Today

. . . is Friday, September 21st 2007.

Ain't?!

When I was seventeen years old I jumped on an airplane and came to the US for the first time. Disney World was not in my flight plan and neither was a picture in front of the Statue of Liberty. My final destination was a small town in eastern Kentucky; a little dot in a map beside the town's name written in a very small font. It was far from any highway and any other large-font city.

Turned out to be even smaller than that: a narrow secondary road intersected by an even smaller one with almost non-existent traffic. I don't even remember seeing a stop sign in neither side of the intersection. Sitting to the side of the "wider" road was a gas station with an ever-empty Coca-Cola machine and a very shy supply of groceries. Few dozen feet down the same road was another store with greater variety on the shelves but broken ceiling fans: the owner was a chain smoker who didn't believe in opening the windows. Rumor had it that some of the cloudy air inside the store dated back from when Richard Nixon was still a popular president.

Down the same road, a hundred feet or so was the elementary school; a couple miles farther down, the farm where I lived; and few miles down plus some turns, an intersection to a bigger yet equally miserable narrow secondary road. There was a stop sign there. If after looking both ways to make sure there wasn't any tractor speeding in either direction you kept going around ten minutes, you'll cross a concrete bridge arriving to the outskirts of the thriving capital of the county. Population: twenty three hundred plus a foreigner.

In that intersection you'll come across the first out of a dozen traffic lights disseminated throughout town and, to your left, the one and only McDonnalds in the whole county. That American icon sat on the only access road to the High School for about 90% of the county's population. And less than half a mile away from the school so that a little hike there wouldn't be much trouble.

Do you think that was backward?

Hmmmm. . . .

Ever since I joined MySpace few years ago and Facebook just recently, I've been trying to find all those people that I met there. I've conducted searches by name, full name, last name, geographical location, high school and so on and so forth and up till today I have to report no success whatsoever. Not a single soul from my promotion or the previous promotion has bothered to join any of those services. There's a handful of people from previous years that I don't remember and quite a few of the new generation. But information on the people I met and the friends I made ain't nothing. Now, if that that shit ain't backward, nothing is.

On Waste

I was just surfing TV channels and end up in the Democratic debate going on in South Carolina. . . and the next dude who starts talking about using "our military strength" is definitely not going to get my vote. It seems to me that a presidential election is about who's the most "Macho Man" who can flex the military muscle the most.

Stop wasting money in the military and start spending money on people: us, the fucking people that pay those taxes! No more money going towards more nukes, ultra-intelligent bombs and billion dollar warplanes. The world doesn't need another aircraft carrier, nor another nuclear powered submarine carrying a ton of nuclear weapons. Let's slice a big chunk of the money that goes towards new weapons and put that money into helping people in everyday life.

Where would we be today if instead of spending half a trillion dollars in the military machine we use it towards peaceful purposes?

BWD!

Every morning I browse different news sites to find out what's going on in the world. Over time I have been changing and rotating them in my favorites; some have been added and some deleted.

Just like everything else in life I enjoy some news services more than others: run away from those that carry stories that run for pages and pages at the time, and crave those with concise and precise information. I believe the effort has to be on the side of the writer -not the reader, to cut trough so much crap and needless information and down to the core of the news, without being just a headline. I do believe in quality, not quantity.

Perhaps one of the most important news this week was the death of Boris Yeltsin. . .

The reason why I check CNN only once a week or so is because every time I do it I get disappointed. Today in their front page there's not a single reference to this event (it happened yesterday). Not a headline nor a picture gallery, not a little line, not even a tiny little obituary. Nada. If you click on the "world" tab you might find a headline but that's about it.

But there's a headline close to the top of the front page with a link to a video about BWD!!!* I'm glad to know the people at CNN have their priorities straight when it comes to informing the world. . .

*Blackberrying While Driving (?!).

On a Couple of Recent Miracles

If I remember well from my biology classes in high school, mosquitoes can live for few days; dogs are able to sustain their owner’s leashed walk around the block for around seventeen years; human beings can easily live pass seventy years old; elephants can outlive any human being and reach ninety years old; and turtles can live for more than a 150 years… And even more so, there’s buildings that have been standing for decades; and even some of them like the pyramids have been around for centuries! …… so what’s the problem with good‘ol Jean-Francois taking a break from his blogging duties for few months?! Once you put stuff in perspective, then it doesn’t look like if it was ages since the last time this little corner of the internet was updated, does it?

