Xalapa, Jalapa, Shalapa
Category: Travel and Places

3:03 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

For Them to Say I’m Asleep
Category: Life

Spanish version.

Oh, and one last thing to catch up on: for those of you who haven't heard, after six-and-a-half years of dating Linda, we decided to get married. An older man working at the court house desperately tried to talk me out of it. "I know what I'm telling you," he said, "I've been married for thirty years and it's a fucking nightmare." Right in front of Linda, too. I told him marriage wouldn't change what I have with her right now; it would just make our relationship official.

It was a long process since the computers were down at the new local court house. We had purposely not eaten that day so we could go have a little celebration in a Mexican restaurant just on the other side of the border. The food, of course, was delicious. We walked it off and took photographs in the plaza right in front of the restaurant.

It was at that moment that the alertness started getting to me. I couldn't keep from looking over to see if my shitty car was still there every thirty seconds or so, and I hated myself for it. Hated myself and the stupid media for potentially being part of the reason that makes me be afraid of my home country. Our government is building a wall to keep these people out for whatever the real reason is, separating them from their families; how can we not expect them to retaliate by taking it out on a car with Texas license plates just there on the side of the street—their street? I know I would.

A few months ago, I wanted to walk across the bridge and go to Nuevo Progreso, which is a small town with a whole main street of vendors and great restaurants and cheap medical stuff. When I presented that idea to my sister, she screamed, "No!" as if I were getting in the car already. She said she heard on the news that at the moment, it was packed with the mobsters native to the Mexico-U.S. border. (You can't really say their name in public; an acquaintance of my mom's got her head shaven for talking about them in a beauty salon.) Now, my sister is the most close-minded person in the world. A couple of weeks ago, Linda and I told her they were building a Muslim temple in McAllen, had the moon on top of it and everything. "Let's burn it," she said. We asked her why, and she said, "Because they're terrorists." The sad part is that she couldn't understand her own logic, even if we said, "They're terrorists?" Anyway, after her mobster explanation, my mom looked at me serious and said it was true. And she's not even an American citizen.

I don't want to be afraid of Mexico; I love almost everything about Mexico. And by almost everything, I mean the people, the culture, the food, the history, the markets, the small towns, and the food. Everything except the government that pushes its people away, and I'm pretty sure if there was better government, this whole mobster border business wouldn't be as serious. I mean, they're even recruiting government employees—offering them better pay and protection. And I know idiots like Mencia make fun of Mexicans, saying stupid crap like, "Oh, you love it so much, then why don't you go back?" Well, I know that if I had a full-time job there that would pay me just enough to support my wife and one kid and have a little bit left to take them out to eat once or twice a week, I'd be there in a second. Preferably South Mexico, by the Yucatan Peninsula.

By next May, I'll more than likely have my Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Which means, this is the last summer of school that I have left—possibly for the rest of my life. I had a choice to study abroad in England or Salamanca, Spain with the university, but I'm choosing to go somewhere else on my own. "Isn't it very dangerous there right now?" my old undergraduate advisor asked when I told her the news. "It's dangerous anywhere," I said. "But the government there is real bad," she continued. I finished with, "And our government is a work of art." I'll be taking a couple of courses for the next six weeks in Veracruz, which is by the Gulf of Mexico coast. My love for writing in Spanish has basically inspired me to do this. I'll be going alone, leaving this Thursday.

So, the next time we virtually meet again, I'll probably be sitting in the lounge of the hotel I'll be staying in. Yes, I'm half-scared about going off on my own, but I'm also half-excited. I've never been to that state before, and apparently I have family a few towns away from where I'll be staying. So that's good. Of course, I'll be taking contemporary Mexican literature courses, and if something bad ends up happening to me while I'm over there, I know in my heart that it's something that would have happened anyway.

8:58 PM - 10 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

No Happy Ending?
Current mood: played
Category: School, College, Greek

Spanish version.

I don't think there's much else I can say about the accident. I really shouldn't say this since the case isn't closed (and when will it?), but since when has that stopped me? My lawyer forced me to go to therapy; I didn't really need it. If anything, it was a waste of time.

