Literary disurbances: the last call

It was terrible, Honey, I was driving on the road, so quietly, and then a car overtakes me, FIUU!, and then another, FIUU!, and then other, FIUU!, when the mobile just rings, RING, RING, RING!, I slow a little to answer and, at the other side GUAU, GUAU, GUAU, MIAU, MIAU, a pet shop, wrong number, so I hung up with a tachycardia not to be told, BUM, BUM, BUM!, non-stop, and I am with the nerves on edge, when, suddenly, COF, COF, COF, an incredible cough, followed by I don’t know how many ACHIS, ACHIS, ACHIS!, that made me close the eyes for a moment and then CHAS, TRAS, PAF, ZAS!, when I open them, I am with the car stamped against a traffic sign, dammit, why they put them in the middle, I try to start the engine but it doesn’t do neither RUN, nor RAN!, so RING, RING, I call the tow car, which comes along with an ambulance, NIII-NOOOO, NIII-NOOOO, does it hurts you here AY!, does it hurt you there AY!, swallow this, GULP, GULP, sign here, CHAS, CHAS, you may leave, I take a taxi, it gets into a traffic jam, MEC!, MEC!, everybody honks, and my head about to explode, PUM, I get out of the taxi with such bad luck that I slip, CATAPUN, I have a deplorable look, and I will miss our date. Honey? CLONC!, she hung up.

Diagnostic: onomatopoeia, the sign created o imitate a natural sound.

Involution

Not a rumour in the dark.

His hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord.A man stood by a whitewashed wall in southern Alabama.

He faced the firing squad and closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his mother.

Striking through the thought of his dear mother was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand: a sharp, distinct metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife, he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

The soldiers were at “parade rest”, the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed about the stock.

He saw his mother holding his hand and taking him back to his home town. They passed through the dirty streets and saw a dead dog on the berm.

Further away they heard the hue-and-cry of some teenagers fighting for a joint of marihuana.

She laid him on the bed. Daniel stretched out and closed his eyes again.

A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right.

A doctor completed the scene.

Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestation of respect, even by those most familiar with him.

The man who was about to be shot was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in someone whose life was at stake.

His features were good –a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting frock coat.

Evidently this was no vulgar assassin.

The soldiers pointed directly to the body.

The night was darker than usual and he wanted to find a star, but the narrow window of the cell barely allowed him to see a tiny piece of sky.

He raised his head. His mother adjusted the pillow.

All of a sudden, he started bleeding from the chest.

The shirt with the inscription of his inmate number got tainted with blood.

The mother noticed that her son had urinated on himself; she raised him and took him to the bedroom. There, she changed the lower part of his pyjamas.

The soldiers dissolved the firing squad.

The lieutenant ordered the doctor to certify the death.

The mother kissed him on his cheek and closed his eyes to sleep at last.

The doctor observed with astonishment the bundle lying on the floor, by the wall.

The criminal’s body had been reduced to a four year old.

What kind of Toastmasters is this?

The Irish are legendary by the amount of alcohol they can ingest. They hang out in the Pub until late, while their wives or partners wait for them at home. These often call the pubs to find out.

In a Dublin pub I saw the following notice:

… TELEPHONE ANSWERING CHARGES …

•        NOT HERE                     .50 €

•        JUST LEFT                     .75 €

•        ON HIS WAY                1.00 €

•        WHO?                          2.00 €

Mobile phones? No this was 1960, the year I went to Ireland, when I was seventeen.

I went to an Irish family home and a girl of that family would come to my home in Malaga. It was cheap, it was convenient and it was practical.

How to call that arrangement?

When I wrote to the Irish family, by hand, no Internet either, I searched the dictionary and I found a word that seemed perfect, because it sounded like international and course:

INTERCOURSE!

So I happily wrote to the Irish family saying that I wanted intercourse with one of their daughters.

With the English language you may commit terrible mistakes.

Things are easier today. You can find the exact meaning of the words if you Google them.

