Posts aleatorios

A strange fact post

I mentioned before that my neighbor is one of those 80 year old Catalan burguesas, rubia de pote. Big hair, heavy on the make up, always looking like she’s in her Sunday best. I can imagine her having thousands of euros, or even pesetas, hidden under her mattress.

She has this collie that must be inbred. It’s a seriously stupid beast. It still doesn’t recognize me after more than six months of daily encounters. It goes nuts every time it sees me, then hides behind her. Just passing in front of her door is enough to set the dog off barking for hours on end.

I often encounter my neighbor and her bemuzzled collie in the street. Oddly enough, her dog walks her. She follows the dog’s whim, whatever that is. One smell after the other, zig zagging through the Eixample, pulling her on its leash. This is true. I followed them once.

That’s not the strange fact, however.

Sometimes I overhear her speaking in Catalan to the portero*, something like “Surto a passejar el gos! Surto a passejar el gos!” (which means, “I’m going out to walk the dog! I’m going out to walk the dog!”). The portero thinks she’s a bit whacky as well, because he usually rolls his eyes at me at this point, and says something ingratiating to her as she walks away.

When she gets to the door her dog is already skittish, afraid of all the people outside. “Vamos! Vamos!”, "Let's go! Let's go!" she says, in Spanish, not Catalan.

I mentioned this strange fact to people - that she speaks Catalan to humans but Spanish to her dog. Apparently, and I kid you not, for I’ve heard this from authentic Barceloneses, speaking Spanish to dogs while speaking Catalan to people is quite common among the older generation.

Check this site out post

Roadside Jesus is now taking questions. He’s also selling some mighty fine looking T shirts with his Jesusness depicted on them. Roadside Jesus’s sagacity is unparalleled. Read this sample, or check out his site.

Do you trust commas? Some people mostly foreigners use them to tabulate money. I could blame the person. I blame the comma.

-Paranoid - Indiana 1/06/07

[...]

I fear from your tone that you may have had an unfortunate experience with a comma in the past. Did a comma hurt you as a child? Perhaps it touched you somewhere inappropriate? Just so you know, it may have been an apostrophe masquerading as a comma to fufill its perverted desire. Apostrophes consider themselves better than lowly commas, when in reality, the only difference between the two is their height. Damn the apostrophes. They are possessive bastards.

And please my friend, may the only foreigner you malign be the band.

Wise words from Roadside Jesus. I wonder, however, if he’s related to “de Jesus”, the pedophile bowler in the Big Lebowski, or if he’s one and the same person. I ought to ask him.

"You don't fool Jesus."

Plugging my friend's blog post

Warning, gypmeisters, private detective up ahead.

Larry Kovaks vs. the bad guys in the penultimate chapter of Shame, Shame, Shame. Check out part five here.

They didn’t count on coming up against someone like me. A chump who’s been around the world five times and seen it all. From mujerones in Rio to flower blossoms in Klang that fit in the palm of your hand. The stories I could tell you.

Interesting videos post

Fascinating short documentary about the effects of drugs on spiders.

Hilarious remix of Mary Poppins.

Fast Film. This could be one of the coolest, most ingenious short movies ever.

Open letter to a jackass who apparently stabbed my tire post

Some creep sent me an email stating the following:

Your bicycle was not stabbed. It was slashed, I know. I did it. Maybe if they sidewalks wider than a tire people would not complain.

No man. It was stabbed. Using the word "stab" effectively anthropomorphizes my bike, therefore giving more impact to my sentence. English is nice like that.

And if you are the evil person who stabbed my tire, I hope you slip on a steamy turd and get laughed at next time you stroll about town. Sidewalk fascist.

I should’ve been posting but … post

What can I say? I could think of innumerable excuses for not updating my blog this week. I could have been trying to prove a priori the existence of god according to Kant’s theory of Sufficient Reason. Telefonica could have accidentally cut my phone lines. I could have been at the dog races. Soy un vago, a veces.

_

*portero – doorman. Most buildings here have them; it’s not as fancy as it sounds. They listen to badly-tuned radios, and many take two hour breaks in nearby bars. Mine is super portero. Don’t mess with him. He showed me this metal rod he’s got, for defense purposes. He slammed it down on his desk to demonstrate its effectiveness. It was loud. It scared me all right.