Memories: April 26th, 2012

I’ve always wondered what exactly happened to my generation. It wasn’t until a year or two ago that I managed to catch up with all of them, and I have to thank Facebook for that since I never did the MySpace thing which I considered absurd especially since I had my own website back then. From all the stories I managed to get together I discerned that half the class from Junior High is married, this baffles me since most of us have 25 right now, and the majority have a kid, again this baffles me even more, which in turn means they could not finish their College education, gee I wonder why. I fall inside the other half of people that are not married but I can honestly say we ain’t better than the rest as this half contains people that became involved with the Narcs, either directly or indirectly, prostitution, became addicted to some substance, dropped out of High School or College to do nothing or find themselves comfortably six feet under for different reasons.

We graduated ten years ago… I still can’t believe that…

In High School, at the Preparatoria Federal Lazaro Cardenas which is the only Federal High School that I know of in the Country, I dropped out in 4th Semester and was the first of the gang to get a job, some 600 to 800 pesos a week which was miserable and wasn’t even worth it no matter in which way you try to explain this to me. Regardless, I was the one who made his own path… though I had no path, no future, I didn’t want to look at the past, I was suicidal and depressive, darkness surrounded me and I lived inside a bubble for some five or six years until the bubble cracked and darkness infused me and made me faster, deadlier, smarter, even more cynical than before, it permanently changed me for bad or good.

Ricardo is moving to Las Huertas soon, somewhere near where I used to work in an Industrial Park for a company called Flex Medical Disposables, formerly Availmed, which was a good training ground for my IT skills and where I participated with Alex, with whom I had worked in Telvista for the Verizon DSL Campaign, Bruno, who I met there and is one of the best Nortel PBX handyman you can find this side of the country, and Spencer, who was a Supervisor at Telvista inside Verizon DSL, under the Desktop Team for direct support to the plants. Back when I used to work there I remember they killed a lot of people, going from 2008 to 2010, and even saw once, me and Alex, a police truck that have been gunned down by Narcs, we even heard the automatic gunshots from distance loud and clear, and there was nothing left of them when we managed to get through the whole commotion.

Edgar and Ricardo also told me a story, which I have yet to confirm, about a man that went Grand Theft Auto somewhere in Las Huertas. By Grand Theft Auto I mean the video game and the term was being used because the man was captive, naked and hand-cuffed yet he managed to kill two Narcs, two bodyguards, unarmed, got out of the house, confronted the police and died. The confrontation, we thought, was most probably because the man was related somehow to crime but as I mentioned before, reader, I have yet to confirm this information for proper verification.

I once meet el Arpas at El Divan de Alicia, apparently Xavier knows him well and he tells me that "El Arpas is everyone’s friend", he was with a woman, that time, they called La Profe, who apparently is a real teacher, whom I forgot to ask exactly in which institution she gave classes as I never want to take my children to that school, ever. El Arpas is an interesting figure, he sells newspapers even at high hours of the night for 1 peso or either he'll ask for a cigarette and start telling you some REALLY dirty things while he does his infamous "Arpas" or "Shazam puro power!" quotes. He is always wearing this exotic masquerade ball mask that only covers his eyes and starts to dance to electronic music, mind you this man is above 40 years old, and he can dance good, he even once got into a bar in skates and danced with the skates, like that time I got drunk at that triple birthday, which Sergio took me to, in which we bought a bottle of Tequila 1800, then some cucarachas for the birthday people, beer, more booze, rum, vodka, you name it and then I was dancing Industrial at El Circo third floor like a mad man and playing with a guy that was doing some dancing with Kevlar balls in flames held by long chains. Fun times.

I remember that many years ago there used to be a placed called la Milla de los Perros where the exit for the Galerias Plaza underground parking is which leads to boulevard las Americas. You could buy all kind of dogs and animals there during the weekend, all of them were being sold by random people but I do recall seeing a couple or two that would come back every so often to sell the same breed of dog every so often which leads me to believe that they lived from that.

Eating an empanada of grounded meat out of a piece of paper that contains poetry from the ICBC, the Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, which was given to me after doing some Social Service, where I meet some really beautiful girls, and getting the food across with an apple Peñafiel bought by Badilla after he bought two of my Warhammer books which I sold for the cheap, cheap quantity of 20 pesos each. Which reminds me I have been selling several of my books at cheap prices with some really good responses, fortunately they will be the last thing I sell since I’ve got a job at another bar, La Naranja Mecanica or the Clockwork Orange, like the movie, with a general theme based off from the movie, and that should REALLY help me out. I was selling books with that dude over at 2nd street, before I sold my books to Luis and Badilla; that red beret bearded long-haired man was cool but a bit paranoid though.