When I arrived to the family, the father,  Paddy, wanted to know about me, and asked if I had any “convictions”, to which I answered that, yes, I was a good Roman catholic.

But, actually, Paddy wanted to know if been in jail before.

Then, we began to speak about our respective countries.

We discussed that in Spain we have coined a term “mañana” which means that: the work may be done tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe the next after that.

I asked Paddy if there was an equivalent Irish term and he told me: "No. In Ireland we don't have a word to describe that degree of urgency."

Altogether, I spent a month in Ireland. What did I learn?

Well, I learned 3 things.

1.Ireland is a very catholic country, where there is a catholic priest or nun for every 264 citizens.

2.I learned that the Irish drink a dark warm beer called Guinness “stout” in a long glass which they say it looks like a priest: a black body and a white collar.

I don’t know if there is something called a nun; a white body and a black veil on top. Perhaps some form of Irish coffee?

3. I learned the meaning of the word “toast” because that the Irish are, yes, catholic, but they spend far more time drinking beer and giving toasts in the pub than singing hymns in the church.

What takes me to the central point of my Speech: how we call Toastmasters to a place where there are no toasts and there is no beer.

To remedy that unlucky situation, I would now propose a toast to you.

With this “priest” of beer I say (pretending to hoist a glass of beer in my hand and looking a little drunk):

"May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten."

Poor memory

I'm here to talk about a subject that for years was a real problem for me, but today, thanks to the latest technology, I have completely overcome.

I mean ... I have it written in the hand ..., bad memory.

I have it written here because it is the only way for me to remember. Before I had it written in a notebook...

I do not know what I did with it.

Now I write down everything on my body.

People think I have a tattoo on my arm, but once I wrote a shopping list there with a Rotring pen and it stayed there.

I am the only guy who has written on the biceps "chicken breast",

They wanted to charge me three thousand Euros to take it off, so I painted a heart around it and now I say that it was a girlfriend I had.

The blame for my poor memory lies on my mother who forced me to remember a lot of things and the result is that nothing more fits into my brain.

My mother would tell me:

- 'Son, go down and fetch the bread and, as you do, buy olives, tuna, milk and lettuce.

And, when leaving home house, you kept repeating:

-        "Bread, olives, tuna, milk and lettuce,

-        Bread, olives, tuna, milk and lettuce '...

And then you passed by a neighbour, and she said:

- "Hello, dear, how's your mother?

And you were repeating:

- "Bread, dear ... tuna ... Well, thank you.

- Bread .. olives

Shit.

But your mother never forgot. On seeing you arrive, she said

-        The lettuce is missing.

I think mothers have at least 5 Gigabytes of memory

My teachers wanted me to remember long lists of names like the tributaries of the Tagus: Jarama, Guadarrama, Guadiela.

Hallo dear, how is your mother? bread, lettuce, Jarama, Guadarrama, Guadiela

So, I am now a disaster for names.

I only learned my wife’s name after two years of marriage.

In the meantime, I kept on calling her "honey."

If I reserved at a restaurant, they would say:

- "Yes, I have a table for Pablo Gómez-Mora and honey."

If I was with her, and I met an old friend from college, it was hard to make the introductions:

-        "Honey, college roommate,

-        college roommate, honey."

Eventually she realized, of course. And she got angry:

-        "You do not know my name."

I said:

-        sure I know"

-        And what is it? '.

-        Eh ...".

Then I looked at my hand and climbed up the biceps to finally exclaim:

-        Chicken breast!"

And the dates, it’s better not to talk about, of course.

In general, men have a problem with dates.

If you ask a man when it is his wedding anniversary he would say:

- "These things are taken care of by my wife."

It's not our fault, we're not genetically prepared.

One day my wife told me:

-        "Do you know what day is tomorrow?".

And I said:

-        "What day is it today?”

-        "Tuesday."

-        "Well then tomorrow is Wednesday."

And she said,

-        "Yes, but what Wednesday?".

