What the heck is Tannhauser’s Gate?

The very first time I saw Blade Runner it turned out to be a whole drag. Nevertheless, maybe because Harrison Ford was starring or just because I expected lightsabers to appear from those unconventional umbrella sticks, I resisted until the irresistible ending to discover inside me a dispairing feeling of having failed to appreciate a work of art and a philosophical answer to many of my deep questions.

Perhaps I was too young to reckon the film in its entire value. It was the year 1982 when the movie was released, therefore I must have watched it on TV by 1984 or so. Eleven years old is not, I’m afraid, the best age to see and understand such a complex narrative.

In any case, being much older now, I still think Blade Runner is a descriptive work where almost nothing happens –with the exception of brief action scenes– whose aesthetics is inherited from Metropolis to Star Wars through Star Trek and all the big hits of the science-fiction genre. It lacks the narrative rhythm one would expect from a great futuristic swashbuckling soap opera –and don’t get me wrong, I love Once upon a time in the West, the paradigm of slow motion spaghetti– or the plain dichotomy between good and evil.

In a sense, Blade Runner is a perverted version of Star Wars. Just from the title the audience has a vague notion of the pure heroic main character from George Lucas’s masterpiece, Luke Skywalker. Unlike the Jedi knight, who walks through the big starred black, Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard rushes next to the precipice instead. The last hope Ford represents is covered with a mantle of antiheroism, and brilliant lights and neons appear in Ridley Scott’s film with a layer of filth while the acid rain pervades everything. Characters are ambiguous to death and the pace slows down to film noir detail. Blade Runner is not a sci-fi movie; it’s a hard-boiled detective plot with a voice-over, lights all around and Vangelis soundtrack to add some solemnity.

But it’s not the huge reminiscences of a distorted galaxy far, far away, or the distopian reminder of an Earth phagocyted by its human inhabitants what trapped me forever. It was, like to the average spectator, the ultimate verses from a superb Rutger Hauer / Roy Batty, a soliloquy worthy of the best Shakespeare, an epitaph of a mysterious eternity just scarcely glimpsed.

Any half devotee of Blade Runner would recited the quote parrot-fashion, but for those not so freak so as to remember every single comma, let’s copy and paste them from wikipedia:

“I've... seen things... you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate... All those... moments... will be lost, in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die.”

These words were not genuine from Hauer; at least, not entirely. He adapted the original script cutting off some redundant and not very related-to-the-topic depictions. The result is, anyway, incontestable. Maybe because of the things they avoid to say rather than what they evoke.

I don’t know you, but I, when hearing those definite regrets, thought of an unseen world of wonder, of pieces to fit in a personal puzzle, of philosophical questions and their impossible answers solved right before me. I had heard of Tannhauser before. It was a blatant double-headed long-tusked imitation of Alien, the eighth passenger on the windowsill of a god-knows-what in the inside of a picture card album. The info was clumpsily developed from Ridley Scott’s film’s Roy Batty’s allusion, but to a child it proved to be imagination-inspiring.

I have sought Tannhauser in many other occasions, reaching nowhere. I have heard of Wagner’s opera but I resist to admit there’s nothing else but a powerful knight or a German poet. If we recall our ancient dreams and desires up to the point of believing them true above the real thing, Tannhauser must be a sort of sacred guardian, whatever extraterrestrial it may be, who prevents mortals to discover the truth beyond the eternal questions of the human existence: Is there anything else? Are we alone in the universe? Is death the end or just a deceiving starting point to infinite worlds, strange beings, wonders we never dare to dream of? Is life a motorway to disappointment? Can imagination prove stronger than sore truth?

Showing more than some verses of an unbound unreality could have been disastrous por the success of the film as a cult movie, since it didn’t earn much in the ticket office, but every fan of Blade Runner is still waiting for something going far beyond Rutger Hauer chant to impossible galaxies, unbelievable creatures and mystic adventures where philosophy would meet for sure the limits of mankind’s plenitude.

As U2 said once and repeat every gig, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, but Blade Runner showed me –as if it were Lancelot of the Lake glimpsing an existentialist Holy Grail– a flash of eternal wisdom in the shadows of our own  essence. Perhaps we poor humans are not ready for more.

Bureaucracy overdose

I heard once from a supposedly serious man that “the level of development of a country is directly proportional to its degree of bureaucracy. The more you can label property the more industrialized a society is”.

Bullshit all around! Procedures exist as diseases or taxes do, just to ruin our lives and make us miserable. For one thing they solve they complicate a dozen beyond reason.

One of my most hated is the MOT test. Every year I pass between one and two car inspections to prove my vehicles are in good shape, smoke-free and all that stuff. I don’t care about paying. I accept the formality as the lesser of evils because some people have a right to earn their living checking cars as well. What really annoys me is the process itself. All that “turn on right indicator; now the left; the warnings; back fog light...” I think someone invented that test and the velocity of execution just to make users appear as sheer stupids. A visionary worker anywhere throughout Spain realised it was easier to get the drivers out of the car and do most of the testing by themselves. Not all. We still need to put our foot in it for a while.