Speaking to a man mounted in an avalancha who has no legs and only a part of his torso, we spoke while watching a concert of Christian Reggae in a small park just a few feet away from the International Border of San Ysidro, before them there was a band of what I believe was Bachata, and talked about the quality of the sound, which to say the least was very good, and how much would a Saxophone cost. He was a good and honest man.

Party Crashing

Back when I used to work at the Medical Disposables Factory there was this particular person that had to crash in order for the party to be really successful, just that it is not that kind of crashing that I’m talking about.

See, back when he started at the company he had bought a red Grand Am from my last boss, and he in turn had bought a pickup truck which he fixed in order to go through the Baja Rally every year, which had never been crashed, ever. When this guy bought the car, just a week or two after he had just been hired, he called everyone in the middle of the night asking them if they could come in and taking out of a ravine he had fallen into, no one believed him.

Next day he came in the car was in bad state but it still worked, apparently it had happened, the guy had fell asleep at the wheel, after a wild party, and went through the contention barrier downhill until he reached rock bottom. He was perfectly fine and had no scratches.

This continued through the almost three years I had worked at the company, eventually we said that the guy had to crash his car every time we went out drinking otherwise it wasn’t a real party, and I saw him crash that car more times that I could have ever been bothered to count for, hell, at one point we told him he should have sent a letter, a physical one not just an e-mail, to General Motors thanking them for making such an excellent car and that American car engineering had been proved time and time again under his alcoholism behind the wheel.

There was also this time when the guy took a friend of mine, the one that got me the job as an IT Technician there, and on the way home the drunken ass had missed the exit but he thought it would be easy to just do a rough turn and catch the exit, the exit was a damn ramp, the car flew through the air, meters, feet, doesn’t matter, the car was in the air and they sobered up as soon as they hit the ground and, somehow, managed to park so they could gaze at what was left of the right back wheel, it was just literally hanging there in an inclination of thirty degrees, they, again, had proven American engineering to be far superior to any other car because we are quite sure others wouldn’t have made it through.

So remember, if you ever have a friend that likes to drive really fast when he is drunk, and we all have at least one of those, then recommend him a General Motors Grand AM, it may just save his life and I am dead serious about this.

Memories: What was I doing when 9/11 happened?

So what was I doing back during 9/11?

We got asked this the other day for a class and even though I denied giving up my experience in class I do remember the whole situation and something interesting that came from it.

It was early in the morning, I was in Junior High in my second year, when I wake up to my dad watching the news, puzzled look, having breakfast. He was watching el mañanero with Victor Trujillo, using his persona of Brozo, who through an unusual serious method gave out the note of what had just transpired at the WTC in NYC, that there had been a fire, those were his words, and that the authorities were checking on it to understand what had transpired. Now it is easier for me to put an image of Brozo than actually describing it.

Right... yet he still delivered and did it well and even though the man has been on and off the news network through the years it is still refreshing to hear him talk with his typical satirical and highly spicy commentary.

At school they started to talk about the note on 9/11, that it was a plane that had crashed on the first tower and that shortly a second plane had crashed onto the second tower causing panic. While we were at it, discussing this as teenagers, we came to a conclusion that the US would go into a war with whichever nation had attacked them, at this time we assumed it would be somewhere in the Middle East, then we also assumed that by doing so they would go into a war that would last for way too long and raise criticism as to what their true intentions were, which we assumed was Oil. Such uneasy minds we were, so paranoids yet so right in the end.

Then we got note that the border crossing had been closed due to a possible terrorist attack through one of them or in a close city to the border, this is what I recall, so the border line was empty, which is something you will not see anytime soon.

While thinking about this something else came to mind, now there´s a problem because I can´t quite put my finger on the exact date but I remember we were in Junior High when this happened and it all goes back to the newspaper Zeta and the death of el Gato Felix, real name Hector Felix Miranda, who was assassinated four blocks away from my house. Back in the day I remember a small statue, a head and ultimately a plaque which states the following.

Now the untimely death of el Gato Felix is related to his articles speaking about one of the most prominent figures of the city, Jorge Hank Rhon, who has been continuously linked to drugs and other misdemeanors. So, was he killed by him? Most probably. Why am I bringing this up then? Well he was the Director of Zeta but his friend, Blan Cornelias, continued to run the newspaper back in the day which takes us to me again.

So, we´re at Junior High doing whatever we were supposed to be doing when there´s a detonation, and another, then automatic fire which prompted our teacher to yell at us to get away from the windows, us being in a third floor, then hitting the floor. What transpired that moment caught me by surprise, there was this ford explorer near the right side of the road which two pick up trucks blocking the path. It didn't take them long to run away, there was a man sitting next to a telephone pole with an M4A1, he looked bloodied, battered and beyond any possibility of surviving. A minute or two later a man comes crawling out of the explorer, it was Blan Cornelias who had just survived another attack by his enemies one of many he suffered since the death of el Gato Felix. About his bodyguard, there is something peculiar and disturbing about that case. I remember passing through that same pole from time to time to find a candle over a black spot that I don't recall from early times. Coincidence? Maybe, rather not know or mess with that which is no more.

Oh and about Blan Cornelias, he died of old age, ironically, at his house that was just next to the newspaper office.

Mankind

Mankind, contrary to existentialist belief, does not suffer because it’s free. Mankind suffers because they are ignorant of the works, the way the world works in an action and reaction environment, but decides to live its life that way in order to prevent himself from falling into a complete depression, it lets itself be manipulated on purpose, to be mandated by divine right or great amplifications coming from technology, they rather kneel and lower their head to something that is not in front of them rather than build their own destiny and when ordered to change for the general benefit of mankind they will resist, they don’t want to move away from their comfortable golden cage, why bother sleeping on hay under an open sky when they can sleep surrounded by their own feces inside a small heavily decorated jail.

Memories: April 14th, 2012

It is April the 14th, 2012, and I’ve stopped shaking. It is 3:09 AM PST and its 44 F outside, almost 6 Celsius for us living on the metric system, it has been raining odd for the last couple of hours, at some point it looked like a tropical storm with winds and all that but that is not the reason why I’m shaking right now.

April the 13^th, Friday the 13^th which some superstitious people may consider as a bad day to do anything at all which I assume includes breathing, turned out to be an interesting day to say the least.

First our classes were a bit tad boring but nonetheless I found appreciation on the first four hours as we saw an old Mexican movie called El Bulto which is about a man that got hit in the head by a club during a Communist meeting and woke up some twenty odd years later to find the world has changed, the next class was also interesting as I got a call from the Art Man who told me there are some positions available at the Axxa Building in front of Plaza Rio and that I may have a chance of getting a decent job over there for some decent money, finally the last class had us seeing a movie about the fall of the Berlin Wall and due to technical difficulties we could not finish watching Bowling for Columbine, not that it mattered to us. On a side note I could not get to the Axxa building since the rain was a complete pain in the butt and was too late when I got there to fill up an application form.

Some quick food and time for Vampire: The Masquerade with the Tijuana RPG – UABC Chapter, five members total, with four playing and me as a story teller, although there are more but most of them were unable to play since they had classes or were simply out of time due to other more important matters at hand, which turned out to be quite interesting. Turns out the group of players are now considered as the “Red Barons Flying Circus” as per our friendly Tzimisce NPC, Andrei, which is a tad bit crazy but probably not as sadistic or cynical as the rest of the player base. Ironically the setting for the story is January 7^th 1993 in the city of Tijuana, one day after the flooding began, and it goes hand by hand with the fact that during the time we played rain wouldn’t stop and only got worst. Abril actually lost the truck that takes her to Tecate, which is passing La Rumorosa, and got her mom to give her a lift.

Before leaving I noticed two interesting things, first there was this girl upstairs, on the second floor of the Cafeteria which is the place in which we play, that was playing in the X-COM setting I used back at Com Com but I never managed to get her attention to ask her what her name was; second, we also noticed that there is another table playing Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 from what we understand, in a big table almost at the same time that we play and they do not belong to our group which makes us really happy about it, finally they manifest themselves without being scared of reprisals.

After leaving somewhere after 5:30 I took a bus and it took me around an hour or so to get back home which ended up being an ordeal but gave me enough time to enjoy a bit more time with that book I’m researching, All is Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

At Downtown I bought a pack of Delicados 20 with the last 30 pesos I had left on my credit card, no more money there and almost all my resources have been drained from my wallet which leaves me in a seriously dire situation for a job. I then decided to stop by TJ Art & Rock Café to check and see what was the show, never actually got the name or the bands, and to say hi to a couple of people then, for some reason, instinctively moved to El Divan and greeted everyone then had a Victoria before going outside for a smoke where I found Danny, a friend of Ozzy and Caguas who I meet when they invited me a week after the second anniversary of El Divan, who was waiting for Itzel, another mutual friend of Ozzy, Caguas and Danny. Apparently today is Caguas brother, Constantino or Constantine, birthday and he turns 21 so he’ll be celebrating at a small bar just a couple of feet away called Viehos which is spelt incorrectly on purpose. We enjoyed a couple of beers, got a free round from the birthday man, and while chatting and getting up to date on things we meet up with Caguas and Pablo who joined us for a couple more rounds and some more getting up to date and geek stories of pride, like managing to get Arch Linux to compile and run on a computer. While enjoying our time there our friend, El Arpas, dropped by with his Navy Captain hat, a trench coat and his flagrant masquerade mask, he started dancing in some very provocative manner that makes you want to pull your eyes out, since, well, you don’t want to see a man like that pull some Michael Jackson moves on the floor, and eventually got kicked out of the place and in the process, somehow, managed to break a bottle without caring a single bit about it.

An hour or so later I decided to make a quick run to the TJ Art & Rock Café to try and meet up with the moon but she wasn’t there or if she was I couldn’t find her so I went back to Viehos, had another round, went for some food at the 7-11, back to the bar, another round, went to El Divan then back into the other bar since Caguas didn’t want to leave his brother alone, although he had friends that came to have a couple of drinks with him but nonetheless we decided to stay at Viehos. Danny went for some food, came back after a couple of minutes and called the Horde for retreat on his Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

First we dropped Pablo off, while avoiding all the Police checkpoints, and got an interesting conversation going on with him on the road about him not being able to feel any sort of pain, or rather minimal pain, and having a high resistance to alcohol levels, which I’ve seen in the past although I’ve also seen the opposite of that and rightfully earned the title “Puke Buddy”. Which reminds me of that girl we were talking with outside of Viehos, because when you want to have a smoke it has to be outside the bars now since the Federal Law came in full effect, after 3 years, around 2 months ago which is becoming an absolute pain in the ass specially with the cold wind trying to kill you, who’s apparently is a friend of Constantine whom looked a bit drunk.

Then we went to drop Itzel somewhere at la Gloria, which is a bit far away, and while speaking with her she was asking me what exactly my career is about, History, and told her that the field is actually quite big and that I should be able to find something that pays decently once I’m off with my title. She also mentioned that she needed some assistance with a book her Faculty is producing as no one is going up for the challenge and I volunteered for the job as long as I can get paid or credit for making it.

Then we see a pickup truck pulling in fast, bright lights, codigos, the blue and red lights of justice, a police truck had just parked next to us and asked us to get our asses of the car and while doing so Itzel got to her house as fast as possible.

Who am I, what do I do, where are you from, what are you doing here, do you have any drugs with you, are you drunk, is this your car, where is your license… something popped there, Danny doesn’t have a license and neither do I, “Get in the back of the truck” is what I hear one of the officers tell Danny and they let me go, in the middle of La Gloria with no way of getting the hell out of this hole at 2:30 in the morning and they are towing the car away. A mordida was in order and 200 pesos paid his liberty, which included my ride back home, I was shaking, I was shaking badly, I wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or because I stressed the fuck out after we were free, I managed to keep my cool but once they were gone the façade dropped instantly, I only had two cigarettes, one for each, Danny was fully awake now, I was fully awake now, hell that was really weird and we really dodged a huge bullet since specially since Danny had asked me to call his Dad but he never picked up, which ultimately we were grateful about.

I got home and offered Danny to stay, even if my parents were reluctant, but he said he needed to be at work at 6 so he was going home, se la iba a rifar, he was gonna go for it, I asked him to call me as soon as he was at his place and I went inside, that annoying dog is there barking like a little bitch, picked up something to eat, started to write this and at 3:20 I got a call from Danny saying everything was OK.

Jesus the Farmer

At home a family sits down for dinner and thank Jesus for it.

At some forgotten field, a Mexican man named Jesus removed his hat, cleaned the sweat off from his forehead and silently thanks them for his job in which he makes a dollar for every box of vegetables he picks up from the earliest hour of the morning to the last drop of the beautiful sun that becomes unbearable during the midday, this is his American Dream as an undocumented worker running away from a country that gave him no opportunities and is at war with itself.

Dreams: July 28th and 29th, 2011

28/06/11

Dreamed I had traveled to England. Flew there, paid one million pesetas for a cab (170 pesos supposedly) and then got off in some place where a friend apparently lived. After searching went to some sort of museum or school where I rendezvous with some people after taking a dump at the bathroom. The way I found the bathroom was by following a trail of feces left by a young blond woman. There were general instructions in the toilet and some even mentioned states from the South of Mexico. Kept trying to reach my friend to no avail and after a while found another friend and his dad outside the place and I asked if I could call Chris which apparently never happened but in any case we began to remember a trip to the desert in which we used an orange and black box that provided us with Internet to communicate while in the middle of nowhere.

29/06/11

Was at several hotels trying to get it on and we had to keep going around since we didn't have any money for it and most rooms we sneaked into were busy or half occupied. In one instance I had to beat a short teller boy who broke the door open with some sort of timer mechanism. My mother appeared with half her body covered in tattoos, one of them being a Chinese dragon. In the end bought a beer with what little money I had left and the last thing I remember was my (ex-)girlfriend and me going our ways for reasons I can't remember but couldn't be reasoned.

