Mexican Politics

An institution based on the fair ideals of democracy, freedom and union. With laws created almost a hundred years ago to which we have only added. Not value unfortunately.

We are a country that is still to politically energized to hope for constant growth with a small deficit. A large portion of the population attempts to behave in a leftist manner without understanding the underlying masters like perhaps Marx and Engels once were. Instead the leftist movements here are relegated to the poorest, most uneducated parts of the country. Also the parts of the countries governed by formerly para-military black ops that have now gone rogue and chanced their names from Zetas to "the people".

And the young minds (hopefully bright) of the educated Mexican burgeoisie gather around a plate of soft bread, oil and vinegar and glasses of wine to talk. All the while looking over their shoulder to make sure no one from the wrong side of the tracks (read drug lords or wannabes alike) is taking offense. You don't want a grenade thrown at you or worse a tail later in the night.

They talk as the lights grow dim, the salad bar closes and more people trickle in to the restaurant for drinks. It's always the same disparate tone. It's frustrated and full of self-deprecating humor. Our politicians have the power to wield influence and money as they see fit. Nepotism is a mass produced dietary supplement.

The radio in the background breaks from salsa/cumbia adaptations of Beatles and Guns'n'Roses hits to allow for the government commercials. They tell the people (not The People from the U.S. Constitution but The People as in "la gente" from the Mexican forms) of all the great things they do. Of Singer's solution and how good it will be once it's done and set up. Huh, maybe I should make copies for the Senate. Talk about the Tanned Man's burden.

The evening wraps up and the girls who have not let go of their purses since they sat down work their way down that rabbit hole looking for cash to pay with. Plastic isn't all pervasive here yet. People still use money for their day to day transactions. Terminals are brought to the table if you do use a card to show you how much they're not going to try to steal your info. Whew, comfort, security.

The bill is paid. Hugs and kisses go all around and everyone parts each walking as non-chalantly as possible.

And I wonder what part of Mexican politics still makes sense. Why the change we often talk about isn't here and why we "aren't the change we want to see in the world".

We're afraid. And not the Coach Carter afraid. The I'm afraid-for-my-country-and-the-future-of-it afraid.

Afraid :)

Se habla espagnol

Me gusta pensar que escribo desde el exilio.

Pero la verdad es que esta maquina que uso, que me gustaria imaginarme que es una vieja maquina de escribir - del tipo en el que se atoran las teclas y la cinta se desgasta facilmente - me impide hasta el ligero placer de la egne.

Entonces calculo los beneficios y puntos adversos de escribir anos cuando me refiero al periodo de tiempo elapsado en 365 dias. Considero el problema que postula el decir "Papas comi" y convencer al lector que este humilde servidor no es un canibal sino alguien limitado por la dificultad de poner acentos en este teclado americano (estadounidense?).

Quizas sea los efectos de un dulce ponche de granada con nuez picada pero hoy determine algo que solo hoy me sentiria capaz de dictaminar. La gente grande -no, no los gigantes sino la gente vieja de alma y no de cuerpo - habla solamente de tres cosas: sus enfermedades que tuvieron, las enfermedades que se imaginan que tienen y sus nietos que se casan. De vez en vez tambien hablan de los muertos que pasan y los que vienen.

Hoy por segundo dia consecutivo platique con un pistolero. Un verdadero jefe de jefes (como la cancion) que en algun distante pasado bajo al cacique local del llano en llamas a punta de pistola. Y ahora le renta su rancho a una compania americana. Quien dijo que el capitalismo americano no existia en mexico o habia fallado?

Un hombre de casi 90 con la lucidez y vivacidad de uno de 60. El dice que el ponche es su ama bendita y entre codornices y moronga se nos fue la tarde en escuchar sus historias.

De esas gentes de antagno que le dicen a los doctores medico.

Me gusta el pasado cuando vive frente a mis ojos. Las memorias un reliquio, y mas si de trasfondo se encuentra un bosque de pinos, de camino hay una carretera que mezcla la terraceria, el empedrado y una carretera federal que esta 2/3.

Y de postre un taco de frijoles.

Finally a love story with a (not so) happy ending

Romantic comedies are pretty up there as far as landmark achievements of our generations. Right alongside teriyaki sauce and crocodile tears.

An even more improved version of them is the subtle mix of a guy flick and a romantic comedy. Think Wedding Crashers and/or Mean Girls and maybe the Ugly Truth?. Either of them include the same predictable series of corny stories and predictable twists along with sufficient guy humor to function. Toss in a couple of drinking scenes and a well backed montage and two very enjoyable hours are to be had.

Assuming you even watch the movie.

But the inherent problem with them is the happy ending. Escapism works only to a point. We stop believing the cheap stucco facade sold by the mass media (listen to me sound like an angry zealot).

I just spent the afternoon talking to a man, a former pistolero, who believes in everything from spiritual entities (evil ones of course, the kind that feed on our life energy) to U.F.O.s. He capped his whole story - one that included a treasure hunt into which he fell into some sort of trance as he was possessed by the treasure's owner - by claiming that it was a dangerous to believe in everything.