There is a lot of things in my mind that I want to talk about today: topics ranging from the mortal to the divine; stories about my exciting live and my beautiful gurlfriend; little stories on everyday situations narrated in my very own style; big philosophical topics involving the immortality of the body and the mortality of the soul (no, is not the other way around bitches!); Hell, I was even thinking about disclosing in these very same pages the secret of life once and for all! But once my fingers touched the keyboard it all vanished and my tired mind was left in its natural state: empty.

But as empty as it is I do want to touch a little topic that caught my attention few days ago: the Sainthood of the last Pope. And let me dive right into it and say that Sainthood is a whole bunch of bullshit tide up together, served fried and with a cheap beer. Religion is based on the unknown, the incomprehensible, the impenetrable and inexplicable; religion is sustained by the ignorance and fear of the masses and the divine word is interpreted by some auto-chosen human beings who claimed to have some direct-er connection with the creator. And these people with their direct line with the Intelligent Designer, not surprisingly, use it to promote, sustain and justify all kind of atrocities in the name God against their fellow Romans. In their urge to stir all their followers towards salvation and/or Paradise, they do make their follower’s lives hell in the real paradise: Planet Earth and everyday life.
I’m sorry but every time I start speaking about religion my blood starts to boil. Yes, I might have the devil inside, but more about that at some other time.

Going back to the sainthood of John Paul II (JP2) and the topic of this post, turned out that one lady nun who was suppose to be affected by Parkinson, prayed to good old JP2 and he cured her! Yes, just like that: Boom! One day she was unable to hold a pen in her hand and the next she was jumping of joy and smiling to the cameras of all news services in the world. No shit, go ahead and read this this or this and you’ll also be cured!

But that’s ok; actually I don’t consider it a big deal. Last Saturday something just like that happened to me. Right before noon I was sitting in front of the TV set and I prayed to a can of Diet Coke, that I was holding in my hand, to please have an Ultimate Fighting Championship marathon all day… and believe it or not once I tuned the TV to channel 325 guess what was on…? Go ahead and guess brother, don’t be afraid of the truth… Yes! There was not just a UFC Marathon but a fucking Triathlon of the Ultimate Fighter! No shit brothers and sister and could I please have an Amen here?! A whole day of UFC fights that made my poor girlfriend and her sister roll her eyes and pray for a power outage!

And I said that what happened to that nun it’s ok, because it just happened to me too; I prayed, it got heard by the wholly Diet Coke and a miracle was performed. The only difference is that I ain’t claiming no miracle and no canonization of my can of Diet Coke.

My actual rage comes from the fact that every single news source on this planet –and heaven and hell and every thing in between- ran the story without any single proof of anything! No cross reference, no in depth interview, no facts on the table, no nothing. We should only take her word that she didn’t pray to a hard and juicy dick but that she actually, being in a very advanced stage of Parkison, had enough brain power to think about JP2 and get cured… Kaboon! One day she’s tweaking and shaking and the next morning she’s jumping out of her bed like back in the days when she was in high school and used to screw the priest from her local parish.
And needless to say the flesh and blood people at the Vatican, in all their wisdom and with that direct connection they have with God, didn’t miss a minute disseminating that lie everywhere like a fact.

Even if that lady nun did get cured inexplicable, even if her ailments went away without any precedent, and even if she was indeed suffering from Parkinson -and considering that she wasn’t misdiagnosed-, there’s no way to prove that she asked JP2 to be cured and that he was the one who did it. Maybe she prayed to God, Jesus, the Holly Spirit and Mary for hours and right before helping herself to bed she said “Oh, and by the way, JP2, if you could please give me a hand with this sickness I’d really appreciate it”… and boom! Cured!
The Catholic Church has a long history of neglecting their nun population, which is not as straightforward as their discrimination towards females of course, and also a loooooog and very well documented history of secrecy, so besides their own words and facts there’s no way to have an accurate investigation on what actually happened in that nun’s body before and after that “miracle”.

