#uraguay

[ya-world-challenge]

Book Review - Our Shadows Have Claws

Trying to catch up on some older Netgalley reviews!

This is a compilation of Latin American monster stories by YA authors - many known names as well as new writers. I’m a little late as it’s past Halloween but this is a great anthology for any season. Note that it isn’t billed as horror stories - while some of them are a bit creepy depending on your tolerance, others are tales involving folkloric creatures and legends, so exactly that: Latin American monster stories.

The stories vary in length and at 15 total, this a great volume to pick up and read a story every once in a while. From Haitian lougarou to Columbian la patasola to completely original creatures, this anthology is a rich bundle of creativity and culture.

My favorite, while not at all creepy, was probably Blood Kin by Ari Tison, a captivating tale of family, heritage, and eco-exploitation where the real monsters are the evil oil companies.

Other favorites were the opening tale, The Nightingale and the Lark by Chantel Acevedo, a Romeo and Juliet forbidden romance in Cuba with a monster-hunting twist; Dismembered by Ann Davila Cardinal, a horrifying but touching tale set in Puerto Rico; Beware the Empty Subway Car by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, an emotional and lovely-written take on the lougarou legend; Leave No Tracks by Julia Alvarez, a feminist-focused story of finding magical heritage.

The Other Side of the Mountain by Claribel A. Ortega is unique for being the only male protagonist in the collection, otherwise the stories exclusively feature Latina teens. ¿Dónde Está el Duende? by Jenny Torres Sanchez is arguably the creepiest of the stories, next to Dismembered.

Altogether this was a very high-quality collection of spooky stories, also made interesting by being spread across a wide variety of locales in both Latin America and the United States. Each story also has its own illustration, which were a nice touch and added to the atmosphere.

★  ★  ★  ★   ★    5 stars      

[thegirlwhorunsforthetrain]

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

“He was going to survive,” Continue reading Untitled

[snototter]

A hard tick (Amblyomma sp.) found in Uraguay

by Anders L.

[incorrect-jojolands-quotes]

How many of the Sussy smugglers speak olelo hawai’i ?

paco says:

Does aloha count or SMTH? I only know Espanol and English. You aint catching me sound like a Gringo.

jodio says:

cap paco you barely got a C- in spanish 1 bc you don't even know what car is. im not fluent but a few peeps taught me a word or two im more of a pidgin guy shoot, brah.

dragona says:

i've picked up a few phrases growing up but i'm not fluent. meryl mei actually knows a lot of olelo hawai’i and she's been teaching me quite some phrases over the years 😊. fun fact: meryl mei used to participate in merrie monarch when she was younger.

usagi says:

hiki iaʻu ke ʻōlelo iki (ʘ‿ʘ✿) he ✨ hapa✨ maoli au. ahaha ʻaʻole wau maikaʻi loa 😅😅😅😅 my fluency is BAD but i try my best~

[ohdarlings]

sorry to any argentinian followers but i hate your football team

[lanehutsons]

usa winning copa you heard it here first

[duranduratulsa]

Dish of the day: Barbecued Provolone Cheese #food #foodporn #cheese #barbecue #barbecuedprovolonecheese #Uraguay #uraguayfood

[willowwind78]

Annabel Lee Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

              Perching in darkness, peering through a broken window on the third floor of a long-abandoned hotel, his fingers deftly removed a spider from the webbing before him. Gently plucking it from its web where it was obscuring his line if sight, he carefully replaced the eight-legged arachnid onto the crumbling architecture. Rain drizzled through the gloom of the late afternoon sky creating a miserable feeling of dampness that soaked through skin into bone. His eyes focused in on a girl. She huddled within a small group that seemed to believe they were hidden from view amongst the tombstones of the old cemetery. Laughing and giggling they took turns at their game.

              In the center of the group hunched a man buried within the fabric of a black hoodie. His black denims, far too big for his body, were held in place at the thighs by a thick leather belt. Red boxers puffed out between the gap of his hoodie and his pants, reminding the watcher of the back end of a Toco toucan he had once, long ago observed in Uraguay. The orange bill of a ball cap protruding from beneath his hood only enhanced his memory. Perhaps the youth of today were taking their mating rituals from exotic birds. His red bum obviously gave him prominence amongst the groupies as he was the center of attention, the leader of this game.

