Alright. Ahora yo quiero aprender espanol, so i am watching univision on new year's eve. besides, who could party harder than the crew at sabado gigante? the woman showing off the new car somebody won, well, you could pretty much park the car on her shelf. the ladies of univision...blame the makeup, the plastic surgery, whatever, but i find myself quickly separating into two categories- the young painted hotties, and the truly terrifying personalities who hang on to the entertainment biz through sheer determination. which would also explain their endurance for surgery. of course you can say the same thing about a number of the ladies on christian channels. which reminds me, down the dial, daystar has an african american gentleman working up a fine sweat as well...though i keep getting distracted from his message as i watch the sweat streams off, wondering how one amasses so much fat around the back of the neck?

you can say channel surfing and blogging on new year's eve is lame. but so is getting drunk, which is why i took care of that last night. anyway i can say i learned maybe mas dos palabras, and aside from the man with the scary eyebrows stationed in duffy square, am truly enjoying the show, even the nortenas i usually dislike well done tonight, even mr. yanqui and his gasolina, displaying the global fashion/attitude plague that is hip-hop/reggaeton, well they are appropriate to the occasion. the fact is, anything that makes the ladies shake their rumps must have some intrinsic value. and frankly i think if the beastie boys hadn't set out long ago that even a crew of jews could rap, i doubt these folks from korea to nuevo york to paris would have been so quick to join the big-pants club.

nuevo york. indeed, as mr. yanqui drops references to brooklyn, as the ball drops en times square, en vivo, the tag on the screen reads nuevo york, and i feel linguisitcally insulted somehow. now mind you i am all for a multilingual society- the more languages in the salad, the richer. and i am well aware that much of this nation used to be spanish land, and that spanish speakers have been recording history since before there was a nuevo york. but that isn't the point. were they reporting from nuevo laredo, or nuevo mexico, one could forgive the shift, since the place names there are spanish names. but nuevo york? are they also reporting from, what, el plaza del Times? if mr. lopez wants to name his daughter jennifer instead of maria, power to him. some relatives might complain that 'jennifer' doesn't sound spanish enough, (but hey it beats univision personality 'barbie simons' for hispanishness) but naming babies is nobody's business. but naming of cities? this is a public matter. how do the offices of the postmaster or mayor of NY, NY refer to their city? in official documents to the homes of German speakers, is it listed as Neues York? do they also courteously translate half the name when addressing speakers of thai-" york mai", low tone on the last syllable if you please? the point is this, with proper names: if the reporters of univision would not speak of the civil rights leader martin luther reyes jr., they should not speak of a nuevo york. that was never the name of the city, thank you very much.

now. why would i be disturbed? who cares, it's not your channel anyway, your country, anyway gringo, eh? new york, nuevo york, loosen up. yeah, i feel you. i am mining my subconcious on this one, and i think it really is a stubbornness about grammar and language. i am not afraid of the implication of cultural...loss? implied by the shifting of population in the US. we are all aware that huge chunks of the population in us cities like nuevo york speaks spanish. judging by the calendar pics and the fine character of many mexicans i have interacted with and i say that can only be a positive development. the work ethic and sense of family alone are welcome..as to whether latinas will put some femme back in feminism, or- shudder- set it back a couple years, perhaps countered by a new urban machismo, or an injection of an entirely different sexuality or morality, those are fine intercultural things to imagine. this nation is indeed one exciting, bubbling, unprecedented experiment and the unprecedented immigration of recent years one of the most dynamic things happening culturally in this generation- a real test of the ideals we supposedly confirmed, in terms of race, in the previous generation.

yet as a matter of linguisitic convention, in recent history, the city in question has been in a country dominated by english-speakers, and the name they most recently settled on reflects that by referring to a place in england. it is not the same as translating "mountain" when naming a mountain like mt. shasta, "street" when naming thoroughfares, or the word "city" as in mexico city. "new" does not refer to any physical feature, it is not what you are naming, it is part of the name. so please, no matter what your tongue, please call it "new york", before i take a vacation in port vallarta, or our good friend port rico.

