2004/01/24

Speak out!
Terrific poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti expresses my feelings about America and our leaders' contempt for the world. In milk magazine.

2004/01/23

Memorable dates
First, this blog and our entire staff (Bear, Lion, Fox & Glib) wish you all good fortune in the year 4071, Year of the Monkey, which began yesterday (according to our Chinese friends). Second, we are reminded every time January 23 comes around of that momentous day in 1958, when Venezuelans changed their history. For photos and background (in Spanish) on the events of that day, January 23, 1958, see Globovision's 23 de enero, momento para recordar

2004/01/20

Is sex a sin? Please pass the fish (Los sordelis)

My compañera and I are not really hard of hearing ("sordeli" in Argentine slang). Not so you'd notice. But sometimes what comes out of the mouth of one is not exactly what reaches the ear of the other.

One evening this summer in Carboneras, Spain, as we were sitting on the balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, I was reflecting on the contrast between the topless foreign sunbathers and the local women, those older ones who would venture outdoors (in that heat) only in a kind of Roman Catholic burkha, a shapeless black dress down to the ankles to deny sexuality and distance the wearer from sin (pecado in their language).

And so I murmured these thoughts to the compañera. (To follow this, you have to know that she and I speak Argentine, a distant cousin of Castilian, and for us "coger" means what the Spaniards call "follar".)

"¿De dónde viene la idea de que el coger es pecado?" I asked.

She looked at me startled. "¿Escoger el pescado?"

Like I said: Not so you'd notice.

2004/01/19

e-reading
This is horrifyingly real -- how a very ordinary young man with decent impulses and a Socialist father could become a Nazi murderer of Jews. It must really have been like this for many of those young soldiers in the Wehrmacht. Do read A Report From Chekernassy by Sean McCormick, at Carve Magazine.