Second wonder: the income tax return. This one chases you for a working lifetime. I accept we must contribute to retirement pensions and to unemployment benefits, everybody must look after everybody, but there’s no need to readjust the balance. A well designed tax system would be even and fair, without needing further compensation for or against. The quantity of material and human resources saved would be vast. Moreover, the procedure is not easy for the average man or woman. Sometimes, or most of the times, professional aid is needed: a civil servant from the Treasury, the bank clerk, an expert in legal matters or else. In any case, any mistake in the process will be your fault and therefore you are to be fined, even if it was the civil servant who did the formality.

What about buying a house, lending money to a close relative, selling a car or any other not very difficult transanction? Be ready for the apocalypse. To a big deal of papers a lucrative percentage of taxes and commissions for gurus and experts will be added.

Bureaucracy is necessary. Our lives are built on private property and we can’t do without it. But things should –and possibly could– be hugely simplified. Everybody would be happier; everybody but bankers, lawyers, politicians, brokers, state agents and so on. Maybe too many interests to be erradicated all of a sudden.

Living with a candidate to pass a competitive exam

Spain is different. Everybody knows that. Starting with the habits of increasing food ingestion from a minute breakfast to a sumptuous dinner, continuing with the compulsive purchase of stock housing or the urgent necessity of getting a permanent job at any cost.

This essay has to do with the last of those assumptions. And with its implications in everyday life. Because who doesn’t want to have a post forever? Things have gone so wrong in the recent past in Spain, with the crisis and its over-elongated shadow, that top desires have changed from a lottery prize to a public job in the administration.

But there’s no easy way to work slavery. With a proportion of at least one post for twenty candidates, if not more, it is a path that a person knows when to start, but not when will be over.

A candidate is a difficult person. Even in his heyday, his mood will turn gloomer and darker than usual, his time for social life will be nonexistent, and his expectatives will go round the examination. No matter how much time one spends on studying, it is always insufficient, especially if there’s a family –parents, wife, children. For them, who understand but do not the situation, the feat is even harder. People who love you want to have good times with you, but you’re not in the mood. And contradictory feelings arouse. The candidate feels guilty because he can’t attend his personal and his professional life, and an aura of pessimism pervades everything.

One life is not enough to face the test. The challenger just wants the competitive examination to be over, to rest, to be the owner of his destiny, even if we are just talking about a couple of hours a week devoted to a long-forgotten minor occupation. And everything turns to be difficult. He doesn’t undestand the lack of comprehension of the others, who obviously are playing in another league. The relatives and friends demand their part of attention and care, and time is very limited, up to the point that, should the candidate have three lives to spend on exam preparation, he would take the three of them in studying and preparing.

But the real tragedy is not here. We have been taught that to a supreme effort a worthy reward must come, but this doesn’t normally occur with competitive exams. If you have, say 700 people for 40 posts, it doesn’t matter how good you are or if you deserve it. Fate doesn’t understand about divine justice and that stuff. The only thing that matters is to be one of the top forty in the examination. It has nothing to do with doing your work well or being the best, it is only about proving that you can do the best test attending to the established strange rules, those that normally have no relationshipship with the post you are applying to. Neither try to understand the assessment criteria or the professional capacity of the examination board: they always know less than you and probably less than the majority of your rivals. Nobody said it was easy, but it wasn’t fair, either.

If you or somebody in your family is undergoing this situation, good luck. You truly need it. Just to pass the exam successfully and to avoid conflict, divorce, distance, madness, remorse of those moments that will be lost forever. Maybe the expectations were, like those of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations’ Pip Pirrip, too great for somebody like you. But do not let yourself be disappointed by this pessimistic narrator. Maybe you are good enough and “it cannot be done” literature only manages to encourage you to try harder. Impossible is nothing, says Nike. It’s just quite difficult.

The tiranny of the idle

He's charming, well educated, tender, clever and sophisticated... the perfect partner. The only little problem is... you know, that he is not very eager to work.
Guys like this are more common than it seems and, if you have one in your life, be ready for an extra sacrifice in the name of love.

Of course the range of people include both male and female adults, youngsters, oldies and babies, but some have more excuse than others to be lazy. It’s not the same being an adolescent with the head full of partying and interminable whatsapp conversation about such paramount topics as hairstyle or the last hangover than becoming a supposedly respectable mum with two children and enormous economic and familiar responsibilities.

The point is, some humans don’t accomplish their duties. They have even developed extraordinary skilful excuses to put the blame on somebody else, the Government, destiny or a bad patch. If they are the one and only in their life, superb! Everybody waste his time in his own manner: sweeping the Sahara desert’s sand, sniffing the money out or collecting stupidities acquired via ebay. But, unless your are a weird alien fallen from the red planet, or a superfreak with no friends or relatives because they abandoned you by a rivershore in a wicker basket, you must contribute to the family economy. Maybe not earning good money. Finding a job nowadays seems impossible mission sometimes. But you can take care of the children as well. Or cleaning the house, cooking or doing the ironing. Household chores are almost infinite. You only need to use your imagination. And your hands. What you can’t do is nothing. Waiting for your ideal job to come out of the blue or even praying for such a chance not to appear.

If you are the other one, the sufferer, good luck. You will need it. God knows how much effort you will make in the name of a bad understood affection. If it’s your offspring I can still sort of admit your patience. Any other case you deserve what you have at home. Do company and two screws a week deserve it? I answer you: not at all.

