Under the Illusion

I was overhearing the TV this evening, a program on the History Channel on the theme of warfare. A soldier from this present age was talking about how cheap landmines proved to be, compared to tanks and other artifacts of war. He then flung around the extravagant sum of 40 million dollars: the cost of a single tank.

Which set me to thinking.

Have we really realized how costly it is to wage a war? Billions of dollars go into killing a foreign nation, toppling its government, instating a new one and keeping the order in general until opposition subsides. This bothers me greatly. This money could be used to improve upon the culture, infrastructure and knowledge of this nation, instead of being spent on squandering another. What bothers me even more, to the core of my beliefs, is that this great deal of money is actually being used for violent purposes - to kill people, if you will! Don't people see this is just another WWII situation? Of course, we're "the good guys" now, and no one has grabbed us by the balls, no jews are protesting in English, but our ears are quite deaf to any other language, no matter how loudly spoken. Apparently, "Mercy, please" doesn't count unless spoken in English. That's why no one is moved by these stories: no one has bothered to place the subtitles.

The other part of this that bothers me is that MY money, the money I earn each day as I wake up and make the goodwilled effort to go and work for, the money I spend in food, clothes, sometimes some little extras to make my life better... are directly or indirectly making someone's life far away much worse. I'm obviously referring to the silk road of Taxes. Each year, if you pay your taxes yearly, or each day, if you pay sales taxes... you pay the government a bit of what you earn, a bit of what you spend. We gripe about it, of course, but only because it is money we would rather have in our pockets so we can spend it in yet more things to make our life more pleasant.

I believe most people don't stop to think that with every bit that each one of us puts in, we're amassing a great sum of money. Money we're giving to the government. Money the government spends on war. Our money, our efforts, our sufferings are going bit by bit into making warfare. We work so Dubya can kill peole off. Wow.

Now I am not very comfortable with this. Actually, I disagree. So, do I stop paying my taxes? No, I can't. I would go to jail in a matter of a few years. We are actually paying taxes so they won't throw us into a cell. Our freedom is an illusion, it's bought! No matter what I do for a living, I have to pay taxes, otherwise it's considered illegal and prosecutable by law. This so-called freedom they sell you is not for free. It is not my born right. I have to earn freedom and actually agree, in principle, to kill those muslim motherfuckers, even if at heart I totally hate it and disagree with it.

So, what do we do? We live on, under the impression we're free, but we're not. We've been caged in a structure called society. We're all born the same way and brought into a societal structure into which we're educated for the final purpose of, at due age, integrating ourselves into the worforce and toil away at the turning wheels of the mechanism of war. We are The Big War Machine. Billions of humans wasting away under the impression of freedom, trapped into the mechanisms of the art of warfare.

Just a few steps away from Aldous Huxley's A Brave \New World.

Feeling better...

...although the problems do not cease to come in. My car's "check engine" light just came on today, but I doubt that something's wrong with the car. It could be more like something's wrong with the light.

Well, have taken good advantage of my new toys (40GB iPod and 3200 Nikon Coolpix) and will soon show for it. In the meanwhile, just wanted to jot down that this is one of those moments in which I feel pretty much stable, and in which I usually don't write at all.... well, I decided to, so as to leave evidence that those moments sure exist! ;-D

BTW: Gala died this morning. Mom bought another bird (a green and blue parrakeet that prefers to sit on the swing instead of the perch, bloody weird bird... what should I call her? I am accepting suggestions below! Soon I will post her photo too)

Cuando lo importante da paso a lo urgente

... según Mafalda (qué no daría yo por un scanner funcional para poder poner también el strip en cuestión).

