Girl Anachronicles

This is a story about a tiny little stovetop of an island...

I went to one of the most accesible gas stations in Hato Rey this morning for my car’s yearly inspection. Since it’s a station sitting smack in the middle of a main avenue, I wasn’t surprised to find a queue of people waiting for their inspection too. I made #7, I got lucky. It was a hotter-than-hell morning, and we were expecting it to rain cats and dogs any minute (the weather here changes from one moment to the next with ease).

Since I wasn’t in the mood to sit in a waiting area with other random people – sit in a waiting area in Puerto Rico, and eventually someone will pull you into a conversation you don’t want to have, – I went to wait in my car, enjoy my tag-along coffee mug and a cigarette. Not the best option to fight the heat, but definitely the best option to avoid socialization.

I eventually got called into the inspection area, which is mainly the same as the waiting area: the waiting area is comprised by a small group of outdoor plastic chairs placed alongside the inspection area. Spared no expense on that one!

While the tests were being run, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation held by two other people sitting at their chairs, and it was mainly this:

30-something dweeb who’s apparently a family man: “Ooooh the heat, yadda yadda yadda!  And you can’t even go to the beach like this, you don’t want the rain to catch up to you at the beach! [Ed. note: It's not like you're not gonna get wet anyway, you moron!] That’s why these days are great to go to the movie theatre…”

20-something girl that’s heading into the same sorry destination as her interloper: “Yeah, or to the bowling alley!”

.. uh-oh! here we go!..

30-sDWAFM: “Ah, yes! I went to the bowling alley in Caguas the other day. It was great. They have these sofas that are so comfy, really cozy, not like other bowling alleys. And it was empty, it only started getting full as we were leaving. And they have food and all sorts of stuff… Only $60, I spent! We had pizza, which was like $10, and 2 or 3 Pecsi pitchers, and a tray of mozzarella estís, which was really cheap, about $9-something [Ed. note: WTF, dude! NINE DOLLARS for a fucking mozzarella stick tray that probably had like 6 sticks? You got duped!]. It’s worth it”

Taste the fake cheese!

20-sGTHISSDAHI: “Cool! The bowling alley in Ponce is just as nice.”

30-sDWAFM: “Where is that?”

LAWL! And I had to stop listening right there. He also mentioned a few movies worth watching at the theatre, such as Shrek Forever After and Prince of Persia, you know, good movies… kill me now!

..it’s up for an Oscar, I can SMELL it, even over Jake G’s spray tan!

And then it got me thinking: this is the way most people deal with either hot, rainy or simply uncomfortable days: we’re avoiding our own condition of living in a tropical island. We keep escaping the heat and the rain and essentially just everything that makes our tropical paradise into something less-than-perfect. We’re native Puerto Ricans, and we just bought into the image sold by the Tourism Company of Puerto Rico. I don’t know how they did it, but they can apparently sell an imported ice bag to an eskimo. As soon as we break into the smallest sweat, well, it’s time to go to the mall! And if it rains? Oh, to the mall too! Apparently, people in Puerto Rico don’t like staying home (then why pay $1500 in a fucking mortgage, dude! if you’re not gonna be living in it?!), but they also don’t like being outside, at least not in Puerto Rico.

You know the Puerto Rican’s true image of paradise?

Ahhh, this is the life!

Hay de cosas innecesarias en esta vida: conferencias de prensa por un temblorcito de 6 segundos, nombramientos ridículos a un centro de convenciones brand new, pop-ups de publicidad que te invaden la pantalla completa cuando vas a visitar el periódico online…

…y otro “Reencuentro” … KA$$$HING!

Cambiando chavos por dignidad...

Estos pendejos van a hacer OOOOOTRO “reencuentro” más. La gira comienza el 5 de junio, vi el poster esta mañana en una parada de guagua y por poco me da un ataque de vomitera-chiquita (“I threw up a little in my mouth”). Porque, la pregunta es:

¿Cuántos hijoeputas reencuentros tienen que hacer estos maricones?!!!

