seeing double

dear all,
I hope you are well, I am fine and have not got the clap yet.
firstly, more news on the legend that is tonylow. thats his name. tonylow. not tony low, but tonylow. crazy. the other day he gave me a cd with all his songs on it. it was the best present ever. however I havent listened to it yet as I am sure the title, danger, is some sort of warning to my eardrums.
the other day a boy turned up at the tv station. I thought nothing of it at the time but hes still there. im still not sure why. all I could find out was that they call him hair of the monkey. I thought about this for a while, decided it had no relevance at all as to why he was here, accepted it and moved on. every now and then I think im the only one who can see him, but I think this is the mefloquine playing tricks with me again. last weekend we went to la tigra, a cloud forest nearby. it was really cool and eerie but I still managed to ruin it by spending most of the day running about pretending I was rambo, the only sensible thing to do. there was also no one about. the only other people I saw all day were two japanese tourists with fishing nets. hmm. oh and I almost died the other day when, being my typically observant self, I failed to notice the rapidly approaching sound of two stampeding donkeys racing down a mountain in my direction. luckily, I had just enough time to freeze with my mouth wide open for a few seconds, wake up, completely shit myself, and dive into a nearby shrub. I emerged a few moments later absolutely fine, although the bush was less fortunate.
``the hour to win`` is hotting up well. though I had a weird surprise the other day when I realised that two of the shows contestants are identical twins with the same name. before I had put this de ja vu down to the anti malaria, but sure enough, theres definitely two of them. they have the same name, the same face, the same costume, I would imagine the same parents, and probably the same lives. and neither of them can sing. I also found out that the hosts daughter is also a contestant on the show. she really looks the part, really pretty, all the moves, good costumes etc, the only problem is that her voice is flatter than holland. ha. the chalk to her cheese in the show is a guy called josue, who has the voice of an angel and the face of a toad. hes also really cocky and slimy, I spent the last week doing impressions of him (basically singing im a dickhead in spanish) and when it was his turn on saturday the cameramen decided to film me instead of him while I wet myself which was nice. now that theyve started to vote people out of the show youd think theyd cut the running time a little, to relieve the boredom factor, but no, last week they padded out the extra 15 minutes with 5 eminem wannabes performing choreographed epilepsy. oh the pain.
the street kids advert was finally finished on friday, which, despite being rubbish, I am very proud of. it was hardly plain sailing though, on monday the beta machine broke, then after a day of fixing it my beta tape was broken. the next day they loaded it straight onto the computer from hi8- which, the previous thursday, was absolutely impossible. then the computer shut down and we had to load it again, then we had a power cut. I went home and ate three choc ices in protest.
oh, I am now a dj too, on the cleverly monickered dj-fm. its english speaking which I have noticed since being here I am rather good at. I now have a new audience to tell all my exciting facts to. brilliant.
theres also a new puppy at my house. its really cute but has an unfortunate habit of chewing me. the other night I took my revenge when drunk by running in a circle with it in the kitchen for five minutes in an effort to make it dizzy or something. however, I blacked out before finishing the task and woke up on the sofa without my socks. crazy.
thats all for now,
kiss kiss bang bang,

