Monday, 26th o July 2004
Patent #10298498 - Method for the Consumption of Crunchy Cheetos to Avoid Orange Finger Syndrome.
I've done it. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Well this one is a mother indeed. Eureka! I jumped, I danced, I rejoiced. Never again shall I have orange fingers from eating Cheetos brand corn puffs.
Chopsticks, my friends, chopsticks.
Ahem, it's only the crunchy ones for me. None of that poofy nonesense. Real men eat crunchy style Cheetos which, curiously enough, go well with a rum and coke (lime, not lemon... perhaps another patent opportunity?)
I'll make millions, I tell you. Millions.
Saturday, 24th o July 2004
Stupid Argonauts, I should've staffed the vessel with women.
I dismounted my bike, grabbed a couple of dollars from my bike bag, and started into the bakery. Coming up the sidewalk were four young attractive women. A man walking into the bakery ahead of me, stopped short, arching his back and his head at an awkward angle as he gawked. I almost walked into him. I cleared my throat, "Ahem, con permiso." I shook my head, wasn't that the damnedest thing. He should've taken a picture. It would have lasted longer.
I made my way to the line in the panadería. It was just after eight o'clock in the morning, the busiest time. The line was long, the bakery crowded. I tried to get there earlier, but sometimes, you just can't get out the door.
The young women, stepped into the bakery, chatting loudly,
giggling, carrying on. They were noticeable because they were all
dressed in filmy, revealing, noodle strap dresses, high heels, and an
unusual amount of makeup for so early in the morning. There were indeed
hot, and they were about to unleash their wiles on a bakery full of old
weak men. Poor devils.
The bakery came to a complete
stand-still. It was like a television freeze frame, ala TJ Hooker. A
fifty-ish short balding man walking toward where I stood, muttered to
his friend, "... e gusta el lechón con gandules." I didn't hear the
first part... Me, te (you), if it was a question or what... but the
point was clear. "Pork and pigeon peas" go well together in a sexual
way. The innuendo was unmistakable, and I tried to contain a smirk. Only
a Puerto Rican can say he likes pork meat and pigeon peas in a way that
connotes sex. I mused on comical variations, taking liberty, but couldn't push it to hyperbole in Spanish. I like marshmellows in my coffee. I like ketchup on my burger. I like little toys with my happy meal. And slowly, with feeling... I like salty... deep fried... artery clogging, pork rinds mashed into gigantic mounds of green bananas. Nope, just cannot push it far enough. Everything sounded sexual in Spanish.
I shook my head to myself, and watched the funny time warp
within the bakery. The women were standing directly behind me
in line, carrying on, obviously excited by the eyes burrowing holes in
their flimsy clothing. I had a good vantage point to observe the
leering, as I was directly in its line of site, and despite being clad in
a bright red spandex skin suit, bike helmet, and
sunglasses, was completely invisible. I was a camouflaged nature
photographer, dressed in bright orange, invisible to the color-blind wild beasts. It was absurd. It was hilarious. I continued to watch the
reactions from behind my bright blue lenses, the population of older men visually undressing the
women with their unabashed desires and their longing gazes. These people
have not even the tiniest slice of shame, their decorum thinly dressed in colorful food metaphors.
I asked Estéban for a dozen eggs. "Estéban, I don't have an egg carton today, do you think you could rig me something up?"
"Sure," he said as he proceeded to put the eggs in a paper bag.
"Um, do you think you could put them in a cardboard container? I'm on my bicycle. They'll surely break in a paper bag."
"Oh, sorry, he proceeded to break down one of the cardboard trays used to deliver the eggs, and put it inside a plastic bag."
"Um, do you think you could put some plastic wrap around it. They'll surely fall out. Sorry for the bother. Next time I'll be sure to bring my receptacle."
"No bother, really. Service is why we are here." And he handed me five eggs crudely wrapped in plastic.
"Estéban,
I wanted - Um, nevermind, good day." I wasn't going to get my twelve
eggs today. The sirens had conspired with the gods to keep me from my
goal.
Friday, 23rd o July 2004
I promise "Angry Jim" will go on an indefinite hiatus, and filling in will be "Fun Interesting Jim," or a reasonable facsimile. Perdona la molestia. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.
Friday, 23rd o July 2004
But what about this war?
