[Monkeys]

When you let the Monkeys run the Zoo, you get the kind of shit that happened today at the office. Enough said.

But I don't give a shit, because tonight is Live Music Night!™

Yeah! Tonight is a night of friends and beer; jazz and blues [live!]; chats and laughs; and [fingers crossed] casual sex!

Calvin and Hobbes

I've been trying to remember when was the first time I saw a comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes, but I can't pinpoint it. Maybe was around the Xmas my sister gave my dad one of Bill Waterson's books, but somehow I think it was before that.

Anyway, over the weekend I saw that the whole collection is up for sale: three huge books going for around two hundred bucks. It would be awesome to have it on my coffee table, but first I'll have to get me a coffee table. But as tempting as it sounds, I'd rather get those two Franklin and go snow skiing -the best stuff in life is not what you get in a store, but the one that is kept in your mind and that can be brought up whenever and wherever you want, like the memoirs of a day skiing in the snow.

Or like the memoirs I have from summer 1991, down in Louisville Kentucky.

That summer was the last leg of my exchange student year in the US, spent in a miserable farm in Eastern Kentucky. In those previous eleven months I had the chance to attend high school with a whole bunch of highlanders that didn't know how a shower looked like; feed the sheeps and goats in the farm three times a day every fucking day; clean the dog poo of the 56 dogs around me; kill one rat in my first week upon arrival and an squirrel with a .22 later that winter; date my first blonde hair girlfriend; and have to interact with every possible animal known to a city boy like me including my little brother Donny.

Louisville was a that time like a trip to the International Space Station would be today: a blast! Even though Louisville is perhaps smaller than CLT, the thing is that I was there with some of those highlanders in some school organized trip, and that spelled nothing more than non-stop drinking and other guilty pleasures. I remember that I went shopping one day [I use to enjoy shopping back in those days] and among other stuff I got me two books of Calvin and Hobbes. I was planning in giving one to my dad and the other one to my younger sister, who was too young to protest at that time and therefore I'll end up keeping both books for me. That night back in the hotel while waiting for around ten boxes of pizza with the highlanders and sipping some beers, I started readings the cartoons and suddenly it hit me.


I started laughing and couldn't stop! I laughed so much and so hard that it became painful and the highlanders thought that I was having some sort of strange South American seizure, or whatever strange illness people over in South America carry with them -or wherever South America is! I laughed and laughed and even though I put the book away, every time I'd remember those pages I'd have another "seizure".

This last Sunday when I saw the C&H book, it was open right on the page that made me laugh so much so many years ago! [are there coincidences in this life?]. And it made me smile again; both remembering my time in KY when it first happen, and by just reading that little sequence that I know by heart today, as I've read it so many times over the years: Calvin and Hobbes after getting in some sort of trouble are sent to play in the garage, but the car is in there and they don't have much space. So they decide to push the car out a little bit so that they can have more room. . . and they end up ditching the car. Fucking hilarious! Just writing about it gets a laugh out of me.

Anyway the thing is that that cartoon is so fucking well done and smart, that I've even had complete discussions about what really happens in C&H world. The main point, of course, is whether Hobbes is real or not; whether he's a real "person" and becomes a teddy tiger only when other people is around, or if is the other way around. My answer is always that of course he's just a fucking teddy tiger, don't look any further, and I even point out that there's plenty of evidence to sustain that claim.

But the truth of the matter is that deep inside me I know that is not true.

One Out of Five...

Crap! I've just realized that I had 80% success in today's shopping spree. My two sweaters Kick Ass; my new pants Rock 'n Roll; and one of the packages that contains three underwear is exactly what I was looking for. But the other package, with the other three underwear, is fucking different! I should've looked at the pictures in the bag, as it shows crystal clear what I was getting [note to self: book appointment w/eye Dr 1st thing in the morning 'cause u cant c shit!].

I had actually 50% success [or fucking failure I should say] when buying my under garments; not a pretty rate my friends for such an easy task. And the thing is that now I have to go back to the mall to exchange them. . .? No way José that I'm gona set foot there anytime soon again[note to self 2: order new underwear online. Donate old ones the others to Salvation Army].

[swimming]

I wonder if that one was for me. . .

Either way, the past belongs there, in the past. And if you like what the present has to offer, then you'll have to like the past that has helped shape this present.

And I'd have to say no [celos] and no [gfriend] –as there was two questions in one.

If I make sense, good; but if I don't. . . I'll just keep swimming, the beach is still far away.

Impulsive

Today I had one of those great ideas that I so often come up with: to go Shopping!

I thought that after two days of the most hardcore shoppers hitting every single possible mall and store in town, only the lay back people like me would show up today. I also thought that by today, most of this Southerners would have seen their savings and credit lines tremendously reduced, therefore there would be less people ripping stuff from each other's hands. And I also thought that by today, most of the things that I could've bought were gona be gone, therefore I'd get upset but I would end up not buying anything -and actually saving money by not spending it.
And I also came to the conclusion that as I am young, handsome, healthy, wealthy, and with nothing else to do, why not go and check out what gReAT hOt deals are still left out there for me.

I was surprised but at the same time I wasn't surprised with the amount of souls out there still engaged in power shopping. And I was right to think that stuff for me was long gone. But anyway I manage to buy my underwear [buy one get the other with 50% off], even though the savings from that transaction were used and abused by my impulsive purchase of two super cool sweaters [again, buy one get the other 50% off]. And later on and few stores down the hall, another impulsive purchase set me back around twenty greens when I got me an awesome pair of pants that were like "taylor made" for moi.

And those transactions had me thinking for a while [giving me a headache], and I realized that ever since I set foot in the US I've been shrinking. . . yeah, like when you put something in the dryer that should have not be putted there and it gets like three sizes smaller. In South America all my tee shirts, sweaters, shirts, pullovers, jackets, etc. were size Large; but now I'm Medium and more often than not Small. Likewise, my pants, trousers, shorts, cargos, etc. all carried the number 32 attached to the waist, but now I'm 30. And the odd thing is that I haven't gained nor lost a single pound ever since I came over here [I've been losing my hair, but I don't think there's a relationship with my garments].

Hmmm something fishy is happening. Maybe as people's asses have been getting wider and wider, sizes have been stretched well beyond their original measures and limits in order to give the impression that that extra bacon cheeseburger with an extra large order of French fries and a humangus size soda, have had no effect whatsoever in everybody's asses. In other words, retailers are not selling clothes anymore, they are selling frikking dreams.

Oops!

Before I tell you what happened to me today, let me explain to you a couple of things. . .

The first one is that in Spanish when you say "a couple of things", it doesn't mean two things only, but more like a handful of things; a number between two and perhaps three, four or five.

The second thing is that I got an invitation from my sister's family in law to spend Thanks Giving with them, and I accepted. My sister's mother in law [SMIL] called me a couple days ago to invite me to her place, and when I asked her what time would be all right for me to show up, she said "around two". Then this morning my sister's sister in law [SSIL] called me and told me not to come at 7 PM as my SMIL had said, but earlier, at 4 PM. I was like WTF? First it was 2 PM, and now instead of 7PM, it was 4 PM? I didn't mention anything to her about the difference in time but told her that "I'll be there".

And the third thing I would like to explain, is that time and punctuality works different in Latin America than it does in the US. Clocks down there have twelve hours and the day also has twenty fours hours; even more so, a minute has sixty seconds as well as it does here in the US. But when you say down there "I'll see you at two o'clock", it doesn't mean 2:00 PM but more like "I'll see you around 2 PM". In other words, people down there are annoyingly unpunctual and for them to be ten minutes late is to be actually on time as hell [There's a handful of things that piss me off in this life and one of them is people that just cannot be on fucking time. If I say I see you at 3:30, I'd be waiting for you at 3:28 and I'd start losing my patience and turning all 16,000 possible shades of red for every second that I have to wait. But just for the record, I'm a nice guy].