Entre exabruptos y tantrums cáusticos, me he percatado de la mayor pérdida en este último mes y medio, lo que ha provocado esta sensacion de ansiedad (restlessness) en mí. No es la pérdida del tiempo libre (en un momento pensé que sería algo así), pero me veo progresivamente enredándome en la telaraña de la vida comunal/ejecutiva/empleocéntrica del yuppie. Poco a poco aplazando aquello que es importante para mí (el tiempo y energía que le dedico a mi familia, a mis seres queridos, a las cosas q me gustan, y - lo más importante de todo - a mí misma) para atender lo que es urgente. Ni siquiera se trata de tener más o menos días libres, de vacaciones, fuera de la oficina. Ya se va tratando de algo mental, psicológico.

Es decir: You may take Diana out of the office but you can't take the office out of Diana.

Eso es terrible! De pronto encontrarse en la cama a las 11PM intentando descansar y ver q no se puede pensar en nada más alla de lo q pasó durante el día en la oficina o los problemas sintomáticos del apego a ella. Es una de esas relaciones love/hate, y esto es enfermizo.

Necesito encontrar forma de desconectar y poder atender mis propios problemas en mi propio tiempo. Si no paso tiempo en la oficina, lo paso pensando en lo q sucedió, y peor aun: dreading to go back.

It's the end-all, be-all of my puny, little existence. ugh ...

Yuppie shite

Pues tengo q encontrar la forma de salir de eso, antes de empezar a pensar q sería bueno tener propiedades en Los Paseos. Tengo q poder encontrar la forma de q, aun estando dentro de la oficina, no se me olvide q lo q me gusta es el arte, q esto no me haga sentir miserable por no poder estudiarlo ahora, sino q me sienta bien pq no soy parte del rebaño de mierda de estos oficinistas en realidad. Que camino con ellos, pero sólo hasta el momento en q poncho. Que podemos ser compañeros, pero no tienen que conocerme. Que esto es solamente un trabajo, y no mi vida entera.

Tengo q encontrar la forma de desconectarme ... y lo voy a lograr.

My New Pets

The two lovers...



Dalí ...



... and Gala


The story is quite simple: I was doing errands (mostly bank errands, the most depressing and tedious errands of all kinds). I was at El Señorial Plaza (the most depressing mall, go figure, perfect place for the most depressing errands). I had just finished paying this month's installment for the car plus some late fees. I was walking back to my car and I passed by the pet store. Now, usually I'm not very fond of these places since they sell what will never be rightfully ours: another life. Plus they keep the dog-breeding industry alive while there are millions of stray/mixed-breed dogs out there begging to be adopted. Why have a snooty poodle when you can have faithful, playful mongrelSpot! :-D

Well, what caught my attention was a big cage with five tortoises (I love turtles and tortoises). It mostly caught my attention cuz these animals were outlawed years ago in the island (basically cuz of salmonella epidemics due to high contact with them). I was talking to Mom on the phone in the meanwhile and I was telling her all about it. I started touching one of them under the paw and it snapped at me! Nasty ho's!

Well, I turned my attention to the parrakeets. I have never been a fan of caged birds , but these two struck me as an explicitly happy couple. I put my finger to the cage, expecting them to screech in fear and scuttle away, but the male just got closer and nibbled at my finger softly. I was as hooked as I would have been with a pup.

I bought them and brought them home. Meet our new family members: Dali and Gala! :D

Re:

Why is it that for me, even if life has pulled me to and fro, I do not feel the weigh of past wounds... do I not learn?

Why is it that I pay no heed to consistent heartbreak, and make the same mistakes all over again?

I retain the same joy in loving, the same carelessness in throwing my heart away, in surrendering myself to the tiniest whims of emotions ... still a child at heart and not in the best sense.

I see others around me growing more cautious, even in love itself, incapable of the same innocent surrender they once were. In me I only see the same carelessness intertwined with a dark tendency to feel doom in the slightest cloud.

I have a belief that love will be love wherever you put it, however you feel it. That's why these "grown up" tendencies to be more cautious or more detached scare me so, cuz a hardened hard is just too easy to find... the easy way out of just feeling and living the most out of life.

Maybe I'm being to hard on the others, maybe I'm being immature at all .... this...

