Black Friday is here. Last year I had to wake up at 3 am to work before dawn in a color calendar publicity rampage for CopyMax. Thanks for small blessings. This year I got to sleep until 7:30 a.m.

This year I have already secured my chocolate coquito bottle. If you don't know what coquito is, let me explain: it is similar to spiked eggnog, usually with illegal Puerto Rican rum, cinnamon, sugar and coconut cream. (I am a law abiding citizen, I am a saint, I do not delve in caves with murky waters of illegality...hmmm, murky, chocolate coquito is murky) A friend of mine prepares it the traditional way, but once I tasted the chocolate version I was converted. She told me she is going to experiment some more this weekend and try to make strawberry coquito.

On the judicial front- The Supreme Court said: count the votes immediately or I will find you in contempt. The Federal Court said: don't count the votes for now until I find out if I have jurisdiction or I will find you in contempt. This is getting more hilarious by the day.

The past weekend found me at a press freedom seminar. Since I am not an independent reporter, I was found not to be free by the fellow panelists. Well, duh! I don't own the newspaper I work for. Hated the experience and hated the fact that my boss knew what she was getting me into. Bah!

The political front here is even funnier. Now the federal court wants to stick its politically biased finger in deciding who will be governor. If everything goes according to plan, the elected governor will not be certified until May 2005 when the Court of the First District picks a candidate.

Been silent, I know. Well, I promised I would stop talking about politics and suddenly all other sujects have escaped my mind. So I will get the encore out and write some political shit down.

Here in Puerto Rico, we still don't know who will be governor. We have our homegrown version of the hanging "chads", the mixed vote. Sometimes this special vote has been counted, others it has been annuled but it was not a mass problem up until this particular election. There are 26,000 mixed ballots. The difference between the two candidates is more or less 3,000 votes. There is no standard procedure whether to validate this vote or not. The instructions on the ballot are vague and can be interpreted two ways. The problem is that this issue has made the courts and therefore stalled the electoral counting process. Here is when things go awry:

Our "constitution" (Why the quotes? Well, a constitution is the Law from which all others are derived, but that is NOT the case in Puerto Rico. So our constitution is unconstitutional. But that is a very personal political rant, and we don't want that right now.) As I was saying: our "constitution" says, on one hand, that the actual governor must stay in place until the successor is certified. BUT: seven paragraphs later it says that if the election outcome is not decided by January 2, the elected Camera and Senate decide who will be governor. So what we have here is failure to draft a fucking coherent piece of shitty paper with clear instructions (again).The governor stays put until the elected governor is certified by the electoral commission and the Camera and Senate decide who is governor. What the fuck is that? And if push comes to shove, the US judicial system must dig their hand in because this particular contested ballot includes a federal position, the fucking impotent in-name-only resident commissioner. Oops, I just spoke out my mind.

Any way this decision swings will make things nasty for the next four years. The Dominican Republic sounds like a good place to live in right now. Look what you can buy for $60,000:

On the third day, he resurrected...

It seems, that the person I least want to be governor is now challenging the votes and saying that he was elected. He waited to react now in keeping with the Messiah hoopla he has created around himself. (Yes: this guy's campaign revolves around drawing comparisons between himself and Jesus Christ. The final pre-election rally included him in ascension mode on a platform that slowly raised with special lighting effects mimicking Old Glory. He has proclaimed himself as Puerto Rico's savior, he considers himself a Protestant-Catholic (WTF!?), priests and ministers have appeared in TV ads calling him "The Chosen and Annointed One". It is deeply disturbing honestly, many Christians from his own party have not voted for him.) His predecessor in the PNP party is rumoured of stealing the election in 1980. After initially awarding the election to one person, they recounted, shut down the computer system and when it came back up, he won. My mother, who has always been anti-PNP, has not voted ever since her ID was among the ones destroyed by a fire in the Electoral Commission that same year, preventing her from voting without an affidavit.

I really would like for things to stay as they are right now. The three parties have control of different government branches. Most of the candidates in positions of power are not combative, son of guns, they seem to value relevant discussion of the issues. I would hate for political assholes to get a hold of power.

There. I don't think I will talk about politics for the next four years. Sorry, L, I know you and your family know a tender, softer, gentler side of Rossellini, but it seems to be a gut reaction in me to despise the guy. Sigh.

The Puerto Rican elections are not apt for cardiac patients. Right now, in a 4 million population, with 2 million voters, the governor is being decided by a thousand votes.

My party is the Independentist. They never win anything. the sad thing is they may not make it for another election, they will be disenfranchised. Oh, well.

My second choice is winning right now, against all odds.

This has been a wild wild night.