And besides having a very bad night last night, this morning I had to drive all the way to the border with South Carolina to do something that I'd forgotten to do; see someone that I didn't want to see. . . a different story. Let me just say that while I was down there, I went out of my way about three miles to buy a lottery ticket and when I came back home I was tired and in a bad mode. It was already two in the afternoon and I really needed to take a nap, so I decided I was gona be fashionable late for the Thanksgiving dinner, and that I was gona show up at around five.

Ooops. . .

You see, my SMIL is married to an American and all his family was coming down here for Thanksgiving [he has two daughters who are married and each has three children]. When I decided to show up at 5 PM, I thought it was South American time, when once you show up you'll have a drink and there'll be a lot of talking and then at around maybe six or seven, the food will be served and there'll be more drinking followed by dessert and some coffee, plus a lot more talking. But as there was such discrepancy between arrival times, I thought that if I was gona make it at four o'clock I would end up having to go and chase the turkey for dinner; and I really needed that extra hour of napping to be honest with you, therefore my rationality on the arrival time.

Well guess what: they ate at fucking 4:00 PM because it was American time!!!!! How in the fucking world am I suppose to know this?! I was fashionable late on top of my fashionable late time, crossing the front door at around 5:25 PM, only to discover that they've already eaten. When I walked in, my SSIL and my SMIL came to ask me that what had happened, and that why I was "late", could you believe those two? Even more so they were on the phone with my sister at that very same time and before I could even say hello to everybody they handed me the phone and my sister was like "why the fuck are you late?". My answer was as sincere as possible when I told her that she was already married so that she didn't have anything to worry about. She must've said something but I handed back the phone and started shaking hands and smiling while at the same time piling up food in a plate. Being "late" doesn't mean that I was not hungry, but the opposite as a matter of fact and they all got to see what a hungry Latino can eat [a loooooooooot].

But at the end it wasn't a big deal, or at least it wasn't for me. And if it was for them, at the end of the night after they've got to interact with my super-cool self, hear a couple of my stories, and see first hand my insatiable appetite, I can assure that they'd forgotten that I got late. Well, American late because as far as I'm concern I was on time as hell!

Evidence!

There's a thought that have been revolving around my head for quite a while, and even though there has been plenty of evidence to sustain it, I could never really find that smoking gun to prove my point. Until today, of course, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about this.


One of the worst places to be on earth is either in the middle of winter without heat, or outside right at noon in the middle of August with a tie, a suit and an appointment in ten minutes. Also to be in an airplane that is malfunctioning or a boat that is sinking. Or in a shopping mall, at least for me. I could get into a mall and walk maybe for half an hour, perhaps an hour, but if you want me to stay more than that, make sure you inject me with a tranquilizer for cattle, or even better, a venti doses of morphine and tie a a leash to my neck, like a dawg, so that I cannot run away.

My shopping behavior mirrors how Vietnam was originally intended: get in and get out. When I walk into a mall I know exactly where I want to go and what I want to see and eventually buy. I may (and often do) stop to see something on display that catches my attention, and I either try it and buy it, or keep walking. When I get to where I was heading to, I apply the same technique: find my size, the color(s) that I was looking for, head for the dressing room, see before if it fits and how good it does, and then check on colors and how I may combine it with my existent pool of clothes. Then I either buy it right away, or make a mental note in order to come back and buy it upon further reflection and examination. Easy and to the point.

Today I went to the mall *hugh* and head straight to GAP in order to get me some badly needed underwear. I do have high hopes that some lucky lady would be looking at it VERY soon, even though the hard reality says otherwise, but hope is a very powerful instrument for keeping my head above the water these lonely days. So I walk in the mall and I start feeling some cramps and a little itching all over my neck, and by the time I pass the big fountain in the middle of it and the hUgE Christmas tree my left arm goes numb and heart failure have never felt so close as ever before. I try to concentrate in those beautiful and young blondes walking around while trying not to see all those huge discounts and shit and trying to keep my compass in one direction: GAP. I finally make it in one piece and after giving a crooked smile to one of the girls at the entrance, I head to where the men apparel is. . . or fucking was!


I turned around in disbelieve but the evidence was overwhelming: the men section of the store had disappeared, had been completely erased from the face of this planet and there was only stuff for girls. As I stood in the middle of the store, one of the girls approached me with the confidence in her eyes of a hundred battles won and even more questions answered under her belt when asked: Where the fuck is the men's stuff?

She looked at me with contempt and proceeded to answer "Honey, it moved loooong time ago, we girls took over the store, soon we'll be taken over the mall and in no time we'll be taking over the world and your procreation abilities because let's be honest mister, a men is nothing more than the useless part of the penis; and if you don't get the fuck out of here and shop online for your extra small size underwear. . ." But at that time I interrupted her because enough was enough and my Anaconda needs more room to stretch than a casual observer would think and you can call men monkeys but my palm tree deserves some fucking basic respect bitch!, and not wanting her to jump and try to find out by herself what I was talking about and abuse me right there, I asked her in a very polite way to shut the fuck up and tell me WTF happened to the male section of the store. "It moved to [whatever mall], sorry. But you can always shop online at GAP dot com where there's amazing discounts and blah blah blah blah blah

I've noticed over the years that the men's section in GAP, Banana, JCrew, etc. had been shrinking little by little, almost imperceptible by a casual dumb observer, but not for this red haired nerd. I've even noticed that the expansions or re-arrangements of the stores always took away more room out of the men's section than the girl's, but I'd kept my mouth shut until further evidence could be gathered, and I stroke gold today. Just as someone included me in some informal research project not long ago, I've also been conducting my very own research projects on other matters and this is just the tip of the iceberg, and let's not forget that an iceberg sank the fucking Titanic for starters. More than an evidence this is the smoking gun I was waiting for, the mushroom cloud, the silver bullet to use a phrase coined by Condi Rice before bombing the hell out of we-know-who and coming empty handed, but unlike her bloody hands, mine are filled with hard facts today.

And even though I got to play in the new xbox today at a computer store, and got to eat a cone of my all time favorite Strawberry-Kiwi sorbet from Ben&Jerry's, the truth of the matter is that my balls have been kept in place tonight, as I type this lines, by my old underwear. And they'll have to wait at least until next Friday in order to get new garments because two shopping malls in one day is waaaaaaaay fucking more than I can take on these early Christmas days. . .

ChapStick [correction]

I found my peppermint ChapStick; and I found in the last place that I thought it was gona be: deep inside the pocket of my favorite jacket (duh!).

Of course it wasn't in all the places where I looked for it: my car's glove compartment, the washing machine, the other jackets that I haven't even used this season, inside my shoes, under the sofa, behind my laptop, under the printer, in the trash can, in my jean's pockets, inside my self-help book marking the page where I'm at, inside my other book that is taking for ever to read, behind my English-Spanish dictionary, up my. . . (no I didn't look there), in the vegetable shelf of my refrigerator, under my PlayStation (which I don't have), or in any of the other one thousand and one places where I thought it could be. It was, where I wrote it was.

I should pay more attention to those clues that I leave on this pages, life might become a bit easier.

On Measures

Later today when I help myself to bed, I'm going to put my hands together, bow my head and pray talk to the Intelligent Designer because there's something wrong with his masterpiece [me! me! me!]. Actually there's quite a few things that have malfunctioned over the years, but tonight there's not gona be room for that long list, as I'm planning to focus my few brain cells in a specific topic.
Few days ago, while having lunch with one of my co-workers, she told me that hot tea is very good for your body. She even told me specifically that Camomile tea is amazingly good for yourself. When I asked her what was the reason for it, or what was the evidence behind her claim, it took her quite a bit to answer as she'd just given a crocodile-size bite to her burger with extra bacon in it. When she finally swallowed, she said that it was just "common wisdom" -short for "I don't have fucking idea but don't you think that my bleach blonde hair looks great today?" [just for the record: NO!].

Anyway, as Jean-Francois is trying to get is life back on track, or finally on some sort of track, and he'd decided that he's going to start from the very-very beginning and is going to cut back on coffee and would start drinking more hot tea. That's indeed the beginning of the very beginning, based on his very own "common wisdom" claim. So today when he went to B&N to read magazines for free and to expand his horizons and knowledge, he ordered a Camomile tea; the 16oz size. Big enough to last as long as it was suppose to last.

