Monday, May 12, 2008

Weird BA scenes

we've decided to head up to iguazu falls tomorrow. we're going to travel like rich people do. i called up a travel agent and said, "please can you arrange us a two-day trip to see the falls?" so far i've found it rather unnerving. specifically, i'm discovering that the amount of worry stays the same; it just changes shape. instead of spending days poring over internet pictures of mid-range hotel rooms and scrounging around for the best deal, i'm worried about how much to tip a private driver to the airport. i worried whether we'd be able to print the e-tickets and vouchers; when sandra, our travel agent, laughed and said, "oh, i'll send them over to you in a taxi," i worried about whether we'd be home when the cab driver arrived. and so on. please, yes, i can see the obvious conclusion. my name is heather and i am a fretter.

anyway, since we're going to be away for a couple of days, i thought i'd leave you with some images to think about.

as i mentioned in "things portenos like," the dogs here are totally zen. the traffic, however, is not. whatever the polar opposite of zen is, that's how you'd describe the traffic here. drivers actually speed up to catch hapless pedestrians with the temerity to step off the curb.





this is a shop display of famous-people smurfs. you've got yer gandhi smurf, yer menem smurf, and yer bart simpson smurf, all cheek by jowl. oh, and, of course, freud smurf and lacan smurf. lacan is huge in argentina.




as well as being the lacanian centre of the world, argentina is widely known to be the globe's cosmetic surgery playground. the phrase you're looking at here is "estetica canina." no wonder they need therapy.







the "centro de elongacion valentinov" advertises on street poles all over palermo. i can see why they'd need to. i could go to their centro for a hundred years and i still wouldn't be able to do this.

3 comments:

Anthony said...

look, i am assuming you are kidding, because i have no mental image of what lacan looks like, but if you aren't, i would kill for a lacan smurf, or a melanie klein smurf (is melanie klein still big anywhere)

Anthony said...

or you could buy the freud and the lacan smurf and reinact the primal scene?

Paula Greenspan said...

I studied at Elongacion Valentinov for the month I lived in Buenos Aires, with incredible results. And yes, I found them through the posters up all over town. Never say never. =)