But to see the apples around me rotting away while I still work hard at keeping my own core intact ... it's frustrating, it breaks my heart.

And maybe this drama won't help at all, but one too many times I have seen people being spoiled for good by situations ...

Maybe one day I will be the old lady sitting in a corner smiling out the window, not caring at all, still feeling like a toddler, still remembering all except how she got into the assylum.

If only old age would get here fast, then maybe I will only see that the rotten apples around me resemble little dark hearts, wilted flowers, something out of a song, something that doesn't touch me ... by then only sunlight and breeze will touch me, and those never rot at all ...

Trading Spaces

Go to Anais's Travels for the serious stuff today.

This will only be a display of mirth and a subtle wish of owning this:



The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

It's 1961 and Dr. Paul Armstrong (Larry Blamire) and his lovely wife Betty (Fay Masterson) head into the mountains in search of a recently fallen meteor containing the rare element atmosphereum. Paul needs it to help him with his science work, but Betty'd just as soon have a vacation. Also in the area, sinister Dr. Roger Fleming (Brian Howe) asks trusty Ranger Brad (Dan Conroy) the whereabouts of Cadavra Cave, mysterious home to rumors of a legend of the Lost Skeleton." That night, both parties witness what appears to be yet another meteor falling. Immediately after, a local farmer is killed by a horrible, unseen thing. Is there a connection? Indeed there is. The second meteor is actually a disabled alien spaceship with a strange couple from the planet Marva, Krobar (Andrew Parks) and Lattis (Susan McConnell). These aliens discover they also need Atmosphereum to power their really high tech ship, and notice their horrible pet mutant (Darrin Reed), which they travel around with for some reason, has escaped. Unfortunately, Dr. Fleming discovers he also needs the atmosphereum to bring to life the dreaded Lost Skeleton of Cadavra which he finds in the cave.

After the aliens disguise themselves as earth people with the aid of their "transmutatron", Dr. Fleming swipes it and morphs four different forest animals into his own ally - the beautiful cat-suited Animala (Jennifer Blaire). Now everyone's after the atmosphereum and the Armstrongs find they have their hands full, capturing the mutant, stopping the evil scientist, and vanquishing the power-mad Skeleton who wants to rule the world.


Oh well....


I sleep now.

If we were in medieval times...

our roads and our highway would look like a BIG medieval joust field.



Our flags:



Our contenders:


But none of it will matter if this guy wins the elections!


Either of these two would be as bad!

Toy CAGA!

Por las elecciones, mas las de afuera (EU) q las locales ... let's hope for the best

Wish List

Mood: Nervous

.... but never mind...

Xmas Wishlist!


Tha new iPod! Black and red (very stylish color combo, absolutely LOVE it!) plus it's 60 gigas! NICE!


Blythe! Already found another fan in my group of friends, so we might as well join those doll-crazed freaks out there .... plus you only have to spend $80 to sign in! What a deal!

Well, up til now, my wishlist is up to $580 in spending, so I'm like ... $600 short ... ;-) See ya!

Hi Fi

I just wish these dreams would go away, it's the second time I dream about these things, I do not want them in my head. Recurrent themes. Ugh! I wake up with the feeling that the dream actually happenned, and it's a panicky feeling, like I fucked up or something. Thankfully, truth is better than fiction at these points.

My new beeper (yes, a beeper... I was handed one on Friday at 5PM... felt like being handed one of Rambaldi's devices, a museum item of sorts, a sun dial, something pricelessly useless) started beeping this morning at 6:30AM. What worries me is that this is the kind of activity that most technicians have to endure when they are on-call during weekends: get a call at 6AM on a saturday, wake up, go to the office or wherever, solve it ... u know, it's scary to see the line between your personal life and your work being blurred and lost like that. Thing is, it will happen to me. I am one of those chosen to be on call on a regular basis as soon as I am considered to be able to solve problems by myself.

If only ...

lost it ...