              The players circled their addiction, eager to shove their cash into the Toco’s hand in exchange for whatever he had to offer. The first contestant was a man aged well beyond his thirty years. His skin was marred with open wounds and blotches of red, matching the veins coursing through his eyes. His nose bent at an unusual angle no doubt suffered at the hand of a player from a previous game. Hair dotted his head in strange tufts as if a drunkard had cut it with a pair of rusty garden shears. The frisson caused him to bounce in anticipatory delight as he shoved a handful of wadded paper into the outstretched fingers of the Toco. In exchange, he was handed a small package. The first contestant skittered away into the darkness: a winner.

              Contestant number two eagerly took his place. She was the reason for the watcher’s stalking tonight. He had been following her for days. Not belonging here, she was new to this game, not quite sure of the rules. Long red hair tumbled in flames down her back. She shivered, poorly dressed for the cold damp weather of the evening. Her shoes, completely impractical, pink straps of leather attached to a high sharp pointed heel. Thin arms wrapped around her stylish designer jacket, her fashion sense prohibiting her from fastening the zipper to hold it in place. What brought her here manifested in her eyes. Streaked with red, slightly swollen, and marred by dark black rings they detracted from her natural beauty. She had not slept in over a week; the dreams were too much for her. The watcher trusted that in her sleep deprived state she would not notice any unusual behavior in the Toco.

              The watcher smiled as her delicate, perfectly, manicured fingers slipped a roll of bills into the Toco’s hand. The Toco grabbed hold of her wrist. The bill of his hat rose causing the girl to let out a small shriek at the sight of his face. There was something wrong with the man’s eyes. Filled with darkness so black they emanated a violet light. It was too late; she had already made her decision. The Toco twisted his wrist, forcing the girl to her knees to prevent her arm from breaking. Using his opposite hand, he deftly produced a syringe filled with white creamy liquid. In one smooth movement, the needle pierced a vein and the plunger was expunged. A hollow sound vociferated from her lips the cold fluid moved up her arm into her shoulder. She pulled free and ran, stumbling as the heels of her impractical shoes plunged deep into the wet soil with each step.

She ran from the cemetery into the darkness as fast as her legs could carry, pausing not for a moment when her leggings tore as her shin made contact with a disheveled headstone. Collapsing at the base of an old knotted oak, she gripped her arm in anguish. She had never felt such pain. She had never felt so alive! Her eyes burned with ecstasy as if the world had suddenly taken on a new form. Everything seemed so clear. She reached out to touch the raindrops. They fell so slowly, as if she could count each one before they hit the ground.

Out of the darkness emerged a man, the watcher. A man more handsome than she had ever seen. He was tall and lean, dressed to kill. His suit perfectly tailored to his form. Her thoughts wandered to who could have tailored such an exquisite masterpiece. The white pin-striping expertly aligned in every seam. She lost herself in her own thoughts; lost in the artistry of the tailoring.

His voice drew her back from hems and inseams. “Would you like to stay here Christina? Live forever in this peace and harmony?” Lifting her head from his suit to his emerald green eyes took more effort than she had expected. The thought of speaking seemed entirely too strenuous an activity so rather than replying she let her head just wobble downward using gravity as its driving force.

Warmth filled her body, emanating from his fingertips, as he lifted her head by her chin. She felt relieved as she did not have the energy to do so herself. “Would you give me your soul freely and openly?” She tried to let her head drop again in a nod but his warm fingers held her chin in place preventing gravity from doing its job. His perfect lips formed a soft kind smile revealing magnificently white teeth. “I am afraid I need you to respond with a definitive answer here dear. A yes or no will suffice. Do you give yourself to me? Freely, without coercion?”

She pulled in a deep breath. The air was filled with the scent of him, musty and alluring, a masculinity that had been lost to centuries past. Bracing her diaphragm, using every ounce of energy left in her, she pushed forth a single word. “Yes.”

There was no pain when his sharp pointed teeth sank into her neck. She relaxed into him allowing the blood to flow from her body. The dreams were gone, she could tell, they would not haunt her nights again. She didn’t need proof, she just knew.

Christina reveled in the peace, her soul trying to cling to it, despite the strength of the pull, yanking her away. Something cold and dark gripped at her, tearing with razor sharp claws. Agony ripped through serenity with a voracious appetite, shredding her soul, until it was nothing but glittering pieces of confetti in the air around her. What had she done? The tiny bits of her spirit drifted to the ground; their light squelched in the damp earth. She had glimpsed heaven only to watch it dissipate before her eyes.

Welcome to my world. I wrote a book many years ago that I never finished. I had dreams that someday I would complete it. This is at least the 3rd or 4th time I rewrote the first chapter. It is nothing but the latest beginning, an invitation, into the life of a woman I have called Annabel Lee, a fictitious version of... me.