That it was just as hard for a mind to be open to the possibility of believing as it was for a mind to remain open to the possibility of not believing. Interesting.

He then talked about blue people. And we discussed what I thought was simply the height of computer science with perfect geometries and a basic story line with the usual values present in the softer side of human nature. He talked of the orient and philosophies that I'd once read about in bits and pieces of Lieh Tzu. It made sense, right down to the symbolism in their tattoos.

These screen writers and authors are getting too good.

So I believe, if only for 120 minutes, the lies carefully disguised as an alternate truth. Kavalier and Clay certainly channeled this sort of thought and energy into a superhero before this. But Autumn and Summer proved to me that these realities often come closer to depicting our own reality than is comfortable.

My name is Tom. And 500 now means something to me.

Responsorial Psalm

I'm coming from a rat and squirrel high induced by the celebration of Christmas in a catholic country and the historical licences taken by a man I finally see as a genius. Kill Jack part one and two never did it for me.

To spark thought is a writer's greatest achievement.

--

My thoughts on abejas doradas (though not really a reply).

Spanish poetry is filled with sadness of people awkwardly reinventing their identity. Even now. From a Peninsula known for great cathedrals, famous banishment of entire cultures and cultural assimilation to politically strong-willed countries who fail to realize that their uncomfortably p.c. status as the second world will remain so until we grow politically tired.

That is neither a comment on their quality of character or prose. Both of which depict a sometimes terribly melancholic past.

A great English teacher of mine and I once engaged in a conversation regarding peace. Octavio PAZ i should say. Paz argued in his masterpiece that Mexicans (and through extension all formerly conquered countries of the explorador/conquistador kind) are the product of la chingada or rape. The problem is that we have taken this thesis to heart though it didn't come through the same literary channels for all. For some it came through cheap government propaganda that would make the author of a little red book cringe. Now we sit back and use it as an excuse for mediocrity. That's why I listen to the reality once depicted by Jaime Sabines.

My thoughts on the new Samsonite travel bag.

While I agree that rational thought is often too much of an ideal, I do think travelling with a toothbrush in your back pocket and a double sided jacket is a good ideal if only because it lets you free to do a lot of shopping at your destination of choice. To even further my otherwise over-extended analogy, I travel with carry-on only means that I have some but I work hard at allowing the possibility of the future to jump in fron tof me at all time.

To be devoid of baggage might, I agree, indicate a lack of emotional connection which can be disturbing at best. No body wants a machine (except that guy from "Say Hi to Your Mom" who was "In love with an android but so what?").

--

As a final parting thought I would like to point out that my writing for the next couple of weeks is written from exile (from which of the two countries I currently limbo between I'm not quite sure). There's a place in Dante's paradise for people like me. And I'm sure Moore (Chris not Sicko) could include satirical elements in his next overly enjoyable piece.

Baggage Check?

20yearolds are at an awkward stage in life. We're the young adults. The future generation they spoke of. Our whole life ahead of us. Ok, maybe like 4/5ths.

We're moving past the relationships (<3)) we had as children and moving into the interesting world of dating and seriousness. Relationships that involve more than standing awkwardly side by side in a gym/cafeteria with the lights on dim and a DJ and telling each other - in detail - what they did that day.

So, um, today, this morning, like I um, woke up right? (No!) And then, like Amy called and I was like Amy gurrrrrl how you livin'? Right? (Are you sure this happened honey?) And the like my mom drove me to school and i was like sad or something because we ran out of frosty mini wheats (Dayum, I was hoping you'd bring some) but then I like saw you and it totally cleared away.... And this was all before home room.

And yet this stage of our lives still hangs on to the feelings developed during these relationships. I'll admit that sometimes these relationships turn into sweet stories that are more a coming of age tale than anything. That is of course if we forget that the "coming of age" construct is a relatively recent one.

I've seen children say I love you and mean it.
I've seen adults say I love you and lie through their teeth.

My problem is that it gets in the way. It stops people from seeking perfectly happy solutions to problems that shouldn't even be there. A healthy budding relationship has been cut short because "there's this thing with a guy/girl from back home". A THING?

A person you see two, maybe three times a year, whom with there is no formal relationship, whom with there is always an awkward moment when you greet because you dont know if you can/should go in for the kill, is not a thing.

My dear friends, what's difficult for me to understand or explain is how you could still think you are in love with someone who no longer exists. These are the years of revelations and epiphanies. That person is not the same from back then.

I fly with carry-on only.

Poems (Haikus, Sonnets, the works)

I've told my friends life is good in retrospect.
I'll elaborate, all in due time of course.

The power of irrational thought - sways, nudges, insanity - has been covered in a variety of texts (Sway, Nudge) and schools of thoughts (mental asylums).

In third person:

He chose a school that wasn't his first choice. Even when his first choice was a viable option. He chose to eat the last turkey leg even though it had been over ten seconds since his brain had first informed him his stomach was full. He continued playing that championship basketball game through the pain of his broken fingers (WORK THROUGH THE PAIN!).