i would love to credit the photojournalist who shot this but i didn't take good notes. anyhow there have been many independent (read: not embedded/in-bed-with) journalists who risked their arses to bring the voices of iraqis and unblemished images of the war. this one features some sad graffitti, revealing the racism that accompanies any US war abroad.

rough soldier and sailor talk about sandn-ggers, towelheads, and diaperheads is to be expected from the barely educated spawn of a racist nation. The racism lies itching barely beneath the surface of public life, as revealed in the comments of US lawmakers in the post-9-11 hysteria;

"If I see someone [who] comes in that's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over." -Rep. John Cooksey, R-La; or Rep. Saxby Chambliss, GA, who suggested that homeland security could be improved by turning loose Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk to "arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line."

to our credit we haven't replicated the internment camps of WWII, and Mr. Bush was quick to rush off to a mosque following 9-11, not that this gesture could stop every vigilante nut with a gun. but

about the photojournalists, of course the carnage they record won't be seen in the us media. now, it is not altogether surprising that the us media shies from gore. however, what is dissapointing is the lack of iraqi voices in the US reports over the last 3 years. only on BBC and CBC (Canadian) do I regularly see Iraqis, on the street, with their comments heard at length with interpretation. Occasionally one hears them on NPR radio. but for all the talk of iraq you'd think we'd hear from more iraqis.

as to other charges of media bias, there's been some crap circulating about a statue. i'll say no more as it's already been said.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/kalat.asp

http://cellar.org/iotd.php?threadid=5086

forget who did that one. pretty powerful. the hawks of the world always moan about the reality of a violent world, and having to fight with 'one hand tied behind their back' and how we should have nuked Vietnam. but the fact is, if you want to be the shining city on the hill, you have to shine- and so stooping to the lows of the enemy is not an acceptable tactic. there are noble traditions in this nation, human rights among the more recent- but if we are not careful to preserve them, an over-reaching government could, in the name of protecting us from evil, take those rights away from us all.

Don't you believe? Why not? Shouldn't we all consider the possibility of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? It would explain so much.

http://www.venganza.org

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT L.S. 2005, free for personal use, commercial use prohibited without written consent of creator





There are many ideas i get in my addled brain whilst in urban traffic, for things that placed on the rears of vehicles, might raise the blood pressure of the enemy. it's a stupid and ultimately, karmically, counter-productive sort of urge, yet so satisfying it is, like Satan himself, so hard to resist. maybe i'll actuallyl cause a red-meat eating amurikkkan to have a premature cardiac episode that might interfere with their next vote!

So I'll post a few designs. If anyone ever wants one printed up as a sticker, email l i c i o u s d a l i @yahoo.com (remove the spaces in the ID) and I will send you a link to CafePress where you can buy one at cost (I don't need your money I just want to you have a sticker). Don't expect too speedy a turnaround folks as that is an email I use for BS and check less often than my other 2. Also I must upload each image to the printer or else they charge me money. But if you really want a sticker, I'll see to it you have one, as cheaply as I know how.

Ok. So i have committed to posting not only bile, to sort of round out the offerings for 2006. So here is another scrap of interest, at least for men:

www.gizmag.com

Some truly insane stuff, folks. i reccomend heading straight for the URBAN TRANSPORT section.

So for some time, the posting of pictures has been enabled, which allows me to do this: a finish the bumper-sticker thingie! here is a sticker i got at Lowes home improvement- not as balls-out as the local hardware store with a THANKS TO OUR TROOPS FOR PROTECTING THE WORLD banner (hubris anyone?) but still a solid shut-up-and-wave-the-flag-you-pantywaste kind of vibe.

Anyway I think what this sticker is begging for, is the replacing of the red URL with a witty tagline. Some of my suggestions would, placed on a vehicle, might put one at risk of being shot- not only by your rabid republican neighbor, but the recently returned from the mission vets, some of whom are having trouble reintegrating due to issues with aggression. Odd, isn't it? Kind of like Mike Tyson. Here, boys, go kill! Kill kill kill for your country! For your job! For your family! For a college education! For your own survival! For the poor Iraqi people, who actually don't want you there, but nevermind! Kill! Ok, ok, now stop. Stop killing, come home, and work retail. Be nice to the customers, ok? Anyway, pity our boys, but then discard that pity- they signed on the dotted line, entrusting their lives to the government, even after Vietnam, and in my mind that means it's open season on the military profession as a whole, because these stinking stickers keep portraying them like some kind of sacred cows, beyond criticism. There are no sacred cows, flags, or gods in this blog, ok? I am, in my blog incarnation, an equal opportunity offender. So envision these new taglines:

AMERICA SUPPORTS YOU
Our Military Men and Women
-too bad the Bush adminstration doesn't.
-well, sort of.
-financially, anyway.
-through involuntary taxation.
-bombs to bodybags, we foot the bill.
and my personal favorite, totally unfair but here goes:

AMERICA SUPPORTS YOU
Our Military Men and Women
-You're Abu Great!

soapbox. may offend. i think i should start most of my posts with that disclaimer, though for the new year i have also committed to posting other sites of random interest, not only doom and gloom rantings and rabid liberal ravings.

it's been awhile. i don't have the time, energy, or ego needed to continually maintain this thing. what's the motivation? one person visited 6 months ago. i use too much profanity and go too off the wall and personal to invite most colleagues to this shitfest anyway. other blogs are sexier and certainly more intelligent reads. the only thing i offer here is my own eye and stylings, and i didn't go into it envisioning an audience. it's a journal, and to me journals were always sort of...private. what is it with the disclose-all, virtual verbal vomit of the new generation anyhow? my self-deprecating remarks are not a ploy for ego-boosting comments (or invitation for flames)- just thinking out loud, which seems to be pretty much what this journaling is good for. i have always been a compulsive writer. it helps work out thoughts to spew them. spewing thoughts helps to work them out, that's better. see? it is also a hoot to shoot off. there is always some ignorant arsehole out there blogging about how we should militarize the border that makes me want to spew. i am just not convinced either really produces any sort of result- reflection, honing of ideas, changing of minds...it's mostly an exchange of hot air, and perhaps a buildup of sorts, the global warming of the national divisiveness. our divides, and the way politicians play them, continue to fascinate me. the church-state issue. the gay issue. the abortion issue. the economic and cultural crisis in America. the race issue. the environment. these things are always floating just below the surface of my polite everyday interations with neighbors, and it is so interesting the variety of positions and nuances that do exist- we may agree on a few and disagree on others- so interesting how supposedly opposing groups, like leftist hippies and pentecostals, have areas of common ground such as the over-commercialization of christmas. is there any hope for a nation this diverse, or will the cultural factions define and unify within them selves to the point of an irreconcilable schism? Has that schism already happened?

and on i go, and for what? i don't even know. i am frankly not invested in virtual communities, again due to the maintenance. i used to do discussion forums, but the egos...yuk. and nobody learned anything really, even presented with hard evidence most people have now hardened their positions to the point that they will respond to contrary ideas with 'I don't know about that' or "It still doesn't change my beliefs/values' or whatever. They mostly existed for the witty snap, the Jerry Springer moment, the smackdown. Chainging minds is a very weak possibility due to the fact that we largely live in different realities, and envision different realities. That is because to a large degree, from manners to architecture, reality is a social construction. Life is what you make it and society is what we make it, which is what all the fuss is about from the school board to the Supreme Court. Laws reflect the opinions of people in power. Symbols only have the meaning we attach to them. And human diversity is a natural phenomenon, evolved for our survival, which dictates that we will continue to be different from one another in appearance and behavior for as long as our species continues to plague the earth. I mean, as cute and fabulous as we are, we are not doing the planet a lot of favors, let's be real about that.

Anyhoo this is not a place to display my ego, or to capitalize much. and even if i should connect with like minds- which is a positive thing- i don't know how likely i am to return the massage to other egos in the ether. i am just not sure of the point. entertainment? companionship of a sort? the illusion of a revolution fomented in front of dim computer screens in pajamas? as it happens i have some free time and enjoy scribbling, so i am back on the blog. but i am not a committed blogger because i haven't sorted out why i blog. i am just a confused puppy. this is mostly for my own shits and giggles but if you read anything that tickles feel free to tickle back...just don't expect a prompt response as i may be back only intermittently, and my apologies if that appears selfish. it is really just a function of keeping life simple.