All heating my house is a salamander from the early twentieth century, is a beautiful object and cast iron with a frame of a dragon-or possibly a salamander adragonada-over door. Coal or wood works cut into slivers and takes a long time to warm up. Once you do it stays warm for several hours and reaches for tuning almost every room in my home. But it's Wednesday and I'm stuck at nine o'clock at night in my bed, with all the blankets and rugs that I have on me. Outside temperature hovers around zero degrees but forecasters say the wind chill is below zero. I believe them. Below the covers is the only place where I can be without feeling a German soldier in Stalingrad. Not turned on the stove. I have no coal and I have a handle to buy a bag. According to the government I am part of the wealthy strip of high-income people who do not cost anything to income tax sacrifice a good part of his salary. But I do not feel well, there is zero degree and I can not buy a bag of coal. And just 22 of this month.
Down blankets and I'm okay I sleep very early. In the morning I wake up shivering because I Uncover a nightmare from which I only remember smudging. Four blocks from my house, someone with whom I was talking just three days before crashing into a column and is dead. ***
Since my teens always defended the winter to my friends, who seemed unable to associate any kind of intense happiness with anything but the summer season when I felt clumsy and inadequate. I loved the winter clothes, loved to go outside without my nose in the open, dressed as a Finnish soldier patrolling around Viipuri. Loved to strip me of the clothes in front of a burning fireplace, listening to sad music and drinking wine by the glass, talking about nothing. He loved being with a hot girl and go lifting the many layers of cloth that covered to find warm skin. He loved busting rain against the skylight and loved being in the shelter of her. Today I realize that I do not love both the winter and would rather be at a table in summer or spring evening, taking me a whiskey and watching the navels of other girls, wearing T-shirts deliberately short.
After nine years without doing it I started smoking again. One night, a week of incredible stress that neither the music nor alcohol appeared to weaken, I asked for a cigarette to a friend. After three puffs and felt more relaxed and the problems seemed softer.
I have to quit again, because I notice that the hangovers get longer and my voice is disappearing. But I see Vázquez Mercosur Summit in preaching about the thousand and one evils of smoking, and being hailed as an apostle of life. As the man who found the dragon to defeat. Glad to not be part of his crusade, another virtue of the cigarette. ***
expression "chill factor" applied to an alleged exaggeration of the perception of insecurity was coined by former Interior Minister Jose Diaz But the press of the right-wing opposition insisted on winning them over and over again, his successor, Daisy Tourne , which he hated with fervor. Diaz expression was not free and corresponded to the almost hysterical exaggeration of the media, particularly those associated with the opposition, in relation to security issues, installed according to the polls in a central place in the concerns of Montevideo. But although his diagnosis of intentional management of this means nothing innocent concern was valid, the expression became very ill. A problem which is used by political interests does not mean that the problem does not exist, and speak of the insecurity has some "chill" that is, unreal perception was terribly offensive to those who had suffered a crime or were close to someone who had. And these were and are many.
National Observatory on Violence and Crime-created by this government in 2005 - recently revealed the new figures on crimes and offenses that occurred last semester. The figures were rather frightening, with a clear rise in homicides and sex crimes. But Interior Minister Jorge Bruni had some good news: the robberies had increased by less than in previous semesters, making it possible to speak of a decline in crime rates. An economist has gone mad trying to explain why something that actually increased decreased, based on the ratio of which increased less than before.
Months ago, Daisy Tourne-to an earlier report said the figures were good for only the robberies had increased, by 20% - but that other crimes were more or less in their numbers in 2002. The same logic above, but in 2002 the country was broken and the worst rates of unemployment and poverty that have been seen since the end of the dictatorship, and now the government could Exibir with an unemployment rate of just pride 7%, a figure close to what is considered "full employment" economy. If economic variables with clearly better, crime-kept and even increased, in the same terms as the country had been on the verge of collapse, then there was a problem that did not explain the factor deterministic theories on poverty and need. There was nothing, sociological and cultural problems for which the left did not give answers or names, much less an immediate solution. Still do not. When they say it's crowded all the fault of the paste. ***
I meet a friend whom I see very little. Just got divorced and has two small children, so their opportunities to get out and have some fun are almost nonexistent. But that night she left her children with her sister and decided to go for a drink with me. In a good mood and tells me that the trauma of divorce is finding smoother than I thought. Recently his mother died his father had died a few years ago, and were very difficult times for her, but is getting along and, at least for the moment, is amusing.
