The Legend of Beth and how I am kind of accidentally following in her footsteps, except I wear socks and shoes.

Blackened feet. Nothing to eat.

Haven´t seen a bar of deodarant in weeks (you know, because that´s the first thing that´s expendable).

Cigarettes to fill my stomach.

Compost piles to build outside my door and homeless children to bathe.

Sick of watching Joe and Stefan eat like cows. Why can´t they just learn to close their mouths?

Fanny Pack.

Making Out.

Lice.

¨This is the most terrifying and disgusting thing that will ever be on my camera.¨
          - William Joseph M.
            Educator, Kansas City, Missouri


¨yet the environment makes me seem deceivingly fancy, as par to my usual situation. I really need to reevaluate my lifestyle.¨
          - La Betty
            Keeping it real since '86, Missoula, Montana


I went with the 2-2-1-3 form in the above poem. I believe the term for that form is post-neo realism. Science. It's all the rage right now with hipsters . . . until they decide it`s too mainstream and therefore can't be cool anymore.


I also just made all of that up just so I could get a dig in at hipsters . . . Take a good look in the mirror hipsters and keep convincing yourselves your not retarded.


Beth fact 1: She had her own radio show in Chile on social issues. She called it Templar because she opened the dictionary up to a random page and liked that word. She went down as one of the worst on air radio hosts in history, not even taking into account that half of the time we weren't broadcasting because we weren't even plugged in. (Don't let the look of confidence fool you)

So, recently for my posts I´ve been going the route of mindless entertainment where I, like you don´t have to think . . . and then I stopped writing all together, except to include a video with monkeys that is unfort not the megamix (I don't want to lose all my readers). As a result of the aformentioned reasons, I have neglected to mention where I have been or what I have been doing for the last few weeks. 


I have been back in Santiago, Chile for the last three weeks, maybe four, not too sure. I no longer have a cell phone and therefore never know the time or date anymore, it's magical . . I arrived with Ceinwen (pronounced Cinnamon) and Jessica and we stayed at Hostal Santa Lucia, a pretty cool hostal in the middle of Santiago. We stayed 3 days before moving on to Valparaiso where upon they continued travelling north while I wanted to hang back for a little, to accomplish things . . . like pee in the biggest pool in the world, pet stray dogs, and drink a beer from Bar Budapest, etc, etc, you know things to help humanity.

(Don't be alarmed, that bulge under my shirt is just my new fanny pack and is not a stiffy. (embarrasing fact: when I was little my dad used to call me Steffy and after tying my skates in the locker room before hockey games he would say as he left, "Good luck Steffy," which caused everyone on the team to call me Stiffy and laugh at me. I feel like Scott Brown after saying that, such a weight off my chest. The only thing I did wrong was mistime the release of that revelation to the public to not coincide with the release of my biography that Joe started writing two years ago. (ps. To beat a dead horse: but shouldn't these assholes who have just gotten elected be concentrating on their jobs and not writing memoirs? What happened to good old-fashioned accomplish shit and then somehow post-mortum release a book in death and your family makes millions? Kinda like how Biggie and 2 Pac keep coming out with songs and I think Michael Jackson has a new one too.)))




Back to the Legend of Beth (The LOB)

Beth fact 2: She was in Ireland one time and someone asked her if she wanted to do a triathalon the next day. She obliged and came in second.

When Beth first got to Santiago two years ago the hostal was just getting on its feet and she worked out a deal where she could work to stay here. I got to know the owner of the hostal just a little bit through Beth and also Joe, who played rugby for him. I played all of one practice before realizing that rugby is just about the worst thing a Dainty Stefan can do.

Since coming back to the hostal I started out as a guest, then a guest who ate lunch with the staff, and then a guest who didn´t pay who fixes some things and goes to the supermarket, and then a guest who didn´t pay and who also has his laundry taken home by one of the workers, and now I am kind of an employee. Weird. Santiago is my bizzaro world.


Right now I am in the midst of the overnight shift. Good opportunity to write, EXCEPT the keyboard is so miserable and sticks so much that I barely have the patience to put this sentence together. There is nothing worse than a keyboard that you have to pound in order to write and only the center of the spacebar is responsive andyouendupwiththingswrittenlikethisbeforeyourealizeit.


I hope to share more on what I am doing at the hostal and the people I meet. I've done about 3 overnight shifts and let me just say they can be WILD. You get guests coming back late at night, prostitutes coming by looking for a room for them and their client, and some super sketchy gay people coming by and some sassy gay guests because we are on the edge of the gay district.


Beth fact 3: She lived in an abandoned kiosko with the leader of the Chilean Young Communist Party. They once went to the opera.

Sometimes when we are eating lunch a random Beth anecdote will come up like how she would go sit in the park by herself at night oblivious to the dangers around her and she is also a bit of a hero at the hostal because of the time she stood up to Sebastian, the owner, and tried to knock his unibrow right off. 

(found these after doing some snoopin around the reception comp)

Going forward, if I truly want to follow in the path of Beth my next steps will include dining with the homeless, drinking only in the bathrooms at bars, bathing (batheing??) once a week, and eating nothing but lentils. Four things I am not prepared to do at the moment . . . I am not to sure how long I am going to be here but for the moment I am pretty content with life in the hostal.

Update: I've been working the night shift now for 5 days straight and haven't really slept. Thanks in large part to Japanese tourists and their lack of comprehension of anything. Each time one walks in the door with a backpack a little piece of me dies. Japanese tourist post in the works.