And talking about lasting, is widely known that different units are used to measure different things: a minute, a second, a kilogram, centimeter, inch, foot, joules, volts, newtons, etc. But how about using the good old capacity of your bladder while trying to read a magazine as a measure?. And is here, my friends, where my complain to the Intelligent Designer out there is going to be directed to. Picture this for a moment: I started reading TIME magazine and sipping my coffee hot tea; the less steaming hot it got the more I drank and therefore the more I enjoy it. Hot women is cool with me, hot tea tend to burn my tongue therefore not cool at all. Before I finish reading TIME I've finished my hot tea and the empty paper cup was sitting on the little coffee table in front of me.


Let me point out that the first place that I went to when I walked into the store wasn't the adult magazines section, was the men's room in order to take care of "number one". So by the time I sat down with the magazines, the hot tea and the ChapStick in my jacket's pocket, my bladder was pretty much empty. Once I finished reading TIME from cover to cover [minus what I didn't want to read] my bladder was reaching a dangerous level that prompt me to make the second visit of the night to the men's room.

When I came back I picked up Newsweek magazine and things down my belly button resembled the movie The Fast and the Furious, as I had to make two more trips before finishing the magazine; two more fucking trips! Good thing I'm a man and I can pee standing up and therefore everywhere on this planet, but the disadvantages of being a civilized Hommo Sapiens is that there's specific locations where you have to take care of business, otherwise I would've pissed in the corner where all the monopoly games and the calendars for next year are displayed instead of taking that looong trip to the men's. [When I was a little kid I liked to pic inside the girls restroom, which got me in quite a few troubles, but that's another story].

So once I was done with Darwin and after I skipped the NoLa Blues, I put the magazines back where I took them from [I'm such a good citizen] and picked up another one about pc games and the new xbox. As I was flipping throughout the pages I really thought that this was a bad joke because then again, my free-sample size bladder was again reaching its limit and when I say enough it is fucking enough and it was enough with the whole peeing thing! I stood up, left the magazine on the coffee table, took the empty paper cup and crushed like if I was fucking King-Kong smashing a little Honda Insight on his way to the Empire State building and stormed out of the store. Then, stupid me, I had to speed on my way back home because that shit, I mean that pee, was real and I almost have to pee on my neighbor's car's tire like a dawg because it was either number one right there and right then or fucking number one in my pants. [For the record I manage to climb the stairs, turn the knob while unbuttoning my jeans, and even though I'm sure I spilled a little bit outside, I managed to score a three point shot in the electric chair. Way to go Champ!].

So, four trips to the restroom for a 16oz cup of hot tea and three magazines? Clearly something is wrong around here. And this goes to the Intelligent Designer out there: you better get your facts and graphics and original plans straight because I'm filling a big complain with you; and you better make some evolutions up grades changes miracles to your red haired MAstERpiEcE or face a fresh new wave of complains in the future. . . With all due respect, of course.

ChapStick

Today I bought the second ChapStick of the season, as the first one lasted me less than a week if I remember well. I always lost them, either deep inside the pockets of a jacket, or are thrown in the washing machine with my jeans, or who knows, maybe some little dwarf fairy takes it just to give me a hard time.


My last ChapStick had peppermint flavor [my favorite], but when I stop at the gas station the only one available was the one in the picture. . .

Today, late in the afternoon, I was wondering if my dry lips are due to the cold weather or the lack of sweet kisses. . .

Bad Kitties

Who said that Charlotte, NC is not an exiting place to be? Who could be so un-patriotic as to say that there's no excitement and thrill in CLT's daily life?

It was me. And I was fucking right.

But once in a while something comes to this town that blows the hats off every gentleman and lift the long skirts or all women and there's non-stop talk and gossip about it. Back in the days it was the Panther's football players: they were getting DUI's on weekly bases, being thrown in and out of jail more often than they took showers and even one of them end up hiring someone to 'take out' his girlfriend; no shit my friends, those were the golden years around here. In the meantime everybody else was still praying the Lord and donating heavily to their own mega churches to buy salvation before it was too late.


But those times were left behind and the excitement worn off; even the Panthers made it all the the way to the Super Bowl and this little hole in the wall town with skyscrapers went crazy. Even Jean-Francois was caught in the whole frenziness and he end up yelling in front of the TV for the local team to bring the trophy home! And he did it because it was common wisdom around the water cooler that it was one shot in a lifetime for this corner of the world country to go and to actually win the Super Tazón.

And who would think that this time the excitement would return hand in hand with a wonderful cold weather?! And let me just say that w'all just can't get enough of the latest scandal to hit the Queen City, as people like to refer to CLT. And the excitement has hit even the front page of the BBC! Very smartly, they included a map in order to show where the fuck on this planet that little dream city filled with mega churches, SUVs, eateries and shopping malls is located at. You just have to love the BBC for picking up quality material.

The news broke out locally on November 7 on the B section of the "Charlotte Disturber", our local rag [I apologize for not mentioning anything before]. Two of the Carolina Panthers cheerleaders were arrested down in Tampa after a fight in a night club's bathroom. But if that is juicy enough, let me quote straight from the newspaper of this Red State what happened:

Witnesses told police the two cheerleaders were engaged in sexual activity in
the bathroom stall. Other customers got angry and started yelling, "because they
took too long" in the stall.

I am kidding you not, you can read it for yourself [do it] as I scanned the article just for you, my loyal readers [here and here]. Then, when the girls emerged from the bathroom stall after some luving, the other fat ass customers that were waiting in line in order to empty their intestines after a big dinner, must've said something to this two Topcats and a frikking cat fight erupted. The first article doesn't say anything about whether the ladies that were knocking on the door finally used the stall or not, a mystery still unresolved, but an exchange of jabs and uppercuts left one woman with a black eye.

Then, the next day [November 8] the story was moved to the front page of the newspaper and this little town went crazy. In the nine-year history of the internet edition, that was the the third most e-mailed story; and the web page of the Carolina Panthers that contains the profiles and pictures of the cheerleaders had to be shut down due to the amount of hits it received. That was certainly a "Monday morning with little work done", as the paper said.

Still today, after almost two weeks people would arrive at the water cooler panting and catching their breath with the latest news: someone saw one of the cheerleaders at the mall sporting big sunglasses and acting weird; the dealer of one of the girls emerged somewhere and is asking money for some detailed information about his clients; even the security guard in our office building said that he saw a video á la Paris Hilton between the two cheerleaders, and that for two hundred bucks it can also be yours; the CEO of the company even venture to say that they were not alone but were making out with two other players in the bathroom stall, but they're taking the bullet in order to save the team. . . In other words: you name it, and people have already thought about it in this conservative state.

The PR people from Topcats and the Panthers have been stonewalling and have avoided mentioning anything; but w'all know that calm waters are deep, and sooner or later all the juice of this story will pour out for us all, Charlotteans, to get all the hard facts -I mean, just for the sake of setting the record straight of course and avoiding any missunderinterpretations.

[rain]

I'm sick and this shit is not funny. My very personal recipe of swallowing as many Vitamin C pills as possible, in order to jump start my production of white blood cells that could do what they do best and is to fight whatever crazy virus is trying to make my life miserable, hasn't worked. An overdose of Benadril Severe Cold Relief earlier this week, left me acting like a zombie and still feeling like shit. My late grandma's recipe, of boiling hot tea with a ton of lemons squeezed in it and honey to do the trick, has helped me to miss and to remember her and the fact that she passed away about a year ago, but illness-wise, has done nothing [I even burned my tongue]. The common wisdom of wrapping yourself in several layers of sweaters and blankets in order to "sweat" the cold, has proven effective on the surface [the sweating part], but the illness has its claws stick deep inside my poor self and don't want to let go.

I wonder what is this illness seeing in such a nice guy like me? I eat an apple a day, which should've kept the doctor away, but is that virus maybe as font as as I am of those Red Delicious Apples? I even talked to Rose-Marie, a friend of my mom who lives here in CLT, and she told me that she's praying for my recuperation on top of all the praying that she says she does for me, but this illness has proven resistant to even the Intelligent Designer [oddly funny if you give it a second thought, doesn't it?].