What is the future of the present?

If any person today turned back towards the past and tried to imagine then how things would be in the time to come, it would result absolutely unbelievable. Hard to think that there would not be flying cars and light sabers fuctioning as multipurpose tin openers and other thousand stupidities. In a sense, one considers that future isn’t a linear progression and that technology and invention have run too much for some aspects and have just decelerated for others. People still have sex by physical contact and most homes are unlocked through a not-original-at-all key. We thought we have grasped future, but it was just the weary present. The other guy was two steps before us.

The last craze seems the whatsapp application. Almost everybody is hooked to that shit. More than cocaine, I believe, although I don’t know if I’m also afraid of so dubious an acknowledgement. Communication has transformed into a big stupid speaker that let us contact distant people at the same time that deafens and silences those closer to us. And maybe you would prefer to be there instead of here, but I bet that if you stayed in the other location you would send interminable whatsapps to the mates in this. Yeah, those you ignored a couple of lines ago.  In any case, “talking” through written conversation demands new skills as important as having a driving license or being able of operating a modern computer.

For immense and neverending household chores, innovation never arrived. We still have to sweep the floor, do the washing and the ironing and change the baby’s nappies. Some things never change, even though you have enough money to buy a brand-new vacuum cleaner robot. As for personal hygiene, nothing new under the sun. We still get rid of dirt and smell through running water, and although wet wipes and dry shampoo do wonders, H₂O is still the king of cleanliness.

And in love? Does technology selects for us in a more accurate way that that naive chubby angel with the arrow rarely reaching the correct buttocks? I’m afraid not. People choose as wrongly now as ever. Cupid’s post is safe and sound. Maybe he shot all of us in relation to our whatsapp application.

Cyber revenge

Many amateur videos about homemade sex proliferate on the internet. Some are funny recordings about couples with a randy moment, taken by a security camera or a far cell phone, where situation and angle offer a comic sketch rather than a hot tape. The other variety puts the emphasis on heating the spectator up.

And things have changed a lot. In a world of interwoven communication, data interchange, instant information and almost free access to any kind of contents, it was just a matter of fact that pornography became boring. Just as operated boobs and streched faces have made beauty seem plastic-like, artificial, aseptic souless flesh on somebody’s bones, perfectly choreographed short videos recorded with wanking purposes have fallen in disgrace. To a certain extent. Reality overcomes fakes. Or, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

But we are not here to speak about the craze of homemade vs. professional sex. The reason of this essay, notwithstanding it comes right into the third paragraph, is to reflect about a new kind of love vengance. Forget about calling your ex at 3 pm. This is much funnier and humiliating. Follow these easy instructions. First, fuck her off. No, no, wait. Just without the preposition. Then convince her, in the name of the passion, your sacred love or whatever, to film both of you in sexual action. Don’t care about appearing on screen, you can add a tomato or any other covering mask to your face in all the stills later. Maybe you are not a sonofabitch. Perhaps you just recorded your girlfriend’s orography because it stimulated your horny mind or your hard-ons, I don’t care. Probably you thought you really love her.

But she left you. Now is the moment for the fuck off part. Remember that video with that so little becoming position of her? Yes, that with the big buttocks. Forget about it. You need to show the face. Now, who is the genuine sonofabitch, the immature, childish, tiny-penis complexed bastard who deserves a good eternal gonorrhea? Yeah, it’s you. Why don’t you cover her face with anonymity instead of those timid drops of masculinity and show off about the deed with your stupid ass-like face and your name subtitled?

Maybe amateur sex is good fun for some, but it isn’t when you don’t ask for permission. You deserve a good yellow badge of cowardice. And a kick in the nose too.

Although quite different, this kind of punishment is similar to beating a woman. I know it’s not the same and the possibility of a forbidden video coming into light is equally feasible for both male and female ex’s. But the fact is, there is no porn for women. Not in the classical term. The most similar thing is a new kind of 50-shadows-of-grey-like type of romantic, erotic stories or films. Women are not going to take revenge on you this way. They could find a thousand other types, but this is not one.

I don’t know if women should use the sexual attraction we feel for them to manipulate men. There have always been who did it and who didn’t. The truth is that most girls feel and think with the heart, and many boys with the cock. For whom does penis size matter? Surely for him, not for her! Those fucking minute dick(heads)!

Firm hand or gentle handling

One of the greatest dichotomies in recent sociology is the way we approach the others, especially when there’s a master-apprentice relationship, when one must educate the other or just when one element has to take the initiative for no matter what weird reasons. The two options are diametrically opposite, since one is based in strengh, authority and powerful represion of non-allowed attitudes, and the other tries to convince rather than defeat, to act softly and win adepts for the cause.

It’s difficult to choose one. One may even think that he is being tough and the others consider that as tender as a feather thrust. Or just the other way round: an apparently self-confessed loving man will appear a complete devil in the eyes of the cattle.