He was a silly man. Human at best. Humans are such the best.

He's carried on with his puerile existence absorbing random facts and acts of kindness as he goes along. I've never ceased to be amazed at their capacity to connect tangent. These, um, humans, carry on in conversation for hours exploring a gamut of emotions and topics in the most perfect circular of fashions.

In the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg, the answer is that a circle has no beginning or end. Every one of us knows that. They've obviously yet to learn that.

And they carry on. And god how they write. It started out with the fastest and oldest of them scribbling away in dark, dimly lit quarters with flickering candles and the sound of matins being sung in the background. We learned that from Follet - his historical accounts, obviously fictional, were essential in providing us with understanding about the pillars of his kind.

Then it was a man. Or a woman? God how they enjoy confusing us. He wrote sonnets and stories of human nature in the shallow guise of drama or comedy. We enjoyed those thoroughly.

And then came a woman. They cover her in the movies now very often. They interpret her on stage, write adaptations of her work and even make films just about her. We'd seen this latter phenomenon before but never in this fashion. Not a documentary, a confusing account about the made up story of some potentially real situation in which they look up to her. We have decided, as a race that she wrote their manual on teasing and flirting. It's all about the teasing and not about the pleasing as some of their "ironic" tv shows put it.

Somehow this one kid enthralls me. Call him a kid, ha! A young adult playing at being bigger than himself. I understand his expressions and mannerisms. He drinks tea because he believes in waiting (learned that from the Germans). He writes out of frustration but he calls it creative inspiration. His family is small. Just him, his parents and his friends.

And he questions poetry. Or the form behind the poetry. And prose, or the ideas trapped within the prose. And yet he sits waiting.

--

Sometimes, just sometimes I take an out of body experience so see how things are really like.

It's usually scary.

Fw:

I like walking on the outside. I like opening doors and pulling the chair for a girl. Yes, I believe chivalry is not dead but very well alive in a small sect of guys called gentleman (not to be confused with gentiles).

We have an easy battle. We often find ourselves on the battlefield metaphorically fighting against sloppy fratty jock of yesteryear with no sense of personal space or personal hygiene. You'd think it an easy fight.

It's easier for most guys not to make a move. On any given night a guy - and yes I speak solely from my gender's perspective for I write what I know yadiyadiyada - looking for "some" (some might call it hunting) can and will get some. Add liquid courage and be willing to lower your standards enough the possibilities are endless. So why try?

And yes girls will complain that all guys are like that. That we suck. That we have no idea how good a kiss might be if there's more than just raw physical need intertwined in that lip-locking. That all we are looking for is a warm body and willing lips. That it feels awful to go to a party just to have some random but hopefully friendly looking stranger grind up against them.

We know.
There's nothing to it.

I'm not trying to place blame. Far from it. A mon avis, the blame lies mostly on my gender.

In any given social interaction I know I'm expected to make the move. Ask the girl out, place my head just close enough so that she knows I'm going in for the kiss, hold her hand in public, etc. But for once I'd like her to do that instead.

Call me upside down, backward, crazy or whatever appropriately self-deprecating adjective you can attach but feminism happened. Or is happening.

A girl who is forward is often seen as aggressive and domineering. It's also a great aphrodisiac.

I know high strung ambitious women in charge of everything in their life who fall apart over a boy. They want a boy to take control over that part of their life. God bless their hearts they try really hard to be happy. Try is an operative word there.

A guy who likes a girl will move the world to see her. No excuses. Mohammed is the girl and the mountain is us. We will move mountains for the girl we like because in our minds, as cro-magnian as the other gender may see us, we have already determined if there will ever be anything else between us and you.

So be forward. I still think a guy has a right to ask the girl. Stand outside her bedroom window sitting on the hood of your car blasting music from an old boom box. Classic. But girls have that right too.

The next time you hate on us remember.

The male gender is still one of the top two genders on this planet.

Phi Beta Kappa

I like to have books and essays recommended to me. Sometimes the pieces are recommended based on what my friends and/or family see as something I should read/like/appreciate. Sometimes the recommendation is based on similarity of style or theme. Sometimes it's just for the sake of having something to say.

Whatever the reason, I love it. I do the same. I consider myself a Golda of pairings. I like to put person a and b together if I think they're a match. I have an album full of mental pictures I've engraved into my mind when I introduce someone to a new type of music that I've guessed they'll love. Even my family's approving nods when they realize that I've chosen the right pairing of beef and protein for tonights dinner.

I don't believe in direct responses. In writing I have the luxury of beating around the bush, dangling the carrot in front of a literary horse. For I enjoy the simple pleasures of teasing. A quick, hungry look followed by complete ignorance. Perhaps a soft graze seeming almost accidental. I hint at things to come without actually saying it. It's difficult I'll admit and I'm not always successful so bear with me gentle reader.

Have you ever deduced something you had no way of knowing? Had your brain put together small tidbits of information and had it click without you even realizing how or why? Or notice a word you just recently learned pop into everything you read or do? How about identifying someone you've never seen?

