Parece que nuestros queridos galleginhos Cobra y Berga ya empiezan a rodar una nueva serie de televisión llamada “Galicia Vice”. Para interpretar su papel de Sonny, Cobra está dejando la barba perpetúa de tres días.
Monthly Archives: November 2006
Let there be light
The other day while hanging the laundry, I happened to look out into the small inner courtyard of the building where I have been living for the past five years. I had never really looked out into this courtyard before. I looked up at one of my neighbor’s windows and noticed a wonderfully painted room and a lovely lamp. This made me feel a bit envious. I don’t know when my apartment was last painted, but it should have been repainted years ago. I have done some minor decorating, but never anything special, just the minimum of making the place feel like it is where “I” live. So, I have some framed posters and pictures of family and friends. Because it is a rental apartment and I can never decide how long I will stay in Spain, I simply have not made the “commitment” to refurnish. But looking through the window into my neighbor’s lovely little space, I felt that I too needed to make my apartment a touch more special. Here is what I did:
Filed under Digressions
Thanksgiving with the Changster, Natalia, Regeneration and Depletion, and Coltrane
Like all things in life, weekends need a fine balance. I had wanted to write a few different posts on various unrelated topics, but instead I will summarize all of them here as the (abriged) story of my weekend:
Filed under Digressions, Friends / Family, Jazz
It’s not always that easy
This morning I got to thinking that it’s not always that easy. It isn’t easy being a son or a father. It isn’t easy being a mother or a daughter. Or an older brother or a younger brother. An older sister or a younger sister. It can’t always be easy being a husband or being a wife, or being in any relationship or being all on your own. It isn’t easy having people depend on you or having to depend on others. And it isn’t always easy having no one to depend on or anyone to depend on you. Nevertheless, I believe that if you stop and think about it a little, and really analyze things, everyone is out there is trying to do their best. Some times we succeed, but often we fail. And when you understand this is part of life, then there really is no reason for anyone to get too upset or to take things too personally.
Filed under Digressions
What’s always bothered me about Rudolph’s plight
Ever since I was a fairly young kid, I was always bothered by the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Yes, boys and girls, you know the one. Rudolph was born a smaller than usual sized reindeer and had an ackwardly shining red nose. As a matter of fact, had you ever seen his nose, you’d even say it glowed. All of his fellow reindeers used to laugh and call Rudolph names. Rudolph was subsequently ostrasized and kept from partaking in the social activities of reindeers of his age. Then one foggy Christmas Eve when Santa saw that his only real significant day of work for the year was going to be little more difficult than normal due to the weather, he came up with a brilliant and opportunistic idea: Hey, why don’t I put that freak-of-nature Rudolph with his nose so bright up in front of my cavalry like a hood ornament to gide my sleigh tonight. And here is what bothers me the most:
Filed under Digressions
France and Lebanon
Here is an insightful article by Robert Fisk on France’s historic and present interests in Lebanon. Anyone interested should also check out the scene in the film “West Beirut” where at a French high school in Beirut, a student is told by his teacher that it was the French who gave Lebanon its nation and freedom.
A French colonial legacy of despair: They wanted Lebanon’s ‘independence’ – but they wanted it in France’s favour; by Robert Fisk:
I couldn’t help a deep, unhealthy chuckle when I watched the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy arrive outside the wooden doors of Saint George’s Maronite Cathedral in Beirut this week. A throb of applause drifted through the tens of thousands of Lebanese who had gathered for the funeral of murdered industry minister Pierre Gemayel. Here, after all, was the representative of the nation which had supported the eviction of the Syrian army last year, whose president had been a friend of the equally murdered ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri, whose support in the UN Security Council was helping to set up the tribunal which will – will it, we ask ourselves in Beirut these days? – try the killers of both Hariri and Gemayel.
Filed under Essays
Bruce Lee and when NOT to be like water
At the end of April, I posted my favorite Bruce Lee quote. Well, in the past two months, a very popular BMW commercial has featured another Bruce Lee quote; this one about water. In context, Bruce Lee talks about how his variation of martial arts (Jeet Kune Do) strives to be like water, for it is both shapelessness and is all powerful. Water has the dual quality of being completely passive, always finding the path of least resistence, and yet water also has the immense force to destroy anything in its way. Unfotunately, this commercial gets it all wrong. It is like Chevy selling a car called the “Nova” or “no va” (in Spanish meaning “doesn’t go”).
Why would you tell car buyers that they should “crash” like water? while Bruce says that water’s formlessness is what makes is become the tea pot, the commercial tells us not to “adapt” to the highway (in other words, not be formless). But then it tells us to become the highway. So, if you are water and are not taking its formless path, then you do not adapt to the highway but overpower it. In other words, you crash. Right? Water can either flow or crash. You adapt or you destroy. So, we should drive BMWs and crash. Hmm? It seems to me like a huge marketing blunder.
Filed under Digressions
Just a few more days
In just a few more days, it will be Friday, November 24th. That is the day after Thanksgiving, and that is the day that I can officially start listening to my favorite Christmas Caroles by the likes of Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Elvis. And in about a month’s time, I should be “home for Christmas”. I got my playlists ready, and my neighbors should beware!
Filed under Digressions
Meandering
A few weeks ago when writing Time to Meander, I was wondering whether my Spanish readers would understand the English word “meander”. I decided to look up the precise Spanish translation and then researched the etymology of the word to see if it had an anglo-saxon origin. What I discovered is kind of interesting (at least to me):
Filed under Digressions
Grave Error 