-        "Hey ..., is it Ash Wednesday?».

-        "It's my birthday."

-        "Honey, congratulations!

-        And how many..?

How angry she got! But she changes her age every year, so it is impossible to remember.

By the time I learned the birth date, she was 33, and the she goes, and turns 34.

I am now taking ginseng, which they say is good for ... memory.

It was recommended by my dermatologist, because if I keep writing things in my body, I will destroy my skin…

The problem is that I never remember if I took it.

The other day I had an overdose. I was quietly at home and, suddenly, I said to my wife:

-        Hey, chicken breast, now I remember!

- What?, she said

I replied:

-        Bread, olives, tuna, milk ... and lettuce! ».

And what is that?

The tributaries of the Tagus!

Oh, what a joy to have a garden!

Most people think that having a garden is a joy in the life of the gardener.

But, what does a garden do? To grow, develop and mature.

What the gardener does? To cut, trim and slash.

So I will divide you into two groups: growers and cutters.

You are the growers. What do the growers do? Say it with me

GROW, GROW, GROW

You are the cutters. What do the cutters do? Say it with me

CUT, CUT, CUT

So, you sit there pretty in your garden, watching the greenery and listening to the birds’ songs. From time to time, weather permitting; you make a casual dip into your swimming pool and go out to lie lazily in your hammock.

While you are listening to the birds and lying in your hammock, what the plants are doing?

GROW, GROW, GROW

You don’t notice it, but they are growing. Slowly, but steadily, they are growing. Yeah! Plants are intent in making your garden a chaotic jungle.

The tendency of things to a state of disorder is a natural law. And, yes, your garden tends to a state of chaos

Are you prepared to fight against it?

Are you prepared to fight against a gigantic producer of trash?

Yes?

Then, what do you do?

CUT, CUT, CUT

Unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money in gardeners, you should be conscious you’ll have to do the gardening yourself.

I am one of these people. I do the gardening myself.

My garden produces about 150 kg of thrash per week.

Yes, no kidding. 150 kg.

The two main culprits are mowing the lawn and trimming the hedge.

The lawn

They say that lawn requires a lot of water, most of it in the form of perspiration. It is fine to have lawn but, if you want it green, you have to water it, and if you water it, what does it?

GROW, GROW, GROW

and what you do?

CUT, CUT, CUT

Mowing the lawn is no small task. Here are the things you need

·        a lawn mower

·        a good supply of gigantic garbage bags

·        gasoline and oil

·        a handcart

·        two hours of hard work

What is the right time to mow the lawn? None, in the morning the grass is too wet, and in the afternoon the air it’s too warm.

The mower is a dangerous machine. You may hit a stone, and ruin the blade, or you may be dragged by the machine and fall or hit a branch with your head when you drive. You have to wear a hat, which limits your sight of overhead obstacles.

You also have to be careful with the insects, attracted by your sweating.

And the lawn has to be watered. Thinking of it is ridiculous, you spend a lot of water, watering you lawn for the lawn to

GROW, GROW, GROW

and a lot of effort to

CUT, CUT, CUT

The hedge

Trimming the hedge is no monkey business either. A common error is to cut the hedge too high not to see the stupid of your neighbour and his noisy friends. Cut the hedge too high and you will need a scaffold to get to get over it.

Unless you are a master drawer, chances are that your hedge is not uniform. In some places it will be thick, in others, thin. The horizontal line will not be level and the vertical either. So you

CUT, CUT, CUT

And the hedge has no uniform edges.

The electric trimming machine is utterly diabolic. The smallest thing that could happen is to cut the electric cord; the worst is to cut your own finger.

So, yes what a happy time, when I sat in my garden, the grass mown, the fence trimmed, the sprinklers working, and the swimming pool free of leaves and algae.

To conclude: gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.

Gay lisp

The last four years I've kept a blog in spanish, in which one of the most popular entries has been the one about gay lisp.The theme is no small matter, No monkey business. It’s serious business.