shows me his new cell. Nokia is a fairly cheap, but according to her much better than it did before, describing it as a prehistoric shit. Every now and then briefly leaves the conversation to send an sms to her sister to see how their children. I do not mind the distraction because when attention is one of the funniest people I know. At one point we went to smoke and we were talking to a mutual acquaintance. I went to get a drink and stay a couple of minutes chatting with the waiter. When I go retake the talk until she returns to find the phone because they did not answer a question that was sent. Not found, had disappeared from his pocket. There was also a regular on missing often wander bowling for years, continuously shaped handle and generally annoying the customers, although some find it nice.
I offer mine but can not remember the number of his sister, and also the night is ruined. We said goodbye and we agreed to meet at another time, and she goes to see what their children are. I'm going home.
A few days later I'm in the same place and is followed by the character who possibly had won a cell phone that night. I say "friend!" Does not give me a dime? ". No, and I'm not your friend. ***
I got a copy of Let the Right One In , the Swedish vampire movie that everyone was talking critical but still not released in Uruguay. We had a bit of mistrust because the review insisted that it was a revolution in horror films, and in that genre I am a classicism. Also I do not like the Swedish cinema.
I decided to start to see her one night, too late, to at least have an idea what it was all but convinced that I went to bed at twenty minutes. Two hours later I was still awake and convinced he had seen one of the best movies that fell into my hands for many years, and a new horror movie classic.
Let the Right One In film is incredibly cool and warm at once, full of loose ends, inaccurate data, characters that give a clear and definite impression on the individual but at the same time we know almost nothing. Of violence and tenderness simultaneously. In fact it is a film about the attraction of opposites, not only evident in the centuries-old vampire with the body pre-teen and his friend twelve years, but also between horror and affection between the beauty of Winter Photography snow and grainy texture, almost socialist realism, a suburb of Stockholm, including refined and grotesque. There is no morality in his characters, only the predominant feelings of loneliness is, reluctant and eventually fought in a battle that has nothing to do with the concepts of good and evil. I did not read the
Ajvide novel by John Lindqvist in which it is based. The reviews are excellent but I doubt it's better than the movie, so just reading the summary of the Wiki some facts in the film remain hazy, it appeared in the novel are revealed, I am convinced that it is probably less suggestive that the movie version. I love those horror movies in which nothing is explained too, films like The Suicide Club or more of those David Lynch, who missed working in the field of nightmares. And I love horror movies as Let the Right One In , always aware that there is an equal share of horror therefore in the monsters on that turn like in a peaceful surrounding that come to disturb. ***
This is my first winter without a dog in nine years. I think of him on those cold nights were the only ones allowing him to get on my bed and sleep on blankets on my feet. Then the blankets were dog smell, but it was worth. I remember as snoring and grunting or crying how completely numb, haunted by dreams of dog that we know nothing.
My friends tell me I need a girlfriend. Maybe. I think I need a new dog. ***
Cold scares people off the streets, and these become much more dangerous for those who must necessarily traveled.
A friend says it will not be able to go out with me as we agreed. The previous night, returning from a performance dragged down the street to steal your wallet and your knees hurt. Is impressed and feels neither sociable nor happy enough to leave his home.
was lucky, a few months ago to another girl I know two types of ground kicking on the ground to steal his cell phone. He finished with a cracked tibia which had to use a cane for weeks and undergo a long and painful physiotherapy. Both are quite similar, twenties, petite and do not weigh much more than fifty kilos.
In a co-worker was robbed three times the same three scoundrels around Tres Cruces, one of the epicenters of Montevideo. She also divorced this year and has more than one job to keep, just to your home and your child. In the sectional area will say yes, they know who the thieves, who are always on the back of the Plaza de la Bandera, but they are smaller and when the stop is three hours later on the street again.