You really have to consider all people on the face of this planet a whole bunch of idiots to believe for just one second that they’ll believe such story. Or better yet, to just consider for a second that any serious news service will carry that story is to really ask for a miracle…. Oh shit! I guess that proves that miracles do exist after all!

D A R E

Good thing that my girlfriend is not home yet otherwise she would've freaked out right away. Surprisingly enough I kept my cool all the way till the end, when the corpse was flushed down the toilet and the open windows let a little air in to minimize the smell.

Few weeks ago I sprayed the apartment with the strongest bug killer out there, and I thought that I was good to go for the next few months as the label said "It kills and keeps killing for months". But maybe I did something wrong. Or maybe those cucarachas that live in this complex are used to being sprayed day in and day out with Raid and have grown resistant to one of the most powerful legal poisons out there.

I just did a mental note to buy yet another can of the meanest and strongest Raid yet created by human beings and there will not a single corner, door frame, or square inch in this place that will not be sprayed to death with the aforementioned bug killer in order to rid this place of whatever group of insects or bugs that are or dream dare of living here.

Even if it ends up taking out the largest bug in this place: me!

The "G" Word

Sorry about my absence. . . but access to a computer from Guantanamo is limited. . .

They came at night; kicked the door open and called my name out loud. I was in bed, it was a frikking Tuesday 4AM and I had to work the next day, so where else was I suppose to be at!?

They pull out a picture of a dude with a long beard and a towel wrapped around his head, right beside him there was a young lad with a bright smile. I do have to say that he looked like me, or like any young drunk dude hugging a total stranger on a Halloween Night. Behind my Catholic nun dress you could tell that that was my happily drunk smile.

They handcuff me and threw me on the floor; took me out of the apartment and pushed me on the floor again; once we reached the bottom of the stairs I was facing the floor one more time. From the floor of a minivan where I was shovel into to the floor of a cell somewhere in southern Charlotte's National Guard little airport the only thing that I was able see was their black boots. I mean seriously, what happened to those times when a gentleman would offer a chair and a glass of water -not to mention the right to remain silence, a lawyer and a phone call- to another gentleman taken from his castle in the middle of the night?

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, not quite sure if they knew about that little fact because my flight made a stop in Egypt for almost six weeks before heading back to the Caribbean. While there I didn't get the chance to see the pyramids, but some smelly dudes asked me questions day and night about the guy with the towel and the long beard on that picture. If you want to know about him, why don't you fucking ask him? -was my standard answer, but they were very persistent, like if they knew something about me that I didn't know. Or something that I should've know.

Once I made it to the island of Fidel -but on the American corner, they got me an orange suit and threw away the key.

The next couple of years were uneventful. I had to commute to see the same tired faces asking the same tired questions, again and again, about the guy with the beard and the towel around his head (ask him, motherfucker, not me!!). For a couple of weeks they tried to see if I knew something about a guy with a mustache; I said that the last time I'd seen him was on an old TV clip shaking hands with Donnald Rumsfeld. The question on him ended shortly after that.

In all honesty, what really worried me during that time away from civilization. . . well, from "civilization" if you can call all that shit civilized, was getting this corner of the internet disconnected due to the lack of updates. And that little voice in the back of my mind that kept asking me if I had turned off that light in the bathroom or not. Turned out that after 30 days of no rent, they actually turn the lights off for you. How nice.

But I'm back; or better yet, I was never gone, which also means that I'm not completely back, but my cute girlfriend would really-really like to see a little post from me and I like to see her happy, so there you go, a little post.

My girlfriend just text message me saying that she might have f*cked up my laptop... I really wonder why am I so relax about it.

 

Calendar

Left my office building at 9:04pm after a little meeting that could've easily be replaced by an e-mail with a handful of bullet points. But people love meetings and they think that they are good for the mental health of the "team" and the organization and as hole. I agree with that concept, but when people start going in circles and asking the same tired questions over and over again, I really ask myself about their mental health.

After that meeting I went back to my corner office, locked the drawer that contains all ther porn, and exit the building through the only revolving door that was working (the other one was beeping and stuck half way open).