Basically, the nurses take a couple of plugs connected to this machine. They stick them on your back, set the voltage to your preference, and then you get little shocks that don't really make you feel better. Fifteen minutes later, she comes back in and screams, "It's alive!"

Then they use this other machine to get an ultra sound, which I thought was really cute. I could see my baby on the screen they had set up. Finally, they get this freezing lotion and give you a short massage. That part actually feels nice, especially when they ask you to turn over and finish you off.

I didn't get to work a lot this semester, mostly because I had to schedule my therapy sessions around my school schedule, which meant I had to go get massages during workdays. And from all the entries I was able to post in Spring 2008 (not one), you might be able to see why I found myself reading and writing for class in the waiting room while everyone around me went on and on about their car accidents. It was the toughest semester so far. The only good thing that came out of it was a deeper passion for writing in Spanish. I took a Spanish Creative Writing course, and I love it more and more.

I got a lot of shit about my age this semester and, though I shouldn't have, I really let it get to me. In a non-fiction course of six students, I got a lot of comments about how my writing reflects my age, even from people I didn't expect it from. "Yeah, it sounds like a 22-year-old wrote this," was one of the negative comments I got on one of my essays. I really don't know what that meant. Then she kept calling me boy throughout the semester; she's only six years older than I am. Another classmate, in his mid 30's, who by the way tried to rip me a new asshole in his critique of my last piece, implied that I was too young to be enrolled in the masters program.

I accept the fact that I was the youngest guy in the classroom (maybe in the whole freaking MFA program at the university)—most of the people in class were in their late 20's and 30's. But this whole age hierarchy thing was something I thought would be over once I became a sophomore in high school and juniors and seniors stopped calling me freshman in a fashion not so different than a white supremacist calling a black person the n-word. Not as extreme, of course, but same fashion. But to get this age bullshit at the graduate school level is just a little much, isn't?

Since my age difference was one of the first things to get acknowledged in the semester, I got the feeling that my opinion stopped mattering in the class. Like I was too fucking young to have any useful input to help them better their writing. I could see their stares saying, "Oh, what do you know? You're only 22. Let's hear what the 40-year-old has to say." So, you could imagine the show I put on when I turned 23 during spring break. "I'm finally 23. My IQ level went up; I feel smarter and wiser already. You know what, I'm gonna start worrying more about them politics and issues. Border wall, my ass."

And it's not just with that class. This age shit is material I've dealt with before, even in this blog. I know I act very immature (for my age?) at times—keyword act. I have a lot to learn about life, as I'm sure we all do. But just because someone is five or ten years older than me, does that automatically mean that they have less to learn than I do? Why do people continue to be judged based on age? Some people have to mature quickly and live life on their own at 14, while others get everything handed to them by their parents until they're dead. When I did get to work substituting in high school and a student was acting like a dumbass, I never said, "Oh, it's okay, she's only sixteen." I said, "Oh, it's okay, she's a fucking dumbass."

You know what? Fuck it. If it'll take seven more years for my writing opinion to start mattering to others, well, then there's nothing I can do about, is there? Except maybe continue aging, but I can't speed that shit up. Can't say I want to either. I'm enjoying being the stupid, immature 23-year-old only people my age and below care about. To my older classmates, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. Let's all be adults about this—old adults. Because in the end, if nature plays its course, your ass is dying first anyway.

8:28 PM - 23 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Breaking the Law. Why Not? Breaking the Law.
Current mood: adventurous
Category: Life

I write it in Spanish, too.

In my last post, Phillip commented on my fear of driving on the expressway. To clear things up (and to reassure myself), that's not the case at all. Now, after the accident, I have to admit that I do get a little nervous every time someone starts to tailgate me... violently, for the lack of a better word—especially when I'm not the only person in the car. If I'm alone, by all means, be my guest, fucker. But what my old readers fail to remember is that I was a driver for three years, delivering auto parts all over the Rio Grande Valley. My pre-accident driving life, on and off the expressway, was beyond a comfortable one. The reason I always take the back roads to and from school is that I fucking hate traffic. I always have. I'm sure a lot of us have had the thought while stuck in traffic of a post-apocalyptic world where we're the only ones driving on the highway. I fantasize about this in the most awkward places, like the shitter.