One of her co-section was also assaulted a few weeks ago. The jet he said "give me the money or get stolen." We laughed a lot when it counted. But deep down there's nothing funny.
I open a newspaper and read the news that a thirteen year old girl was abducted, raped and murdered. Is called exactly like my niece who is thirteen. During the two seconds it takes me to go from the front lines until clarifying that the crime was committed in Florida, the second name is different from my niece and the murderer is arrested, I feel dizzy I do not want to feel again in my life.
Women are the favorite victims of all modern criminals, both inside and outside their homes. If you were a political group or even speak of persecution and extermination of terrorism, would defend democracy marches and guarantees that group beset by torturers and murderers. But the crime against women is seen as inevitable, if inevitable, "y. .. is fractured society is poverty, is the pasta base, is home detonated, is consumption, is the XXI Century." Yes, so what?
try to imagine what goes on in the head a couple of guys capable of brutally kicking a girl on the floor to get a fucking phone. I can not, I find it much easier to try to imagine what dogs dream, the end of the creatures with many more principles that these spectra nasty as luck, misfortune or justification I long ago stopped importing. ***
The documentary series The History of Popular Music Uruguayan is arguably the best audiovisual product ever made for television in Uruguay. Juan Pellicer took eight years to complete the fifteen chapters that make up and it is clear that none of them was sabbatical, this is one of the largest work-study by Pelletier and his group have been made on - sorry for the redundancy-Uruguayan popular music of the past four decades. Not much bibliographic material respect, and this series fills the void with amazing quality. And with no less amazing generosity and lack of prejudice, I know more than one -Including myself-who were completely surprised to find that beyond what is culturally usually enroll in the golden book of the music, this series includes several discrimination, such as tropical music or folklore rather right, which usually fall outside the canon. And comes with all the respect they deserve.
not feel like going out into the cold when they issue The History of Popular Music Uruguayan on a public channel which, for once, seems indifferent to anything other than providing the best possible TV without thinking about the lowest common denominator . It is a place of warmth and Uruguayan homage to a tradition far more glorious than the football and a thousand times more ignored and underestimated. The tradition of a group of people without rewards and little respect believed that Uruguay could generate an original and powerful musical kaleidoscope that in a country with low population, took two or three generations of composers that nations ten or twenty times more populous has failed to align.
There are many exciting moments in this series; teaching Jaime Roos play "Kite lamp," the Darn honestly explaining how the dictatorship torn fucked him the best years of his career, which Reconco Sabalero exiled musicians were actually in a much better those who had stayed here, despite which the tenants were much less recognized, a member of Combo Camaguey explaining how the introduction of the synthesizer enabled them to escape the tyranny of popular music clubs in which he had piano , the stomachs talking about the total lack in moving the rock 80 ... many things. And it's, like surf lucid, clear evidence that there was a time when music was much more important. And that the links formed around it as well. ***
Influenza A introduced a new element, previously unknown to most of us, in our houses: the alcohol gel. Out of curiosity I bought a bottle, and small act of faggotry choose a scented aloe vera. I do not know if it serves to give a fuck, but after spending the gel for hands, they left me with a nice fragrant aroma of alcohol and aloe. Hours afterwards I still feel that fresh smell in the back of my hands.
One night I discovered also that it is excellent to start the third carbon of my salamander, and a minute is aloe-scented smoke that environmental home. ***
sociologist Rafael Bayce is interviewed by the daily on the subject of criminal and minority groups are perceived as diffusers codes violence (football bars, some urban tribes ...). Bayce with soil who match their vision especially in legalizing drugs, has always assumed the role of defender of the marginalized sectors, and is among the few who bother to take the perspective of them. In the interview, Bayce defends these groups of belonging, identity and cohesive as sectors that have stigmatized prejudices, generalizations from their more violent members without regard to the large number of members of those who behave as fully associative. Ok, it's a valid point. I have my doubts about the benefits join a group of people who sing together the best thing that happened in life was the day that some of that group killed a young man to wear a different color shirt, but I admit that is a complex issue.
