UPDATE: Ahh, you (un)lucky souls. It turns out tonight I will be dining with my computer screen. Which is to say you, asynchronously, which means, if you’re so courageous, you can now at least skim over the smarts of Mr. Robbins which I have typed out below. Before I forget, a shoutout to my boy HP, who I apologized to after being so cranky last night. A shoutout to Mari, who says it right once again on AlterNet. And a shout out to the Doctor who’s kicking some ass on the wiki. Adelante carnales.

It used to be, back in San Diego, a certain routine developed when it came to writing a blog post. My usual cup of the dark stuff, a pastry - sometimes sweet, sometimes savoury - and whatever sections of the Union-Tribune, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal I could find lying around my neighborhood cafe. I’d skim through the papers for about 30 minutes to check out the international situation. And like my dear friend Tom says, “the international situation is always desperate.” Still, it managed to intrigue me. A well written soap opera arguing over the usual adulteries.

On cue, 30 minutes to the tee after that first drop of squeezed java went down, I would get up with buddha-like calm and Gary Cooper confidence and go take the most giganticest shit you’ve ever had the fortune to not see in your life. With so many types of yoga, I still don’t understand why these Indian smarty pants haven’t come up with shitting yoga. Cause I tell you, it’s by far the fastest way to that devine sense of balance which fools you into thinking you know what’s going on.

Bueno, and then I would type. But something has changed and I blame this Pavlov fellow. Now, all I do is pour the coffee grains into our little french press and the turtle is already peeking like a Chinese city. I’ve become a premature defecator and it’s really effecting my writing life. Throwing me completely out of wack.

A friend writes:

I have to tell you that I haven’t been keeping up with news/blog of you. I’ve
checked in a couple of times and realized that I’m just not enough of an
intellectual for it. And even if I was tempted to post a comment, I have no
gravatar (or gravitas, for that matter). I didn’t even know what a goddamned
avatar was! Pretty much out of my element. And frankly, I’m kinda sick of
feeling out of my element. It’s becoming an almost constant state. For a
minute, I think ‘OK, let me learn about this; this sounds really interesting,
really important, really…’ And then it’s ‘I don’t have a minute. I’ll lose my
job; they’ll repossess my house; I’ll fail!’ if I don’t take care of what’s
already on my plate. A long-winded explanation for ‘I don’t have the energy.’
There was a time when I felt like I had it covered, whatever it was (clearly a
sign that I didn’t know shit). I was more interested in deconstructing this and
that, the human condition, getting to the bottom of things (not nearly as
eloquently as you, never –except maybe on acid- no, not even). Like I was
reading your post on the Chinese novel, and well, in my reductionist mind,
everything about the human endeavor, status, power, jealousy, economic policy,
boringly boils down to evolutionary theory. All the ugly stuff is about
self-preservation and survival-of-the-fittest and all the sublime is what we
aspire to become.

For years now, my routine has been to listen to NPR every morning. It starts
with my alarm clock and I let the day’s news creep into the last of my dreams;
then I keep it on on my way to work; be sure I know what’s going on. But I’ve
been noticing que las noticias del mundo me aplastan, so for the last couple of
days I’ve been putting on music instead, which has the exact opposite effect.
Like, for example today I found out that Verizon contributed to Tom Delay and to
the republican party by the millions, and I JUST renewed my contract with them!
Now the bastards have me for 2 years. I wonder if they have a conscientious
objector clause… Like, I’m watching TV right now and the Ramones are selling
some frumpy Mitsubishi. Now The Who’s “I’m Free” is selling a Saab. I’m
Free!!!…the hell!?

And I can’t agree enough. I’m inspired to boycott our own blog because I just can’t seem to work myself up to give a shit about it. Which is so weird cause just a few weeks ago I probably woulda said that blogging and reading blogs is one of the best things to have happened to me over the past several years because it’s opened me up to so many new perspectives and new ideas that I would have never come across otherwise. And if that doesn’t reek of cyber geek, I don’t know what does. But now I’m thinking more like, what a waste of perty letters. Again, it’s the schedule of my bowel movements that’s messing it all up.

So for the past couple days I’ve been trying email out again. You know, “leave a message at the beep.” “Hi, this is Oso, look long time no see, I realize, just uh, wondering how things have been, how’s that new girlfriend of yours, how’s uh … yeah, well just wanting to check in, you know, hit me back when you got a chance alright?” They write back: “Os, wassup bro, I didn’t tell you? I got married, yeah man, things going pretty good, I always feel so bad that I haven’t checked out your blog in a while.”

And that’s that. We blame the bowel movement.

Of course there’s the good news. Besides the new pope who’s just as cute as a jelley bean, a group of us here in Monterrey are trying to give some mouth to mouth to Seyd’s masterful creation, MTYBlogs. If you know how to make a pretty XHTML front end to an OPML and FOAF, MySQL based directory or have a general affinity for acronyms, please leave a comment.

I met three of the people involved - Rolando, Candy (who for some reason took a photo of my crotch), and Alan - at last week’s Monterrey blogger’s meetup and they’re super duper. Cream of the crop, rise to the top, never eat no pig cause …

It’s kinda weird ’cause for the most part we’re all talking and planning on an email listserve that Seyd set up which has forced me to write much more Spanish than I ever have in my life. And I keep having this feeling that I come off as a total asshole because I still haven’t mastered the art of couching language like we so subtly do in English.

This weekend there’s a round table put on the by secretary of culture on books and the internet and I figure I might go since secretaries seem to be pretty attractive around here.

The idea was to quote favorite most recent paragraphs out of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (which is about every other paragraph of the entire damn book) but alas, it is time for me to teach a group of bottling engineers the difference between adjectives and adverbs. So depending on the domestic situation tonight (which lately has been much like the international situation) I might update the post with some gems of Mr. Robbins. I send you, my friends, love and cacahuates.

“Julian doesn’t know his scrotum from Kentucky fried chicken,” grumbled Dr. Robbins. “I recognize that paradox that the Chink was speaking of; it’s inside us as well as all around us. I went into psychiatry with teh desire to help set people free. But I soon learned that man is stuck with a lot of conflicting behavioral and emotional traits that have a genetic basis. We have built-in contradictions; they’re standard equipment on all models. No matter how much people long to be free - even to the point of valuing freedom over happiness - an aversion to liberty is right there in their DNA. For eons of evolutionary time, our DNA has been whispering into the ears of our cels that we are, each one of us, the most precious things in the universe and that any action that entails the slightest risk to us may have consequences of universal importance. ‘Be careful, get comfortable, don’t make any waves,’ whispers the DNA. Conversely, the yearning for freedom, the risky belief that there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain, is also in our DNA. But it’s of much more recent evolutionary origin, according to me. It has arisen during the past couple of million years, during the rapid increase in brain size and intellectual capacity associated with our becoming human. But the desire for security, the will to survive, is of much greater antiquity. For the present, the conflicting yearnings in the DNA generate a basic paradox that in turn generates the character - nothing if not contradictory - of man. To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How’s that for a paradox? But since the genetic bent for freedom is comparatively recent, it may represent an evolutionary trend. We may yet outgrow our overriding obsession to survive. That’s why I encourage everyone to take chances, to court danger, to welcome anxiety, to flaunt insecurity, to rock every boat and always cut against the grain. By pushing it, goosing it along whenever possible, we may speed up the process, the process by which the need for playfulness and liberty becomes stronger than the need for comfort and security.