Tenia tantas ideas para escribir en este espacio hoy ... todas perdidas por una conversacion q no me esperaba ahora mismo ... por un relajo montado por mi usual autismo sintomatico cuando me conecto ...

Pensando un poco: en Florida estan votando hoy, no se por que ni los pormenores de esto. Papi estaba en esas. Votando. Por Kerry. Thankfully and let's hope he wins.

Can't concentrate .... FUCK THIS!

Cheers ... without the Jose Cuervo.

Listening to: Cheers Darlin' - Damien Rice
Mood: ... oh dear

This song had been looping in my head for a few days now, but I had totally forgotten who sung it or the name, everything had scrammed from my memory except the sorrowful despair that it carries. Should have assumed and trusted that Eze would include it in one of the MP3 CDs he made for me some time ago.

Now, why did it loop that way for so many days? Why am I feeling this particular way at times? So many things are going right, so many things have gotten fixed... this ungrateful little bitch sitting here cannot deal with a bit of sadness in the blood? Damn!

Here is the latest on how to fight boredom...

I don't even know what's going on really inside of me. I suppose automatically a disorder of sorts, usually blame myself, my neuron connections, my subconscious workings, I blame no one else... I never do. Whenever things aren't as pretty as one hopes, why do I start feeling doomsday weighing on my shoulder? Things start looking less pink... why does the gradient jump to gray?

Why do I make his memories my own... don't I have enough with what I have lived, with the baggage I bring to all this? It's almost beautiful how all of it merges into this big ball of dark glass and tears.

What this feels like: unexplainable. But it depresses, it sinks, it washes me in salt and vinegar. Until I feel jaded, sea-treated, like rusty metal ... like the things I love ... but when they cut, they kill. If only feelings were more organic, less shiny, then the luster wouldn't be gone that easily. Then it would all behave like the inside spiral of a seashell: always shiny, neverending.


How do you turn a chain into a seashell?

How do you erase your memory, how do you unchain yourself from all that made you who you are ... how do you get to be new again?

Cheers Darlin' - Damien Rice

Cheers darlin'
Here's to you and your lover boy
Cheers darlin'
I got years to wait around for you
Cheers darlin'
I've got your wedding bells in my ear
Cheers darlin'
You give me three cigarettes to smoke my tears away

And I die when you mention his name
And I lied, I should have kissed you
When we were running the reins

What am I darlin'?
A whisper in your ear?
A piece of your cake?
What am I, darlin?
The boy you can fear?
Or your biggest mistake?

Cheers darlin'
Here's to you and your lover man
Cheers darlin'
I just hang around and eat from a can
Cheers darlin'
I got a ribbon of green on my guitar
Cheers darlin'
I got a beauty queen
To sit not very far from here

I die when he comes around
To take you home
I'm too shy
I should have kissed you when we were alone

What am I darlin'?
A whisper in your ear?
A piece of your cake?
What am I, darlin?
The boy you can fear?
Or your biggest mistake?

Oh what am I? What am I darlin'?
I got years to wait...

Let the sun set on my tears

I spent this sunset at one of these:



... and I started thinking... that every time I spend a sunset or an evening at a Wendy's, the mood tends to set in gloomy and weird. At first I thought that it had something to do with the excess of windows and how it looks so dark outside, but then I remembered that other fast food places, like McDonals, have a deluge of windows, and I've never felt like that in one of those.

So I noticed ... the color scheme. All Wendy's restaurants have a color scheme in which blue-green is predominant, with other gradients of blue, and highlights in wine-red and pink (these highlights do very little to chipper up the place). Colors like blue and green are calm and, if the color scheme and lighting in which they are included are not taken good care of, they could very well end up being downright depressing. These color schemes are not your typical fast food colors. It has been proven that bright colors, like white, pink, orange, red and yellow arouse hunger and increase activity. These are popular amongst fast food places because people are not only compelled to eat more, but they also feel the need to move on. What's up with Wendy's? I don't know.