Botolf, as usual, tried to stay positive about my crash situation by saying that I at least got a new car out of this. Let me tell you about my brand new 98 Dodge Stratus. Before anything, it eats gasoline like crazy. Al Gore would hate my guts. The back windows, they don't work, so my passengers will have a blast drowning if the case presents itself in the future. The alarm likes to go off every once in a while for no reason—and not the siren kind but the continuous honking one. The brakes make a funny buzzing noise whenever I slow down, and it's a miracle when I get a static-free radio station. It even sounds crappy when I connect my iPod to it and that's because it's receiving the signal from six inches away. I know what you're thinking: "Then why'd you get it, dumbass?" Perhaps I should've hunted better for a car; I admit it. But when you're a college student, you kind of have to settle with whatever the $2,700 can get you before you fall further behind in classes.

Oh, there's something wrong with my car. The tint from the back windshield is so fucked up, it takes the whole point away from the rearview mirror. You can't see anything, including the cop that was following me a couple of weeks after the accident. I was driving with Linda to school on the back roads, on my way to only turn in a scholarship application for the summer. (Yeah, I wasted about $80 in gas that week.) It wasn't until the cop turned on the sirens that I immediately pulled over. I had been going five miles below the limit on a single-lane highway, so I wouldn't even have had a chance to fail to use my blinker. Apparently I must've been doing something really wrong since the cop with the shaved head and tattooed left arm opened with a serious: "I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, but I've been chasing for half a mile."

I explained my windshield situation to him before he moved on to threaten Linda and me with taking us to hail for evading arrest? Once again, I was going five miles below the limit. How is that evading? I showed him my license and insurance at his request; he did not even look at them. He failed to tell me why I was stopped to begin with. Was I stopped because I wasn't stopping? In this situation, I'll admit that I was almost shitting my pants. This guy looked like he was about to pull out his gun and start shooting if I so much as scratched my nose. How else does one react to: "I was already reaching for my radio to call someone to shoot your tires?"

I don't have a problem with cops. I used to work with them in the local prison. Most of them are boring, normal folk, but then there are those that barely graduated from high school and made other students' lives a living hell that go on to become policemen to feed their families. Still, you'd think you should have to feel served and protected by them, right? I tried to report him, but he didn't even give me a name or a badge number. Just the department he worked for. Could've been a pseudo cop for all I knew. I didn't even think to look at the license plate number. In my defense though, I was too busy looking at his hands. He made a u-turn behind me and drove the other way. My knee was shaking over the gas pedal on the way to school.

9:57 PM - 8 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Ketchup Game
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Life

I find it best to start this game with the crash, the one that turned this past February into the worst month in the history of unblogged days. It was the day before Lent, in the morning, and I gave up beef and flour. Really. Beef. Me. Gave it up for forty days straight. Attention Christian fat people: diets work so much better when you make a promise to God. I mean, I don't usually do the Lent thing; don't really believe in it. This time around, I just said, "What the hell," and did it anyway. The fear of damnation alone made me prove to myself that I could survive without the beef.

Still, you'd think that being the first time in 23 years that I plan to go through with Lent that God would not spray me with a little bit of his most expensive Unlucky You fragrance. There are basically two roads I can take to and from school in Edinburg, Texas. One of them is a lonesome back road known as 107, haunted farm roads for miles before you pass by this place straight from The Hills Have Eyes meets Dangerous Minds: deformed gangster peoples. Then there's more of the nothingness before finished up the 1:20 trip from my house to the university. This is the road I always take, early in the morning and back late in the night.

