Gus In The Real Life

So the holidays are coming to an end, and I keep wondering how much the Disney Corporation had influenced the holidays?, in the past 53 years. I guess a lot, and after my first year living fully 12 months in the United States I can say that the holidays wouldn’t be holidays without the seasonal movies from Disney.

Probably we had get an idea, a merchandise idea of how Christmas should be… but probably in a cynic position I would say that behind the religious parafernalia lays a powerful marcheting strategy that appeals to anyone.

Ok, this is a complaint. I know Obama hasn’t taking possession yet and the media is in love with him like if he had done something great, he hasn’t done anything let’s wait until he get in the White House so then we can take some conclusions.

I know almost +99.9% of the world population don’t like George W. Bush (myself included) but we need to wait because we don’t know if Obama is going to do a worse job than Bush, we need to stop putting in a pedestal because at the moment he and his crew make the first mistake they are going to be bombarded as the image they sold to the masses was an image of winners, and the masses don’t forgive mistakes.

Mental diseases are a problem that most of the time, they pass by without been noticed. When I arrived at the country, I didn’t knew I was going to live with a person who hasn’t been treated properly and everyone around her thinks that she is just eccentric but she cleared displayed the characteristics of a schizophrenic paranoid individual, that were more visible when she was “sitting” her grandchildren.

I have to say the experience was kind of traumatic, as I wasn’t used to that level of family “violence”, the screaming, the punches, the insults, and not only her but some of her grandchildren also, and nobody even though about doing a thing as most of them thought that was normal.

I remember feeling like Carol Lewis Alice, I was in another world that I never seen before, not only because I was in the States but because I was in the middle of an inner war and I was there watching in first row. I compared the lady with the Mad Hatter, a crazy individual who was immerse in his own world and he wasn’t aware about his psychotic behavior; that was the lady, like the Mad Hatter (even her hair was kind of similar and her nose).

Me being Alice, I was trapped in a world with new rules, rules that I didn’t knew and to this day I don’t know any; someday it was happiness, other it was sadness and rage, those mood changes were so sudden and quick that you were seeing two individuals in one body, one side was happy and go-lucky the other was somber and destructive; you could saw her buying toys for her grandkids and in a blink of an eye, she was a paranoid individual who was afraid of her own neighbors.

When I arrived to that house, I was with my physique ripped off due to it being the first time I was away from home,  away from my country and family, I was by myself and I couldn’t think well, I started to hear her words about not trusting the neighbors, racist comments and some superiority complex related words, and I didn’t saw anything strange at first, but when I saw yelling at her grandkids like if they were some kind of animals, I started to see the truth and that was the first time I reacted in the mess I was into.

Not only the person with the disability suffers, the family does as well, they will see the violence spurts as something normal, when clearly they aren’t, violence is not normal, is an aberration and at the same time a part of human nature that can be controlled. I remember that her youngest granddaughter had some similar sprouts as well, by punching and bitch slapping her younger brother with the minimal provocation, I thought that her could have the same disability has her grandma, since both were prone to violence burst with the minimal hesitation.

Her other grandkids had other problems as well, such as introspection and language difficulties, they couldn’t look at the eyes if they were speaking with you and they used to stutter; the youngest one had a dialect problem where at his 3 years of age he couldn’t pronounce more than a couple of nonsensical words, but nobody saw anything different from the other kids, the comments were that it was only a phase, but probably those comments were made as I was there, a stranger who passed by the looking glass into a wonderland.

6 months later after I left that house, I guess I have regained my strength, I do not feel weak anymore and I see that experience as a life experience where not only I could saw another perspective as an individual but I could saw and live to tell the life behind the looking glass.

Ok, I know that everyone has their own opinions and their own personal dogmas, but something that really bugs me a lot is when celebrities go political and the thing that blows my fuse is when people hear them; is good to know that many celebrities are not political versed or anything, many of them are like you and me, and many times they make “out of place” comments that people will think that they are saying the truth, as they have the celebrity status; but the truth people hear celebrities as they appear in movies and people will think that celebrities are smart and well versed because of that fact.

I know the logic is kind of strange, but, is true, people will hear celebrities as their exposure to the mass media. One or two celebrities that I don’t like… let’s say three, Oliver Stone and Sean Penn for their “support” to Hugo Chavez, how in this world they can speak well about that man, everyone knows that Hugo Chavez is crazy and he has done some serious things in the past, that for reasons of time we are going to avoid in this article; the celebrity that I find annoying and I know I am not the only one, is Tom Cruise, but well there are many reasons to find him absurd after his jumping the couch momentum.

So people how can pay attention to them (as well many others)? If at the end they aren’t saying anything good or doing anything fine either, I guess at the end masses are ignorant with what his shown in television.

So a day without the gays?, I see a day where Broadway is not going to open, half of Hollywood will be in their homes and San Francisco will be paralyzed; is hard to think that with all the civil improvements we have, today we have citizen treated by as a third class citizens just because their sexual orientation, is amazing to think that America one of the most avant-garde countries in the world (after Japan) it’s still one of the countries with more hate crimes to people who love different than the rest of the population, is incredible to think that a society with so many social developments it’ still so backward with different approaches about how individuals should be.

On December 10 of 2008, the International Rights Day, it’s the date marked by several Human Right Organizations to fight against the prejudice of proposition 8, by asking LGBT people to not go to work and donate their time to the initiative; I think not going to work it can be risky to many people, not because of discrimination but rather due civil disobedience, since many companies are gay friendly and they will not fire their employees due their sexual orientation but rather of not going to work because people can use this cause to take the day off and do something else.

A day without the gays?, probably I will see many business close in Ybor City, since the old district have most of its business run by the Gay and Lesbian Community here in Tampa Bay, but I am only speculating and I guess we have to wait to see what happens.

The Story of the Chimp, the Sassy Girl with talent, the Old Man, the Company Oil in Iraq and the vintage Americana Memorabilia

By: Gustavo Lequerica

So a new dawn is near for America, and the Bush administration is coming to an end, I guess many of us we can say “Hooray!, Horray!”, not another year with this daddy’s son who ended in the White House by some mistake in the vote counting, you can see how happy I am, and I know I am not the only one with this issue.

But after 8 years on the power, I know I am speaking soon, but in less than 60 days he is gone from the power, and we can celebrate (in a side note, too bad Sexy Sarah didn’t won, but well we can wait to see her as a the next Oprah), but we can’t sleep in our laurels as we have to be careful what President elect Obama do, since he and his vast team will be the key players in this critical situation for the American economy, remember something my reader, we the people for the people we are the ones who control this country, even if we can’t vote our power of opinion can make a difference for good.

Ok, now we talked the serious, now we can go with the jokes, Ok, Bush administrations was like the major, biggest soap opera ever, more than All My Children and Guiding Light combined, I mean we had drinking, gun shots, fraud, twins going wild, war, we had almost everything, it was so fun the scandals and all the stories, more than the Clinton administration, as a joke I can say George Bush deserves an Emmy for best comedic actor ever, the guy was hilarious in his speeches, he couldn’t even read well the teleprompter not even Jimmy Fallon in SNL made so many mistakes, but at least Jimmy laughed when he screwed up.

And now after 8 years, this “show” is coming to an end, and it will be a show that it will be remembered. On a side note, did you knew Condi Rice played the piano?, she is truly a sassy girl with brains and talent.