Take boss-employee relationship. For no matter which reason, the former is always a bloody bastard with no possibility of redeem; the latter, on the contrary, turns out to be the ultimate lazy unless unskilled worker, even though he has two degrees and a master by the university of life. When the employer adopts a brother-like, gently manner with the laborer, he will systematically try to escape his duties, reaching the point of laughing at the face of the dumb boss, insulting of nicknaming him if his kindness permits the situation. We mankind are like this, biting the hand that feeds us, abusing good people and crawling before real sonofabitches. Because the evil boss, bad-tempered without reason, always molesting and humilliating his subordinates is much more typical, and it’s difficult to say if he went cruel because circumstances and abusers led him to be or just because one get rotten having the single chance and no reason.

In the family field the same can be found. Relationships are generally built over a strong and a weak counterpart among adults, and around a despotic parent and a kind one against the kid when educating underagers. But sometimes parents fall into excessive connivence and children then become real monsters, tyrannical brats with no sense of right or wrong, only whims, shouts and cries.

From my point of view, I have always defended the necessity of being nice, although firm, but from some time on I prefer, on increasing occasions, to settle conflicts with youngsters with a terrifying shout. And, educative or not, it works much better that good words and an infinite patience with them. Of course you cannot be all the time yelling, but once in a blue moon it makes them remember who is the alpha male here, because in a classroom we are not the same. The master orders, and the apprentices try not to obey. It’s a fact of life.

For the rest of human relations, I’m still finding a way. The best I have found up to now is “Yes, darling, a crawling worm and I don’t deserve to live”. It works too. J

Politics is not that easy

The South of Europe is still recovering from the aftermath of Greek general elections in which a brand new political party has risen as the ultimate solution to the country crisis. Alexis Tsipras’s SIRIZA has won all but two seats to obtained an absolute majority government. Measures have been swift and reactions for and against them have followed subsequently. The average Greek citizen celebrates the new anti-austerity policy, the rejection to talk with the Troika or at least the intention of renegotiating the national debt with Europe. But things are not so straightforward. Inverstors have escaped with their money to more stable markets and minor savers are afraid of a national restriction of their own savings. In the long run, if the new hellenic government, apart from persecuting corruption and limiting the overenrichment of high public posts, doesn’t assure relaxing fiscal and tax conditions to millionaires and big companies, they will probably move to a countries with more beneficial conditions. No investments, no industry and no jobs.

In Spain people is eagerly waiting for the general election of November with the hope that Pablo Iglesias’s Podemos will turn over the extremely corrupted practices of the two traditional strong parties, PP and PSOE. The new political group will also try to revert the destruction of working posts, reduce the debt and cut down on the inmense economical abyss between rich and poor people, among other popular measures like guaranteeing the national health service and the quality of public education, both now into question thanks to current Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his fantastic decrees born out of the absolute majority that the Popular Party has in the government.

But the same as in Greece is about to happen here. If the new measures are too strangulating por the powerful, they will go to new paradises. Maybe the system is bound to accept a certain degree of enrichment for the priviledged, some corruption but not too much. What I’m saying is terrible, but down-to-earth nations work like that. Until the very rich aren’t inmensely rich again, the average person won’t notice any improvement in his daily economy. As I heard once in prison –not as an inmate, I must remark–, “Some quantity of drug is not that bad within. It makes addicts tranquil and not very nervous.”

Another question is the result of the would-be new ministers from Podemos in the future. We don’t know if they will limit to run the country or will do just as everyone else: introduce the hand in the safe and retire some public funds for personal use. Only time, and maybe George Orwell’s Animal Farm will tell. From the time being, there are now three major parties in the surveys and two of them will have to pact to make a coalition government. Perhaps the traditional close enemies on the right (PP) and on the left (PSOE)? In any case, what is still incredible in Spain is that the party in the government, after so many flops and dishonest behaviour, is the first option for the majority of voters. They must have a lot of extended family.

I don’t know if I am (Je suis) totally Charlie

Maybe this is not the best way to begin an essay, but being politically correct is,  reached this point, nonsense. The truth is the truth, yes, but sometimes it is a polihedron with multiple faces not always as beautiful or ugly as we may think.

The reprehensible shooting of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters has been a truly jab into the heart of the most recognizable nation of freedom in old Europe, but no more than a sharp pain into the chest of a body little accustomed to severe injuries.

Again, opinions could be misunderstood, but statistics never lie. In the 11^th  September 2001 terrorist attacks on The Pentagon, The World Trade Center and other places in North America three thousand people died there. The 11^th March 2004 bombs in the Madrid train system cost a toll of almost 200 lives. In Paris 12 people passed away and four more are critical or seriously ill. The magnitude goes in decreasing numbers.

Now think about the tsunami of 2004 which drowned 230.000 second-class inhabitants, or the earthquake in Haiti where a hundred thousand natives –maybe more– stopped breathing in the name of poverty. And what about the innocents being killed every day in the African and Asian war conflicts? The figures are so big that it is risky not only to be born there, but also to state an approximate toll number.

The Western World has mobilized with the execrable crime of the satirical magazine, but we have been watching the Islamic State killing people day in, day out and nobody has ever cared about it. It seems that freedom of expresion is more important than third world’s lives.

When these horrible things happen, one can less than reflect critically on them. A teacher or mother brought her pupils/children to Charlie Hebdo house to show them that the artists had been killed for drawing. Well, I won’t say that is false, but I’m afraid this is a huge simplification of the facts.