Death and Time

Death has never faced a defeat; it always gets the target no matter what obstacle it finds. Death is the twin-brother of Time, they share specific characteristics, they are undefeated, undeniable and understood, their Empire endless and their temples eternal, why deny such power when it could be used for good measure.

Memories: April 6th, 2012

April 6th, 2012, the last Friday of Semana Santa and only three days away to go back to school which I’m really looking forward to just so we can finish with this horrendously bad semester. Time to roll out and I decided to go to El Divan de Alicia and see what’s up over there as there seems to be an event of a group called Tijuana Roller Derby Girls, which as the name implies is a group of chicks that enjoys roller skating the hell out of wherever they can skate freely and make a deadly business out of it. Found Keke, one of the guys serving El Divan de Alicia as a waiter, while getting off the cab and spoke with him about some events that transpired a couple of months back that could or may affect the performance of the bar. Once at El Divan I found Gil, this Rastafarian like Death Metal lover, no love for reggae here just the dreadlocks, and a heavy substance abuser when he feels like it, sweeping and we talked a little about this and that, politics, philosophy, war, current events and a book I lend him a couple of months ago, maybe a year actually, called Doctor Farabeuf o la Cronica de un Instante which is a pretty bizarre, no heads or tails, non-logical, non-lineal story about a small event that seems more and more disturbing as you turn into a new page. While chatting one of the Tijuana Roller Derby Girls got there, I think the one in charge of everything, and started doing setup while other girls dropped by and all I can say is that there was some really delicious fine looking women going in and out of that door. Went for some cash at an HSBC ATM located in 5^th street, just in front of the old porn movie theater, next to the taxi site I use to go home, and got some money at the ATM inside the Calimax, a big player down here just like Wal-Mart but obviously with far more places open than them. While walking back I had some really patriotic thoughts about a lot of things in regards to this country and the hope I have that in 30 years this will be a 1^st World Power where my children could eventually live “decently”, not that they wouldn’t be able to live decently though. Once back at the bar I looked at the outside for a split second and went in, not before patting the logo outside the bar, this beautifully metal carved logo of El Divan de Alicia that has a terrifying story. From what I understand the logo was done by a man named Alex, a smith that knew El Perro from when El Divan de Alicia was at La Plaza, said Plaza being in front of Plaza Rio, next to a river that has since then dried up but back then, for example in 1993, it flooded and caused the President in turn, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to declare Tijuana a Disaster Zone and send in the military to assist us, which is one of the major points of the city, who I met once and I personally thought he was an absolutely cool guy, who found his death under some really confusing circumstances back in 2010, a few days before Christmas actually, and I will not talk about them since there are different stories from different sources and the only way of confirming this is with a newspaper but I would leave to you, reader, that task as I like to respect the dead in their final place and I believe I have heard enough to know what the real answer is but I will not reveal anything from this incident except the fact that we have that Sombrero de Charro behind the bar with pictures of him, that were never framed…

Went inside, saw Moya, gave him a cigarette and went to smoke outside to get up to date with the events at the bar and the surroundings. Apparently they were not aware that Transmetal is not playing at El Foro and laughed when I told them they would be playing at the TJ Art & Rock Café, although they did retract a little bit when I told them they were expanding it to at least double their size. Then the DJ, who I keep forgetting his name, said he played at El Foro, apparently he opened for 2 Minutos, and he had a blast doing it with such a huge place and expensive equipment at hand he was like a junkie having his cocktail served to him with extra power. Of interest we confirmed that with the new Metal Zone thing that is going to happen on Saturdays there should be more people coming in, especially with that Iron Maiden tribute that sounds exactly like Maiden does which is great since you only end up paying some 40 to 50 pesos, 3 to 4 American dollars.

