Posted 5 years, 3 months ago in the early morning by oso
Imagine if your great-great-great-great-grandfather/mother had a blog. How rad would that be? Any time you wanted you could go and check out what they thought about Napolean or Cortes or what their favorite food was or why they got in fights with their neighbor. How crazy that our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be able to do that with us.
Call me MacGyver. I’ve gotta admit, I was addicted to the show as a kid. Well, I just locked myself out of the house again on my way to get a donut from 7-11, but using some mad skillz (a now broken screen and a broom) I was able to unlock the sliding bolt and avoid waiting outside with absolutely nothing more than 6 pesos for the next four hours.
My lady and I went to Real de Catorce in the neighboring state of San Luis Potosi this weekend with the hovering idea of trying a new type of nopal. That didn’t happen, but we did end up having an amazing weekend. I also realized my gadget dependency on batteries when my iPod gave up after four hours of highway (I forgot the charger) and my digital camera joined the conspiracy just as I was about to snap my first shot of the town. Luckily, girlfriend brought a disposable camera she picked up in Mexico City the week before so we’ll try to get that developed soon and I’ll write more about our trip and the town when we do.
My fellow English teaching, frisbee throwing, weight lifting, guitar strumming, blackberry pickin’, Indio drinking Gringo-Regio, Dr. Cereal just put up some pretty amazing pictures of the city on Flickr. I think it’s time I put the pressure on about starting a blog. As you can tell, he is a better photographer and has a way cooler apartment. But don’t worry. I have a plot to get him drunk enough on Indios to challenge him to a game of frisbee golf where he will bet away his apartment … and of course lose.
I have finally, finally finished my response to HP’s argument against gay marriage. I’ll post it in a couple days … I hope it generates some healthy and respectful conversation.
AfroGEEKS 2005 seems like a more than worthwhile conference. I remember while studying in Barbados, it was obvious that the upper class of the island was using the internet to search out and contact other Blacks throughout the Caribbean as well as Africa, the United States, and Canada. But it was very much limited to the educated, upper-class of the island (sons and daughters of politicians and business owners). I hope someone brings up the element of class division in the online presence of the African diaspora. Mark Dery, it turns out, will also be speaking at the conference. I’m awaiting my issue of CABINET, which I won by default for my Mexico City recommendations. And as a final aside, I’ve become a big fan of the blog Negrophile and have been meaning to comment on the disappearance of Blacks in Argentina and relate it to the similar disappearance of Blacks in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
While Race Matters, so does class, which is why I’m very happy to see the New York Times has the courage to start a new series called Class Matters – Social Class in the United States.
From the very well articulated opening article of the series:
Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents. Social diversity has erased many of the old markers. It has become harder to read people’s status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin. The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared.
But class is still a powerful force in American life. Over the past three decades, it has come to play a greater, not lesser, role in important ways. At a time when education matters more than ever, success in school remains linked tightly to class. At a time when the country is increasingly integrated racially, the rich are isolating themselves more and more. At a time of extraordinary advances in medicine, class differences in health and lifespan are wide and appear to be widening.
And new research on mobility, the movement of families up and down the economic ladder, shows there is far less of it than economists once thought and less than most people believe. In fact, mobility, which once buoyed the working lives of Americans as it rose in the decades after World War II, has lately flattened out or possibly even declined, many researchers say.
Mobility is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. It is supposed to take the sting out of the widening gulf between the have-mores and the have-nots. There are poor and rich in the United States, of course, the argument goes; but as long as one can become the other, as long as there is something close to equality of opportunity, the differences between them do not add up to class barriers.
Over the next three weeks, The Times will publish a series of articles on class in America, a dimension of the national experience that tends to go unexamined, if acknowledged at all. With class now seeming more elusive than ever, the articles take stock of its influence in the lives of individuals: a lawyer who rose out of an impoverished Kentucky hollow; an unemployed metal worker in Spokane, Wash., regretting his decision to skip college; a multimillionaire in Nantucket, Mass., musing over the cachet of his 200-foot yacht.
There is also a forum to discuss the series.
And finally, mad props to Lourdes who emailed me this very graphic representation (Windows Media Video file) of how I got my nickname.
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Aleix and I drove along the ocean border of Guerrero and he commented to me that in terms of the people it felt much more carribbean than the carribbean had to him. When I asked him to explain he talked about the obvious mix of afro-mesitzo (o mejor dicho mulato-mestizo?).
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Alexi and I drove along the ocean border of Guerrero and he commented to me that in terms of the people it felt much more Caribbean than the Caribbean had to him. When I asked him to explain he talked about the obvious mix of afro-mesitzo (o mejor dicho mulato-mestizo?).
I still think that Guerrero and Oaxaca are the best states in Mexico. We’ve got africanos, asiaticos, arabes, indios, mulatos, mestizos. Simon.
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That would be rad if my grandma had a blog!
Looking forward to seeing your gay marriage response.
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man, i cant wait to read about your great grandmother’s gay marriage to her blog, that should be an interesting read i’ll be sure to comment on. also, did you hear about what Fox said about blacks in america?
I don’t see why people are surprised tho, Vicente Fox is the owner of the Fox News Channel which unabashedly promotes the Bush agenda under the guise of “news”. anyway, sounds like you had a good time in the Carribean, put up some pics you took with that digi cam, dog!
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i missed out on real de catorce on my last trip to mexico. please post pics–i wanna see what i missed out on.
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If I go visit you in Monterrey will I get to visit your friend too? And what the hells is frisbee golf? This is the second time you mention something I’m clueless about. I guess I just don’t have the cultural capital.