But after warning against generalizations, Bayce makes a particularly brutal, says: " Those traders who are attacked by monsters that consume cocaine base are the slave who rob people, emphasize expired products, with the balance trout have one working to pay him 3,000 pesos which should work for four and win 5,000. After a half impoverished population, complain that the raid, please. They want to underpay, complain, and defend them from society the monsters they created .
The guild of grocers CAMBADU-Center Retail, Barista, and related AutoService of Uruguay is probably the most beaten by the current delinquency. Virtually not a week goes by in which a shopkeeper is not killed by a blast nervous and not a day passes in which two or three are not assaulted. I do not know what neighborhood you live Bayce, in mine, which is not particularly humble, grocers are not just exploitative capitalist landlords behave like cotton in southern U.S. before the Civil War, on the contrary, those who know and have survived the installation of large supermarkets, are people who works from 7 am to 9 of night-a-times, which rarely have people working with them than your family and I have ever seen getting into a 4 X 4 after closing the metal curtain, simply because they do not. Shopkeepers I know have kept their business to competition rather unfair business of large areas because of their ability to trust those who do not have credit cards, or to settle in neighborhoods where no one wants to settle, or capacity to become neighbors of being part of a neighborhood community. Shopkeepers who know know me, know my name, let me take a Coca-Cola will pay them later, I pay change for the bus when I have not.
There must be hundreds of Reverend bastards among them, of course, but even in these cases the deterministic and cutting pundits seem Bayce never be able to appreciate the tremendous disparity between someone stealing three dollars for a tomato and tuned balance that that someone is left without the collection of a week, or without the tools necessary to keep your business. The impossibility of comparing a shopkeeper has a black employee and he is paying less than you deserve, and receive that same shopkeeper shot in the face with his family. Among the reprehensible and punishable slightly and definitely irreparable.
Bayce, as the apostles of security to those who find it a crime for someone grabbed a wallet but not for an employer to an empty factory and let a hundred heads of families without work, see the attacks in terms of comprehensible and incomprehensible. He sees the pain or damage. Do not imagine the face of some grocer's widow read her assessment. Meanwhile the owners of the big supermarkets, while still unionize workers who work under the threat of dismissal sure the slightest protest, they can read that opinion without bothering at all: the end of the assault never large supermarkets, they are never behind the boxes and usually do not even live in Montevideo or in this impoverished country. ***
My favorite song of this winter's "The Trapezee Swinger" by Iron & Wine , ie Sam Beam, the singer so sweet it could kill a diabetic with only hum in the ear. Beam But the sweetness is never a kind of subterfuge to get along with in-law and potential female listeners, but the guy has the enviable ability to sound really like, or is, who the fuck knows, a better person than the rest. So a sadness difference groundwater, which apparently makes your infinite understanding the world around you not sound like a hippy Old. philanthropic, but whose human empathy saw hell and did not leave things untouched by such contemplation.
"The Trapezee Swinger" is "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands " Beam, composer who clearly one notes his love of poetry among the best street surreal Dylan . Takes about nine minutes and each of its stanzas begins with a " Please, remember me ." There is a recurring theme in the songs of Iron & Wine, and the desire to be remembered with happiness and affection. For Beam seems to be no greater terror than leave this earth without leaving traces of love among those who surrounded us. It's easy to share that fear.
The song evokes a series of images youth of very personal and intimate memories, in which anyone can identify Although very accurate, localized and defined. Beam recalls have black cars from a hill, face painting for Halloween, smoking pot in a high tower, hit by a circus ... But remember mistakes, remember things lost, remembers lost dogs who love the rain and the colorful birds that run in a circle around a well. Remember especially to a woman, that song goes. Says "I Heard from someone 're still pretty ."
But in the same way as a natural mixture composed and definitely lost, Beam has a habit-like the best Dylan interlayer fantastic elements in his paintings of suburbia, and "The Trapezee Swinger" Imagine that the pearly gates of Paradise are covered with "eloquent graffiti." And in some verses lists some " We'll Meet Again", "Fuck the man ", "Tell my mother Not to worry ", "Lost and found ", "Do not look down "," Someone save Temptation "," Who the hell can see forever? . " Near the end promises that if we reach the gates of San Pedro, will draw a picture of God and Lucifer, a boy and a girl (perhaps the very God and Lucifer), an angel kissing a sinner, a monkey and a marching band around the frightened trapeze referring to the topic name.
Although the melody of "The Trapezee Swinger" is a fairly simple chord sequence (Do-Sol-Fa-Do-Sol in the first two pairs of verses of each stanza and the beginning sequence in A minor in the last two ), not boring in any of his nine minutes, thanks to both the beauty of the letter as a subtle arrangements mutants (again the tradition of the best Dylan), to be progressively enriched without the subject climb in excess energy . It's a great summary of Beam's imagery and, possibly, vital conception of memory, mood and did not return. But among possibly many brilliant lines I still like most is the simplest, which I quoted earlier: "" I Heard from someone you're still pretty . It makes me think of a couple of women who do not need anyone tells me that retain their beauty.
*** A skinny
living on the street, wandering through a gallery downtown and around the pub I usually go, handle food, some drink and places to stay. Obviously have a mental disorder, perhaps due to drugs, maybe not, and clearly not one of those guys used to living on the street. Go to a backpack with his belongings on their backs and occasionally grabs a glass that is not theirs. From time to time a punch is linked. In a sane world would be hospitalized or medicated, but it is not. It has better days and worse days, sometimes wearing just a shirt with temperatures of zero degrees and the wind of the south promenade scaring even the most sheltered. Yet he says he is hot and not afraid.
Like all the lonely and those who fell outside the world, is generally quiet, but when someone gives you entry talks non-stop for hours. I see him approach a group of Germans who drink as if they were to invade Poland. The Germans are friendly and Hardy joins the conversation politely listen for a while and then try to continue their conversation. He continues speaking. Germans finally changing table, strategically, to a smaller one in which there is no place for raving mountebank. He follows them and remains standing at the table staring at them and unable to intervene, as they are now talking in German. But it is uncomfortable to be talking to someone standing beside you looking at you with crazy eyes, and finally one of them asked to leave them alone. It does, for a couple of minutes, then returns and stops at the same place.
Germans finish the bottle and out of the pub, followed by the viewer. When you get into a taxi, he tries to climb with them. I say no and remove him without any violence, he hangs next to the taxi and says "please take me." But the Germans do not wear it. Neither do I. ***
winter Violence is not the exclusive power of the most marginalized, everyone is horrified to learn that in a dance of Marindia, two bars of young middle-class half local, half of El Pinar - cling to fierrazos and a teenager dies from a shot. The reason apparently was that someone had ennoviado El Pinar with someone Marindia. One big reason for those who want to see a history of Montagues and Capulets, but it really is just more proof of how you can make love hate, and how people living in similar houses in resorts also near the coast, you can find an excuse to kill, to ruin, to destroy anything in the name of nothing.
When I was a teenager going to dance to some parts of the Ciudad de la Costa. Eventually we got into a brothel of fuzzy reasons. The worst thing that could happen was to leave with a black eye. Or a tooth less. Do not get stuck with a rod of steel construction. Never shot a 38 in the neck.
When I was a teenager, rarely we finished the night with some girl. But I remember one in the country of Atlantis, in which a beautiful girl, sister of an actress less attractive than her but that was considered a sex symbol decided that media- I was funny and worth being with me. I remember his lips in the spring of Atlantis and the feeling that I had been waiting all the time about something. In one of these would have been worth a shot that hit me. Luckily in those days did not shoot a poor skinny on a lucky day. ***
Every day when I go to work by bus, passing in front of a graffiti paint that catches my attention. Is on the door walled up with blocks of a closed bar on the corner of Gonzalo Ramírez and Mines and a mammal is not so defined, is all white like a polar bear, save the eyes and nose, but the shape of your head and ears more reminiscent to that of a raccoon, and at the same time suggests a panda.
The lower body of the bear, raccoon, from the height of your belly, is disintegrating into geometric pieces, as if he were making glass and this would have been stoned. Has raised forearms and look, with a huge sadness, like her hands are also starting to crystallize and crumble. While
observed for the umpteenth time, from the bottom of the hood of my jacket, I wonder how I will be sitting maldormido and somewhat disoriented by the mostly empty bus stop.
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