It's how I come up with new definitions. How I invent and reinvent my thoughts into ever changing streams of consciousness.

So let me define the pack. The initial image is Buck circling within a picket of crazed dogs. In this image I am the sleeping man a couple of hundred feet away perfectly oblivious to what's happening on my camp.

The pack is a life-line. A place where a happy trekker keeps his water, trail-mix, and a compass. So as not to get lost of course.

While getting a man into the Senate or Congress costs a lot of money, keeping a man in Congress requires little to no effort. The beauty of politically tired countries is that things don't change very much from term to term or person to person. It's one of the greatest investments you can make (incumbency rate of 95%). These are leaders of a pack (a country).

The pack as a country is that its made up of an unwillingly unchosen multitude. Who's to be the leader then?

And then the problem of cliques arise, and coalitions and parties with vested and opposing interests in a wide variety of outcomes. Things stop being about delegation and about leadership.

So what's in a pack?

Self-Worth

Thousands of kids apply to the University of Pennsylvania every year fretting about scores, grades and extracurriculars. Don't worry, this isn't a sad sob story of how I didn't get in. Allow me to be cocky for a second.

I attend school with 10,000 undergrads, most of them smart, some, even brilliant.

And I've had the pleasure of working with them into the late hours of the night coding and decoding, writing proofs that seem redundant and looking over marketing reports trying to deduce what the next big step in computing will be. It's smartphone operating systems and what they will contribute to cloud computing btw.

I also attend Wharton. A school within a school is an interesting concept but not the subject matter of this discussion.

The Wharton Undergraduate division is a model toy of an MBA education. With grade non-disclosure and a strong cohort system, the Wharton MBA program affords (for a small fortune of course) some of the brightest business-minded beings in the world an opportunity to network. Sometimes they even learn a thing or two (I know. I've seen them in class with my own eyes).

Wharton undergrad is an attempt to replicate this. Your social capital is worth as much as the brains you may have or claim to have. There are brilliant people in Wharton.

I also attend the Engineering school - SEAS. We don't have a proper name so call us Penn-gineers.

An undervalued school to be sure. We have great professors, are nationally ranked in a variety of departments and world class labs. Even a building shaped and colored like a chloroplast. A little too much negative space for my taste.

In both schools the problem is not the quality of mind but the employment of the mind.

The leader of the pack here is definitely not the smartest guy or girl. It's the individual that capitalizes on his/her self-worth and uses it to his/her advantage. It's definitely not meant to be a negative thing. Capitalizing on what you know and who you know is something both business school (come to our Networking event!!) and the engineering school (CIS 112: a Networked Life) teach and preach. The leader of the pack knows that his/her best bet is to surround the persona created about him with those of equal or greater brilliance or cunning as it may apply. Think of a president's cabinet or a famous artist's army of reps/legal counsel/agents.

Gladwell would call them Linkers. So would technical management lore.

Half of the battle is knowing how to use your brain. How to best exploit your skills and areas of expertise is a lesson best learned young. It has been said before that practice is worth more than inherent talent.

Gladwell would call it the 10,000 hour journey.

Those who are personable are often times the ones that manage to make it big. Given, this usually correlates with an arbitrarily measure of high IQ but it requires being personable. Fortune 500 CEOs, Presidents and student leaders alike all have to combine these traits. It's not a choice. Without it there's nothing left but brains. The body cannot live without the brain. Without it we are reduced to being geeks or smart kids who don't know how to communicate their knowledge. Think of the Macbook air and ignore all possible negative thoughts that come from its image. It wouldn't be half the product it is if Jobs hadn't pulled it out of a paper envelope.

Things do not exist in the vacuum of our mind. A medium is key and that's what our leaders get. They might not be genius but they are genial and they know how to infuse their energy and life into those around them. That's what makes them.

It's all about self-worth. A combination of mind and soul(read people skills).

Fe(Male) Relationships

Something to notice: the word relationships IS in the title - you can start worrying.

Let me begin with bromantic relationships. Validated by society, movies like Wedding Crashers ("Maybe it is creepy that a...promised his best friend he would never spend another birthday by himself. Yeah, that might fall under the category of creep") and the obvious I love you, Man ("Bromontana, Jobin, Tycho Bro-he"), we have been free to involve ourselves in these relationships full of brove. Some people drink vrodka now.

Interestingly enough, even the most relationship averse guys will enjoy their bro-s.

Historically this was the relationship cultivated when the ladies would play cards in the drawing room (women were and for the most part been more advanced in the field of human relationships. This is where the idea of best friends started). The men would go elsewhere, the library perhaps, and have neat scotch and smoke fine cigars. They would all laugh, discuss the business of being men then awkwardly shake hands good bye.

No more! Now we hug, pat on the back and ruffle the hair. Prolong contact for as long as possible, no drinks or cigars for an excuse (now they're just there, they've ceased being the excuse) and we'll talk. Share our fears and desires. We can share secrets (Guys, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas ok? Ok??? Dear god my wife CAN'T find out) and keep them.

