Macondo:  the dysfunctional location at the heart of Gabriel García Márquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and official nickname for Puerto Rico. Yeah, it is supposed to be a fictional Colombian town, but consider the following photographic evidence taken this morning:

Oh!  I need gas, let's go to the Texaco, uh-oh what a long line:

Rats, the Texaco doesn't have gas so the line is even longer and farther away.  (All these cars are in line for gas, the road was closed to all other traffic):

And then you realize you are competing with yet ANOTHER long line coming the other way:

Inside the station you fight it out with a tight, unruly, fatigued and belligerent clusterfuck of MORE cars:

When you finally get to your pump, wait until the gas station attendant explains to the four people in front that: NO, you are not special, you cannot fill your SUV tank, you get $10 worth , so beat it.

(The guy with the red container later boasted that he had filled it seven times by walking up to the pump without having to wait in line.  The lucky intelligent bastard)

As a reward for reading so far, here is a somewhat cropped but cute anyways pic of a thirsty Red Pony:

The government has said that everything will be fine on Monday. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

A ella le gusta la gasolina

I spent three hours getting gas for my car, ended up in Quebradillas. If the trucking and transport strike doesn't end tomorrow, Puerto Rico will not have one drop left anywhere. Like before Hurricane Georges, I am in a state of "Yipee, bring it on!" though that would probably mean that we will have a blackout soon, then we won't have drinking water, etc. etc. The theme song for the day is Daddy Yankee's Gasolina.

I have some news to cover tonight for work. Can't seem to find free time.

Saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a trip. Bonus: saw the trailer for Corpse Bride. Yay.

Too sleepy, had fun with Eliud and Viv last night at Denny's until almost 2 am. Eliud leaves for Utah on Saturday, to be a trucker of all things. He still believes that he will be the new version of BJ McKay. He doesn't have a chimpanzee and I don't think true truckers blast Chicago, Journey, REO and the rest non stop all day.



Which Trainspotting Character Are You?

I had not commented on this: piece of Hawaii news because it is not my business. By all means if you want to kill a pest that happens to be a beloved symbol in Puerto Rico, well go ahead, it is your state after all. The thing is that reading the article and such heartbreaking accounts of mental exhaustion and disquiet has left me speechless and breathless from all the laughing. Some people can't handle the coquí, after all this time they haven't got used to it. I will have to consciously wait until tonight to hear it and try to understand the chaos. How do they handle crickets then? I find them more annoying but I ignore them. Oh well, could be genetic, this is what happens when you fuck up with nature. Heh.

P.S. Maybe Hawaiians should try whatever it is that we do that we have driven several of the coquí species into extinction just by being us. Or they can send them all back, we can handle them. Coquí!

Had the most awful nightmare in a long time: Was in a grocery store shopping and suddenly everything goes dark. I dismiss it as a blackout, go to the cash register to pay and the guy tells me to take all the newspapers I want for free. I take one and leave the store, noticing the sky is also black. I look at my watch and it says that it is 9:30 am. As I am passing the firehouse I notice that the hill that overlooks Mayaguez, Cerro Las Mesas, is spewing dark gray ash clouds and there is a loud continuous rumble and hiss. I look at my house and see the whole neighborhood completely covered by orange and black running lava coming my way. I run towards the firehouse, sure that by getting to the top floor I will be safe. I start crying because I somehow know my mother made it to a safe place but she left the kitties and the dogs to be burnt alive. My feet feel heavy and the lava is getting near (why does the director of my nightmares always use these cliches, I tell you it is a total abuse of the slo-mo technique) In the time it takes me to reach the door of the firehouse, I have a cell phone conversation with the boyfriend who tells me that he is very sorry but can't come down because the roads are closed. He also tells me to be careful because he heard on the news that people are closing tall buildings so no one can get to them. I hang up and a fireman is putting a chain at the entrance of the stairs. I shout at him and he flees. When I get to the gate, the chain is padlocked and my feet start to burn. Then I woke up. It was a very nice and cozy feeling indeed.

I wonder about this, since there is no rational way to explain why volcanoes were on my mind. I almost never think of them and they don't interest me the way other natural disasters do. Weird.

