Ch. 1

I'm listening to Juelz Santana right now. I used to casually listen to Juelz, now I only listen to him in cases of emergency.

And this qualifies as an emergency.

I have signed myself up for a two-month backpacking journey through Argentina. I have never backpacked before. I've never traveled alone before and I'm not even sure I have enough money or balls to keep me on the road for two months. However I told enough people that I was doing it, I no longer have a place to stay in Buenos Aires and I declared my plan to the world on this very blog. The final factor perhaps being the most trivial and important since I would never want to look like a pussy to whoever reads the blog.

Fortunately I have Juelz' mind-numbing music pumping into my ears. Trying to pick an example of his lyrical prowess, or lack there of, is liking trying to pick your favorite Michael Jordan highlight. However the verse I heard just before the bus left the station is pretty solid, "I worship the great prophet, the great Muhammad Omar Atta, for his courage behind the wheel of the plane, reminds me of when I was dealing the caine."

A verse which barely rhymes, doesn't follow any rhythm, unneccessarily alludes to cocaine and praises one of the September 11 hijackers. Perfectly dumb enough to distract me from the sitauation at hand and prevent me from completely losing my mind.

Juelz has helped me out countless ways in my life. Just knowing that I live in a world where 18-year-old rappers can come up, declare themselves part of the Taliban less than a week after 9/11, endlessly name drop Curt Cobain for no other reason than the fact that it rhymes with cocaine and continue to produce media with not even a hint of intelligence give me the sensation that I can do anything in life.

When I first came to Buenos Aires three months ago my travel companion at the time was losing her mind over leaving her family and boyfriend. As she sat there in bed clinching a teddy-bear her boyfriend had given her and sobbing to herself looking to me for some words that would make everything better, all I had to say was, "Don't you have some type of Juelz Santana in your life?"

She probably didn't understand what I was talking about. It also doesn't helpt that I am not explaining what I meant by that until this blog that I am writing six months after the fact, but at least I tried.

In addition to Juelz I to alleviate my worries I just met Thiago, a Brazilian, who has lived in Sahuarita, a small town 30 minutes away from where I attended university. Thiago is a young border patrol agent who entertains me with wild stories for the first hour of the 16-hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu, home of the Iguazu waterfalls.

The only other person I had met from the truck-stop town of Sahuarita was Jeffrey Zarga, who was the kid who didn't drink or smoke in my dormitory hall freshman year, he was also the kid who could give you a pornstar look-alike for every girl he ever met. It was nice to finally meet a more normal person from Sahuarita.

The first movie they show on the bus is "Shooter," in which Mark Walhberg plays a sniper named Bob Lee Swagger. I am certain that had this movie been bigger, Gilbert Arenas would have stolen the moniker for himself. I declare that should I arrive at the pshycopathic traveling state where I feel I need to make up a new life story, I am chosing Robert Swagger as my alias.

I daze out halfway through the movie and beging thinking about how many of the jokes I made before coming to Argentina have become true. I did end up dropping out. I am begining to go on a solo excursion. And if I stayed in Buenos Aires any longer I would have tried my luck on establishing a drug cartel (no doubt named after Paul McPherson) just out of sheer boredom.

Before I left I asked my friends and family for some radical ideas that I could put into action while traveling on my own for two months, such as taking up Zen, not using time, etc. The best contribution by far came from my Buenos Aires roommate Tom, who made me a sock puppet and instructed me to only talk through the sock the entire time while I made a sockumentary. He also said it could serve as a mastabatory device should I get lonely on the road.

Right now I am using the sock as a camera case, but I got high hope for the both of us on our travels.