news. For one thing, I’m not really interested, especially when I know there are zillions doing it far better. For another thing, I’m simply not qualified, typically limiting my news digestion to five minutes of BBC News reporting every day or three. Still. . .

You said it sister!

I must say that today’s BBC News headlines caused a serious Good Grief Moment in me. First I read the headline, “Ministers ‘using fear of terror,’” with the subhead of “A former head of MI5 accuses the government of exploiting the fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties.” That made me think of my post yesterday about how fear had been used to pass the democracy-terrorizing Patriot Act in the United States.

Of COURSE governments are using fear of terror to gain great political control. Good Grief!

Then, to my shock, I read another headline: “US welcomes Venezuela’s term vote.” The subhead for this one is: “The US cautiously welcomes Venezuela’s vote to scrap term limits, allowing President Chavez to seek re-election.” HOLY GOOD GRIEF! Or, more important, WHAT THE FUCK? (more…)

A dictator-in-waiting thanks his applauding farm animals.

Why do people willingly, downright eagerly, toss away their freedoms like nasty bits of garbage, cheering as we hand over our historically rare semi-democratic powers to megalomaniacal nut-jobs?

Actually, don’t worry about trying to answer that question, and neither will I. It’s too big and too sad of a question to address in my admittedly not-too-serious blog. I don’t thing there is any real answer anyway, although George Orwell does a pretty neat job at exploring the mechanics of such rapid digressions in freedom in his “Animal Farm.”

The reason this question of freedom-tossing comes to mind for me today is that — and I honestly can’t believe it, even thought I should — the a massive percentage of  Venezuelan voters have whole-heatedly pushed through President Hugo Chávez‘s agenda to do away with term limits. This paves the way for him to easily extend his wackier-by-the-day presidency by years if not decades if not until his last, clinging-to-life days like good ole Fidel Castro. This, of course, seriously increases the chances of Chávez becoming yet another one of history’s unfortunate, how-did-we-let-this-happen dictators overseeing a totalitarian state in which the ability to even vote at all could quickly become a dream. (more…)

Boatmen take a break before unloading clay that will be used to make bricks in factories that line the Río Paraguay in Concepción, Paraguay.

“While we talked a lot about technology, sometimes the good ole stuff is pretty neat. These are two of six men who make two trips each day, seven days a week, to haul dirt from the other shore further up the river. It’s the first stage of making bricks.

“I found them in Paraguay, and they proceeded to show me which way to go to find the brick mill, where they were forming brinks and tiles by hand, drying them in the sun, preparing to bake them in a massive kiln that could
have been — and might have been — built in the early 1800s.”

—

I put this extended caption in quotations because it is from an email I sent to Andrew Matusik, an outstanding and (more…)

Even presidents make mistakes putting on their pants one leg at a time.

As I forge ahead with my nascent blogging efforts — writing too much about bogging itself, I’m sure you’ll agree — I find myself realizing that the biggest challenge that I face is forcing myself to fail.

If that sounds cliche, that’s because it is.

If that sounds resoundingly true, that’s because it is.

(Fluffy sounding clichés tend to also be profound truths, but that’s another post.)

Today I had a great lunch with Kate Stanworth, a fellow photographer and writer here in Buenos Aires, and I gave her my standard pitch on the critical importance of blogging for the creative story-teller. As always, I insisted that she could only learn about blogging by actually doing, encouraging her that there was no one out there “judging,” that we all are given the space and time we need to comfortably find our own voice in the Blogosphere. (more…)

I wonder if this post will receive more views if I caption this image, "Low-cost pot seeds shipped internationally!"

[Warning: Do not read. This is a dirty, search engine-oriented post not meant for humans.]

This blog is new, and I’m still playing around with the basics, trying to get a feel for “blogging,” it’s tools, the “Blogosphere” community, as well as what drives traffic to me and why.

With only 25 posts, and most relatively dull, I just can’t stop giggling about the fact that the post that has received the most views — a whopping 18! — is “How Does an Oil Rig Work?” I’m pretty sure I was “stoned on marijuana” when I wrote it, and it was nothing more than a blogging hiccup. So why all of the massive attention?

I guess it’s because I wrote “penis pump” in it, and even linked to a few related sites. Aint that a hoot! So much for the value of quality writing on relevant topics. “The Internet is for PORN!” (more…)

Actors waiting to audition at the first Starbucks in Buenos Aires.

My dear, dear buddy Meghan Scibona has just gotten her new blog up and running, and this post is nothing more than a hearty congratulations to her in the form of a ping. That is, I’m going to use this post link to her latest post on “Low Budge Girl” in hopes that she gets alerted via her email. That way she can learn what such a ping feels like.

I’m trying to learn a little as well, as I’m not totally clear on a bunch of these blog-related phrases, such as “ping” and “linkback” (or is it trackback)? There’s probably a “pingback” and a “backlink” and a  “linkping” as well. And they all probably have very specific meanings. But who really gives a poop? It all really just means “more interconnected,” no?

So Meg, this one goes out to you. Congrats on the great blog, and the interesting stories! Who knew what you could do with a little blood and a condom!

Make sure you comment on this post and let us know if you found in though the “pinging backlink frontbang,” or if you just stumbled upon it.