sprengiko x

Refried Beans

dear all,
I hope you are well, I am fine. and I dont want to talk about it.
damn those refried beans.
so.
firstly some news about the old colombian guy, tony low. well, hes definitely clinicly insane. I am still really affected by my malaria medication. the other day I walked straight past my house which is something I rarely do. I am also trying to find new and exciting ways of killing cockroaches (any ideas please send an s.a.e) so far washing detergent and toilets have played their part well. my tongue proved unsuitable. so, last weekend I went to copan, which was wicked. its like some ancient mayan temples and it really made me want to be a parrot. we also headed up to Agua Caliente, hot springs nearby. the trip up to them was interesting, in the back of a pickup with 20 odd other people, a huge gas canister and about a million bags of cement. I almost broke my ankle trying not to lunge forward into a groin that was strategically positioned 3 inches in front of my head. then he got off and on got either a girl with a beard on her legs or a man in a dress. still we made it to the springs which were cracking, I found a place to sit between the boiling spring and the freezing river which was, I would imagine, something like standing in Norway with your arm in the oven. great. damn those refried beans. the other day was Don Raphael’s (the dad of the family I live with) birthday. hes really rich, got his chubby fingers in lots of meaty pies, so to speak. I was invited to the party, which was like a scene from the godfather or something, not the one with the horses head in the bed though (though the food was delicious), but I am sure he’s connected, in fact, as far as connections go I reckon he’s waterloo. this week there’s a new volunteer at work. She’s so dull she might as well be a spade. or grey wallpaper. or the dead of night. or two sheets of wet toilet roll. or, you get the idea. anyway, I asked my boss for a project for the two of us and he gave us an advert about street kids to do, which, a week later, is making pitifully slow progress. yesterday I managed only to transfer 10 minutes of footage from hi 8 to beta. in a day. a full day. also we have had a few other setbacks, on the first day we went down into the city centre for 3 hours and saw precisely one street kid. one! and they call themselves a developing country! Ethiopia didnt have national famine by having one pot-bellied skinny kid did it? one! its meant to be a really big problem here. one! damn those refried beans. also the next day the car broke down, and the clutch went in the tow truck. one night though, we went into the really dangerous area with some of the guys in the middle of the night and filmed some kids sleeping on the streets which was sad, drugged up to the eyeballs with no idea what was going on. then we drove a little farther and encountered some of the worst attempts at transsexuals I have ever seen. really scary, especially when one reached in the window and fiddled with the guy next to me’s flies. no flesh became visible, but for a homophobe he was remarkably reluctant to stop him-her-it. despite the fact it looked like mike tyson in drag. or maybe because of it. damn those refried beans. im really dissappointed. damnation and hellfire. damn. oh, to end on a comical note, the name juan-carlos (quite popular here) can be hilariously shorted to juan-ca, with no-one batting an eyelid. brilliant.
right thats all for now until next time
damn those refried beans
sprengiko

Polishing turds

dear all, hello I hope you are all well, I am fine and have not got the shits yet (I know, unbelievable, I clearly have impenetrable bowels) anyway... the other day I accidentally inhaled next to the colombian host of the weird kids’ programme. he smelt like he‘d been enbalmed. this wouldnt surprise me, hes about 10 years over the honduran life expectancy and moves very slowly, I think rigamortis has set in. sound men dont exist over here. instead they plug the microphone directly into the output, to hell with the consequences (usually shit sound, sometimes celine dion) subsequently I was asked to change the lighting in the tv studio. lighting was the one thing that I decided very early on I would be no good at (and promptly stopped listening) so I looked intelligent, moved a light and they all got really excited. it still looked rubbish though, its like trying to polish a turd. the other night we were short staffed so I was in charge of all 3 cameras on the sports show. needless to say I was pretty rubbish but I figured they werent going to lose both their viewers thanks to some dodgy camerawork. no, they were going to lose them because the host’s mobile kept ringing and he spent half the show trying to advertise rum. still. on saturday I worked on a the new show, ‘la hora de ganar‘ (the hour to win), a slightly misleading title in that the show was 3 hours long and contained no prizes. or a competition. (and no, it didnt just feel like 3 hours, it was 3 hours. it felt like ten) anyway, despite starting off as cable-basher-in-cheif, by the end of the show I had been promoted to 2nd cameraman (largely because the other guy got bored and decided to sit down instead) and still managed to make my daily appearance on tv, this time looking like a twat who had been left in charge of a large camera and had no idea what he was doing. however I knew exactly what I was doing. I was dancing. like a twat who had been left in charge of a large camera but was trying and failing to blend in. so. no doubt you are all gripping the edge of your seats in anticipation of the conclusion of the 39th annual amf bowling world cup. I was lucky enough to go and watch the bowlers, live, the other day (and even luckier to leave relatively unscathed 20 minutes later) if theres anything funnier than watching people take ten pin bowling seriously i‘ll eat my hat (unless I lose it first, I am trying) on the anti-malaria front things have taken a turn for the worse. the other day after a particularly savage dose I went on a killing spree, massacring several mosquitos all of which exploded in big puffs of my blood. its odd being its killer and its last meal, almost, but not quite, exactly the opposite of being a bumble bee. or something. I have also started having really vivid dreams about toothpaste, ever since buying some colgate the other day. one night I thought I had bought the wrong type that only works on tall people. it was so real I had to check the packet the next day. I blame the mefloquine. yesterday I went to the cinema to see legally blonde 2 which was utterly vile (I was anticipating a classic) but on a plus note I saw both the videos for I Love Rock And Roll and November Rain on mtv the other day (my favourites) which made me momentarily scarily happy. also I got a lift in a taxi the other day with a guy who, in my less than sober state, looked exactly like uday hussein (before he died). I dont think it was him, but here would be a great idea for a hideout. I reckon osama‘s here somewhere running a dirty brothel. on that note I had better go, I’m meant to film interviews with the honduran national team later (footballers, not goat hurders)
hasta luego
rico