Once that was said and done I went back upstairs to the bar, had a couple of Caguamas, a Caguama generally being a one liter bottle or one third of a gallon for those of you who don’t use the metric system, of Corona, I would have had a Vicky or Victoria but those are 40 pesos, an equivalent to almost 3.50 in American currency, which was a bit out of my league at the moment and I wanted to enjoy some extra beer if possible. Found Xavier, a friend who is also in the Humanities Faculty, in the Communications branch, back at the University, who was taking pictures of the event while enjoying some Pacificos. We started talking about visiting La Cupula, eventually I hope I can do that next week, and of taking the Vampire: The Masquerade deal to them to see if we can use their café, Café Batcraft, as our playing ground. Funny thing is that Xavier was already aware of VTM, as it’s usually abbreviated, since he had read something called The Book of Nod which contains most of the mythology and story behind the game. Went outside for another cigarette, found Mr. Nacho, an almost clone of Herman Goering which makes sense since he descends from pure breed Aryans, his Grandpa actually serving as a Colonel in the Nazi Army down in France but escaping to Mexico once he saw things were going down the drain, and then Germain, Mr. Vampire himself who, from what I recall and understand, used to have several rings on his back so he could hang himself from the ceiling using them and relax, apparently it is a very relaxing thing for a lot of people as I have looked around and everyone concurs on that fact so maybe I’ll have to ask Doc about this and see what is the exact reason behind it, probably some chemical release. Saw Moya and Andy later on, then Pantera came in, the rest of the girls from the Tijuana Roller Derby Girls, with whom I discussed a possible sponsoring from some important people but that will be left pending until I can get an answer back from the correct people which may take quite some time, more people, Vodka Jell-O Shots, more beer, bad combination, rockabilly music, yeehawing all the way, more people, chit chat, the works. A miracle that I made it back home, after tricking a cab driver to get me there for free but not because I didn’t want to pay but rather because I had no money left at all but I don’t feel bad at all, even though I do understand the fact that they have, listen to this, to pay to actually work the cab, it works like this. To work a Taxi down here in Tijuana you need to have the unit, the car itself, and the license plates, which are quite expensive, but you can actually rent the plates as it is totally legal as long as the correct paperwork is done and in the end the plates are yours and nothing less. So, the person driving the unit has to pay a daily or weekly fee, which is up to el Patron to decide, they have to pay their own gas and in some circumstances, not all of them, they have to fix the unit in any possible way or face the wrath of their boss. Not a pretty thing to drive a taxi down here in this city.

Saturday, wake up, have breakfast, take a quick bath, check some things, go to Bolas’ house to play some Texas Hold ‘Em with the old gang, Bola, Ozzy, Doc, Shoppa, Mora, Edgar, Ricardo and me, got there a bit late but almost everyone was there except for Edgar who had things to do before coming in. We started a discussion on what to eat, we settled for Chinese and even though I had some adobada tacos I thought that some extra food wouldn’t hurt me that much, I was starving and the vodka had left me in limbo, so we went for some Chinese at Las Palmas, just a couple of blocks away from there and almost in front of El Harinero el Rosal. We started eating and watched as Mora enjoyed some God of War 3, geez the graphics are incredible and even though it’s a button masher I could not stop and awe at the titanic battles between Kratos and the Olympian Gods.

We start our war on the field, 70 pesos each, first place takes 400, second 140, the initial bet is 2 pesos and it doubles every 30 minutes, minimum bet is whatever the current bet is at the moment, the laptop is available for songs and everyone takes a turn unless that person is not in game anymore. The game starts OK and escalates slowly to the point where I’m kicking everyone out until it’s only me, Mora and Doc, the bet is 64 pesos, 10 minutes left on the clock to go for 128, it is here where fate is decided and a winner takes all, either Mora or Me as Doc is left with only 20 pesos, I call him for an all in, he goes for it, cards on the table, I got a 2 and a Jack, he’s got a 10 and a Queen, cards on the table show a 2 and other cards that aren’t helping, Mora goes out of the battle as he doesn’t want to risk it, next card, nothing for either one of us, final card, nothing more, there is silence, I’ve won, again, for the longest time ever in the history of this table. It is drinking time to celebrate. It’s 7 something when we end up the game and the Xolos, our primera division team for soccer, are still playing on the Stadium, so we hit the road fifteen minutes before the game is over but lose Mora on the track as he has to do other things and Ozzy is not coming since he had to finish fixing a PC.

We get to downtown, down at 3^rd Street and a block above Revolucion, and go looking for a bathroom since apparently everyone is now feeling the post-effects of the Chinese food, we go to an Oxxo first, I buy a pack of Delicados 14, which is a Mexican brand of fine tobacco, so says the box, with only 14 cigarettes at the modest price of 20 pesos, then move over to the Sanborns, a chain of Restaurant, Pharmacy, Candy, Toys, everything that started in Mexico City with Sanborns Azulejos where the infamous Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano Zapata, heroes of the Revolution, took a picture some 100 years ago and that place is still standing, even though it was renewed it continues to be that magnificent and awe-inspiring building, on 8^th Street. After everything is said and done on that end we walk towards El Divan but find that just outside El Tillys they are doing an enquiry on sexual relationships and giving away a box of condoms, with more than one hundred condoms inside, lubricant, etc. which Edgar took the time to fill. Our first stop then was El Divan de Alicia where we buy a cubeta, which is a metal bucket with ten beers, Victorias and Pacificos, five and five, as per our request, as we had agreed that whoever won the game would buy one to celebrate and I am a man of my word. We finish one, we get another one, greet a lot of people coming in and out, makes me think that all the people that I have in facebook, those 800 something, I actually know and see, the majority of them rather, at least once a month. I see Moya, Andy, one of the many Christians I know, the one that used to be the bouncer actually, Chano, El Perro, Gil, Pinky, Keke, the DJ, Xochitl, Gaby, Emmy, Mayra, la Flaka or Madre, our Metal Mother, this guy, that guy, we go out and visit El Zebras Mexican Pub, and yes there is a little Zebra in the logo because of the Zebras all over Revolucion, which is a bar, pub, thing where you can get beers from different parts of the world; I greet Mr. Baldy Metalhead, a Professor at the Faculty, then I find Bruno, Xavier again, Everardos’ Cousin, whom I can’t remember by his name only recall him because he is Ever cousin, who said that if I needed a job he could get me one at El Porkys or at Rosarito but I don’t really want to go to Rosarito, then outside I had found the Contrafuego crew going to El Divan and smoking outside El Zebras I found a dude with whom I’m making the Mexican version of Epic Meal Time.