Maybe things got worst because on Tuesday I behaved bad and end up going to the blues concert; and drinking a couple of ice cold beers, and walking out to the parking lot late at night with only my black v-neck sweater while a nice and cool wind was hitting the city. That was clearly a recipe for things getting worse on top of bad.

And Thursday, instead of being a good boy and coming straight home to take my medicines and blog about it, I went out and broke one of my golden rules. Well, not one of THE golden rules, but one of those little rules that I impose to myself after learning a lesson here and there. "Never, ever, buy a book based on its cover" is the aforementioned rule, the one that I broke. And as I was breaking the rule, I went ahead and broke it in style and got me instead of one, three books. I didn't break the rule three times, I broke it once because it all happened at the same time and only one credit card receipt was produced [whatever].


I got me a non-fiction book that has proven to be as thick and heavy as a cinder block; a novel that is nothing more than what a monkey with a type machine could produce; and a self-help book. Yeah, you read it right: Jean-Francois got himself a self-help book. . . which hopefully would help him figure out stuff.

There has been a big gray cloud over the building that houses the headquarters of the StrangerInStrangeLand blog [aka my life] and is not going away. I amaze myself sometimes with the amount of shit that I'm able to write on this pages and how little I talk about myself and what is going on in my life. Last time I had this thoughts I end up taking a looong hiatus from this pages, but the difference is that I now know that it didn't help a bit on the things that I have to face sooner or later; and that today there's not a cute girl beside me, like there was back then, who could help me figure out stuff and just share all those little silly things that make relationships and life so special.

I would like to brush all that off blaming it on my cold and my overdoses of the last days, but there are things in life that have to be faced and live with the consequences of those decisions. Being on a limbo, not knowing what to do, is perhaps the worst state where someone can be. That's why I got a self-help book: one little first step on my way to more sunny days in the future. If it doesn't work then it will be a shrink and a ton of happy pills to go with it, allowing me to live happily ever after; and if it there's no results, I'd perhaps go for a lobotomy.

On Torture

[...]We are hardened to what we know, and we rationalize and even justify cruelties practiced by us and our like while retaining the capacity to be outraged, even disgusted by practices equally cruel which, under the hands of strangers, take a different form.

A History of Warfare, John Keegan [p.09]

Overdose

I woke up with a cold today; and I've been feeling like if I had a cold all day. Why couldn't it wait until tomorrow to hit me, why today? I was planning in going to one of the local holes on the wall to listen to some live blues and jazz, have a couple of cold ones, chat with friends, and come back home and sleep like an angel. But now my plan is pretty much to overdose myself with some of that cold medicine, dig out of the closet all those blankets that I never use, and wrap myself in quite a few pullovers in order to sweat all this bad energy out of me. I hate all those blankets and shit, I always sleep with a clean and fresh cotton tee shirt. . . the rest I'll leave it to your imagination.

I'm sure this little illness has nothing to do with that Lemon Mandarin Chicken that I had yesterday at the Chinese Buffet down the road from my condo. When I approached the owner to say "hi", he recommend it to me pointing out that his uncle had smuggled the chickens himself from Guangzhou [South China] few days back. His exact words, when describing that poor animal, were that it was "sweet and tender". I didn't want to offend him nor his tootles uncle who was in a corner of the restaurant sipping a cup of green tea and smoking a cigarette that looked like a clove, and I had a tray-size plate of that bird.

That last paragraph is just a whole bunch of bullshit. Time to take *two* too many pills and hopefully I'll wake up like a new man tomorrow!

Autumn in NC? My Ass!

This is just ridiculous: right in the middle of November and still having to put up with temperatures close to 80 degrees during the day? Give me a motherfucking break!

Autumn is my favorite time of the year; among other things I love that red-ish, orange-ish and yellow-ish tones on the trees; that nice and cool north eastern wind that comes down on this area; the smell of logs being burned while families get together around the chimney; the digging out of all the the cold weather garments that had hibernated for so many months in the back of the closet; and above all because Autumn is the threshold to Winter, the best part of the year for me.

Autumn has also a very special part in my heart. Memoirs of great friends, memorable situations, and past flames always come to my mind with Fall as a background; even if they happened in a different season, I always recount them during that magic trimester before the end of the year. Walking down in a park, hand in hand with a loved one, dry leaves been blown by a cool wind, and the smell of a dry clean jacket and distant chimney fires in the air would transport me back in time and space to sweeter moments. . . charging my batteries and propelling me into what the future might hold, a brighter future perhaps. . . But no Autumn, no shit, no nothing. Like these crazy November days that I've been having to put up with.

For all you people out there who might have a more direct line with the Intelligent Designer, could you please let him know that his creation went loco? Let him know, while praying that he's an awesome God, that down in the Bible Belt, where his more hardcore followers inhabit, the seasons haven't change as they suppose to this year? Let him know, while putting your hands together and bowing your head, that people down here really fear him, and if he could maybe scare the shit out of everybody with non-stop freezing temperatures and winds and snow and misery all the way to let's say June or so, people would really REALLY fear him? Let him know, while accepting him as your savior, that a move like that would make even devil-possessed Jean-Francois to drop to his knees and sing Aleluya from the top of his lounges? Is it really too much to ask you to ask him to please send a blizzard on this direction so that cool Jean-Fran can use his cold weather garments and stop complaining? Com'on brothers and sistas', have some compassion with this pour soul!

Like a month ago I got all my sweaters, jackets, scarves, gloves, pullovers and all that stuff from the back of my closet and stood in front of the mirror ready to wear'em all at the first hint of cold weather. But we've had a heat wave that is not going away; like a cloud of mosquitoes that no matter how much Raid you spray on them would not go away, this warm weather seems today that is going to stay around until, God forbid, spring! [As a side note, let me just clarify that I don't have a back and a front closet; but for example I unwrapped my awesome pea coat jacket portrayed by that male stud in the above picture that I got in GAP two years ago after being discounted from $150 or so to something like $19,99 and that I even got right in the middle of January. Sweet deal!].

If things don't change this week, I'm seriously planning to weave a little Voodo Doll of myself and stick it in the freezer. That shit might either do the trick or keep me entertain until the thermometer falls to a more decent temperature.

Subscriptions

I'm subscribed to three publications: One is The Economist, of which I've been a subscriber since '99 and that has been taking my few greens as that shit is expensive as hell; even the introductory offer is so high priced relative to other publications!. But I've managed to be a "new subscriber" more than I can remember, saving quite a few bucks in the process. Hey, at least I don't use my criminal mind to rob banks, or steal from my company, or shit like that: I just don't answer more than I've been asked, when it comes to my subscription, that is.

The other subscription I have is to Time magazine. I wasn't planning in getting one, because I usually read it for free at the local bookstore and because I can't find much juice in its pages. But one sunny afternoon I was invited to a cookout with my brand new family in law and one of their kids corner me to buy a subscription for some sort of fundraising in his elementary school. Anyway that was only fifteen bucks for a whole year's supply! Don't tell me it wasn't a sweet deal?! [even though you can't clean windows with it, still it was cheap].

And the third subscription I have is to FHM [For Him Magazine]. The introductory offer was like less than a buck per magazine, and the renewal was almost the same price plus it was a "buy one get two" deal; being the good friend that I am, I gave my friend Stephan the other copy [don't know how please his wife would be though]. And certainly I would've pay more for that magazine as it's perhaps one of the funniest things I've ever came across with. It has the kind of humor that is sarcastic and well planned, and not those typical and so fucking obvious jokes with laughs in the background that are poisoning our children's minds these days.