The day before Lent, though, I told my friend who carpools with me: "You know what? We should try going through the expressway today and see if we get there sooner. If we do, we could sleep for an extra twenty minutes in the mornings." So, I skipped the back roads, driving straight to La Joya, a small town with ticket-happy cops. We come to the expressway, and I have to take a piss. I consider getting down at a gas station in McAllen; but I can wait until I get to the school.

Linda calls me. I tell her we're taking the expressway. "Good," she says; "that's probably a lot safer than the empty back roads where you can get mugged by some crazy hitchhiker." The thought of a crazy hitchhiker had never crossed my mind. Ghosts, yes, and I always looked out for those late at night. Still, "I don't think the back roads are more dangerous because you don't really come to a stop. As long as you keep the car in motion, no one's getting in. The expressway is actually more dangerous. There's all this freaking traffic right now whereas the back roads have nothing." A while after we finished talking, it was like 7:30 in the morning. The entire city was getting to work.

There was a line on the exit ramp to head towards Edinburg. I managed to stop, but as I looked in the rearview mirror, I noticed that the guy driving behind me wasn't going to. I started getting on the shoulder to get out of his way, but he hadn't even stepped on the break. It was a queer feeling, and I mean that in its literal sense. And I'm not saying that because I was rear-ended hard by a guy driving a car. It really felt weird as the car pushed mine off the expressway, the adrenaline rushing all over as my car formed a U and ended up facing incoming traffic off the expressway.

There was blood everywhere. My friend started screaming like a girl... I'm kidding. No blood. The back half of my car was totaled. The trunk was all crushed, and even though no windows broke, there was somehow broken glass behind the seats, both of which were permanently bent all the way back like cots. I got out of the car as the guy that hit me was walking towards me, asking if we were okay. His passenger was injured. The truck I would have hit had I not gotten on the shoulder was only a little dented. I had taken the big hit. The cops and the firemen got there, took down all the reports, towed the other guy's even more totaled car, and told me it should be okay for me to drive mine away.

They failed to notice my gas tank was busted (and I had just filled it up that morning). By the time I got to my destination, it was practically empty. It was already a piece of shit car; it couldn't attract babes even if it wanted to. But it had once made it to Temple, Texas in one tank of regular unleaded gas. That's like 400 miles. Not bad for a 98 Monte Carlo with over 100,000 miles in it. And now it's gone, the lawyers are still working on the paperwork since I was not at fault, and I will not rest until the guy that destroyed my car gets life in prison for what he did. But yeah, that probably won't happen.

Welcoming myself back,

8:06 PM - 18 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

The Day After Christmas
Category: Life

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how. — Oasis

Welcome to another edition of the monthly ShoneyRamone[dotcom] blog. Before I turn this into another set of words where I explain my very much delayed update, don't look at this as an opening statement in my defense since we all know I'm guilty, but rather as the things that have been going on in the last month and a half. I missed out on several holidays and events, but then again, what are holidays now besides days where you're stuck in traffic for hours because a car at the very front of the line is upside down next to another? Which was really a position I found myself during Thanksgiving—stuck in traffic, not upside down. Other than that, I don't really remember much about it. The food was okay.

Writing wasn't the only thing I've been distancing myself from these past few weeks. Christmas was pretty uneventful, but only because I made it that way. The family did gather at my house, brought hundreds of pounds of meat to grill (including a dead goat that was placed inside a large ice chest in our dining room with its head sticking out), but I decided to spend that holiday being lost with Linda. And I don't mean lost in that sense.

I didn't really have money to get anyone anything for Christmas, even though I'm really against buying people presents for Christmas. But you can't say that anymore without someone spitting in your face and calling you a liar. It's like saying you read Playboy for the articles or like Diet Coke because it tastes oh, so good. To avoid people telling me shit, I just got my niece and nephews presents. My niece is into all that Hannah Montana and High School Musical shit, which are pretty retarded shows, but what are you going to do. I got her this purse at Wal-Mart.

The day after Christmas, my stupid cousin finally moved out of my parents' house and got himself a wife. Why do I say stupid cousin? He was born the day after Christmas, leaving him at only one present per year, but that's okay. He had no way of controlling the day to come out of his mother's womb. But he did have control over the date to get married, and he didn't have to pick his birthday, the day after Christmas. Now the stupid wife has to think which she should say first after happy, birthday or anniversary? Bah. It won't last anyway. Oh, and I didn't go to the wedding.