War is ugly. War should be ugly. I watch the Bush administration trying to contain the fire, batting it back as they try to save Mosques, civilians, trinkets within the house that is on fire. The house is burning, you moron. You've got to put it out. If bad guys are using a Mosque to store weapons, the Mosque is already gone. Level it it and anything in it, around it, underneath it. If a block is harboring bad guys, take it out, the entire block, eliminate the fire, lest it spread and burn everything else. Put it out. Fuck the civilians, they should get the fuck out if they want to live. The house is on fire, get the fuck out, get as far away as possible, take your kids, your family. Don't go fucking buy fruit in the middle of a fire fight and cry about your little girl getting shot through the head. Get the fuck out of the burning house, because it's coming down. Once the fire's out and the firefighters have gone, THEN you can come back and put your life back together.
Does that sound terrible to you? God, I hope so. The goal of war is to put an end to it as quickly as possible, lest we become comfortable with it. War must be prosecuted with extreme prejudice and no malice. War is terrible, war is not something that should be entered lightly. I'm sorry, but “credible intel” sounds too much like a hunch to me. YOU DON'T GO TO WAR ON A HUNCH. Hunches are for TV gumshoes. They have no place in foreign or domestic policy. I'm starting to wonder if we've learned anything since Vietnam. You can't manage a war and you sure as hell can't manage a fire... you can only put it out or let it burn.
Thursday, 22nd o July 2004
Blessed be the Melancholics, for this world will never meet their expectations.
Sometimes I think that the black bile will overwhelm me, fill me up to my eyeballs with anger and despair, anger at those in power that have not accepted the true responsibility to those they serve, and despair at being so utterly powerless to affect the change that I feel this world so desperately needs.
Here I am with this stinking goo leaking out of me, affecting those around me, venom poisoning relationships, attitudes, positive change, weighing down, hanging in the air with its foul putrefying odor.
I was speaking to my dear old friend Courtney the other day, and she said, "It's just that the complete powerlessness... I mean, the Bush administration just makes me feel so... powerless." I had been feeling so under the weather about the present state of the world, my military service, my military fellows, Laura's brother Carlos who has been put on standby to be sent to Iraq. I wanted to scream and point out this evil mist that had settled over American society. I couldn't scream though, buried as I was in my own excrement.
I have been working so hard, seems like 17 hours a day, and
getting nowhere. Oppressing me is this shroud of ugliness both from
within and without, angry, nasty, vile, desperate thoughts, as I hear
Fox News in the background, parroting cheerful messages of war and
how liberals are undermining America. Hello, people?! We're at fucking WAR. You're prisoners in your OWN homes! And your government thinks you're all criminals and wants to SPY on all of you! Liberals are doing what again?!
I toil for clients that don't pay, put up with ingrates, degenerates, and malcontents, while I hear Bush's administration's "stop loss" shenanigans, designed as a back door draft, whose purpose is to keep in harm's way those that have already sacrificed so much. Bush is taking advantage of the faithful service of thousands of Americans pressing them into involuntary servitude beyond their enlistment contracts, beyond their retirement, beyond any measure of good faith that should have been rendered to them. This comes from a man who did everything he could to avoid military service himself, who never sacrificed, who didn't do shit. Look! daddy set me up in a cool airplane! Chicks dig pilots. Do you think, Mr. President that chicks dig disabled veterans? Of course you don't Mr. President, despite what you've read in Penthouse.
Does it make me feel powerless in the face of this evil dictator who acts like he owns the country? This is our country, dammit! Bush is the CEO, we elected him to the board, but we shareholders own the thing. It's our country, but he wields it like his personal conviction with his smug little smirk and federalist totalitarian self. Midget dictator, fucking creep, smug bastard, beady eyed miscreant, bible thumping wacko, American society hostage taking fool, abuser of military service, arrogant trampler of civil rights, and big business whore.
I was asked recently if I had seen Fahrenheit 9/11. Hell, no, I responded. I've lived it! Why would I want to drag myself through that shit, something to make me feel more powerless, less significant, less valued, and a victim of a presidency gone horribly awry. Fuck that, I can get that from Fox News, and the fucking erroneous pay or die letters I get from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) for recoupment of military service WHICH I PERFORMED! Fuckers.
There, I've let some of the ugliness out, exorcised some of my demons. Whew, it felt good. You know what. If I were ever on Inside the Actor's Studio (which I won't be), FUCK would be my favorite expletive... there's such a nice draining feeling to it, like a good satisfying puss-filled pimple pop.
I think I'll go sit next to Laura and see if she'll put up with me now.