Happy Birthday, dear LSD

It was first synthesized in 1938, but it was on this day in 1943 that Albert Hoffman first discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD.
Also, I am overwhelmingly happy that Google now has a calendar. My Glife is now complete. All I have to do now is figure out if it's pronounced "glife" or "gee-life."

I have this one nightmare where I look in the mirror and Jesus is looking at me and he screams at me for hours and I can't close my eyes

http://wigu.com/overcompensating/2006/04/night-mares.html

This reminds me of the Semana Santa procession I witnessed last night. We were walking home at around 1 am, full of alcohol and god knows what other substances when we heard a racket coming from a side street. Great drums crashing and a band playing something mournful and dirge-sounding. We were not entirely surprised to see a procession of people that looked like purple-hooded Klansmen with silver staffs and 5 foot candles marching along in front of a float with Jesus on top carrying a cross. All in all, this this was at least 5 or 6 meters or 16-20 feet high. I know my conversion is not entirely accurate. These are round numbers because I was staring in horror at a giant statue of Jesus marching down the street as hooded, robed, creepy weirdos marched in front and a very military-looking (Falangist?) band followed.
Some people seemed to be taking it relatively seriously. There were people who had video cameras pointed at the statue of Jebus the entire time it was moving down the street, and it was not moving very fast. I have no idea how much it must have weighed, but the base of it was about as big as a car, then there was the statue on top of a slightly larger-than-life-sized Jesus on top carrying an appropriate sized cross. So I imagine it was pretty fucking heavy. There were at least 12 or so people underneath, carrying it, conveniently hidden by a cloth. They would move it forward about 10 yards or so and stop. Sometimes people would sing or something for a while. Then they would pick it up again, which would generate applause and move it a little further down the street. I have no idea how long they were going before we got there, but we were waiting around for at least a total of 25 minutes and it only moved about a block and half. I can understand taking a picture, but I don't know what they're going to do with 3 hours of footage of an unmoving giant Jesus statue other than freak out their children and grandchildren for years to come.
Other people did not seem to be taking this that seriously. They had beers and other drinks and would talk to the hooded people standing there and take pictures of themselves with the drinks in front of the float, pretending to give head to the bottle of beer and such.
I also have to mention that this float was covered in candles, giving it an even more impressive and ominous appearance and guarunteeing that it would haunt our dreams for the rest of our known lives. The five foot candles that the Katholic Klansmen carried were a dark red and the wax all over their hands looked disturbingly like blood. There were also pools of congealed wax on the street from where they paused during the march. The only thing they really could have done to make it creepier would be to give BeJeezus laser eyes, a mouth that shot fire, and have it scream things in Latin.
Max and I agreed that it was the creepiest parade ever, but Max was slightly more disturbed by the girl he saw on the metro wearing swastika pins on her jacket.

Gwyneth Paltrow Gives Birth to Baby Moses

This week is Semana Santa, which of course, the week when Santa sends all of his hot jizz down on all of the good girls and boys. I don't have to walk dogs this week, so I'm trying to use up the rest of the hours available on this 10-hour Internet ticket that I bought. I'm also attempting to regrow huge sideburns now that I have a job and don't have to attempt to look somewhat clean-shaven.
After spending all of our free time for the past number of weeks looking for apartments, we have found two that might work out. One is being rented by a woman who is Spanish, but has lived in Texas for 30 years. So she is more than a bit insane. She's very concerned about who is going to live in which room and where we are going to theoretically put bikes, even though we don't have any bikes yet. She's also living there until May 2, so we can't move in before then. She also agreed to rent it to some Spanish guy that she doesn't like, but now the both of them are reconsidering.
The second place is bigger, closer to the center, and has a small balcony. It's slightly more expensive, but it's worth it. We can also move in on the 15th of April. Neither one of these places is definite, but the bigger one said it wouldn't be a problem provided we had the money and pay stubs and the crazy woman said that it's fine as long as the other guy doesn't want it.
What is the point of all this? The point is that I am going to scream and rip people's still-beating hearts out of their chests if I have to spend another week or god knows how long looking at more apartments.