Lo triste del caso es que existe un demográfico bastante nutrido, pudiente e insoportable que todavía se moja los pantis a la vista de la cara de papa de Ray. Ew… Mientras las mujeres no se enteren que ya Menudo pasó y que está un chin triste seguir pagando billetes altos pa ir a bailar al son de “Cámbiale las pilas a tu vida” (a cambio de dejar de pagar el agua, la luz o el celular … del marido … con los chavos que él le dio pa que ella hiciera el pago … hay mujeres cabronas, sa’e!)… pues mientras ese demográfico no se entere de lo patético del asunto, seguirán sucediendo “reencuentros” innecesarios …

Clajemielda!

Prom never felt so right. Last night was the long-awaited Lost series finale. After years of Tuesday get-togethers at Pepe’s house, this would be the last official TV-crew gathering. Every Tuesday for the last few years we’d get together, bring popcorn, cupcakes, wine, beer, whiskey, chips, etc, and have a geek-out feast. We also did this for Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, but these series are long finished and gone (or have been horribly malformed! Sorry, Heroes!). Lost is the last of its kind, so this one finale brings with it a taste of sadness and nostalgia… much like prom, you’re saying good-bye to Lostie classmates.

So a number of friends, slightly more than the ordinary TV-crew, agreed to meet up for the last time at Pepe’s house. And, like we do in cases in which some of us are traveling from more or less the same area, a few of these friends decided to meet up at my house first so we could carpool to Pepe’s. This is where the fun starts.

First we had Cecilia (one of Eze’s coworkers, charming as a button) come to our house in dire need of a shower. She’s been camping out at the Río Piedras campus during the strike, so she had no cell phone to call us up and let us know she was there, so she proceeded to climb the condo’s fence and then call out Eze’s name like a madwoman. In the process she got a tear in her lovely sundress, and as soon as she came up laughing her head off (she was slightly drunk), I knew it was going to be an epic night.

We carpooled there: Cecilia, Lynnie, Josian, Katiuska, Eze & I, and when we got there, the house was already full! (as I used to say to my sister on those Saturdays of yore: “Caaaasa llena!”) We arrived with more than an hour to spare, so we did what we always do when there’s a lull or pause in our TV-watching activities: we ate and we drank, we sat outside to talk shit and smoke, etc… And then I see Ceci come out from the kitchen juggling three plastic cups full to the brim, and she offers me two (one for me, one for Lynnie). I think *Hey, that looks like a handful, I should help her out and grab those two in her left hand* … always follow your hunches. I went to grab one and the second one cascaded on me.

Oh, the contents? Calimocho: a delicious mix of Coca Cola and wine. Thankfully, the top I was wearing was red. Not so lucky that my pants were a beige-y tone of gray: now I had a map of burgundy continents down my legs. I walked in and headed to the bathroom, where I tried a few on-the-spot solutions for the wine stains: commercial spot removers, hand sanitizer, and ultimately took my pants off and washed them off with Ivory.  Suffice it to say, I spent the rest of the night wearing wet pants.

The Lost finale in itself: there’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said. The event has been a mediatic carnival: people have either loved or hated what happened there. The one thing that I can say without being biased: the series was 6 full years of buildup on a fan-base that was as hardcore as they get. People obsessed over the tiniest little details, and read into every single line uttered in that show. I think it would’ve been unreasonable to expect EVERY viewer to love the finale. So many expectations were on the line with those last 2.5 hours, that some of those had to fall through. Some people felt it was a cop-out (memories of likewise comments about BSG’s finale come to me). I think it was an unconventional happy ending in a time in which morbid cynicism is the expected norm, and that took guts. Lost shall be missed, to some extent as the compelling story we grew to love and obsess about, and then as the easy motive to gather around each week as a family to watch a narrative that gave us topics to pore over for hours and hours.