[markramsey]

Watching Uraguay vs Brazil on FS1 #CopaAmerica

[writersmorgue]

i had food poisoning last night and was pissed about it. anyway mid-puke i remembered that Paraguay and Uraguay exist and i was like Paraguay is on top right? if I remember correctly from middle school geography. So i googled them to check

and then I read an article about the Paraguayan war bc apparently it was particularly brutal. anyway, i forgot about how bad my stomach was cramping and was just really upset about civilian casualties for a while so i guess it worked. stick it to the man.

[holedyke]

our fun guy in uraguay 🫶🫶🫶🫶

[ping1n]

eyes skipped over the first part of this post. thought you were extolling the life of a hot air balloon driver.

kinda sad now. i want a hot air balloon. i want to go where the wind takes me. even if it takes me to uraguay

Having ADHD is a lot like being only able to travel with a hot air balloon. When the wind is right and the weather conditions are ideal, you can effortlessly go wherever you could possibly want, with almost no energy seemingly spent. And when the weather just Will Not Do That, there's nothing you can really do about it. Advice from people telling you to just fucking Grow Up And Learn To Steer don't believe you when you say you've got no steering wheel. Your explanations of navigating different wind directions at different altitudes make no sense to them.

So you just gotta accept that some days the wind goes your way, some days it won't. You can either exhaust yourself fighting the wind, accept that you're going nowhere at all today, or that the direction you are currently going is not the way you planned to go. Why am I in Uruguay.

[manmetaphysical]

4: Reverse Node Trouble with Ricardo López and Lars Von Trier

In 1996 when the Sun was conjunct Neptune, Björk was stalked by an unbalanced and obsessive admirer called Ricardo López, a Capricorn born in Uraguay with a North Node conjunct Neptune.  He was unhinged clearly as when he was living in Florida, he began stalking Björk who was having a relationship with British musician Goldie at the time.  López sent Björk a letter bomb laden with infected needles and sulphuric acid. It failed to explode but his feeling was so intense that he filmed himself committing suicide while listening to Bjork’s music. The implication was that Björk was the cause of his personal suffering. She was duly freaked out and worried about her own life and the safety of her son.

Björk reached truly international fame in her first major acting role in the film Dancer in the Dark (2000). She even wrote the songs in an ironic anti-musical style. She played Selma, a girl losing her sight who had to work with heavy machinery but who falls foul of the law. This was directed by Danish director, Lars Von Trier, a Taurus with a conjunction of Pluto and Jupiter in Leo.

Some think of this film as a kind of twisted masterpiece, but others say it is a kind of relentless doom porn. Make your own mind up. Von Trier puts his leading actress through every form of difficulty, creating an absolute hell on screen all of which can be disturbing to watch. But they had personal disagreements on set. She refused to be his pet leading girl and he did not like it. She avoided acting for 22 years after that until she did ‘The Northman.’ She published a statement in 2017 explaining Von Trier’s abusive and domineering behaviour as Björk is not one to be pushed around as the female  journalist learned to her cost in Bangkok when Björk physically attacked her. Von Trier denied all these accusations and claimed his behaviour towards Björk was not unusual in any way. But since that denial has kept quiet.

So what brings this challenging behaviour out in her chart? I noted a fascinating pattern of the reverse nodes of the Moon. This is where the the North Node in one chart conjuncts with the South Node in the other. Björk has her North Node in early Gemini and her South Node in early Sagittiarus. Both these men who challenged her have the reverse positions to those of Björk. Both their North Nodes are in early Sagittarius and their South Nodes are in early Gemini. This clash shows a potental for aggravation or some kind of karmic reckoning. López even said he wanted ‘to punish’ her.

Nodal positions can bring about fated events. In 1984, aged 19, when her nodes returned to the natal position, not reversed she published her first book of poems.  But in synastry where two natal charts overlap, there’s a sense of it being like compass points where the magnetic pull in each direction is forced in the opposite direction. While not exact to the degree, these natal points are close enough to show that there might be a clash of wills, a reversal of fortunes, or at the very least a struggle with different goals, and how each native might trigger the other native to operate from their projections on the other.

To have this alignment would not be auspicious synastry for a good marriage for example. But deep lessons can be learned for the events that happen, not all necessarily bad, but where it appears to polarise two people. Ricardo López and Lars von Trier are both Earth signs and upon encountring Björk, it may have mirrored something lacking in themselves that they perceived in her an energy that is both emotional yet other worldly. Another interesting factor of this node reversal phenomenon is the age gap: Lars von Trier was born nine years before Björk in 1956, and Ricardo López ten years after her in 1975.  