FHM has beautiful woman splashed all over its pages, not naked but with small pieces of garment on them. And if the human body is the most amazing creation [or evolution] ever, the female body is the closest thing to perfection on the whole universe. Besides all that beauty, the articles and letters and notes and columns and comments and reviews are filled with a delightful and smart blanket of sarcasm that cracks me up. The old joke says that people buy Playboy Magazine for the articles, not the girls; and in this case I'd say that I started my subscription for the girls, and end up enjoying the articles as much as the beauty in its pages. And the publication has so many clever sections intended to encourage people to write to them and to participate in the publication, that it surprises me that other more serious publications hasn't picked it up yet.

Wrapping up I'd just like to say that if one day you're at your local bookstore, go ahead and pick it up, look through its pages and READ some of the stuff in there, you won't be disappointed. Check out "From the Boss's Desk" or Captain Ka-Ching", or "Letters from our Readers". Hilarious stuff.

It would be sad to think that after this little paragraphs you still think that men on this planet are shallow, and that they "see better than they think" as one lady once told me [bitch!]. I tried my best to explain why I have a subscription to FHM and why I renew it. Hope I didn't fail miserable. But if I did, just keep in mind that I have a brand new subscription for a whole year and no one is going to take it away from me!

On Pictionary and...

Last night was a night of Pictionary, high emotions, and a night when I fully realized that I am a boob man, hell yeah. There was also a night where my poor little heart got tested: but not the heart that is attached to my love life, I'm talking about the real one, the one hidden under my hairy chest. And believe it or not it was a night were many asses got kicked, and even though I shouldn't say it in this pages, my ass was one of the kicked ones. And overall was a night with friends, beer and a very cool time.

And it was a night when after more than a year away from them, I got to wear my contact lenses again. And if I questioned myself earlier that night of why it had been so long since the last time, by the time I got home and tried to unglue them from my eyes, the answer was obvious.

Pictionary is such a cool game. My friends had it, and after a session of karaoke we end up playing it. The early karaoke session went as it always does: everybody is kind of timid at the beginning, no one really wants to sign or no one knows which song to sing, and then after someone jumps in the water and sings some of those cheesy songs, then everybody's Lucianno Pavaroty emerges and the poor microphone is ripped off from whoever has it. And of course regardless of who had the microphone we end up singing those oldies but goodies from the top of our lungs. . . so loud that the poor next door neighbor came to tell us to please shut the fuck up before it starts raining. At that moment was when we decided to put the karaoke on hold and move to the Pictionary.

There was eight of us last night, so we made two teams of four for the game. Actually one team had four, and the other one had 3,5: three girls and one of my friends who was all trashed, therefore the 0,5. The game was in Spanish and it had some very fucking hard words and a lot of fun shit happened. For example, I had to draw the word Torre Latinoamericana [Latin American Tower], which sounds difficult but was quite easy actually. First I draw two lines to let them know that it contained two words; then I draw a building and they found the first word [torre]; and then I draw the Latin American continent and those donkeys in my team weren't able to figure it out, could you believe it? They kept yelling Sur América!, but I draw the continent all the way up to the Río Grande to point out that it was ALL of it, therefore Latinoamérica. And if you put it together with the first word, then the answer was just as easy as stepping on a cockroach. But these Einteins kept yelling torre suramericana and after I told them, through my draw, that they were very fucking close to it. . . time ran out.

Surprisingly enough another harder line came suprisingly easy: Triángulo de las Bermudas. One of my teammates draw a triangle and we all shout "triángulo", and before he could draw anything else another friend yelled Triángulo de las Bermudas out of nowhere! OK, that was an easy one actually. Throughout the night we had words like velocidad [speed], hacer garabatos [scribble], aeropuerto, dolor de espalda [back ache], panal de abejas [honey comb], dormir [to sleep], puerta [door], hervir [to boil], dollar, cinturón de seguridad [seat belt], and so on.

But at the end my team got their asses kicked in a Grand finale that was nose to nose and looked like a Hollywood movie. My team got to the end first but when you roll the dice you have to get to the last spot with the exact number and win the last challenge, and we failed miserable to get those exact fucking numbers. But the other team arrived right to the end in their first try, which has a challenge where both teams have to draw. The final word was Religion and in a very contested and extremely fishy maneuver the other team yelled the answer before we could. That last leg of the game reminded me of how GWB got elected. . . don't want to say out loud that they cheated, but I'm sure they cheated.

I hate to get my ass kicked in those board games. And even more so because that was a struggle between women and men last night: we were four men in my team and the other team was three girls and my fucked up friend. I guess the rational explanation for them beating us is that we were over confident and thought that we had it; or perhaps they were just lucky; or maybe they really cheated. Anyway, for the record they won.

The excitement of the night came while we were in the early stages of the karaoke session. . . It arrived in the form of two round and I would venture to say a perfect pair of 34C boobs followed by a super-duper-cute brunette. My friends have a little boy and he's friends with that beautiful brunette's baby boy [of course she's married], and the kid was staying for the night. She came to check on her boy and stayed for about 5 minutes chatting with my friend's wife right at the entrance, while we tried to pretend that we were singing.

I thought for a moment that she was coming to stay and to sing with us and to play Pictionary and I had the whole night mapped and planned a second after she walked in. My usual shy self would morph into a more outgoing dude, my "one in a six billion" candid personality would do the trick and in twenty years we would be laughing about the early November night when we first met and when we fell for each other. That was before [and even after] seeing her three-carat wedding band. In a time span of less than a second I had my heart rate going sky high and my already high level of unused testosterone got up went even higher.

Once she left we grilled, I mean we literally grilled my friend's wife with all sort of questions about her and her whereabouts, and I even got upset 'cause WTF weren't we introduced to such a beautiful girl, ah?! Anyway she's married, has one kid, got ten thousand dollars worth of implants and lipo that makes her look like a million dollar babe, speaks Spanish, dances salsa and even though she's married to an American Prince, she secretly craves the company of a red haired Latino. hahaha, not really, but we got her whole biography including some stories of my friend when he saw her in a little tiny bikini by the swimming pool and that had us making all kind of manly comments and the girls their usual girly comments.

Now that I give it a second thought, I think I know why we loss in the game of Pictionary. . . I just couldn't get my mind out of her all night and I'm sure my friends couldn't either. Damn I can't believe we were such an easy pray! Maybe we should invite a big stud before the next game in order to mess up the girls' team. . . But as I said to them once they were done celebrating their victory: "En juego largo, siempre hay desquite" [In a long game, there's always time for revenge]. And last Saturday night was just the beginning. . .

The M-F Word

It cracks me up when a girl uses the word motherfucker in a sentence.

It seriously does!

I Report, You Decide

We just had elections here in NC. As far as I know people were voting for a new Major, City Council people and some referendum on only God knows what. I, as a responsible member of the community didn't vote; because I don't go to church and here in CLT you have to be register as a believer and you have to prove that you go to church every Sunday in order to be able to vote. Oh, and you have to be a US citizen, and I'm not.

But in the picture to your left you can see not only the old carpet in my room but the front page of the local rag, called "The Charlotte Observer". As it has more coupons, advertisement and classifieds than actual news, people refer to it as "The Charlotte Disturber", and is widely known that this so-called newspapers is good only for cleaning windows and wrapping dead fish.

The news are basically taken from Knight Reader's writers and from other mayor and a bit more serious newspaper like the Times, Post, and news services like the AP. But still, sometimes they get to actually write something about this town, perhaps interview someone and who knows, maybe even quote one of our fellow Southerners and post it in the front page! Hell yeah!, Rock 'n roll y'all!

Which is exactly what happen few days ago with the elections; and as you've noticed I've circled a little something to get your attention. But before giving you a zoom on the aforementioned quote, let point out the following:

a.- This was a local election;
b.- The election was for local officials;
c.- North Carolina is a State;
d.- The election was within the state;
e.- State election means local election in a geographical sense of the word;
f.- Word is a word, and world is also another word;
g.- As far as I know the world ain't flat;
h.- The world is a pretty damn big place;
i.- NC is a state
j.- A state within a country;
k.- A country called the US;
l.- There's a lot of countries in the world;
m.- There's actually more than fifty countries in the world;
n.- And less than 300;
ñ.- Charlotte is a city *gasp* I mean, a town;
o.- The world is the world;
p.- A state is a state;
q.- With the letter Q you can write cheese in Spanish
r.- No shit, you really can;
s.- And if you're gona appear in the front page of your local rag;
t.- Better come up with something interesting;
u.- Otherwise;
v.- Keep your thoughts for yourself;
w.- That's just a thought;
x.- I'm running out of letters
y.- YO!
z.- After I publish this I'm going to ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzzzzz

As I say, "I Report, You Decide": please check out this quote from the front page and tell me if I am not right when I ask the mirror every morning "WTF am I doing heeeeeeere?!!".