Shooting somebody because they have shown an image of your undepicted God or prophet seems a bit overfanatic, I admit, but there is much more over the layer than it seems. I mean, we exert economic legal assassination. The developed nations have long helped poor countries to die of inner starvation. This has nothing to do with religion. It’s pure survival. And we first world citizens have forgotten about them long ago. We don’t push triggers. Not in the literal sense. We don’t need to. A good pack of measures and restrictions, greedy politics and interventionism have made the work for us (did I want to say “us” or “U.S.”? I’m not pretty sure).

Isn’t it cruel, insensitive, a total aberration to celebrate our Christmas traditions and compulsive consumerism habits while we turn our backs to those in need of basic help? Perhaps we deserve this kind of suicidal torments, maybe we are much more guilty than we think. Where did autocriticism go long ago? Oh, yes, we don’t need it. It’s all about maniacal followers of Allah and their Holy War. They are the baddies and we, pure saints that unfortunately passed by over there in the worst moment.

I think we are totally mistaken. And still we consider ourselves the paradigm of liberty, egalitarism and fraternity. The Islamic State may deserve a good nuclear bomb under their pants, but we didn’t care a damn until they touched our isolated happiness and remembered us that people are dying violently out there while we suffer depressions because there isn’t much more to undergo when all our basic necessities are covered. If bums are perishing of coldness, bad luck. But my family a new iphone each. 

The worst day of the year

For me, it is today! Maybe for others it was yesterday, their wedding date or the last day of summer holidays. Variety is the spice of life, they say. Well, Christmas holidays have melted like a snowman at the sun of August (in Spain) and we have nothing to hope for.

Yes, you will tell me that we are half in the middle of the academic year, that summer is half way, that there is a ray of light in the midst of January mist, but it is not enough.

People have a lot of good intentions when the year breaks: a good deal of gym torture, re-starting (one more time and it’s the twenty-second time) that rusty English of you –I’m doing it as well, I confess–, giving up horrible vices such as smoking, devouring cakes or criticizing your mother-in-law, taking life seriously, saving some money, avoiding those terrible drunk times with their corresponding hangovers... the list is almost infinite.

I don’t believe about this reset of life. Not now, at least. The commencement of a new year is only a mark in the calendar and a lot of nonsense celebrating that we have overpassed another change of digits –I meant figures, not amputation and reimplantation of fingers–. Things really happen when academic years start again. That is September, the month where everything is new. You come from a long –or short vacation–, even fed up of vegetative contemplation of non practical routines, waiting for something that may indeed change your future. Mankind expectations are made up of dreams and illusory constructions, being only a small part those that will actually come true, sometimes in a completely unexpected way, or to a diminished fulfilment from the predicted result.  

In Autumn you see clearer, the air is still warm, and the harshness of cruel winter is far. There’s time to prepare for its rawness. Now it’s high time for projects and daydreaming. This is more clearly seen in school life. For students, the starting point is always the beginning of a new challenge: brand new mates, teachers, subjects, decisions, habits... For workers, some of the most paramount modifications appear after the summer, although not always. In any case, more and more enterprises tend to big changes when June is over and not with the natural fall of the year –another hint of true conclusion of a whole period.

In January, few features have been altered. Experiments, with coca cola. If the company must swap posts, reorganize departments or reconsider further instructions, they will wait for six more months. For the time being, definite decisions may be reached depending on the final performance of the pieces on the chessboard, but only to be communicated on the edge of vacations. Thus, a forced retirement will be well assumed and new responsibilities, too. In the end, living is going up and down storeys of a big building in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by everything. Which floor are you going to?

¿Are you kidding?

Recently I have heard of Cristiano Ronaldo supporting the narcissistic idea that he is an idol for youth, or better, an example for youngsters. Well, this doesn’t exceed those unforgettable words about being criticised because he was handsome –arguably–, rich –indisputable– and a good player –one of the best, actually, if not the best right now–, but this epitaph renews old flaws in egotistic CR7.

And the blame isn’t his. Not totally, at least. He has been remembered once and again of his almost godlike qualities, much over the reasonable, until the point in which one doesn’t know if he is a demigod or a whole one. A good deal of euros per minute complete the spell and convince the most self-critical one. If a pornographic current account and the vacuous and neverending cheers and raw admiration of mindless fans hungry –if not starving– for epic don’t convert the humblest person on earth into a stupid brat nothing will.

Ronaldo will be another victim of football. A millionaire one, yes, but have a look at him five years from his retirement. There is no other field of failure and collapse like that of former sports men, being idolized and workshipped with interminable inconditional admiration and money just to end up alone, forgotten and bankrupt after a host of bad decisions closely related to luxury, glamour, compulsivity, vice and everything that money and fame can buy.

The twilight of the Gods must be something that no one can bear, that’s true. It makes you blind and deaf, if not completely dumb. And the worst is when you lose perspective, when you really believe that you are an example for others. I won’t deny that the Portuguese striker has got plenty of qualities, that he is one of the best in soccer history, that his pectorals are to be envied and desired, but from that to consider him a referent there is a huge stretch. I admit that his obsessive love for vigorexia, fitting and good shape make him a superhuman athlete, that those virtues can be extrapolated as effort, working hard and insist in life, but no more. The way he handles his fame is selfish, arrogant and childish. He is more a divo and a celebrity than a footballer. In spite of that, he is still a superb one, which makes it clear to what extent Ronaldo has been alienated by a massive overdose of idolatry.