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And you called yourself MacGyver´s fan??? I´m sure MacGyver would come out with something, even in Real de Catorce…shame on you Oso
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i’ll be interested to read your response to the gay marriage issue, oso. i didn’t realize the post had gotten as lenghthy as it had via comments until i went back and re-read it all. i have some more opinions i need to get up as i don’t think the simple side of looking at it from a rights issues has been addressed adequately.
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can I say there is something bothersome to me (and I am not saying-logical or justified just bothersome) about two hetero men debating gay marriage?
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macgyvers the glue
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EM,
I’ve never been to Guerrero, but I agree with you about the Oaxacan coast. And believe it or not, northern Mexico is even more diverse than what you call “real Mexico.”
And I definitely agree with you about feeling strange/bothered about two straight men debating gay marriage. I hope that Myke and Seyd and anyone else who is gay will enter in, if not take over, the discussion.
Moreno,
I say it’s racist. Elenamary disagrees.
Irasali,
Pics-a-coming, I promise.
Cindylu,
It’s a hippie white-boy game. You aim your frisbee at trees and old ladies and see how many throws it takes you to hit ‘em. Dr. Cereal and I can teach you how to play if you come down.
Hipo,
iPods, as it turns out, don’t respond to peyote.
Myke,
You are well quoted in the post. Can’t wait to hear your opinion.
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As I started to write this, I was watching Bill O’Reilly on the fair and balanced channel, and I am again reminded why I, like so many others, don’t watch this guy anymore. Whenever he rants about how we need ‘the military on the border to stop all these illegals’, I get this strong urge to jump into the TV and argue with him. Doesn’t he realize that by going extreme anti-immigration, he is just going to attract the crazies, people like Pat Buchanan and Hillary Clinton? Urggghhhhhh, it is so frustrating to watch. I’d much rather watch Bill Maher than this guy….but I digress.
Boy have I missed you all. You guys do know that you are my favorite bunch of liberals (especially Cindylu
), right? I’ve been so busy lately with school/work and my upcoming trip to Monterrey that it has been hard for me to find time to come and visit. But don’t worry, I will try and make more time to at least finish our current discussion. After all, I can’t let Abogado take my title as #2 commenter on this blog. After so much work and dedication, I am not going to let it go without a fight.
What’s with all this talk about Guererro? Guererro is where my family is from. Some people think, with my recent trip to Guadalajara and my upcoming trip to Monterrey, that I am from Guadalajara or Monterrey. However, I don’t have any family that lives in Guadalajara, that trip originally started out as a trip to accompany a friend from college; I liked it so much, I went back three times. On the other hand, while I do have family that lives in Monterrey, an uncle, several cousins (all from the same uncle) and my grandma, that is only because my uncle decided to move there later in life. The sad thing about this is that while I have visited several parts of Mexico, the one place my family is from, Guererro, I have never visited. I’ve mentioned this to my dad several times, and while he goes back atleast twice a year, we still haven’t worked it out so that I can go down there with him. He says that I won’t be able to handle it, that it will be a wasted trip for me. Apparently, there is no hot water, they live on a ranch several miles away from the city, and it is in extreme poverty (As they say in Mexico, my dad is from ‘la tierra caliente’). In addition to this, he tells me that there is a lot of violence down there, every time he comes back he tells me of another family that got wiped out because of some family feud or something. He says that if I go, with my somewhat tempermental attitude, I may pick a fight with the wrong person and never return (would suck for the homies too, kinda far for them to go to avenge me).
But who knows, I think he is going in September, maybe we can plan a few days trip. Kinda sad that I am as I old as I am and have never visited whree my family is from. It is certainly on my things to do list though!!!
And I definitely agree with you about feeling strange/bothered about two straight men debating gay marriage.
This line of reasoning reminds me of a debate on abortion where one of the debate participants, a female professor at the university, said to the audience that she thought it was rather strange that it is two men who are representing the anti-abortion side. She said something like, ‘remember all, it is women who get pregnant, not men’.
One of the anti-abortion participants, being the more logical and intelligent participant, quickly responded with something like, “arguments don’t have penises, people do”. The audience immediately broke out in laughter, and you could tell that the pro-choice advocate had been outwitted (By the way, as a side note, in poll after poll, men have always supported abortion in higher percentages than women, the reason being, abortion ‘benefits’ men at the expense of women).
It is the same with gay marriage. It doesn’t matter who is doing the discussion, ultimately what counts is the arguments. In addition, as I’ve said before, the gay marriage debate is not about gays, it is about marriage. And the same arguments used against allowing gay marriage would be used against allowing any other union the title of marriage. But I’ll stop here and leave more of this for our upcoming discussion….
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You see, I really need to go with my dad on this next trip, I even spell the place wrong. I meant ‘GuerRero’!!
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“After all, I can’t let Abogado take my title as #2 commenter on this blog”. –HP
Cool! Now I beat Abogado……je je!
Has Oso posted his Gay Marriage reply yet? I checked and don’t see it.
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HP, so lovely to have you back. I hope your exams were like Sunday morning. I don’t blame you for coming back to us more than O’Reilly.
DD, it’s there. It’s long. Maybe I got carried away. Hope to hear your thoughts.
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Passing the musical baton
Sean has passed me the “musical baton”. Total size of music files on my computer: 17.17 GB (roughly 44 percent legal) The last CD I bought was: Zero 7 — Simple Things (UK) Song playing right now: The Killers — Mr. Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont’s Thi…