[april-pad]

Whisky - Cannes-winning Film - Movies That Touched Our Culture

Whisky. Most movies have something to do with their titles. This movie has nothing to do with alcoholic beverages or distilleries, and it is certainly not Scottish. So why was this Cannes Film Festival award winner call it 'Whisky"? Amazingly, this film is all about culture. According to the Air Buturian, "There is a moment at the heart of the film when the three of them have a photo taken. Upon being asked to say “whisky” by the photographer.." In Uraguay, saying whisky is like saying cheese in the US. Both words are intertwined into the fabric of their culture. It may surprise you to learn how well this movie did on the critics and awards stage. Firstly, there are only three characters in the entire movie and if you were expecting some whisky-loving, fist-swinging scenes - this is not it. The synopsis made it rather clear. "Jacobo Koller runs a near-derelict sock factory and leads a life of quiet desperation. When his more successful brother Herman announces a surprise visit after many years' absence, Jacobo is desperate to prove he's successful at something and asks his near-mute assistant Marta Acuna to pose as his wife."

How Did Whisky, The 2004 Movie, Fare Before the Critics?

After sweeping the Cannes Film Festival, Whisky went on to win another 19 awards. The critics believed that this movie was one of the best Latin films, loading accolades of all classes including reviews. One famous writer and chief movie critic at the New York Times,  Manohla Dargis, said that "the film is a model of the economy both fiscally and narratively, and the kind of work that taps into the mysteries of consciousness, that recounts political detail and a sense of aesthetic proportion —that is, so often missing from American independent cinema." The film received favorite ratings from the top popular media including IMDb 7.1/10, Metacritic 66%, and Rotten Tomatoes 100%. Production, Actors, and Cultural Importance The production of Whisky highlights its cultural importance to Latinos as some of the most important countries assisted in the process. Although it is primarily a Uruguayan comedy, Spain, Argentina, and Germany were equally involved. Directed by  Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, the film centered on three characters played by Andrés Pazos, Mirella Pascual,  and Jorge Bolan. One commentator on IMDb drew critical comparisons between the characters and the literal socio-politico state of Uruguay. "Whisky" is also a film about Uruguay, represented here in Jacobo's character. This once prosperous country, a stalwart of democracy, nicknamed "the Switzerland of South America", is now a country in dire need of technological updating, of restoration of its architectural treasures, and of serious political planning and execution of its economic and social future, and is paying high stakes for decades of unrealistic labor legislation and the aftermath of a traumatic dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. To prepare the future, one must take care of one's past, but also be prepared to bury the past when necessary (like the brothers have to bury their mother). There are no easy solutions. debblyst How much we agree with him or not does not change the beautiful lessons that can be found in the movie.  Whisky is undoubtedly one of those films that touch the fabric of our culture, leaving us with truths and questions we must find answers to.     Read the full article

[harmandmac]

Those are all great moments! I love that whole scene at the end of "Hail and Farewell Part 1" with the anniversary of the baby deal and then in Four Percent Solution when we see a flashback to that scene, all the AU episodes, Lifeline and so many others. I love how they were always there for each other and he gave up his commission to find her in Uraguay. It was such a beautiful journey.

Harmon Rabb is the only man and I will die on that hill.

No but in all seriousness, the way they kept coming back to each other, even when things were really bad (known as Paraguay, known as Australia etc etc), that’s when you know they were meant to be . Oh goodness, I just love them so much

[claudiotrezzani]

L'avevamo già scoperto:

Roberto Besana non vende gelati, a dispetto del cognome.

Ma propone ben altro, in immagine e parola.

E ciò che ritrae, a volte sposta.

Sì, proprio sposta.

Per esempio sposta Genova in Venezuela.

Da cui il titolo "Besana Barrio".

Il barrio  non come algida entità amministrativa, come in Argentina od Uraguay.

No, proprio il barrio venezuelano, nella sua tipica accezione di vitale degrado.

Pulsante vitale degrado.

Vedete, di Genova ci sono chiese, case torri, gru.

E non è neppure solo la faccenda degli adesivi su cartello, a spostare Genova in Venezuela.

No, è la temperie generale a farlo.

Il mood od il vibe, se proprio mi costringete ad impiegare parole eteroctone.

Lo si respira.

Timbricamente, lo si respira.

Quella certa minacciosa vaghezza.

Quel contrasto che prima prende, indi sfuma.

E' anche così che si trasfigura senza tradire, in Fotografia.

Quando l'esito è alto, succede.

All rights reserved

Claudio Trezzani