We leave because there are no tables, apparently people think you can’t drink while standing up, and start looking around for another bar, which I fucking hate because I don’t feel like moving to another bar if I’m comfortable at one bar; Niño managed to catch up with us back at El Divan, he was with Ricardo down at Mexico City for a student exchange that lasted six months, which was pretty much was triggered us to move onwards. Since we couldn’t find anything I told them I needed to go to the TJ Art & Rock Café to pick up the tickets; greeted Ale, her brother and Jose Luis, Panchito was outside cleaning or doing something, he is the right hand of Jose Luis who is the owner of the bar, and got confirmation from Jose Luis that the tickets still hadn’t arrived and he returned me my money. Off we went again to El Zebras.

We decided to sit down, order a couple of rounds, 15 pesos glasses of dark beer, I got an Arrogant Bastard which was 65 pesos, quite expensive actually, but when I asked for a Fin du Mond I decided not to complain anymore about prices here; Guinness was down for 40 pesos and Newcastle for 30, really decent prices. While chatting we noticed that the futbolito table was empty and decided to give it a try and we had a blast with it even though we weren’t playing fair it was fun; I was sweating heavily and noticed I wasn’t tipsy anymore, not that I ever was, so I decided to finish my beer and went to the bar with Shoppa for another beer, this time something home made from around here, and went for a Cucapah Chupacabras, yes the bottle had a Chupacabras like entity that was a mixture of the mythical creature and El Santo, the wrestler, and Shoppa had a Cucapah Honey, which was also a great flavor and with a price of 40 pesos it was alright, more than alright now that I think about it.

Once we finished all of this we went outside and decided to go to El Porkys, which previously was La Sexta House of Music in which they played a mixture of different types of electronic music but never quite got to the point where it could apparently return some revenue so they ended up changing owners and image. This place, which by the way has a huge pig head outside with some 80’s shades, used to originally be at La Plaza and apparently they were going to soon celebrate 13 years since its inception. The combination of music was decent enough for me to enjoy it and with a balcony where you could smoke and drink and clean bathrooms with working toilers I was more than glad to accept whatever else they tried to bring at me, even Indio, so we were going round and round, looking at this, looking at that, wiggling with that party rock, the girls with the bunny ears, which were not as good as Ricardo made them look but again that’s alcohol speaking… well except for one of them which I wished she became the progenitor of my children, several times. Shoppa had to leave early because he had homework to do, I have homework to do too and I finished it in about half an hour today, Sunday.

Somewhere around 2 we left, time to hit the sack, but first we went for some New York styled pizza from a placed called Al Volo, I think that’s the name but honestly I’m not sure, which is just half a block away on the other side of the road. Destiny did call in, as per usual, and we had an encounter with a man that wanted money or food, he sang to us the same old story about being deported and not having anything on his pockets, we didn’t have any money, not for him and what I had wasn’t even mine since I have to return it to the people who paid for the tickets; then he gets aggressive at us and starts yelling and cursing, his friends pull him back and ask us to forgive him, he’s been drinking, you don’t go asking for money when you’re drunk, not looking like that, people aren’t going to trust you, they don’t trust you already, and Doc wasn’t happy at the fact that the guy was drinking because, and I quote him “The most I see down at el General are old men, 40’s, 50’s, who have been drinking themselves to death, they are alone, they live alone, they drink heavily, most come in advanced stages of cirrhosis, they all die or we let them go, there’s nothing we can do, we even had a guy come in, yellow like a mother fucker, who had been drinking twenty liters of alcohol every, single, day, since he was twelve, he is currently twenty eight, he shouldn’t be alive and I know that he is going to eventually die”

Is it some sort of divine wrath, some sort of unholy punishment, I wonder?