…however, why the FUCK can’t dogs go to heaven!? C’mon, Damon & Lindeloff! What gives!

Vincent, we will miss you!

He’s probably hanging out with BSG’s Jake in a place way cooler than the island or Jack’s heaven.

Getting mentally ready for the snip snip on Gallifrey’s balls. I was instructed to withdraw his food since 8pm tonight. That means withdrawing his food and Caprica’s food – and their water –  as well (Gallifrey is not a very discerning cat, he’ll eat dog food as happily as his own cat chow). The house feels a bit empty. Vero is at work and Eze is out and about recording for #EnProfundo. I think Caprica knows something is not right.

..she knows something's amiss..

I’m almost sure Caprica would go into a depression if Gallifrey ever went missing…

On another note, this is the new turn on things going on in the UPR strike:

The police of PR spending our dollar so well...

Students and other interested parties went to protest at the Sheraton Hotel. Governor Fortuño was holding an activity in this hotel in which people were paying $1000 per plate… this in a system in which we’re being told there’s not enough money to uphold a functional budget for the public university. Protesting students were approached by the riot police… and you know how these things go. Next thing we know, they’ll be heading towards Río Piedras campus…

Things are getting out of hand…

You know how appliances and cars have the very annoying tendency to break down just when you come across money? Well, my belongings apparently learned how to fucking read, and they must have found this blog post to be a sort of challenge.

My cell phone (an unnecessarily swanky Palm Pre) started acting up some days ago: it’s a touch-screen phone, and suddenly it started acting as if a thousand fingers were playing on it all at once. It started making calls and writing emails by itself. I was like thisclose to calling the Ghostbusters, but then I realized that a) they don’t cover electronics, and b) they’re fictional characters. So I did the next best thing today: after work, I took the Child of Poltergeist to its parents – the Sprint Store.

Sorry, lady, but our policy doesn't cover Palm products.

Vero rode along with me to keep me company and also to have her own Palm Pixi looked after (hers was a bit torn up by the usual tear and wear… well, “the usual tear and wear” by Vero). It was pouring by the time I got home to pick her up, and by the time we got to the Ponce de León Ave (where the Sprint store is), the streets were absolutely flooded. I drove on, confident that my teeny Toyota Echo would make the trip with no incidents.

We dropped our phones with the tech team and headed across the avenue to have lunch. By the time we were back, the bottoms of my pant legs were soaked and my sneakers were all squishy and mooshy inside (yuck! like walking on seaweed, nasty nasty, I don’t wanna feel like I’m Under the fucking Sea every time I take a step! those tennis shoes have GOT to go!). We got inside after taking some flak from a random guy about us smoking outside. Fortunately, Vero’s phone was fixable. Mine wasn’t. It had fucking RUST inside, the goddamned thing DID go and sing Under the fucking Sea with my tennis shoes apparently. They tell me it’s replaceable with a deductible of $100 I don’t fucking have.

So we get into the car and suddenly we’re trapped in a huge-ass traffic jam. Everywhere we turn, there are cars stopped like it’s freakin’ Christmas in Plaza las Américas (the centermost circle of HELL). I’m guessing it was an hour before we finally got home, but on our way there we find out the reason for the excess of traffic: a man got killed in a gas station smack in the middel of our route home. So, I took an alternate route, and just when I start picking up speed I realize: my brake pads broke. They most likely got water-logged while they were still hot and -POP!- they broke.

$100 for the cell phone, God-knows-how-much for the brake pads, WTF!?

Car! Cell phone! Goddamn you and your fucking opportunism. Go fuck your mothers.

Not my actual car. My car is dirtier and has a better personality

I hate you and I love you, but fuck you, phone

PS: Upon later remembrance, I realized my phone DID undergo some liquid distress. One drunken night, I dropped it on the ground and didn’t notice until half an hour later. It was a rainy night. It DEFINITELY sang Under the Sea with that pesky little lobster.

Go fuck a goat, Sebastian!