And yet somehow my gender, and increasingly more the female gender as well fears the word relationship. They are all relationships.

Especially in college, people will hook-up, go on dates which they'll call casual outings with friends, hang out an inordinate amount of time but still maintain they are not in a relationship. All the while, one or two of the parties involved will develop feelings but maintain that they do not exist. They will never have THE conversation though the situation will merit it. They will maintain that all is well in their "thing".

This is the ways things are they say. I don't want the attachment. I don't want to be committed. She'd be such a drag as a girlfriend dude. We don't need to have the conversation dude. She said she was ok with things like this.

Let me clarify a couple of things
a) Human beings are dense only if they are allowed to be dense. The same way we can only get away with the things others let us get away with.
b) Deep down all human beings crave a deeper emotional connection with someone (save serial killers and even they have families)
c) Being afraid of relationships is ok but you also need to face your fears, especially the irrational ones (like the boogie man).

Wear your heart on your sleeve. It hurts like hell but it's always worth the ride.

Dear School Newspaper

A nickel for your thoughts.

The school newspaper is an institution established over a 100 years ago. It is a great example of what student drive and ambition can achieve. I respect this dearly.

A year ago a student at the University of Pennsylvania was vivisected by the school newspaper. In what they displayed as journalism they proceeded to slander his name in one of the arguably most biased pieces of pseudo-writing they have ever published. They apparently forgot - like most public media outlets do - that in America you are INNOCENT until proven guilty.

We wrote a letter to the editor regarding the unilateral attack that the article mounted. The obvious question was - of the many people quoted in the article for an opinion (almost, if not all negative character references), why were none of them his fraternity brothers? The people who probably knew him best.

If you push the matter you get silence in return. They probably have non-committal expressions to divert the subject. Make you forget all together. They are bound by journalistic integrity. This I respect. I "get" confidential information.

My doubt as to why the paper went silent after that article was published is still on my mind.

We are told that letters to the editors are published based on the intelligence of the argument, the appropriateness of language and thought provoking qualities.

The man who wrote that letter was a near 4.0 GPA ivy league student who went on to Law School. Usually the kind of person who can produce a cogent line of thought. He is also one of the smartest people I have ever met.

It the secrecy surrounding the topic is related to the eventual outcome of that article's accusation. They're clairvoyant you see? How can we compete with this?

We are told to get a letter to the editor published, a valid point must be raised. And yet they set a precedent that is big brotherish at best. Silence.

As an independent institution within the university they act with considerable autonomy. Attached is a whole lot legal responsibility. The staff would do well to remember though that to those to whom much is given, much is expected.

We are also told that an outright attack to the DP will not be published. I wouldn't expect them to and I am not bothered by this. It is a logical move and no one would expect them to do so. I don't think an outright attack would be in order.

I like the DP. I read it everyday. It has funny pieces, covers Penn Athletics, includes some worldly news articles and has some insightful editorials. What I am talking about is not meant to be an attack but a comment on the practices some, perhaps rogue writers/editors may have followed in the past. The idea is to provoke thought, to wake the silent majority.

And these thoughts are all part of a technically not off-the-record conversations.

Your move DP.

Speaker for the Nerds

I'm a fan of irony. Semesters lasting four months. It being his-tory not her-story. Sound in space movies. Stepping left when punching right. Evil being live.

But that is neither here nor there.

I am playing an archeologist in the search for the foundation of modern sci-fi. A genre often discounted because it belongs to the Star Trek dressing geeks and nerds that speak in Vulcan. We might sit around and argue the value of a TI-89 vs. a puny TI-83. We think non-deterministic automata defining recursive languages are a think to marvel at. But this is a narrow view of the nerd-dom. We are much more than that. Like Adam Gant we can be academic rock stars with a keen eye for organizational behavior. We can describe the Friedman's four way win and value the pro's and con's of the apocalyptic Fukuyama. Even Huntington gets to play.

Perhaps it is too bold to consider myself a spokesperson for the nerds. My credentials? An elitist education, a supreme interest in all things interesting and a conscious effort to learn that which matters to as few people as possible. A nerd is often most easily defined if he knows about the sword of truth than if he knows what happens to Edward.

The thing is, I like to know about both.

I like to dance to big band music, appreciate Carreras singing Nessun Do-rrrr-ma, and stand around awkwardly in a My Morning Jacket concert. I read People, xkcd, GQ and the Economist with equal delight. I box and play chess.

So consider this an introduction to a book. For my sake I will picture myself writing this on a spaceship or a battle ship like the Logos (not a Hovercraft though) as I fly away from a doomed earth. I write her-story (Gaea) from my eyes in hopes of including as many biases as possible. Some of them mine.

They say history is for those who win on the battlefield. They are wrong. History is for those who survive on the battlefield. Semantics matter when it comes to being able to put pen to paper.

Revenge of the nerds was a documentary.

Growing fond

My grandfather used to say that the hardest thing to do is be simple. Simplicity - simple - has a negative connotation. It means plain, dumbed-down, vanilla-flavored.

I'll say it. It's wrong.

It was a greater man who once said Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity. A cleverly constructed edifice that exemplifies what I'm trying to say.

And all this time I've held parallel dreams. In one I'm in control, pressed suit, corporate corner office with the view. In the other I go live in a place like Walden or a la Bryson - the Appalachian Trail.

The juxtaposition of the two derives mainly from the word - simple(icity).

I've been accused of being a complicated writer. The connections often times appear straightforward in the jambalaya of my mind(s). A little moo cow once inspired me to write like I do. I don't sign my name with an Asterisk like Vonnegut or write in post-perfection. My writing is in retrospection.

For me the Kevin Bacon number is not just for actors. Everything is connected (and illuminated according to some accounts). Described as the butterfly effect, the common thread, the eternal golden braid. It's simple really.

Given, 3.14XXXX is a recurring occurrence in nature. Understanding the relativity of time and the curvature of space is not simple. Solipsist thought is unnatural - complicated.

The thought of an electron popping in and out of existence around it's parental atom is...difficult.

All I want is to keep it simple, stupid.

KISS.

Alumni (sometimes Generations)

As a writer I was conflicted. On the one hand my absence from the airwaves suggests to me that there is a need to apologize to my gentle readers. The other is a desire to start a blog entry with a quote. Something memorable uttered by a famous person or a ghost writer somewhere. A thinly disguised level of dept infused into something grammatically quaint.

The word alumni offer conjures an image of older people who were once where we are. Dressed in suits and real-life attire, hair thinning, sometimes graying, they probably speak of the world as a renaissance man spoke of Da Vinci's work - with a disturbing familiarity. They might even tell jokes about Leo DV and the local wench.

Even their dinner manners seem officious. Everything is properly set out on their person. A controlled smile, a pat on the back.

But ah the pleasure of seeing two of them reunite.

At the moment this was published I am considering an interesting possibility in which I will live amongst alumni in their natural habitats to learn about their behaviors/mating rituals/hunting styles.

They jump from their seats, rush to each other, pats on back, the smaller of the two gets picked up by the other. A quick succession of unintelligible bon mots are exchanged which are cause for laughing and celebration. A quick nod,glance,look at the bar and they saunter over, cool as cats, order a Perino or an Amstel or something that lets the world know they're no longer college kids but sophisticated young men.

A stark contrast to the squealing and hair pulling of B.F.F.A.E.A.E.s after a summer away from each other.

Do not be fooled gentle reader. I LOVE ALUMNI.

Talking to them reminds me that there is more to this breakneck speed race we call an education. Their worldly knowledge which usually simmers down to entertaining and delightful dinner conversation ranges from the outlook on debt-equity markets to living in Chelsea. Oh and let's talk a little about the 500-pound gorilla - Google - or simply discuss the merits of a company whose main objective is the people but has the positive side of effect of money.

They come back and we go to them. The need to be a part of a larger organization is a powerful motivator. Get to know a stranger who knows what you do with over 50% of the time. In a Card moment we all feel Ender's monitor go out as we meet our controllers.

Hi John Doe. In a Venn Diagram our overlap is a considerable fraction of total surface area. I've been told you were once selected based on the same criteria as I was. Your social interaction score is >55. Want to talk?

A quick nod,glance,look at the bar and we saunter over, cool as cats, order a Perino or an Amstel or something that lets the world know they're not college kids but young colleagues sharing experiences.

Macallan's. Neat. Please.

Going Viral

The blood-shot college student. What a cliche. Tired not high. Eyes slightly glazed with fine sugar and the warm flickering light from a computer screen pushing you on.

It's the trudge of a knight without clothes. A king without his crown or a doola without her tub.

Charlie bit me. Did he?
David went to the dentist.
Dove made the beauty transformation once and for all revealing that beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. That the beautiful models depicted on internationally distributed magazines are as unreal as our daydreams about them. It was like Rasputin telling the world's children the truth about Santa Claus. The towns wept and a green monster (green?) came and found himself.

Now people talk about going viral. Making something go viral. It would appear we live in a viral time in history.

Liberally applied.
H1N1. Seasonal flu shots - but those are just "bugs" right? SARS.
And we got started early. Think of the bubonic plague. Think of polio, and leprosy.
The first true mass marketed viral news.

We have been doing this collectively but we rarely plan things - as we are prone not to do. History has taught me that we often create the best types of chaos when we are given free rein of a situation. Think of yourself at a bar.

The 60's Mad Men with Macallan scotch and cigarettes gave us an era of Marilyn Monroe pin-ups slipping a sable under the Christmas tree. The marketing wunderkinds of today have given us viral.

It's only natural for us to accept virality (Newspeak for viral related). Of course we have to wear face masks and latex gloves but give us a hazmat and we'll even embrace it.

I love the idea of the human race as a virus. It might be what we need to drive us into space or explore the rest of this world. We don't need Magellan's or da Gama's, we need a new Thomas More to embark on the search for utopia - one not so fundamentally flawed.

And we're still looking for a flu shot.

Part Dos

A story - an anecdote really - for part two.

This one involves the night but no teenage girls wanting to mingle with the Nosferatu. No shining vampires, no southern gentlemen, not even cast-iron Moore-ish nearly human vampires.

It once again entails the tale of two cities. Built on the foundations of human intellect and creativity we have managed to define thought and feeling as different emotions propagating from two distinctly different sources in the human body. Biologically there is no argument. I am fortunately not a biologist - my brief incursion into that world resulted in nothing more than gutted fish and the knowledge that I may or may not be a carrier of every genetic disease known to man.

I am however an optimistic misanthrope. Sometimes. Not really. Not even a little, not even at all.

Thinking with the heart is a romantic idea. Some say romance died in the 20th century. They were born in the 18th century. I suppose now the thing to say will be "Romance died in the 21st century" and people will clamor genius and that will be that.

The six quintessential quarts are what brings life to every inch in our body. Just like love. Love would then actually be all around us.

And red is the color of love! What would it mean for those blue-bloods out there then? A lifetime of the blues and melancholy?

And yet the skeptics in the audience doth protest enough. We think with our brains they say. Emotions are a mellange of cross and self-referencing thoughts. They boil it all down to a science. Like the psychiatrists that pop out every now and then with the "key" to the human brain.

And so you're kissing the girl you've been hoping to woo all year. The horizontal plane reminds you of the long lost memory of geometry and Mrs. Simmons and her black frame glasses and the way her wavy blond hair would swish to and fro during first period. Your hand explores her gentler, smaller, softer frame. Your marvel- beautiful. She pulls on your hair softly and you look into her eyes looking for the warm, vanilla smelling, cinnabon tasting feeling.

But your brain goes into overdrive.
Am I being to aggressive?
Am I any good right now?
I wonder what she's thinking...
Is my roommate coming?
What time is it?
My roommate is going to hate this...
What is that taste?
Should I be doing this?
Is she what I built her on to be?
Under or over?

And the dance continues. It's still just a dance.

The problem becomes when it becomes a struggle. I interpret the struggle as my demons.

Big Heart Big Brain Dance

I am latino ergo I dance. One of the few stereotypes I have embraced and helped propagate. Who wants to be the tipping point?

The dance is a ritual we learned from our days in the forest. Jumping and spinning, weaving and teasing the space with a rhythmic, primal instinct. We call it flirting now.

School has presented a number of challenges.
A small fish in a large pond - sometimes ocean. I'm the guppy here.
Everyone, EVERYONE was the valedictorian, captain of the soccer, basetball and basketball team, Model U.N. and mock Trial. The Halting problem was a 7th grade problem and orbitals were a cute joke discussed somewhere around the 9th grade. When they were in 10th grade they created A.I. sans Jude Law. Senior year rolled around and they organized the humanitarian campaign to save the world (project is still in the works - to join go to www.overachievers4eva.com).

Yes. It appears everyone is smart in my own little space of the planet. This protective cocoon of ivy walls untouched by ivy and appropriately tucked polos and sperm whaled seersucker shorts is my slice of heaven. Everyone is a cherub - brilliant, wearing golden sandals and sitting to the left or right of someone bigger than them.

And we all dance.

Street smart. Plain smart. Damn smart. Smart-ass. Smart.

Where is Mezrich when you need him to write a solid human interest piece on the unheard masses of nerds struggling to find the beat in the dance? Writing about oil futures probably or perhaps interning with a greater writer of nonfiction dribble.

Life as seen through the eyes of the genius. A long string of polynomials representing complications (deviating from the standard by <2*stddev). Passion completely removed. Cancelled out and subtracted. Better to double count on this one than risk leaving a residual claim on what our head tells us to do. Strip it down, parse the problem and solve for maximum efficiency. Everything is a puzzle to be solved. Even the poly chromatic sens-o-sketch our heart evokes every time we feel happy about the irrational. The normal call it spontaneity. We call it recklessness. I'm doing something because it makes me happy. Only after a careful cost-benefit analysis, an in-depth excel spreadsheet and a glance at the life plan.

To be bold. To let our heart rule over brain sometimes. To mix the illogical pleasures in life with a quantitative outlook on life. Teaching at Princeton and reading into pigeon waddling is something reserved for the unlucky and brilliant few.

This dance is modern. Developed with thought. The struggle is great and dealing with it should entail more than blue electric lady or cheap vodka labels or participating in the $10 a pill market. Should is an operative word.

How to deal? Thought. The very thing that put us in this messy situation.

Now think. Left, right, left, right.

Adult Conversations

The idea is to avoid the word relationship. I don't want to label myself, fall into a set box or conform to the norm. I want to be everything but normal independent of how much I may or may not appreciate the mathematical symmetry of normality.

A professor once told me about his days in college, drinking boxed wine and talking late into the night about O'Brien and guns. The image? A couple of sleeper nerds both wanting to be cool and get to the crux of Foster Wallace's argument. Hidden in a trellis of obscure references, savvy story telling and drugs was the ultimate answer.

No, it wasn't 42.

I think about pop culture a lot but not in an analytical, introspective sort of way but in a cloud my judgement and perception of reality sort of way. In it, there is a "talk" that every girl and guy both look forward to however unknowingly. One night, their eyes will meet across the room (strangers in the dark/lovers at first sight), they will strike up a conversation and find the other person entirely too charming. They'll walk out of the bar together shoulder-to-shoulder indicating that while they wish they had the intimacy level to hold hands, this will do for now. He'll walk her back to her place all the while making her laugh at the appropriate time with a slightly self-deprecating comment or on the weather. At the door step there isn't an awkward moment. They walk in and sit down on a comfortable couch, a solitary relic of the good old days (college). A peck here and there, cuddling, embrace and conversation. CONVERSATION - all night in a desperately hungry attempt to know the other person.

The truth is, they're hard to have. They're often unwanted monsters looking to make us face what we are trying to avoid.

Try writing an post-mortem eulegy.

In a domino game we don’t control the pieces we get. We do however control the distribution and the strategy of the game. This is the attitude I have when dealing with this little thing called life.

The existential talks are not only for the meta-physical breakfast clubs of our generations. Tea usually helps, or a healthy serving of aged Shiraz. It's not just for the heart. Trust me.

Given the chance, I want to be a good listener. An empath who knows just what to say and do. I'd like to know when to hold the person's eyes with a supportive gaze, and when to look at my shoes and untied laces and shake my head softly as if to say - Why? It makes me wonder what they say in those muted scenes in movie when the guy says just the right things to the girl and by the time the volume comes back on she's wiping away her tears and giving a half-hearted smile. The director probably made a stylistic call, it's definitely written somewhere, the choice words. The chosen words.

And they lead to introspection. To feel the internal tourist explore from within commenting on the warm, vivid colors of our warm insides. Oohing and aahing at the gamut of emotions and thoughts weaving and dodging through my brain.

It's a scary place - the self.

You don't want to say hello and hear nothing but an echo.

Elaborating on Creativity

Apparently I write about what has been written before.

Arguably, some of the best books of our time have been written about the least creative of situations. The act of putting a sweater on. The sequel would of course be - Me and Hair: a tale of combing.

A couple of year ago (I wonder when I'll start saying "Many year ago" and look in pride at the time I've spent well and sigh at the sight of time wasted) I discussed the collective imagination. Not in a philosophical kind a way for I am neither prone nor apt for that sort of intellectual discussion but more in the spirit of my usual inquisitive curiosity. I like to discover things.

There are pyramids in Egypt and there are pyramids in Mexico. Architecturally different but structurally similar. The Greek and Roman gods played swap games with names but followed the same basic trends. Purepecha, a language of a central Mexico tribe, is most similar to the Swedish language.

A monkey put in a room with a type writer with a long enough timeline will eventually reproduce Hamlet to a comma. Conversely, if Durden taught us anything is that on a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero.

Creativity occurs most easily in short bursts of passion. Creativity lies in a child's first laugh, every breath a potential hiccup or eek! or mixture of glee and slur.

So today I write a brief body. If I were to justify this entry I would say that the haphazard nature of my introduction* is meant to create a displacement of electrical impulses in the brain of the reader. A sort of exercise in jogging (sprinting) the mind. The sort of thing I think about when analyzing books. I read into things, reconstruct them, add my personal biases and then tell the world what the author was trying to say.

Why would an author ever tell you what he wants to say.

Magritte argued that his art was meant to be confusing. Art was sometimes just art.

Ceci n'est pas une ecrit. --> There. Creative. Right?

Persona

In Spanish, a person. In English, the personality we adopt when we write. I write to be read.

I once wrote about my aunt in a thinly disguised story. I wrote about the 4 lives she led - a 50 year old woman playing at being 20 and a business woman and a menopausal being and an aunt/family woman. Having her read it was exciting.
I sat at the edge of my seat watching for a chink in her armor, a twitch in her crow's feet, a curling of her thinly pursed lips.

In high school I struggled with the idea of explaining my persona to my classmates. I wrote of dark things and morbid thoughts. An agoraphobic sociopath that called home a NY city public restroom. A mental patient. A eulogy writer. It's not me, it's him!

I have never given him a name. It seems appropriate that I'm excited about naming my persona (alter ego).

There are famous historical accounts of these people (persona's). Think of Batman, Wonder Woman and the Escapist. Some have chosen another route and called it a pen-name. Bah! It's an expression of self. A waking dream we enjoy only when brought to life by a pair of watchful eyes.

A single frame reveals a truth or is it Munroe's stick figures?. Dreams are a brief comatose period where we hallucinate vividly and then suffer amnesia about the whole thing.

I don't write about what I know. My persona embellishes. My writing voice is reflective of my mind not the way I speak.

And I'm still jealous of a fat old man who refused the presidency, flew a kite in the middle of a storm and became a founding father of nation and science. A little bit of toast and a drop or two of malt liquor splashed on the ground to your good health Silent Dogwood.