Naked

That's how I felt today: naked.

Ever since I found out this morning, while walking towards my office building that I had forgotten my wallet at home, I felt naked.

I had to go back to my car to dig for a whole collection of quarters, nickels and dimes to pay for the parking space, good thing that I always throw all change in the ashtray; which by the way I don't fucking know why cars come equipped with such device: an ashtray. Everybody throws the cigarette butts out onto the street, as well as the ashes, because they don't want their cars smelling like ashtrays. Try stop smoking and poisoning everybody around you with those cancer sticks for starters; and if you're so helplessly addicted and there's nothing your sorry ass can do about it, trash your car and not the whole city. But more on cigarettes later [I hate cigarettes].

Back on the topic of this post: leaving my wallet at home. And the security guard in my office building.

I always carry my Speed Pass™ in my wallet, and even though you're suppose to hang it from your neck like warriors use to do it back in the days with ears cut off from their enemies, I always keep mine in my wallet. Every morning I have to remember to get my car keys, pen, wallet, cell phone, condoms [you never know], to shave, shower, pray the lord and read the Bible [hahaha], stop on red lights and go in green lights, make and drink my morning coffee, eat my very own blend of Corn Flakes and Musli with a diced apple in it, wear deodorant, feet powder and a couple drops of my colone, check my e-mails and read the news; and if on top of all that I have to remember to hang my Speed Pass™ from my neck, I'm sure one day my brain will short-circuit and I may end up wearing a condom to work.

An uninformed observer would say that there's nothing wrong with it, but let me give you an insight here. There is not, has never been, and there would never be enough One Hundred Dollars Bills printed on this planet and its surroundings to make me procreate with any of the females on my floor. I would cut my manhood off [palm tree, coconuts and all] and would put them in a jart like eunuchs use to do back in Imperial China times, before I use it with one of the females that work with me.

As I walk into the building, my brick-size cell phone in one hand, shirt freshly pressed, black shoes polished, a smile splashed across my face and testosterone going through the roof due to the lack of female companionship, I spot Earl, the security guard. Monsieur Earl is from some western African country [Nigeria would be my best guess] and he knows pretty much all the capitals in the world. We had an exchange few months ago and I was really surprised by his knowledge. Being the smartass that I am, I also know a good share of the world capitals, plus rivers, oceans, seas, lakes, peaks and stuff like that, but this guy was really good. He got all my questions right but one, the last one that I asked him; and I got almost all his questions right, but he kept asking me more [the bastard].

He was at a desk right by the entrance to the elevators, where you have to use your Speed Pass™ for the first time. So I approached him, we shoke hands, did some small talk, and I told him that I've forgotten my Speed Pass™, and that if he could let me in. He looked at me like if I was Osama Bin Laden's little brother, the black sheep of the family, the real bad one, the one voted in the yearbook as the more likely to end up blowing up shit; Earl sent me the kind of look that gives away all the possible suspicion a human being can come up with in a simple look. He then proceeds to ask me again what happen to the wallet and what was the relationship with my Security Pass [that's the technical name, but I like to call it Speed Pass™!]. "I just forgot that bitch at home man, let me in -was my very polite reply. He looked towards the front desk, where visitors get their daily Speed Passes™ and I felt he was an inch closer to tell me to go there and narrate the story to a real ape dressed as a security guard. But he ends up unlocking the middle gate, the one used by people with an extremely wide bone structure and who's ass could easily get stuck in any of the other narrower gates [in other words, all the fat people working in my building].

Once I pressed the up arrow on the screen and began my long wait for the fucking elevator, I started thinking what exactly went through Earl's mind when I asked him to let me in without my Speed Pass™. Did he think that I was gona torch down the place and that not wanting to leave any "paper trial" I had left my Speed Pass™ at home? Or that I had gotten fired the day before and I was gona take out as many co-workers as possible with my Victorinox knife?

I already made it once all the way to the front page of a newspaper, and if a second time comes, I hope it wouldn't be for something snapping inside me and going in a killing spree. When I was seventeen years old I was part of a one-year exchange student program and was sent to a little and miserable tiny town in Eastern Kentucky. That was the first time I set foot in the US. The news of a red haired boy from South America coming to town spreaded fast and a week after my arrival, my smiley face appeared in the front page of the local newspaper. Back in those days the only English words I was able to mumble were "helow", "haw'r yu", "zank yu" and "pie-pie"; but it didn't stop the overweight reporter from grilling me with a hundred questions and coming up with a loooong fucking article.

Maybe in Security Guard School they teach them not to say yes right away and to try to look like if they were really keeping the place secure. Even if is such a little thing like one of the "usual guys" forgetting his Speed Pass™. Besides if he would've told me to go talk to the other guys at the front desk, they would've asked me for my driver's license or a "valid photo ID" in order to give me a Speed Pass™ for the day and to have a record in case the place burns down and they need to identify a very sun tan red haired guy; but all my IDs were sitting, undisturbed, on my desk at home having the day off. So when I made it to my floor I decided not to go out for lunch later in the day but to ask for a favor *hugh* from one of my co-workers to bring me some sort of sandwich or whatever. If I had gone out, then I would've had to go to the desk and blahblahblah.

I'm actually thinking exactly what you're thinking: that this post is just a whole bunch of bullshit putted together on the simple fact that I forgot my wallet today.

Yes it is. Peace out!

Upset

My stomach is a bit upset today, maybe was that stuffed chicken that I devoured for lunch and all that stuffing that came with it. No doubt that stuffing was a very colorful mix of all the stuff that the restaurant couldn't sell over the weekend and that it was either the trash can, or one lucky customer: me, in this case. But even though my stomach is upset, I'm not upset with them; actually I understand them, that was a very simple business decision, the dumpster or few more bucks. But shit, why me?!

My downstairs neighbor is not upset with me. . . yet. But I can sense that she'll soon be. Yesterday when I got home, she had her door open and even though she called me I pretended I didn't hear her. Somehow I could smell in the air not only that she'd been smoking those long narrow cigarettes of hers [Capri], but that she was gona try to go for the kill and ask me to baby sit her cat, nine lives and all while she's away. Today I didn't see her, but the cat was in her window checking me out as I came up the stairs. Perhaps my neighbor told him that I was the lucky one who was gona give him food, water and would clean his shit. Maybe the cat is analyzing me in order to find a way to make my live miserable; maybe he already knows how much I hate cockroaches and he'll have a whole family of them hungry and waiting for me.

My parents and my elder sister are upset with me. And it seems to me that everytime we talk, they find something to get upset for. This was gona be the topic of a long post, but I decided not to. Long and convulsive story very short: my sister is getting married and I'm not gona be able to make it to her wedding. She was gona tie the knot next year, but she followed my sarcastic comments that she better hurry up before her fiance finds out how much of a bitch she is and call off the event; so she decided to move the wedding to the day after tomorrow [or was it today maybe?]. I know, I'm such a bad brother. . . but relationships between siblings have to be based on understanding, patience and sharing like any other relationship in life, and my elder sister and moi never had much in common other than our last names. Plus is really impossible for me to go back in such a short notice due to my job, my VISA status. . . OK, I'm gona stop here. That's why I didn't want to write about this because it can easily take a lot of room. Summarizing: my parents and elder sister are upset with me [but not my younger sister, who's the one I really care for, so no big deal].

My family in law is upset with me; well sort of. Reason number one is the whole wedding thing and the fact that I am not gona appear in the family pictures, but that's just maybe 10% of the whole thing. The other 90% is the fact that I haven't been back to their church and that I'm definitely not going back there. They called me today to "chat" and by the way they asked me why I haven't been back to the church in the last two weeks, I could sense some tension in the air. I was honest to them and told them that two weeks ago I was terrible hungover after all the Halloween celebrations; and last Sunday I was busy either sleeping or blogging, or just staring at the ceiling. I could tell that they were "disappointed" with my answers but I was honest to them. I haven't told them that I consider that church and their rituals and their Bible study group and the singles group and all that stuff a complete waste of time for me, but confrontation would lead to nowhere with them. I'd rather prefer to tell them, little by little and surrounded by plenty of signs, that even though I am a nice guy I am definitely not church-material. But I know that I'm heading towards a confrontation there.

And I'm a bit upset with myself. . . for quite a few reasons. But the one at the heart of the situation is the fact that I still have to come to terms with myself on a lot of stuff. I still have to move from talking to action when it comes to accepting myself the way I am with the whole range of qualities and defects that I have. Lately, and little by little, I've been analyzing myself, the way I act and think, and I've reached some conclusions that need to be taken to the real world. The secret of happiness and perhaps the secret of life is to feel comfortable with yourself both physically and mentally, and I still have a lot of work to do in that department. OK, this is a fascinating topic [me! me! me!] but I'm gona cut it here, promising to write extensively about it in the near future [if I can stop procrastinating of course].

And I've saved the best for the last. I report, you decide. . .

While talking to my mom she came with a thousand reasons why I HAD to be at the wedding, being one of them the family pictures. You have to understand that my mom was raised in a very Aristocratic family in South America and she'd always thought that she comes from, and belongs to, a better family than everybody else, including even the nuclear family that she conceived. When she said that "how could that be" that I was not gona be in the pictures I told her not to worry, that she could e-mail them to me and I'd Photoshop myself into them. "You'd photo WHAT?!" -she said with a frustrated tone. "I'd photoshop myself into the pictures mom; that's an easy process and not a big deal".

That last line just send her through the roof, I'm sure. But believe me, I was being completely honest with her and really trying to find a solution to her concerns. I guess that was one of those good ideas that so often pop up in my mind but that end up being not that good at all. But don't tell me that it wasn't a very fucking good idea, wasn't it? Hell yes it was!

A Tale of Two Crushes

Ever since I found out that you can go to a library and check out books, I've sttoped buying them; and when I realized that you can renew items online, I've been keeping them longer than necessary. And even when I found out that you can keep them beyond the due time and just get a fine, I've been keeping them way longer than any rational human being would. And I've also being paying hefty fines for such reckless behavior, of course.

And I also found out that the library hasn't stop me for going to Borders, B&N or Joseph-Beth to get a cup of coffee and help myself into one of their nice chairs and read whatever I feel like it, without bothering in pulling out my credit card and paying for it. Even magazines, scores of them have passed through my hands before someone with different priorities and values in life decides to buy them. I've also read few books in these places without even bothering to spend my very few greens not even in a glass of water -actually water is free.

And I also found out that there are cute librarians after all.

Thanks to those sabbatical laws that NC has pioneered and embraced with so much enthusiasm, every public-related thing in this red State opens after 1:00 PM on Sundays. And even a big chunk of all private businesses open after that magic hour when everybody in this Strange Land is suppose to leave church, sinless, and eager to dive in a sea of glut at their favorite eatery, some laziness throughout the afternoon, and perhaps some lust once the digestion is completed. So as the library is a public institution, they open their door to the general public -which includes this red haired foreigner- right at one o'clock.

Today I made my triumphant entrance to the library at some point after 2:00 PM and headed straight for the fiction section on the second floor of the building. My eyes were set on a copy of Neinsein's Stranger in Strange Land -yes, like this blog! After a couple minutes of disappointment when I thought the book might have been in the hands of some ignorant, irresponsible and church goer local suburban white bread plain vanilla piece of shit driving a pick up truck with a Confederate flag on the rear window, I found it. It was actually filed under Heinsein, and not under whatever the fuck I was trying to find it.

While walking around and browsing other books, a crush that I have further north came to my mind and off I went to find one of her favorite books. I had again hard time finding it because I was looking for it in the wrong place: letter M instead of letter G. When I finally made it to the right section, I found it, but didn't quite find it: the book was there, actually there were two copies of it, but both were in English. I believe that if you speak more than one language, you should always try to read a book in the language that it was originally written in; if you speak only one language, disavow what I've just said.

So I got upset due to that little fact and headed for the front desk downstairs, when suddenly I saw another crush that I have: a girl that works at the local branch of the library, a cute librarian! The truth of the matter is that I'd seen her before, and I was looking for a way to talk to her in a way that seemed casual; but as I don't hang out at the library that often and when I go there she'd been doing something else, or wasn't anywhere to be seen, the moment hadn't arrived.

Until today.

She was sitting by herself at the help desk when I approached her and asked her if she could help me with a book I was looking for [duh, that's her job]. After an exchange of smiles, more from me than from her, she offered to show me the location of the Spanish-language books. As I start walking behind her, she turns her head and says that those books are in one corner "hidden from everybody else". And for a split of a second I felt like being part of a raunchy porn movie where the characters exchange two sentences before getting busy with each other; sometimes in a hidden part of a local library. . .

So putting my feet back on earth and once we get to that "hidden place", I see that most of the books are for learning the language or just translations of computer stuff. I ask her if she sees any fiction books and we both search for a moment until she finds them in one of the knee-height shelves. We both bend over and realize that there's a handful of books, literally a handful: six books all together. We talked for a moment and I tell her the book that I'm looking for and she suggests that we can do some inter-library request. "That sounds like a great idea" -I reply and she gives me a smile. But she points out that we have to go back to her desk to use the computer and request it: not a good idea because then I realized, while we were heading back to her desk, that there was not gona be any sex in the library for me today. Dough on!

So we do the whole inter-library request and I learn that she knows a little bit of Spanish as she recognizes some words [kudos for her], even though she comes up with the wrong translation [one more extra kudos for trying hahaha]. She says that once they get the book they'll call me to let me know, but I reply that how about if she just gives me her cell phone number and I'll call her and that fuck that book and that let's cut through all this red tape and that let's jump into each other's arms and let's head to my condo to cuddle up together and then we can like you know we. . .

I mean, ahem [clear throat], I thank her in a very polite way for all her help, and she points out that the book will be arriving in the next couple of days. As I'm about to say good-bye, she reminds me that I have some unpaid fees and if I "would like to settle it now?" Fuck those late fees I say to myself, but tell her that "I'd love to". After getting out of my pocket eight greens plus some change, I wish her a nice day and start walking towards the stairs, the first floor, my little red missile in the parking lot and a big-O-lunch later that day.

Kind of an strange coincidence this afternoon's situation if you give it a thought: I was thinking about one crush and another one pops up. Really makes you think if we live in a world of coincidences or *some* things happen for a reason, like if they were part of a bigger plan. A topic for another post that's for sure; but isn't it odd that one crush lead me to another one?

Interés Cuánto Valés?

The title of this post is an old saying in Spanish that I don't quite know how to translate to inglés. You use that term usually when someone is treating you well because he/she wants something in return, something that you have, a piece of your ass if you allow me to elaborate [even though in Spanish its use doesn't carry sex connotations].

This good old saying came to my mind this evening after I had a little conversation with my downstairs neighbor. And let me point out again that it doesn't have any sexual connotations and God forbid, because my neighbor is a ninety years old woman. But allow me to elaborate a little bit more about this saying.

I like to either have good relations with the people around me, or no relation whatsoever. Perhaps in this matter I'm too radical: people that comes pouring drama around my little world would be shown the exit door and let loose to spread their misery upon someone else, not me. However, before this happens I usually give them my both cheeks; sometimes I turn and give them the other cheek again, but there's always a limit on the amount of bullshit that I can take.

One early evening a couple months ago, I was listening music in my condo as only music can be listened to when there's despair and restless in your heart: LOUD. My two busted Sony speakers were pushed to the limit as well as the two little JBL speakers attached to my laptop.