My family at the wedding all thought I was at my other cousin's house, who also happened to be celebrating his birthday, the day after Christmas. Little do they know that I decided to skip that, too. It's not that I have anything against that cousin as I do against the one that got married; in fact, I feel he might be the only one out of all the twelve cousins in my mother's side of the family I still have a connection with. I didn't go to his party because I know how he celebrates them: a bunch of computers hooked together via a network running video games where they all get to kill each other. Don't get me wrong. I love video games. I just bet you they don't even talk to each other at the parties. They just type whatever it is they have to say. SHIT. I WENT UP A LEVEL AND ONLY GOT TWO MORE MAGIC POINTS. Then someone in the back of the room starts laughing, gets scared, and types I MEAN, LOL.

I know it's strange that I stopped writing at around the time shows started being affected by this writers strike thing that's been going on. I don't know if the couple of you that actually care started wondering if I, too, had gone on strike because Myspace refuses to pay me to post my writings there. For the record, I'm against the writers bitching with their picket signs, but that could be my very biased opinion because The Office has been shut down, 24 has been delayed, Heroes was cut short, and there hasn't been a new Daily Show and Colbert Report since the last time I blogged.

I'm looking at this on the bright side, though. Taking advantage of the fact that writers are being greedy and not putting out. This is the perfect time to catch up with shows I've never watched before or go out and buy the DVD sets of older shows that have ended. I went out to Cockbuster to rent the first discs of the first seasons of The Sopranos and The OC. I had never seen a single episode of either one. Never caught on with Tony Soprano, and one of my favorite bloggers, Siknerd over at siknerd.com claimed that The OC was way better than 24. I fell asleep after half of the first episode of Sopranos. It was shit. I don't know if it was because of the way it was set up, or because I just don't like mobster films and shows. Hate Scarface, have never been interested in The Godfather movies; what the hell was I thinking?

I actually gave The OC two shots instead of one. I saw the first and second episodes, and maybe Siknerd likes it because he actually is from the OC, but I just found the show stupid and full of retarded teenage problems and lame one-liners like, "Welcome to the OC, bitch." Then the adults in the show pretend to be important with their own set of problems. "I know you're married to another man, but could I borrow $100,000 because my wife wants a pony?" But who knows? Maybe these shows get a lot better and more interesting as the episodes keep rolling along, but the best ones have to get you from the beginning.

A couple of weeks ago, Linda and I rented the first disc of Lost. We had been meaning to check it out for a long while now, but in the midst of 24, The Office, 30 Rock, My Name is Earl, Heroes, American Idol, The Soup, and all of the shows that Linda watches on Bravo and I don't because they're for the gays, it's kind of hard to pick up a new show.  I'm glad we picked up Lost; it is one hell of a show. And in closing, I would like to say that in the last two weeks I didn't join my family for Christmas, I didn't go to my cousin's wedding/birthday bash, didn't show up to my other cousin's birthday bash over at the World of Warcraft, I didn't blog, I didn't work, basically didn't do shit because I chose to watch 71 episodes of Lost with Linda, usually day and night. So for all you guys out there, if your woman is willing to watch a marathon that big with you—eating nothing but McDonald's, Burger King, Whataburger, Jack in the Box, and Mexican take-out—that's a woman you'll have a very long time. Or at least until the cardiac arrest kicks in.

Hope that didn't suck,

11:06 PM - 13 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

Substitute
Category: Life

11:18 PM - 16 Comments - 15 Kudos - Add Comment

Between Aliens and Elians
Current mood: sick

12:14 PM - 10 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Wednesday Buffet: Work Edition
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

12:13 PM - 6 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

The Tree Amigos
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Click here for Spanish translation.

Currently listening : Greatest Hits By The Ramones Release date: 06 June, 2006

11:56 AM - 12 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment