&#$%!! Calderón

Qué lindo. Nuestro Presidente (sí el que representa a TODOS los mexicanos, no sólo a los fantáticos religiosos) hincado ante la Iglesia Católica. Hincado antes las presiones de la iglesia, en actitud de sumisión hacia sus directrices. El Presidente, como figura pública y política, líder de un estado LAICO, no tiene por qué rendirle honores a ninguna autoridad eclesiástica, porque implica que su poder y sus decisiones están supeditadas a las de una autoridad "superior". (Nótese que Dios NO estaba en las boletas electorales.)

Gracias al PAN por mantenernos en el obscurantismo.

(La foto es del Sexto Encuentro Mundial de las Familias, evento organizado por el Vaticano, donde en la inauguración de ayer se leyó el mensaje de Benedicto XVI, quien pidió una educación más "integral". Supongo que con "integral" quiso decir que se enseñe religión, o por lo menos valores morales católicos en las escuelas públicas de México. Qué horror.)

El Pinche DF, vol. 2

Hoy mi mamá descubrió que le clonaron su tarjeta de débito y le vaciaron su cuenta de ahorros. TODOS sus ahorros. Sus meses y meses de trabajo. El aguinaldo.

La vi llorar de coraje, sus lágrimas tenían color de chinga tu madre.

La historia es la siguiente: usó su tarjeta BANCOMER para sacar dinero de un cajero en noviembre, y desde ese día le empezaron a drenar su cuenta, con cargos y retiros diarios. Mi mamá suele hacer un retiro a la semana, uno solo, para ir a Superama...lo lleva haciendo así durante años. Y los idiotas de BANCOMER no tuvieron la inteligencia para detectar una anomalía cuando empezaron a aparecer cargos enormes, consecutivos, y diario! Le estuvieron drenando su cuenta durante 42 dias.

Aparentmente, ahora se pueden clonar las tarjetas de débito desde el cajero automático. Lo más frustrante es que en BANCOMER le dijeron que no es problema de ellos y no le pueden regresar su dinero. Todos sus ahorros. Sus meses y meses de trabajo. El aguinaldo.

El Pinche DF

Ayyy el Defectuoso...bien merecido el apodo! Habrá quien me diga que por vivir en Canadá me volví un intolerante, pero la verdad es que siempre lo he sido. Por eso me fui, porque no tolero el desorden, el valemadrismo, y la pinche impunidad.

Llevo 4 noches sin dormir. No por insomnio ni por estar buscando películas softcore en Cinemax. No he dormido porque desde que empezó diciembre, todos los trailers que entran al DF provenientes de Toluca están bajando por Reforma en vez de Constituyentes. No sé si es por la obrita de Gabriela Cuevas en Constituyentes o porque los traileros se dieron cuenta que bajar por Reforma está más divertido. Lo que me queda claro es que Reforma a esta altura es zona residencial y no tienen por qué bajar por aquí.

Ahora bien... para agregarle al desastre, los trailers bajan con el escape abierto! Quien haya escuchado de cerca un trailer de 18 ejes frenando con motor con el escape abierto entenderá mi enojo cuando digo que ya estoy hasta la madre de no dormir. El ruido es tan tremendo que vibran mis ventanas y mi gato se despierta y me muerde cada que pasa un camionero culero.

Qué he hecho al respecto? Pues he hablado a la policía las 4 noches para pedir que manden una patrulla a multar a los trailers que abren su escape en zona residencial. Sí, lo chequé en el reglamento de tránsito y es infracción (obvio!). La respuesta de la Polecía: "ora si que tiene que reportarlo con ora si que con tránsito de su zona" o "mire, ora si que no tenemos conocimiento de ningún trailer" o mi favorito "ahora mismo le mandamos a una unidá". Y ahi voy de pendejo en mi pijama a esperar a que llegue la unidad y por supuesto me quedé parado en la calle viendo a los trailers pasar junto a las patrullas que los ven cagados de risa.

Qué hacer ahora?
1. Hablar a un noticiero o a un periódico para que vengan a presenciar esta impunidad,
2. Salir a apuntar el número de placa de cada trailer y hablar a las compañías de los trailers (Coca Cola, entre otras) para quejarme.
3. Organizar a los vecinos para bloquear Reforma mañana a las 2 am y exigir que no bajen los trailers.
4. Aventarle un ladrillazo al parabrisas al siguiente camión que pase (con lo cual seguro voy a terminar en el hospital con un tubazo en el cerebro),
5. Callarme la boca porque si es Gabriela Cuevas la que les da permiso de bajar con sus escapes abiertos, me van a cortar el agua, la luz, y no me van a recoger la basura.

O mejor, ponerme unos tapones para los oidos y esperar ansiosamente a que llegue el lunes y salga mi vuelo de regreso a Vancouver. Como dicen por ahí, "háganle como puedan, ahí les dejo el changarro."

Arrrggghhhh!

It's been three days now and I'm still boiling inside. Every time I think about it, my skin dries up and my little stomach releases...well, stomach juice of course. "What on God's name are you blathering about?" Well, I'll tell you what I'm blathering about.

I missed the Yeasayer concert last Thursday...

...because I had to write a term paper. Arrrghhh. At the moment I thought it was the right choice, the responsible one (considering my final countdown). But then, at midnight that same night, I got a 5 day extension. Arrrghhh!

Anyway, the symptoms of my post-ImissedYeasayer stress disorder have only increased because now I can't stop listening to their music. AND, almost every music review that I've read compares them to David Byrne! So double arrrgggggh. (I'm tempted to call it "divine punishment")

So please join me in my frustration by pressing play and realizing what you also missed:





And yes, we should all listen to Rodrigo more often.

Mouriño

Confieso que cuando me enteré del avionazo del pasado 4 de noviembre, sentí ansiedad. La idea de un atentado contra el segundo hombre más importante en el gobierno de mi país me agarró por sorpresa. Afortunadamente cuento con un escepticismo brutal que no me dejó preocuparme demasiado hasta no saber más detalles sobre el terrible suceso. Las teorías de conspiración transforman todo, hasta un estornudo, en una sospechosa coincidencia.

Ahora que la SCT publicó los contenidos de las cajas negras, mi ansiedad va en picada. Hoy siento una terrible tristeza. Saber que tantas personas murieron por algo tan banal como una turbulencia de ala me parece una verdadera tragedia. En el caso de Juan Camilo Mouriño, no sé si sea peor o mejor que su muerte haya sido por un sencillo y evitable error humano, que por un preciso y premediato ataque de los narcos. Pero lo que sí sé es que cuando se trata de la muerte, no importan los peores y los mejores. Importa nada más la muerte, que es total.

Conservatives Again?!

Today is a sad, sad day for Canada. Stephen Harper won yesterday's election with 37.6% of the vote (Liberals 26.2%, NPD 18.2%, Green 6.8%), renewing the Tory minority. My first thoughts (apart from a loud "dammit!") are that the NPD succeeded in splitting the liberal vote, causing the Liberals' worst performance since 1984. In other words, the widespread calls to "vote strategically" didn't work. I'm not surprised...

Why would anyone vote strategically knowing that their single vote has no incidence in an election? Every person wants to have the personal satisfaction of voting for their true choice...and even if the ultimate objective of all opposition voters was to beat the Tories, the mere notion that your Green neighbor might not cooperate with the strategy because he feels his single vote is meaningless would give you an incentive to do the same. It was a predictable collective action problem, in the parlance of our times.

In my opinion, if the opposition was so worried about a Conservative win, the candidates that ranked third and fourth places in last week's polls should have defected in favor of the strongest opposition candidate in their respective constituency. But, alas, that doesn't make democratic sense given that each of the opposition parties represented a very distinct set of legitimate ideals and projects. The tragedy of the Canadian political system then, is the lack of proportional representation. (for a much better explanation, read this perspective)

Anyway, I'm sad about Harper because I disagree with his worldview. These are my major problems with him:

- Harper has aligned Canada's foreign policy with the Bush administration.
- Harper signed a deal to let US troops into Canada in case of an "emergency".
- Harper has provided millions of dollars in subsidies for companies investing in the Alberta tar sands...an impending ecological disaster.
- Harper supports tax cuts to big corporations.
- Harper has silenced intellectuals speaking against him and blocked scientific panels discussing the effects of climate change.
- And last but definitely not least, Harper is against reducing greenhouse gas emissions and described the Kyoto protocol as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations”.

In other words, Stephen Harper ranks high in my list of top 20 enemies of the world.

As the Georgia Straight put it, "there are many reasons not to vote Conservative, beyond the cost of the Afghanistan war and the idiocy of integrating Canada more deeply into the U.S. economy. They include: the Conservative leader’s misleading use of crime statistics to make Canada appear less safe than it is; his big lie that he wouldn’t tax income trusts; his other big lie in refusing to acknowledge that a Liberal carbon tax is offset with big income-tax cuts; Harper presiding over declines in Canadian productivity; Harper’s abandonment of agreements with the provinces that would have created more daycare spaces; the Conservative government’s decision to appeal a B.C. Supreme Court ruling in favour of Vancouver’s supervised-injection site; Harper’s elimination of the Court Challenges Program and the killing of the Kelowna Accord; Harper’s stacking of a stem-cell advisory panel with opponents of embryonic stem-cell research; Harper’s $45-million cuts to the arts; and Harper’s refusal to support the United Nations goal of having developed countries donate 0.7 percent of their national incomes to international development."

Oh, and did I mention that Harper has close ties with Evangelist groups? (appointed a minister to a scientific advisory group!?)

Brrrrrr! (that's me, shivering)

Obama fail

What can I say... I'm disappointed. I watched the first presidential debate on Friday and my impression of Obama as an inspiring politician that was ready to change Washington slowly faded away. I won't say he "lost" the debate, because I don't believe an exchange of ideas has to necessarily produce a winner (it's curious how the minute the debate ended American networks were mostly concerned on giving their opinion on who won...as if trying to condition the American public to ignore substance and judge the debate only on the basis of a winner and a loser), but what I saw was a tame and passive Obama.

Maybe my urgency of getting rid of the Republicans caused me to constantly magnify his virtues and idealize him as the true embodiment of change. Or maybe I was just too naïve to expect him to stand up to McCain in live television and boldly denounce the Republican lies and foreign policy disasters. In any case, I perceived an Obama that was not able to differentiate himself "fundamentally" from his Republican rival. He struggled when trying to explain why McCain's policies were flawed and then let the "maverick" score so many namedropping points that, as a viewer, I almost got the impression that McCain was the real expert.

To put it simply, I saw a candidate that was driven into McCain's turf and forced to play his game. And the problem of beating a Republican in his own geopolitical playing field was evident: you can't talk of the current wars without using their languague...their imagery. In other words, the only way of breaking from the eight long years of Bush, of denting the Republican stronghold, is to attack their discourse. The simplistic good/evil binary or the "freedom fighter" rhetoric need to be subverted in order to fully expose the faults in John McCain's worldview. From what I know, the War on Terror as an ideological space is what needs to be challenged...and Obama fell very short of doing just that.

I hate iTunes more than Bush

It happened again. My iTunes stopped recognizing my music library. This is the third time in less than two months that I lose all my playlists, lose my play counts, and lose a considerable portion of my music. Arrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhh! (I still don't understand why this happens, but I'd love to take a second here to blame it all on my Lenovo PC...and Bill Gates, of course.)

Olimpiadas, o la imposibilidad de superar la televisión basura

Ver las Olimpiadas de Beijing 2008 desde México ha sido una PESADILLA. Como muchos, me he tenido que chutar al pendejo misógino del "Compayito", al carita todólogo Loret de Mola, a Brozo y su vulgaridad machista, y a los comentaristas de fútbol superados tratando penosamente de comentar algo inteligente, diciendo que TODO, desde un revés en tenis de mesa hasta una brazada de Phelps, es "contundente". Pero lo más patético es el reciclaje de personal en Televisa y el estilo clásico amarillista que convierte todas las historias en telenovela. Perdón, pero ni sentando a Nadia Comaneci en la silla de huevo de oro me convencen. Triste que con tanta lana, tienen a puros comentaristas expertos en nada.

Pero si le cambio a TV Azteca me va todavía peor. Luis García parado en una pantalla de publicidad eterna dándonos cátedra/quejándose de la zancada sobrenatural de los corredores "morenos". O el racismo también del Eugenio Derbez wannabe que sale a molestar gente en Beijing embarrándoles estereotipos "chinos" y abusando del product placement. Y luego la conductora en mini mini mini falda a la que le hacen tomas de todos los ángulos posibles mientras nos perdemos alguna competencia...porque claro, a quién le importa ver el badminton cuando podemos estar viéndole las piernas a la señorita. Carajo.

¿No le da vergüenza a los patrocinadores? (Me mata de risa ver el enorme logotipo de Bimbo en estas basuraproducciones y pensar en su campaña "por lo mejor". Con dinero, baila el perro.)

(más ideas con Rodrigo)

Boris, or the dangers of blind trust

I don't remember who recommended the Boris concert to me, but somebody made a very successful prank when they convinced me to buy tickets for yesterday's concert in Vancouver. (I have to call Rodrigo to inquire if it was him...and maybe end our friendship) I have a bad habit of buying tickets first, asking questions later that has led me to suffer through horrendous performances by new bands. Yet, nothing compares to my Boris experience.

I sacrificed the last night of the Celebration of Light to go to the concert... yes, the night where China showed the Canadian and American teams why they are the fireworks rulers of the earth. But don't get me started on that....

After walking in front of Richard's on Richards and hearing the first fireworks explode (any view of them blocked by the Yaletown buildings), I shoved my way through a crowd of leather clad Boris fans and suddenly realized I was surrounded by a mass of headbanging hardcores that made me and my skinny jeans look ridiculous. En español, me sentí fresísima.

Minutes later, the Boris guys jumped on stage, turned on their amps, and began their metal guitar noises and their shouts. The crowd went crazy and I felt just like a character in Guitar Hero, with the rhythm guitarist trying hard to follow the drummer's extra fast pounding of his Tama with equally fast riffs. It felt like an aggressive talent show band, just delivering song after song of ear busting noise. I left after the 5th identical one... the horror, the horror.

------------- Update! (August 4)

Revising my blog, I just realized that I got this Boris thing all wrong!! I did NOT see Boris that day at Richard's on Richards... it was the opening band Torche!!! I arrived late that day, (the tickets said doors opened at 8 pm) and I assumed that the band that started to play at 10.30 pm was the main event! Faaaaaak.

Walter would call me a "fucking amateur" and I would have to just bow my head in agreement.

It's the guns, stupid.

Last week's DC ruling reaffirming the infamous (and frankly ridiculous) Second Amendment, is a sad reminder that, although greatly deflated, the House of Bush can still deliver subtle, yet great blows to American society.

I cringe at the thought of Charlton Heston rejoicing in his grave.

Heil state-sanctioned corruption!

I hate my PC

I haven't posted in these past days because my PC suffered a series of convulsions that seem to be announcing the end of its short life. The symptoms point to a slow but painfully frustrating death of what I once thought was a good computer. Your host owns a Lenovo T60 Thinkpad that is only 12 months old yet is already gasping its last breaths. I could say the problem started a month ago when I began getting random error messages, repeated program crashes, software playing disappearing acts, and finally, the infamous blue screen of death. But the problem really started a year ago when I chose, yet again, to but a Windows powered PC. As I opened the package to my new Thinkpad I noticed the slogan "You obviously value great engineering" on the manual and smiled thinking that I had made the best choice. Unfortunately for me, I had been fooled again.

It's not that Lenovo lies when it says you bought a piece of great engineering. Their PC's have unparalleled keyboards, incredible physical durability, and a very solid proprietary software package (ThinkVantage) that greatly facilitates working with the computer. However, my Lenovo PC came with one major disadvantage: its Microsoft Windows operating system.

As a disclaimer, I've taken care of my laptop like a baby, never dropping it, never spilling liquids on it, cleaning the dust from the keyboard every other month, almost never shutting it down without the proper procedures, updating the drivers often, and defragmenting the main disk very often. I even purchased the most expensive McAfee security suite available and have done my best to keep it clean from programs like Limewire that could flood it with spyware and trojans. However, there is only so much a Windows powered PC can endure and my shiny Lenovo has reached its expiry date.

The next question could be, "is Bill Gates the richest man in the world for creating high quality products?" Any Windows PC owner can tell why the answer is an unambiguous "No". He's the richest man in the world because, after turning the brilliant idea of personal computing into a reality, he became a fantastic player of the monopoly game. But this rant is not about him (for more about him, open any Fortune magazine from the past two decades). This rant is about my newfound hate for my PC and my deep desire to give an Apple a chance.

My friend Diego would argue that Mac is not necessarily easier to use or better in terms of performance. He has a good point... the idea that Macs are easier could be a fallacy that has been very effectively constructed by Apple's propaganda. He suggested that instead of investing on a new computer and struggling with learning how to use a new operating system, I should completely restore my hard drive to it's first day and give it another chance. I guess it makes financial sense. As for my friend Andrés, I suppose he would suggest sticking it to Microsoft by learning how to use Linux instead. Knowing that they're my most computer-savvy friends, I'll try both suggestions (even the imaginary one) and hopefully write my next post from the same keyboard. Nevertheless, I am prepared for the most probable outcome: the death of my PC and its inevitable replacement with a Mac computer. (I need to start saving)

Para Andrés

Con mucha tristeza y enojo he seguido las últimas noticias del golpe que dió Alberto Begné a Alternativa Socialdemócrata. No cabe duda que México como país pierde al perder la única opción política realmente alternativa, la única voz que proponía un discurso de izquierda moderna. Los que creemos en la libertad y en el verdadero cambio no podemos más que estar de luto.

Lo que más me inflama es la reducción de la agenda Alternativa al despectivo "pinky." El término es asqueroso porque resalta la mentalidad discriminatoria en la que vive Begné: esa mentalidad que ve el mundo en diferencias, que entiende a la sociedad en términos de "ellos" y "nosotros", que cree que la sociedad se puede dividir en oposiciones binarias.

Andrés, brindo por tu lucha, porque es la lucha por todos.

Carlos Mota es tonto

Puedo decir con cierto grado de sinceridad que esta nota en el diario Milenio fue el "tipping point" para inaugurar este blog. Lo tenía planeado desde antes... pero el silencio es canijo y necesita de una explosión para romperse. El señor Carlos Mota fue mi gas butano.

Mi entrada será una copia del comentario que puse en escrituraleatoria.

Me revuelve el estómago esa mentalidad de líder, la de emprendedor, la mentalidad TEC, donde no cabe la búsqueda del conocimiento sin fin utilitario, donde no se entiende la investigación básica porque sólo importa la aplicada, y donde el éxito se juzga en función de mi contribución al PIB. Pobre tonto, pobre Carlos Mota que piensa que un estudiante sólo vale la pena si se dedica a los negocios.

Me encanta que hable de "adoctrinamiento" sin verse a sí mismo... sin darse cuenta que el más adoctrinado es el que no tiene la capacidad de entender las decisiones profesionales de los demás.

Pero lo que más me inflama es su ejemplo final, sobre los filósofos de EUA que deciden corregir su camino estudiando un MBA. ¿Acaso no se da cuenta que EUA es el país donde se publican los journals de filosofia más prestigiosos del mundo? De verdad cree que los filósofos exitosos son los que dejan de ser filósofos...los que dejan de perseguir sus intereses intelectuales para dedicarse a crear empleos. Tristemente, la respuesta es más simple: para Carlos Mota esos journals solo importan si logran enormes ventas.

Devolviéndole sus palabras, este tonto quiere "romper el mundo, no construirlo." Y de paso, a mi me rompe las pelotas.