christmas, yay.

every christmas eve eve I hear this weird ominous music in my head.














it's coming...

public school

I spend a good amount of time trying to convince people that UMass Lowell is a great school, that it doesn't deserve its horrible reputation, and that I'm getting a super rigorous education (well, as rigorous as I can handle anyways).

Then UML decides to put THIS on their homepage to advertise how eeeeeeasy it is to get a few credits over winter break.

I have no words to describe how misguided this marketing scheme is, how many months of convincing this is going to set me back, how much lamer I now feel for being overwhelmed by my coursework...

a desalambrar

"It is better to remain quiet and to forget. That is the only thing we must do. We must forget. And that won't happen if we continue opening up lawsuits, sending people to jail. FOR-GET: That's the word. And for that to happen, both sides must forget and continue with their work."
~Pinochet


So Pinochet is dead at the ripe old age of 91. He will have never known suffering like that he inflicted on others. He was never punished for the crimes he committed, he may never be held responsible.

En la Villa Grimaldi cayó un septiembre amargo
Un grupo de hombres lobos sentó allí sus reales
Se les unió la muerte con su fría guadaña
Y el horror con su corte de atroces materiales

En la Villa Grimaldi se callaron los pájaros
El silencio del bosque se hizo duro y tullido
En su lugar crecieron sórdidos estertores
Agónicas plegarias e inhumanos aullidos

I'm working on scanning my pictures from Chile, so you'll be able to see what Villa Grimaldi looks like. It was a concentration camp that was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s in he hills on the outskirts of Santiago. While I was there I visited Villa Grimaldi twice, with a man who had been interned and tortured there. More about that later, I'm tired now.

q&a with patty, worrywart

So I was telling my friend Patty about his argument I got into with some pretentious plastics engineers about toxic substances in household products. This one guy basically tried to argue that if we didn't have brominated flame retardants there would be dead babies lying around everywhere. I made a feeble attempt to get into it with him, but eventually decided that there's no point in arguing with someone who just wants to win so he can feel better about himself. Anyhow, when retelling the story started to go on and on about how the toxics stay in the body for decades and how there are natural alternatives that are just as flame-retardant, etc...

Patty, always the pragmatist, pointed out that a lot of these issues could be solved if people had a little common sense:

"JUST DON'T PUT YOUR BABY NEXT TO A FIRE!"

Now that is what I'm talking about.

tha woo

I went to Worcester with my boss/professor Bob yesterday. We did some interviews and one guy drove us around the neighborhood where I went to school when I was little. I didn't tell him that until we had already left the neighborhood, because I thought telling him would be like cheating.

It was so surreal though, to hear this guy talk about these places as if we were tourists (well, weird eccentric tourists who come to see abandoned factories and redeveloped affordable housing units). It was interesting to notice what he mentioned and pointed out and what he glossed over. Like I said, though, I kept my mouth shut.


I was sad that we didn't have more time after the interviews, I should have shown Bob some more Worcester, like this mural that I saw every day of my life for years:

It must have been done right after the Berlin Wall fell. The Perestroika and Glasnost were always there; the Target logo was not.

I just finished this a few days ago. I started it over a year ago as a Solstice present for Maggie, then it evolved into a birthday present for my mother. Her birthday was September 12, and she got it on Thanksgiving. Not bad, but I'm getting faster and more efficient every day. When I called my dad on his birthday (November 29th) I told him that his birthday present will definitely be finished before it's too warm to wear a scarf.

la memoria obstinada

Pinochet is dying, just a few days after he admitted responsibility for all the atrocities of his dicatorship:

PINOCHET’S CONDITION STABLE, BUT CHILE FORCED TO DEBATE DICTATOR’S LEGACY

Doctors Reject Second Intervention After General Suffers Heart Attack

(December 4, 2006) Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet suffered a severe heart attack early Sunday morning and was rushed to a military hospital where doctors preformed a life-saving angioplasty on the 91-year-old former general.

Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara reported that Pinochet is conscious and is breathing without assistance. He added, however, that the heart attack left Pinochet in serious condition because of his advanced age.

Pinochet’s youngest son confirmed that the former dictator had received his last rites from a Catholic priest and said doctors literally had brought Pinochet back from death. “He’s no longer in the hands of the doctors, but in the hands of God,” said the young Pinochet.
more...

And Chavez won in a landslide.

Simón Bolívar, Simón,
caraqueño americano,
el suelo venezolano
le dio la fuerza a tu voz.
Simón Bolívar, Simón,
nació de tu Venezuela
y por todo el tiempo vuela
como candela tu voz.
Como candela que va
señalando un rumbo cierto
en este suelo cubierto
de muertos con dignidad.