Kelly and I are off to Barcelona, Spain today! SDF->ATL->BCN. We’ll arrive 11AM local time tomorrow. Barcelona is the cultural capital of Spain – imagine the Montreal of Spain – as the predominant language of Barcelona isn’t Spanish, it’s Catalan. It’s a fairly old city with a Barri Gotic (Gothic Neighborhood) that dates back to the Roman era. Winding streets and open-air markets galore.

Gaudi’s magnum opus, The Sagrada Familia

Barcelona at it’s center is an old town with great ancient architecture, and (as seen above) great modern architecture. It’s a cultural wonderland with plenty of delicious food and sights to see. We will also be present for the Festival of the Mercè – Barcelona’s annual fall kick-off. Kelly has also arranged that we will run the Cursa de la Mercè, a 10k (6 mile) road race through the center of town. Other runs of note include the correfoc (fire run) which appears during the Festival de la Mercè and is a parade of incendiary insanity. Devils and dragons parade through the streets shoot fire over the parade participants. Yeah – that’s awesome.

Tapas at Cal Pep

Did I mention the food??? Tapas are a big draw in Barcelona, and Cal Pep is the place to go (see above). Also, there are a number of delicious chocolate bars and being right next to the Mediterranean, the seafood is ridiculously fresh.

We’ll be walking quite a bit, likely biking and maybe taking a train or two! So, expect photos and daily travelogues – Wifi is pretty all-round there in the city center of Barca. We’ve been putting together a Google Spreadsheet of Things to Do Around Barca. Plenty of links and such in there if you want to dive in.

I’ve leafed through a couple of issues of AdBusters magazine a couple of times, and have always been intrigued by the layout and the complete deconstruction of branded® America&tm;. How should I best explain AdBusters? Well, I think they do it best:

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.

Yeah, pretty much. So are there ads in the magazine? Nope. The layout is fantastic and entertaining, but they somehow manage to stay away from having a “brand” themselves. I really don’t know how they do it, but they seem to stay on that razors-edge of having a good, gripping, competent design, but yet don’t fall into the trap of “no image as an image”. Also, culture jamming is a great idea (not to mention a great name), and I suspect that Warren Ellis knows well these busters of ad.

I do believe I will subscribe.

Jackson, Kelly and I went to the fair yesterday! Bunnies and rednecks and chickens, OH MY! Note well our “weak shouldered” bunny friend over to the right there… We also encountered rockabilly ducks and some odd memorials to Bob Hope and Desert Storm II in aquarium format! The bunnies were extra cute this year.

Check theKentucky State Fair 2003 gallery!

Holly (she’s no dumbass) sent me an op-ed piece at CNN entitled Believe It, or Not and it discusses the shift in American Christian faith (including Catholics, mind you) where more and more Christians believe in the idea of the Virgin birth and that God is the only key to morality (among other things).

As the author Kristof states: “The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time.“

Man, that worries me quite a bit. People that don’t know why they should believe what they believe. I know the word is “faith”, but damn! There are ridiculous numbers of pieces of evidence that state that the Bible isn’t “the word of god”, but a constantly edited piece of literature. Many things that are the bedrock pieces of the faith are later “add-ins” by the clergy. (The “why” of that is another argument all together).

I don’t intend to impugn religious beliefs here but faith is indeed turning away from the hard texts and more into an almost oral tradition of mysticism and mythology. Know your faith, and question it. Know more, assume less.

i don’t want to say that i’m a bad person — but i placed bets on the behavior of a homeless man last night at the outlook inn.

there was a girl across the street and she and her dog-toting boyfriend were locked into conversation with a local homeless guy for about a good 20 minutes.
it all started when i said “i’ve got a dollar that says that the conversation ends in 2 minutes”.

hunter said “5″.

brad hack said “3 minutes”.

another said “4″.

basic rules were set down. conversation must end by both parties walking away. at 3 minutes, 10 seconds — “the hack zone”, as it were — girl attempts breakaway, hack claims victory. but WAIT! homeless man reinitiates, hack cringes, feels his 3 dollars drifting away like a bottle in the sea.
it is ruled that conversation never ended. 3 minutes 20 seconds passes, and we are all in the grip of the situation. hack whispering under his breath “walk away, walk away” — the man at 4 minutes hoping for more… the seconds tick by, my gaze shifting in half-second intervals — secondhand / disturbing social experiment / secondhand / disturbing social experiment…

at 3 minutes 25 — girl turns away, homeless man does the same, and conversation is ruled overwith! there is a loud commotion as we revel in the excitement of our disturbing social experiment. others in the bar swoop to the window — wondering what our exitment is all about. hack swipes his cash from the table like a man catching a fly — “the next game of pool is on me, boys!”

When someone tells you “Hey man, Louisville is boring and sucks,” you can promptly direct that guy to the URL for the 2nd Annual Lebowski What-Have-You festival right here in Louisville. I don’t know if it’s the only Lebowski What-Have-You Festival in the nation, but I do know this — the man who was the inspiration for “The Dude” will be there, drinking white russians and bowling. Yeah.

There has been a story about cell-phone related deaths floating around. This estimation that 2,600 people died last year in cell-phone related car accidents comes from a mathematical model from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Their summary of the report can be found here.

It seems to me that we, as a people are more terrible than the most terrible terrorist. Our culture is own terrorism. We live sedentary lives, we eat until we die, we smoke too much, we war against drugs while we advise that everyone “have a designated driver” (btw, alcohol caused 12,000+ deaths last year in car accidents). Our government speaks of peace in the same breath that they threaten war. Jail journalists that leak information, but would you mind printing this threat to Sadaam? Thanks.

Sheesh. I can’t help but think that the same moral ambiguity that started the anti-slavery abolotionist movement in the 1800′s is being manifested now. A nation, birthed in the ideas of freedom allowed for the continuance of slaver. How do we, a nation that prides itself on freedom, cope with being so contradictory — not only to other countries, but to ourselves?

update: this just in! eat up, fatties! Meanwhile, when will White Castle make soy-burgers?

Kelly and I have quite a few driveway moments. NPR is great.

Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to Jessica for chipping in some of her no-doubt precious time to the Distributed Proofreading project. She did five pages yesterday! “It’s fun!” she said, I think.