Not that I believe in the conception of God as they put it in the Western Hemisphere, I’d rather believe that I myself am part of God and that it is action and reaction that provokes all the changes around us but… I do wonder from time to time about this… makes me feel not a prisoner of my own liberty.

We finish up then move to our next destination with is the main site for the red taxis, the blood cells of this city that work 24/7; we part ways with Niño who is going to his place and then with Doc, we can’t find Bola who told me he was going down to 3^rd Street with a friend of his but we could never get a hold of him but fortunately for us since Ozzy was back at his house we could get him to open for us. We get to 4^th Street and a block above Revolucion and find our taxi, we get in, start talking about that condom box Edgar got for free, apparently he had left most of the condoms at el Zebras bathroom; clever boy. Then all of a sudden, Snoop Dogg, smoke weed every day. Damn.

Sleeping on a couch for three or four hours isn’t fun at all, especially when you don’t fit and have to put both feet on a chair just so they won’t hang around in random angles. We went to eat tacos de birria close to the place I used to work in, the factory, just in front of Siglo XXI, and had some four tacos together with a little consome, a consome just being the soup in which the meat rests that will usually be served with red sauce, cilantro and onions. Ricardo gave me a ride back home and the adventure ended there, at that point, with a refreshing bath, a coffee and me doing some homework.

These days are interesting and I wish to save the memory of my friends, places, this city, groups, bands, everything, in this text together with my feelings… like Doc… after listening to what happened to him I feel really bad for him, like isn’t fair, sometimes we get little tests to see if our actions were right, maybe it’s out of our control but it’s not like you need that additional mental strain to prove a point least you want to end up on a mad house.

Science

(This story was originally posted in Jottify, which is now defunct, for a competition that involved Science)

“Holy...” The blue suit man gasped and stared in awe at what was inside that giant cylinder, about twenty feet high by twelve, filled with orange liquid; he had almost dropped his suitcase from the first impression “Doc, what the hell is that?”

“That is an exologue morphus continuum” Answered the man in white lab coat as he adjusted his glasses. He noticed the face of disbelief on his companion and continued. “In Christian words, it's what we call an outside traveler that continuously morphs, what you see right now is not what it will become in a second or two, it has no shape in this dimension, at all. As we understand it, this being comes from a higher plane, drops in by accident and gets trapped; it is quite fascinating if I may add”

“Doc, how the hell can you call this fascinating, it's like looking at a freakshow, gives me the creeps!”

“My good man, nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist after all, and what I have seen in this lab surpasses everything we have so far managed to understand from reality, but this, this is different”

“Whatever, just tell me you've made sure this thing is locked up for good”

“It is as secure as we can possibly make it. For all we know the thing may one day wake up and kill us, hasn't happened yet though and we do not have any expectations on the killing portion of it”

“Hold a second, so that thing is asleep?”

“That... is something I can't fully answer. The entity is not exactly asleep, it seems to be away from his physical entity in this reality”

“Doc, Doc, please, Christian words for the masses, keep it in pig Latin for me”

“From what we understand this form of the exologue morphus continuum, 'exolo' for short, is just one of the many physical manifestations it can achieve in the different planes of existence”

“This sounds too complicated for me still”

“It is like you, it has a different suit for each occasion, it changes it as it sees fit but when it does it leaves the other behind for someone to find it out, it could be in the middle of the ocean, a jungle, a city, it doesn't matter to it, we know this for a fact”

“And then?”

“We don't know for sure, we think that it elevated or lowered to other dimensions, but that is as far as we can take our assumptions as our investigations have not managed to push through that specific portion as we had expected”

“So we're waisting money on this”

“No, not really, it is a matter of time. Our main concern is what happens when it wakes up, if we will be able to communicate with it directly, will we be able to contain it, will it friend or foe. We are pushing as hard as we can to understand more before it eventually happens”

“Then that means that we could be handling a nuke with no safety whatsoever”

“If you want to look at it that way, yes, but do not make it sound so lightly, we are making our best efforts to understand how this entity works; science, Director, is a long process, but we make sure of what we are doing when we do it”

“I will report back to the board then, but I'm warning you, we need to see some progress or we are closing down this project”

“That is the last thing you want to do, take that as a light warning” With that the man left but not without gazing back at what was inside the cylinder, it looked monstrous but at the same time beautiful, it provoked in him a queer feeling, of not being able to understand it fully, something that came as familiar too, as if he had seen it somewhere before but he had no recollection of it. He proceeded to walk out of that room as fast as he could, the scientist looked at the cylinder and sighed. “How unfortunate; if only they could understand the full potential”