Right before making one of the last right turns in order to get to my condo, I remembered that I thought about getting a little almanac for my cubicle with some nice art in it and decided to go and get it. The bookstore didn't have a great variety and I realized that Summer is definitely a bad time to go shopping for calendars. While browsing the little calendars, I saw on top of the stand a large sign advertising 20% off -not bad for a $8,95 calendar, eh?. I decided that I was gona get me one with the images of some paradisiac beaches. . . but the fine print below the 20% stated that that promotion was good through 07/07/06.

So fuck it, I turned around and smiled to an underage girl looking at some DaVinci code paraphernalia on my way to the door; when I cranked my car I looked through the windshield at a little Toyota that reminded me of the Smart; and while pulling out of the parking lot I cursed under my breath at two women who were walking in the middle of the road even though they didn't have license plates on their wide asses.

I may go back and get that calendar in few days; perhaps next week while holding hands with my better half that is gona be in town; or maybe I won't get it at all. The reason why I didn't get it today is that I considered that sign misleading: the promotion already expired, so why advertised something that is no longer good?

S t u f f f f

I'll be moving in a couple of weeks to a new apartment and I've been in the process of packing up all my stuff. Or I should say in the "mental process" of packing all my stuff because as per today not a single one of the boxes that I got are filled with anything other than air.

But I shouldn't be so hard on myself. . . the truth of the matter is that I just finished packing up the first of three boxes: one contains my Minolta SLR, that looks brand new (and I can argue that it is, because it has seen only one and a half films going through it in the almost two years that has been in my night table's lower drawer); another box contains all installation CDs and connection cables of my other camera, a digital Cannon that has seen a lot of use in the year or so under my care (and has shoot many pictures of a cute blue eyed gurl who lives further north).


And the third box is a shoe box filled with stuff that I don't know if I should throw away or keep. Some of it I definitely have to keep, like my passport for example, while other stuff are many little papers with many ideas of posts and writings I still want to keep if one day I decide to develop those topics, among other little things.

These three boxes together with some magazines, files, papers and other stuff are in a big red plastic container that was originally intended for recycling bottles and cans (you know, the kind that you leave by your trash the day the garbage people are coming to pick it up). And I should say kudos to me because before today, and besides having that red recycling container filled with stuff plus more stuff around it, I also had the two huge night table drawers (that look like a dresser) packed with all kind of shit that I guess I was just saving for when I had to throw it away. Now is just the recycling container filled all the way to the top neatly organized.

In other news, earlier today instead of packing and organizing all my stuff as I should've done, I went to B&N to drink coffee, read and procrastinate. When I step on my little red car at around 3:30PM, it was hot as hell here in the Bible Belt and the sun was coming down on us unrestricted due to a cloudless sky. When I saw my little car standing in the sun with its windows rolled all the way up, I knew that it was hot as fuck in there, as it actually was, and I had to leave both doors open for a while to let all the extremely hot air out, and the regular hot as hell air of this city in, in order to cool it down.

When I parked in front of the bookstore, I decided to let the windows a bit down in order to avoid returning to an oven with four wheels. . . but as it always happen when I do that, from nowhere a sea of dark clouds came on the city and let down buckets of water in a split of a second.

As I was deep inside the bookstore enjoying a coffee, a bagel and a book by a woman in urgent need of a straight jacket called Ann Coulter, I thought I heard a loud BOOOM in the distance, but thought it should be some sort of construction going next door. Wasn't only until almost an hour later that the noise became stronger and a little humidity could be sense floating in the air that I turned my neck to see through the non-fiction lane that the day had turned into night and rain was coming down with furious vengeance!

When I came back home after driving less than a mile that separates the bookstore from my place, my left side was all wet due to all the water that manage to get into my car while I was thinking that everything was clear and sunny outside.

I used to remember the number of times that this has happened to me, leaving the windows down just to come back to a car under heavy rain, but I definitely lost count of it. I've tried to come up with a trend of when it happens: more often in Spring than in Summer and Fall, but the truth of the matter is that it happens when I least expect it. And I know that from now on and for the next couple of months, I'll leave the windows all the way up until one day I'd say to myself: "it's time to leave the windows a bit down. . . and Murphy's Law will come down on my in the form of buckets of water to remind me that when it's hot as hell, no matter if you roll down the windows a little bit, it still is gona be hot as hell when you get back to the car!