More meanness

Chunky girls keep trapping Max and giving him their phone number. This even happened the first weekend we were here. We were at a club and some girl who was like 6 feet tall and on E kept trying to give him drugs, sex, etc. Most recently, someone invited us to this birthday party where there were these two English girls. I talked to one briefly, who turned out to be a hardcore Catholic. She referred to all Protestant religions as subdivisions of the Catholic church. This all came up in reference to my Salvation Army T-shirt, which I was trying to explain to her and a Spanish guy. She was like, "Oh, we've had those forever. The Catholic Church invented the Salvation Army." So I started ranting about how I was a gnostic Christian and therefore my religion pre-dated hers. Because I'm, y'know, a dick.
During this entire conversation, the other (fatter) English girl had Max trapped on the balcony and was regaling him with stories of a former boyfriend that had asked her to piss on him, nude "bungee rocketing," and how she had been "technically celibate" for the past six years. Oh, and she's a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan.
I came out onto the balcony and Max immediately started trying to position me between himself and this girl while babbling about wasn't it about time we needed to go? She ignored this and recited portion of a Monty Python sketch from memory. This, along with other things we discussed when we all left together to get the last metro, prompted me to ask her frankly, "Sooo, would you consider yourself a nerd?" She replied in the positive and then we discussed comics, but she was apparently only into shite such as X-Men and thought that Jessica Alba performed admirably in the film version of "Sin City." I did not hesitate to tell her how completely wrong she was, but I didn't get the satisfaction because she had to get off the metro.
We also have a new favorite word, "minging." It's a British word that means, more or less, to be ugly. As in, "He was just minging," or "She was a real minger." The Chinese restaraunt called "House of Ming" next to one of the schools where we work has become endlessly amusing. When we later discussed that night and the insane nonsense that these girls were spouting, Max referred to them as "Ming 1 and Ming 2," at which I laughed uproariously. Then he said we're the meanest people we know in Madrid. And I laughed some more.

The meanest people in Madrid*

So I think I set some sort of new personal record last night. I saw this woman at an intercambio last night that had to be 6 feet tall or so and looked like Elvira with an '80s short n´spiky hairdo. I knew that she had to be Russian and I told Max that he should "mack it." We went sort of near her to talk to the guy who runs the thing by introducing people and he introduced us to Olga (a.k.a. Elvira) who, as it turned out, was Russian, from Siberia. With a lot of gold teeth. Max talked to her a bit before I chimed in, saying, "I speak some Russian." What I said to her was the equivalent of "I have wine, let's fuck." Only infinitely more foul because it was in Russian, the language of swearing. Let me state that I have said this to many Russian guys before and they all laughed. Olga did not laugh. She sort of stood there with a stunned look on her face and did a triple take. She didn't slap me, which Max thought she was going to do, so he quickly explained to her that I didn't really know what it meant. Which was sort of true. Anyway, she said, in broken English, that that wasn't something I should go around saying. I just stood there trying not to fall over from laughing. Yes, I was drunk. But I do feel slightly bad about it now. I didn't realize that it would offend her. I think that she took it as an actual proposition.
Another thing that happened while I was drunk that I also feel bad about is something that I didn't even plan or think about at the time. We were sitting at a table at this café that has a €10 all-you-can-drink night and this girl we knew came in. For the record, she's crazy, but this should be assumed about anyone that associates with us. She asked if the seat was taken, and I said, without hesitation, "No, but we're saving it for more attractive women." She said, "Well there's no chance of that happening" and sat down anyway. I thought that it was clear that I was joking and didn't give it a second thought. Only later when Max told me how shocked and chagrined he was did I stop to think about it. My thought process went something like this: "HA HA HA. Wait, that was mean. Well, whatever. She's still talking to us."
This is in addition to us making fun of everyone that we meet as soon as they're out of earshot. Binghamton has bred it into us.


* According to Max.