However, I did not need the depressing sunset on me today either. It has been a gloomy day, mostly my fault. I just wish I were a bit less emotional, a bit more pragmatic ... i just wish I didn't get so easily worked up and teary eyed over things as ephemeral as one day less, one hour less, a notch down the belt... things that shouldn't be at all of significance in the bigger scheme. I still feel, however, the need to cry more, and it worries me, cuz I have no reason at all to feel sad, not really. But things come to my head, excuses and reasons for the tears, fantasies of doom and gloom. Today has been an exercise of self control. Of wanting to cry more, just a bit more, and not being able to, so as to prevent more questions from falling on my head. Today has been a day of finally noticing that I am not always on the right. As a matter of fact, I'm mostly on the wrong and childish attitudes, irrational thinking, control my reactions. Today I noticed how easy it could be to ruin the most precious things in your life, the things you should be forever grateful for, with one tear too many. Today I feel it would be wrong to keep crying, but then I can't help it.

Today I feel like going into hibernation, hide from the monster in myself, and not come back until it sleeps again.

Divine Plan my ass!

However some things happen for no apparent reason, at least for the while. Then you notice that even if what's happenning is not entirely to your great benefit (although in this instance it isn't to my detriment either, fortunately), it is to the benefit of others, and that a little act of good will can open up doors for you.

Do not misinterpret, I do not mean economical doors or a favor owed to you (how convenient!) but more like... mental doors. Suddenly, a little act of good faith, letting go of fears and grudges, it makes you understand things apparently unrelated. Well, at least it happenned to me today. And I am thankful that at last, out of a particular situation that wasn't the most pleasant, I was able to extricate a bit of meaning, a bit of value to my favor.

The value of true empathy over something that was otherwise not so totally clear... well, now it is.




Yet again, I wish to apologize for my cryptic tone, but sometimes, just sometimes... you just can't get rid of a bomb!

Good News First!

I got a fucking jobbbbbbbbb!
Here!

Good salary offer and, as customary for the company that used to be GM Group, great benefit package. I am happy about this. VERY happy. I'm supposed to start on friday (a bit off-whack, it being friday, but it makes sense, since they pay on days 15 and 30).

On the other hand (and I apologize for my unusual cryptic demeanor): very concerned that I'm not being told something. Even if I know (or hope) it has nothing to do with me, I am still very concerned. I respect the need for space and silence and non-disclosure. However, the need to "not talk about it right now" is new to me in this particular situation and unsettles me a bit.
But I trust ... I trust the other's judgement and I stand by my initial decision to respect the needed space.

Concerned about my father too. :-(

In a Foul Mood

No need to spread it around, however I am finding that this foul mood, this depression, is bleeding into unrelated areas of my life. One of them being my love life, which is going quite well, if we don't take this current emotional state of mine into account.

I am afraid of fucking it up due to my un-diligence at just disposing of these negative thoughts and dark emotions. It has nothing to do with him, or the relationship per se. It has to do with me and my state of growing despair for a job, something to do, money to earn.

Already expecting the worst (which is not very constructive in itself and if I keep it that way, the devil's gonna take me as part-time, underpaid concubine)...



May the force swim up your ass.

Diana

In celebration of...

LOVE


July 23rd, 2004.


Thanks, luv, for these two months thats sometimes feel like a second and sometimes feel like a year, but they have always felt right.

I love you.

:-)

The Art of Dreaming

... y como el "arte de soñar" me tiene ya cacorra!

Why do I keep dreaming things? My mind keeps pulling out cards out of my subconscious, bringing forward whatever it is I think has been forgotten. One day it is that deeply ingrained fear of beaing left alone, next... like last night... I can't even say what it could have meant. Besides, it stirs up nothing in my being besides this one phrase: "What the fuck!?"