It’s a pity that the youth don’t use common people as referents, but these are the market rules. Take it or leave it. The world will not change in a sigh. Well, maybe, if it is the phenomenon from Madeira who emits it.

Black is better

We could be talking about garments, wall colours or chess pieces, but actually this article is about the physical supremacy of black people over the white ones.

We have to admit it, negroes do better in a bunch of significant roles related to sports and are highly esteemed in terms of penis dimensions. Maybe size is not important. That is what we white people tend to say, but it is. At least, for males. Otherwise we won’t be all the time making comparisons in which, by the way, we always lose for an inch –or even far more. In porn, for example, black actors are continuously hired for their monster dicks. It doesn’t matter if only well-endowed guys appear on films moving foward and backwards and short-sized negroes are not allowed to fuck for film purposes. The fact is that I have never seen a black man without a long attribute.

As far as physique is concerned, they are again much better gifted than the average bloke in other races. Therefore it’s not strange if they do better at basketball or athletics, where is unthinkable that an Aryan could ever overcome them.

Nevertheless, things always have another side, and usually far more ugly than the previous one. Negroes are certainly the best in some aspects, but not necessarily in all. Coming back to sexuality, for instance, their elephant-size members have the same problem as that of the pachyderms: their penises are so huge that they usually can’t guarantee a complete erection. A flabby cock, no matter how big it is, is worse that a hard tiny willy. Flaccidity has always become a real battlehorse for Africans in action, as if skin colour paleness were strongly connected to hard-ons. At the end, no matter if prick size is good for its long proportion or the desire it awakes on women –and homosexual men, I guess– but functionality is even more important.

As for sports, black people are very good at them, but not at all. Have you ever seen a negro swimming like a mermaid in any major competition or skiing down a snowy mountain in any Winter Olympic Games edition? Maybe you guys can fuck deeper and jump higher, run faster and play better, but you won’t screw first in the Hymalayas or across the Amazon. You can’t win always, dudes.

Positive discrimination

I am totally fed up with this new custom of awarding the underpriviledged more than the reasonable. I mean, of course we all have the serious responsibility of eliminating all kind of barriers –physical, psychological, academic, labour–; in short, to guarantee equal opportunities for the handicapped.

By extension, we tend to include here all kind of groups susceptible of suffering any sort of abuse, either concious or unconciously. I am talking not only about disabled, but also children, the poor, the young, foreigners, especially from Third World countries, women, the elderly and so on.

I absolutely agree and support the need to protect people in severe risk of exclusion in any situation, but to reach a real even level. The problem is... what if the undertaken measures become so powerful and convincing that instead of securing equality of rights they provide the underpriviledged with more than the rest?

Theorizing is easy and not very down-to-earth. Let’s try to present some clarifying examples. Think of criminals. Here in Spain they’ve got a chance to rehabilitate. If they show cooperative skills and collaboration, they are offered a assembly-line kind of post, inside the prison. Inmates are not paid much –no more than 400 euros– but taking into account that they don’t pay for the “accommodation”or the “meals, and that there are around 6 million unemployed out there all over the country, maybe their reinsertion is a luxury we can’t afford.

Official posts are another field of great controversy. Exams to get a permanent job are hard, especially because the rate of applicants per post is considerably high. In these cases, some vacants are reserved for people with a certain physical disability. This is all very nice, but a lame person has mucho more chances to become a civil servant than the average guy. Preserving park spaces for reduced-mobility people is one thing, and offering them access to a post with over-exaggerated assets in proportion to the rest of mortals is a very different one.  

We must tend to equality of rights and opportunities, not to over-award those with less possibilities, because at the end becoming a handicapped –if the disability is not very accused– seems better than having nothing to declare and benefit from. Solidarity sometimes turns into counter-abusing from the part of the weak. Be aware of that, and try not to be harm by the rules.

Devoured by the pumpkin celebration

One of the most increasingly-observed festival in Spanish lands has to do with the straightforward anglosaxonization of former religious traditions. Thus, the highly respected All Saints’ Day has been biased towards the western party of All Hallows’ Eve, where children and not-so-young people hang around from house to house trick-or-treating, wearing (not very) creepy costumes and having fun playing frights or collecting a huge amount of calories and sugar.

The celebration has gone far here, since Halloween is followed by several age groups one way or another. From the very little children going not beyond their own neighbourhood, even block, frequently acompanied or distantly watched by their protective parents, to the adolescent parties including lots of make up and overwhelmingly low necklines.

Horror sells well. Everybody loves it, especially when, as if it were a Disney animated film, you can enjoy yourself in different levels of macabreness, from the very innocent disguises of small children to the creepy creatures sourrounding adult fun. People love fear, especially the youngsters, because it pops up their adrenaline when they really need new thrills. If you can also wear fancy dresses, sometimes to look like a whore, better still. Nobody is going to condemn you for that, particularly in a night where everything is allowed, either tributing Mary Shelley’s Fankenstein’s monster or imitating Count Dracula’s vampiress daughter. Notwithstanding the proximity of the sacred feast, this night is here to give free rein to terrific excesses; something similar to the Carnival spirit, swapping flesh vices for overhorrifying. Dawn will bring peace to souls and to the bodies of the wild participants. Continence will rule again on earth... and under it.