A CRISP DEFINITION OF LISP:  a stereotypical speech attribute associated with gay males in English-speaking countries.

This is something not to be taken lightly. There have been studies: LINVILLE (1998) and MUNSON et al (2006) and Professors Henry Rogers and Ron Smyth at the University of Toronto investigated this.

Scientific conclusions.

1. ONLY GAY MEN HAVE IT

But not all gay men have it.Gay women don’t

2. HOW TO DEFINE GAY LISP

There are a few features to stereotypical gay speech.  

1. One is pitch. All things being equal, the higher a voice, the more effeminate a voice sounds, for the obvious reasons.
2. The second is pitch variability. The more up and down a voice goes in conversation, the more likely it is to be perceived as "excitable", feminine and gay in men. 

For instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdL-_ILynl4&feature=related

3. DO THEY SPEAK LIKE WOMEN?

No they don’t. It’s something different.

4. DOES IT COME NATURAL, OR IS ACQUIRED?

Hard to say

5. DOES ONLY HAPPEN IN ENGLISH? OR IN OTHER LANGUAGES TOO?

It happens in other languages, although I don't know if happens in languages such as the swahili or vietnamese.

5. DOES IT SIGNAL OTHER MEN THAT THEY ARE GAY?

Since it's a speech pattern, and not some other marker, like clothing, you can also mostly 'turn it off' at will, if meeting someone you do not wish to reveal your orientation to.

7. THE GAY ACCENT MAY ALSO JUST BE A RESULT OF LIVING IN PROXIMITY TO OTHER GAY PEOPLE with the same accent - a way of identifying with a community.
8. DO GAY PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHY THEY HAVE THE LISP? No they don’t. “I don’t understand it either. I’m not trying higher pitch or anything. It’s just like… the way it is”.
9. OFTEN, THE 'SHANE' ACCENT IS USED AS AN IDENTIFIER FOR SUBMISSIVE homosexuals, in contrast to the characteristics of the dominant, or 'butch' homosexuals. -Victor Fieri, August 26, 2005.

Homeless children

This is Irma.
She is a sweet little girl, 4 years old. Irma has a good personality, is friendly and a leader in her group. She is a smart and capable child. But, she was abandoned by an unknown person at the Judge Office doorsteps, in El Progreso, Honduras.
¿How can anyone abandon such a beautiful creature? My heart breaks with pain.

It is hard to imagine, but true, millions of children across the world call the streets home. Their young lives are marred by neglect and abuse. Too often drugs become a cheap and reliable escape from their lives of misery.

How does a child end up on the streets?

The reasons are many and complex: poverty, disintegration of the family, abuse and neglect are chief culprits.

Some children are sent to the streets to earn money for the family. Other children turn to the streets hoping to escape physical and sexual abuse.

Many turn to the streets looking to escape the terrible reality of their impoverished home.

Sadly, the find even worse misery await them in the streets.

These young children live lives we can’t even imagine. Lost to the streets they take comfort usually in drugs. Huffing shoe glue is a common practice and reduces hunger pangs. Flattened cardboard boxes often serve as a street child’s “mattress”.

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has a GNP per capita of about 1.000 $ (vs. 30.000 for Spain), 150th in a ranking of 215 countries.

With an area of 43,277 square miles (112,088 square kilometres) and a population of only 6.9 million Honduras is also one of the smallest countries in Latin America.

Honduras’s economic and social problems were compounded in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch struck. More than 5,000 people were killed and 70% of the country’s crops were destroyed. Damage was estimated at $3 billion dollars and economic and social development was set back decades. The poverty and unemployment has caused a dramatic rise in gang warfare throughout Honduras since Mitch struck. Police estimate that more than 33,000 gang members stalk the country.

Close to 65% of Hondurans live below the poverty line with malnutrition, poor housing and domestic violence rampant.
Can you do anything to help?

Yes you can. There are organisations that create brighter futures for these children.