Here is the banner for my boyfriend's next gig as a guest artist with the Antartica DJ set.

So, as my boyfriend predicted, this happened yesterday:

Puerto Ricans voted to do away with half their lawmakers, endorsing a one-house legislature that supporters say would be cheaper and more efficient.

Final results from Sunday's referendum showed nearly 84 percent of voters endorsed the concept of replacing the state Senate and House of Representatives with a one-house, or unicameral, legislature.

Turnout was about 22 percent, extremely low by Puerto Rican standards.

Opponents of the change suggested the results may not be binding on lawmakers.

``If the electorate ignored this process, the legislature also should ignore it,'' said Thomas Rivera Schatz, secretary-general of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, which controls both the Senate and House.

Complete news story here

And this is the democratic process we live in. You vote for something and they take into account the people who did not vote. (Of course, if bicamerality had won they would not have said the same thing). They were the ones who made possible this election and now they don't care about the results. I am not surprised since I saw it coming but I must admit it is galling to see how freshfaced they are about ignoring this. As they have been freshfaced over stealing the Senate presidency, about firing people from their own party if they don't back Pedro Rosselló and how Pedro Rosselló, Norma Burgos et al. backed the unicameral option but told people to stay home.

Like Gloria Baquero said, "The Puerto Rican people have lost the ability to get angry." Let's see if the same civil groups who backed this legislative reform, use the results in a judicial forum. I say: take it to a court (which will probably say that the law was not well written and not binding anyways).

OK, today is a busy day, couldn't make it to San Juan. Also my stomach is not feeling too good either.

Last night tried to go to the movies with Viv and Stiv. We ate something and we waited in line which moved quickly until we got to the front and they told us that "Land of the Dead", "Fantastic Four" and "War of the Worlds" were sold out. So, that plan was shot, we headed to the local Blockbuster where "Phantom of the Opera", "Immortal", "Alone in the Dark" and "Infection" were rented. I only had time to see Immortal, the movie that had a good story behind it but horribly intrusive CGI. I guess, they didn't have the money for a cast of thousands and the set that the story required so they took out some animation freeware and got to work. Oh, well.

Coinciding with a comment I made last night en route to the movies, it is always good to wake up to the following MSN Autos review in your inbox:

Dodge Charger 2006 Preview.



Grrrrrr. I want one.

The government called. I am in for a general orientation meeting next Thursday with the local version of the SBA. (They tried to get a hold of me earlier so I missed the appointment for Tuesday- I am gonna check if I can still change the date)I am actually excited at the prospect that maybe 25 years down the line I may ditch the middlemen bosses, just deal directly with customers and maybe my grandchildren will have a fight over the family fortune I worked my ass over. (Yeah, because MY children will be my personal slaves).

Don't know yet if it is going to be a home based business. Checking mall spaces but they don't catch my fancy, except for the one nearest my house. There used to be a similar business there, but ill designed and expensive which probably accounts for its failure. The equipment part is where I am racking my brain, the sensible way to go is Xerox leases, but their latest copiers seem made of toy parts. The good ones have been discontinued from the lease program and I don't have 50K to plunk on just one black and white machine with almost no service warranty. Decisions, decisions.

Maybe I am going to San Juan today so my boyfriend stays in Mayagüez until Sunday or Monday. If it doesn't turn out that way, I will probably visit him tomorrow after the whole referendum hoopla that I have to cover for the newspaper.

Anyways, over and out.

Been looking for information like crazy on the Net about the London bombings, since PRican TV doesn't seem to care that this has happened. It saddens me, just like 9/11 and 3/11, and makes me angry that after all the effort and blood and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, the terrorists are still very much functional and better equipped than any army. The US government is wasting precious time and effort mining Iraq while these people operate the international equivalent of a white van that blends so well you don't pay attention to it until it is too late. Whoever believes that justice is been served by continuing the operation in Iraq is mistaken. This is not a desperate reaction to the war in Iraq; it is the same cold blooded, intentional, all-the-time-and-money-in-the-world kind of operation they have been setting up since the first attack on the World Trade Center. We are at the same exact place we were almost 4 years ago. It is time for a serious meeting of intelligent, strategic minds in the know who come up with a new plan to counter this.