Lone Ranger or the rebirth of Jack Sparrow

One of the most dangerous things that may happen to a consummate film star is that the actor persona devours the movie character. Thus, never expect Humphrey Bogart to behave weakly or Clint Eastwood to solve trouble by means of accurate, convincing words. The same occurs with Johnny Depp. You may like him or not, but he never deceives anybody. Either directed by Tim Burton or by any other director, Johnny will always be the same funny guy on the verge of madness, taking himself not very seriously –actually, not seriously at all–, showing a huge range of soft, mild, even affectionate good manners and a pinch of idle extravagance.

 For this reason it was not surprising that Tonto, the loyal and supporting native American who finds a more dead-than-alive John Reid and save his life as the ranger had previously preserved his –according to the 80’s film, from which this movie is clearly a sort of remake–, from the very beginning overlaps and overshadows the title character who, by the way, is much duller and softer.

But we were highly warned. A production coming from Disney couldn’t be prone to the free exaltation of violence or the unreasoned revenge of the reflexive distric attorney, reconverted for the occasion in The Lone Ranger, the only survivor of a massacre of lawmen by the ruthless Butch Cavendish. Instead of highlighting the heroic abilities of the outlawed ranger, the studio prefers not to take the film very seriously, and gives Depp carte blanche to repeat all the tics and eccentricities of Jack Sparrow, including a pervading inofensive insanity, a relaxed sense of absurd humour and neverending remarks for every rough situation. Armie Hammer does his best as the ranger, and he’s not bad on his role, but audience and script are on Johnny’s side.

Apart from that naive comical tone that spoils more than improves the film, the length is excessive and the rhythm uneven. Often, accelerated action takes us from one place to another without much sense and other times the movie hungs around interminable reports about the extermination of ethnic tribes, the coming of the railroad to the West or the exploitation of Chinese slaves in the construction of the necessary network.

Nevertheless, the movie has good points, as well. Action scenes are devilishly fun, especially those that occur around the trains, the plot is rarely consistent but works and the general feeling that remains after the final credits is one of high optimism and faith in mankind. Once more, Rossini’s William Tell Overture fills the critical stills with adventure and nostalgic heroism.

Finally, the film doesn’t forget to pay a straightforward homage to some of the great themes, directors and movies of the genre: John Ford, the railroad, Anthony Mann, the confrontation of indians vs colonists, the all-American noble cowboy, as opposed to the crepuscular spaghetti antihero... even to Lucky Luke through the weird occurrencies of Silver, the white horse, which resembles clearly to Jolly Jumper at his best. Another scene is directly inherited from Once Upon a Time in the West, when silence fills the air and something is going to happen while the character is drinking from the well and startled birds flutter around.

The film deserves to be watched, but without too many pretentions. Just to have a good time and remember the old good times of westerns. To expect something else from this product would be an unforgivable error and an exercise of avoidable disappointment. Next try leave Disney and Depp at home and harden the tone. Maybe it flops the same but at least it will have cost much less bucks.

The three musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Few books have been so widely adapted to films as this masterpiece of cloak and dagger, doubtless the most famous from Dumas, apart from The count of Montecristo, which will probably rank second in his repertoire.

What the average person has got in mind is the popular history revisited over and over again in more than 30 or 40 films. Both original novels –for The three musketeers is only the first and best-known part of a whole trilogy– and subsequent film versions have in common the body of the plot, although it is only the first big adventure of D’Artagnan –that is, the one of Buckinghman’s diamond studs delivery– which persistently appears movie after movie.

An aspect rarely neglected in the film versions that reflects well the feeling of displacement is the arrival of a provincial D’Artganan at the city of Paris, yet a rushing metropoli up to that epoch, being this foreigner’s solitude a sensation overrepeated a thousand times here and there. But the aparent naivety of the young would-be musketter is not so real in the novel, for the Gascon is brave and resolute and, although not familiar to the customs of the Court, determined in his matters and soon affairs of other kind.

Much of the plot is ruled through luck and coincidence, being this way sometimes difficult to believe, but in general facts are fisible and, as we will know much later, logical under the eyes of the Big Brother of the era, Monsieur Cardinal Richelieu, the baddie behind the scenes. And the ending of the book seems solved sort of hastily. Milady Clarick’s perfidy has no limits, we all know that, but we don’t need five chapters to get convinced of that, nor did por Felton, the integral puritan corrupted by her beauty and manipulation into assassinating the Duke of Buckinham and freeing her at the same blow.

And the execution of the Countess de la Fere, aka Milady, whereas essential to the plot, has nothinh heroic on it so it’s frequently excluded in filmed versions. As for the men of Meung, his apparitions are crucial and very mysterious, but the long-awaited duel with the main character actually necer takes place in the novel, and is only referred to in the epilogue.

The book hooks you and ask for more pages to devour, but I don’t think I will take the second part Twenty years later. For now I have had enough of cloak and dagger stuff. Maybe in 2033.

Too numb?