I dreamt of my ex.... and I dreamt of his wife. And more about her than him... perhaps the predominant mood in all of this is the same mood that overcame me the day I really saw her up close, just a few weeks before I finished working there. It was annoyance at him for having abandoned and double played a woman as beautiful as she. It is a point of view so stupid, because... why didn't I think of that before? I already knew she existed, I already knew thay had kids together, I already knew they had once loved each other. Her being beautiful doesn't change a thing in life... why should it change my point of view?

Perhaps it's the fact that having her that close, that day, made her much more real to me. And that is what hit me like a truck and made me much more happy of having ended the relationship with him.

However, I have to get all this shit out of my system. NOW!

The Process of Job Hunting

So! It's been more than a month, to be honest, it's been a month and 16 days since my last day as a worker. Since then, maybe even since before, I've been looking for a new job. No one said it would be easy, but then again, I never thought it would become this hard. Maybe because I don't have another job to fall back on, maybe beacause my days are filled with longing... not only for a satisfying job, but for the compensation that goes with it... the thing that "moves the world around": money.

I wouldn't consider myself materialistic, but everyone knows you need money to survive and procure yourself the most basic commodities. Right now, thanks to my mother, I haven't been wanting on the most basic things, plus a few other vices and privileges as well. However, I hate to be a clinger,

Yesterday I went to yet another interview. The second one with Evertec, It went well, I suppose, because I was selected as part of a (small?) group to go through the last phase: checking references. This is where I get anxious, because even if I am very aware that I had no quarrel with my previous employer and clients, nonetheless there's the small detail that to them, to my ex-employers, I am supposed to be in North Carolina. Puzzlement will ensue. Puzzlement brings unpredictability.

Alex, as I got to know him for two years as a boss, was a good man. A fair boss. One to keep his moods in check... too much in check, to be honest. Most of the times I couldn't really read his moods. That made him unpredictable by nature, at least to me... and that makes for a relatively dangerous situation.

Now that they will learn that I am not on the other side of the Atlantic, a Pandora's box will open.

And knowing the intricacies of personal trusts that rule the world at D&A, certain someone else will know for sure I am here ... and avoiding him. Maybe he already knows. Maybe he even reads this blog. I have taken all the risks quite unconcernedly. But now he could know for sure. I just hope a personal vendetta does not ensue.

An Experiment

Went here, a website I had visited before... just as an experiment. It had been a while since I last visited. It's a good website that recommends movies for you to watch according to profile and mood. I thought it would make for an interesting experiment, since I've watched a few more movies since my last visit.
Their recommendation (after two first tries: Trainspotting -which I LOVED- and American Beauty -which was great too):


Magnolia

Magnolia is the study of nine lives in one day in San Fernando Valley, California. These nine lives all connect and revolve around the game show "What Do Kids Know?"(WDKK), where a team of three kids play against adults and everytime the show is on, there is a new team of adults and the kids remain; if they won the previous game. Earl Partridge (the late Jason Robards) produced "WDKK" when it was first on in the late 60s. He is dying of brain and lung cancer and is being taken care of by Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a male nurse. Linda, Earl's trophy wife (Julianne Moore) starts to fall in love with Earl for real, despite her cheating. Earl, rapidly dying on his bed, asks Phil to find his estranged son, Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), who grew up hating Earl and now runs a seminar for single men, which teaches them how to seduce a woman and leave her... The host of "WDKK", Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), is also dying, but not as rapidly as Earl. He has a very rocky relationship with his daughter Claudia (Melora Waters), who sniffs crack 24/7 and accuses her father of sexually molesting her. Police Officer Jim (John C. Reilly) goes to Claudia's house after getting called about a disturbance. He falls in love with her right away... Stanley Specter (Jeremy Blackman) is a contestant on "WDKK", who is a genius and is being used by his father to make money. If Stanley and his team keep winning, they will set a record on the show and get tons of money. The record Stanley is trying to beat is the 1968 record set by Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who had the exact same childhood when he was on the show and has now grown up to be a pathetic loser. He's been recently fired from his job, and is trying to find his way into happiness...

Oooookay... might watch .... some day... I guess.... Any opinions? Please?