Alone came my 120-years old downstairs neighbor knocking on my door, wearing her pajamas and she wasn't using her cane. She asked to me to "pleeeease turn down the music" because it was driving her "crrrazy". First I turned it down, then a bit more, and finally I turned my stereo off because this mad woman was still using the same "crrrazy" and "pleeeease" lines when I asked her if it was "ok now?".

Once I turned off the stereo I pretty much told her to fuck off. I followed her technique and repeated one single line about three times until she mumbled some sort of thanks or good bye; I said "is off now, the music is off, what else you want?!". I didn't slam the door behind her because that's clearly no good manners, but by the way I spoke to her she got the message that I was telling her to go and fuck herself and leave me alone.

She likes to leave her door open while reading or watching TV [which is pretty much from dawn to dusk] and I always wave my hand to her when I'm coming up or down the stairs. But for the last couple months after that little chat she tried to ignore me, even when I ran into her in the parking lot she either looked the other way or gave me a very cold "hello". The last time was more than a month ago when she didn't even reply my greeting.

That situation made me both sad and happy at the same time, some sort of bittersweet feeling. Happy because I wasn't being stop by her once a week with her same old stories and her discussions with the poor Latinos that mow the complex's lawn among other little rants. You see, she has three adult children but they live elsewhere [San Diego, Philly and Denver] and even though she says that she talks to them on daily bases, the truth of the matter is that she is a very lonely person. Which is sad. And I know that by stopping and saying "hi" once in a while, I somehow bright her day in a way that I don't even understand.

But as I said, if you're gona come with drama around me I don't care if you're an old lonely lady or a Barbie Doll, I'll give you the same medicine: go fuck yourself.

So I stooped waving hello to her and even one day that I saw her struggling with her grocery bags in one hand and her cane in the other, I just kept walking don't even bothering to drop a fart on my way to the mail box. I even thought that it would've been a good time to "accidentally" kick her cane to see if is true that she really needs it [she climbed the stairs without it when she asked me to turn the music down].

Today she finally stop me on my way to my condo and asked me to come inside for a while. I was in a rush because I had to go out again so I declined when she offered me a chair [beside I'll end up with cat hair all over me]. She told me that she's going to California to visit his son and that she's had problems finding someone to baby sit her cat. She'd contacted a couple of people but didn't like I don't know what about one of them and another thing about the other person, just silly stuff. She also asked me what my plans were during those days and I told her that I would be around, "perhaps I'll go snow skiing", but that definitely I'd be in CLT.

There was a moment of silence when I thought she was gona go for the kill and asked me to baby sit her cat, but I stood there , locking eyes with her and not even moving an eye brow and she hesitated for two seconds too long. Enough for me to wish her "good luck" with the cat situation and to tell her that I had to go. She mention something about the music and our chat but I brushed it off.

I'm almost sure she's gona try again to get me to look after her fat cat, but now that I know the days she'd be leaving. . . I'd be leaving too. Oops.

Once I left her condo, closed the door behind me and started climbing the stairs, the good old saying on the title of this post came to my mind immediately: Interés Cuánto Valés? She wants something from me, and under normal circumstances and after our chat about the loud music, I'd be the last person on her list of people to ask a favor from. But as her list is so small, and I believe I am pretty much at the top and at the bottom of it, she had to eat her bad mood and try to make peace with me in order to ask me to take care of her cat.

There you go, the Spanish lesson of the day hahaha.


PS. I've just read this post and. . . WHEN, I mean seriously, at what point in my life did I stop talking about, thinking, and chasing beautiful girls in order to talk about my 300-year old downstairs neighbor, ah?!

iNet

The world of the internet: I can't believe I lived a big chunk of my life without it. Just can't believe it. It's even hard to picture my pre-inet life. . .

Sure I remember being a baby, and a teenager and ridding the school bus every morning. I also remember my freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast. And how can I forget hanging out with friends at the mall, playing football [soccer for you ignorants] in the park down the street from my house, smoking cigarettes during my early years, doing home work, holding hands with my young girlfriends, and ridding in the front seat of the car sticking my little hand out and feeling the wind through my fingers [I still do that]. I believe I even remember the last time I pee my pants, and remember very well when I caught my dad red handed pretending he was the tooth fairy [in South America I used to call it El Ratón Perez].

The first time I crashed my dad's car, my life was pre-inet. And the next two times I crashed my mom's, still I wasn't connected to the internet. At the end of my junior year in high school, before coming to the US for the first time as an exchange student, I was still in my pre-inet days. Oh, and when my awesome parents left for a nice resort in the Caribbean with my sisters and left me home alone, I couldn't e-mail them with the latest bad news because we weren't connected to the inet. Even my early experiences with the opposite sex where pre-inet; but most of them have been post inet [thanx God].

These days I rely so much on the inet for whatever I want/need that is hard to think that there was a time when I didn't have to check my e-mail. Ew, a life without e-mail and the advances of the inet? Please. . . I certainly don't believe that the "good old times" were better.

BTW, you should check Google Earth, fucking amazing. The picture in this post is where I live. . . yes my friends, right at the Heart of America's Bible Belt!

In The Back Burner

I'm cooking as-I-type: the right front burner has a small pot with some wild rice; it's currently in low meaning than soon will be ready. The left front burner, the big one, is on high and my largest pot is sitting on top of it. I'm cooking a mix of a lot of stuff that I got me at the supermarket.

The two back burners are off; and I can't recall one single occasion when I've use them. . .

Needless to say my friends, I!. Am!. Hungry!.

Big-O-Bag of Candy... And Two Pumpkins!

Forgot to mention that yesterday, on Halloween day, I had a big disappointment.

Last year on this very same day I was home after a night of celebrations, trying to remember all the events of the previous night, when I heard some noise outside. That noise was followed by a very timid knock on the door and an explosion of kids singing the "trick or treat".


I, my friends, didn't have a single piece of candy in my condo, not even frikking sugar to give away, neither had those chicken cubes that you use to cook with and that could've passed as candy. I had nothing, nada! And those little devils outside my door were eager to get their share of candy at any price.

Of course I didn't do what a good God fearing Christian would've done in a situation like this: to open the door and say "sorry kids, but I forgot to buy candy. . . by the way, nice customs!". Hell no, I duck under my dining table and pretended that there was no one home.

Those little kids almost knock down my door asking for their poison! I swear I could feel for a moment those were not really little kids but zombies coming after me with their little pitchforks and plastic axes and swords.


But I learnt my lesson, and this year I got me a big-O-bag of candies with plenty of all those harmful chemicals and altered flavors and colors that are so appealing to kids these days, and put them in a basket right by the door. I even got me two pumpkins and carved one with a very evil face and lighted some candles, just to give my condo a Halloween touch. And can you believe that not a single little devil shows up asking for candy? WTF! And no, is not that they skipped my door, kids don't have that good of a memory when it comes to soliciting candies, because I didn't even heard them knocking on either of my neighbors doors.

So there I was, all hungover and shit but with a Halloween spirit still intact and no one to share it with. Anyway I'm gona save all that candy and would give it away next year if I'm still around this Strange Land, luckily it all would've expired by then and I could teach them a frikking lesson: eat your fucking veggies and leave people alone.

Damn! Am I an ogre or what?!

Alexandra

I've just hung up after talking with my friend Alexandra. . . She's alive, I'm alive, and we had a very nice chat. Last time we talked was back in summer, long before my birthday, a time when we both were going through some very particular period in our lives. . .

She surprised me with the news that her plans have changed and she may be moving to CLT, if the wind lift her sails this way.

We talked about that something that we didn't fully address the last time our roads crossed; and she has sent a ray of light on my path. Anyway I'm gona see her this coming Saturday, for her birthday, and I just can't believe that it was a year ago that we were having a delicious Caribbean dinner and a night of salsa dancing. Time flies.

She said that she now completely understands the way I felt back in those days and the things that I did and said. Today I know that I should've been more forthcoming with her, perhaps I held things close to my chest that I couldn't fully explain with words, but there are things in life that you have to live, in order to understand.

Today we're exactly in the same page.