In this days of crises and shortages, where everybody tries to survive under harsh conditions, and truly unaware of the harsher circumstances of the neighbour, we average people are getting used to undergoing social cuts and impoverishment without any simptom of discontent but resignation. Everyone is becoming poorer, but no one does anything apart from turning up in endless demonstrations. Getting into politics is a tricky matter, and trying to stop financial abuse a chimera, but the former and the latter are the ones to blame for the economic situation. The population seems to forget that banks are made of our capital, little, but a big amount when added to everybody else’s. And they at least have made themselves, whereas politicians are supposedly elected by us –each and every of us–, which is not a big deal but we did the choice.

Being things like they are, what really strikes me is that we all don’t go out and hang –metaphorically– these two lineages, bankers and politicians up the highest tree everywhere. Maybe it’s high time to stop swallowing corruption, overtaxing and abusive conditions imposed by the powerful, that prepotent bunch of villains and to make them eat desperation, poverty, lack of opportunities, hanger, unemployment, inflation and vital uncertainty. We need a big revolution because capitalism only makes the rich richer, and the poor, bloody poorer. We have long been ripped off. Now, ¿who’s gonna paid for the crashed lives in that huge economical accident they had with all of us sitting behind without seatbelt?

Expulsion: is it an appropriate disciplinary measure?

Many different groups have argued about the convenience of expelling disruptive students from regular classes. Does it have any positive effect? Well, it depends on the point of view, or better, on the affected people. If you ask all the participants in the still, some will be surely relieved whereas for others it will cause a nervous breakdown and a truly pain in the ass. Take the other students, for example. For those only interested in studying and benefiting from a good lesson –which will make them study and review less hours at home–, the measure is worth an Oscar. But if you think of those parents of the “angel”, who probably will have to seek somebody to care for the boy, or take a day off, or just leave him alone at home, abusing the computer, the punishment is not useful. A boy at home on a school day certainly means problems. For the teacher, giving a class without the black pie takes a lot of stress away. And as far as the other not very nice pupils in the classroom are concerned, the exemplary sentence will serve them well: they will either avoid getting into trouble or try to “suffer” the same cruel but liberating punishment.

Some groups have doubted about the efficiency of the measure. Sending a problematic student home is not a solution. Well, it is for the rest of the school community, but not for him. Society thinks that education implies making an effort, and taking the student out of school is not precisely an attempt. Reaching that point, we all have to make ourselves a question: is a single person more important than the collective? Do we really have to sacrifice the whole class so as to save a unique and very special critical person? The answer is not easy, but amplifying the scope may help. How does society deal with criminal behaviour? Do they keep disruptive people with the regular community, waiting something wrong to happen? Are those misbehavers to be re-educated, listened to, consoled and comforted, and reinserted in society without moving a single muscle of their bodies? Just as adults are penalised with fines, prison, seizure and other ways of public rejection or deprivation, so do students have to be punished with effective measures. Dialogue, understanding, care and attention are first procedures to apply but there’s a point when thumping the table with the fist is necessary and highly recommended, not only for the disruptive pupils but also for the rest of the academic community. Infinite patience would be the best option but, if parents cannot provide a whole life to take care of their children, how could teachers look after twenty minds starving for affection and understanding?

What to study for?

This is the question many youngsters make themselves in current Spain. They have been said to prepare for the future, to gain academic skills to face life on equal terms with regards to* other young Europeans, but the economic crisis has taken all hopes away.

When the Spanish Government explained that the difficult times were not something to be afraid of, either they were underestimating the situation or they simple became exceeded by the big problem. Only when the EU obliged Spain to cut off services to face the crisis did the average citizen realize that we were really having serious trouble down there.
The country has adopted some restrictive measures to reduce the public debt, such as increasing the retirement age up to 67. Meanwhile, young people find it difficult to get either a steady or a provisional job. Some make fun of the situation. Typical jokes include elderly people failing at work because of their advanced age or the contradiction of having young healthy Spaniards sunbathing on Mondays while their parents or grandparents pass away working.
Things are difficult for everybody, but they turn out to be especially discouraging for teenage people. They try hard to get good marks and job titles, but at the same time they know that a university degree does not imply a permanent job, not even a temporary one.
In any case, being things as they are, it is better to spend time on academic matters rather than on the dole queue. If life is made of repeated periods of prosperity and poverty, crisis will end. The question is when

In what way can consumers change their eating habits?

To begin with, people can only change their diet if they really want to. The worst problems when facing food habits are quality and frequency rather than quantity. If a person wants to keep healthy and fit, he should worry about what to take and when instead of how much.

The point is, we should eat a balanced diet, with plenty of vegetables, a good deal of fruit, quite a lot of fish,enough milk and dairy products, some pasta, bread and rice, some meat and a bit of fat and sugar from crisps, chocolates and candies. In fact, obesity and weight-gain have much to do with an abuse of fattening food, such as processed food, whereas natural products are normally healthier.
Apart from the kind of food, it is also important to eat five times a day, and to avoid doing it between meals. A heavy breakfast and a decreasing quantity to reach a light supper before going to sleep would be highly beneficial, too.
To sum up, eating habits need more balance than drastic changes. After all, keeping fit is more a matter of continuity than one of punctual sacrifice.