Sierra Nevada Veggie Chips part 1

 
After a few decades living quietly in Irvine, California, the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, decided that it was time to make his public re-appearance.

Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, had been kind to Him: the weather was consistently warm, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's were a short drive away in His Prius, and Newport Beach offered world-class waves, but he was becoming complacent. The Son of Man's massage and aromatherapy clinic (motto: "The right hand knows what the left hand is doing.") was just as successful as ever, but banishing Crohn's Disease from the bowels of retired investment bankers no longer gave him the satisfaction that it used to. Not even turning bottled water into Armand de Brignac champagne for guests at Kobe Bryant's backyard barbeques was fun anymore. Life was perfect, fun, but empty. It was time to give back.

Pope Francis was happily eating a cheeseburger and joking with priests and nuns in the Vatican cafeteria. Raucous laughter erupted each time the Holy Father shared one of his terrible puns. The Pope's personal secretary, Georg, was seated next to His Holiness, patiently waiting for him to finish eating. Georg was secretly relieved to take an urgent call on his phone. He excused himself and returned to whisper discreetly in the Bishop of Rome's ear in between rounds of laughter. The color drained from his face. He, too excused himself, and took the phone from Georg's shaking hands.

«¿Hola? Habla Jorge.»
(Hello? This is Jorge.)
...
«¡No me digas! ¡Qué milagro! ¿Desde cuando?»
(You're kidding! What a miracle! Since when?)
...
«¡Por supuesto que sí! Sólo déjame hacer unas llamaditas-»
(Of course! Just let me make a few calls-)
...
«,,,pues, él tampoco me ha caído bien, es muy arrogante.»
(... well, I never liked him either, he's very arrogant...)
...
«No, no, no, no. No te molestes, nosotros vamos para allá. Nos encanta la playa. »
(No, no, no, no. Don't bother with that, we'll go. We love the beach.)
...
 «Jajaja... vale pues. ¡Ciao!»
(Hahaha, ok then. Ciao!)

The former cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio slapped George on his back and with a bigger smile than usual said,

«¡Ha vuelto!»
(He's back!)

George Washington

George Washington was a firm believer in the importance of religion for republican government. It's a little-known fact that he was also a pioneering musician. During his inauguration ceremony, he performed four bluegrass songs as gift to his closest fans to enjoy.

Washington restricted himself to church music in his later years, performing impressive shows involving elaborate pyrotechnics. One show resulted in a small fire in the pipe organ. The fire was quickly put out with buckets of water.

Church elders also became concerned about an indirect consequence of Washington's musical popularity: the waste of thousands of visiting fans could damage the church's Victorian sewage system.

By the end of the year, George Washington left the band and his group disbanded for 12 years. During that time, Washington traveled and focused on foreign politics. He is considered by some as the founder of the Communist movement in Bengal.

Dr. Ozymandias' Health Magazine Daily

A while back at work, I received strange spam emails with random sentences. I thought it would be fun to create a narrative order out of verbal chaos. I believe the results are surreal, but I'll let you judge for yourself in the next few posts.

Red Tail Ale

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing. 

Now wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before the king?

Andy couldn't eat one more pigeon.

He sat at a small metal table in a small, humid basement that smelled of sweat and cigarettes, lit only by a couple of naked lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. His camp mates were easy to spot in the crowd- they were simultaneously the largest and the youngest people in the room, and they looked right at home among the animated Latinos, leathery-skinned Asian men, and world-weary white men loudly exchanging bets. There, in the basement of their dormitory building, with the counselors asleep, Andy and his friends were a world away from the personally-empowering, exclusive weight loss summer camp in beautiful La Jolla, California their parents had signed them up for. 


The gamblers laughed at Andy's first tearful attempts to dispatch the pigeons. 

"He cry! He cry!"

The tears hadn't dried off his face when he discovered an efficient way to twist off the pigeon's head with his sausage-like, but deft fingers.

"¡Vamos, gordo!"


Snap! Squirt! Rip! Rip! Glug glug glug!


"You can do it, Andy!"


One, then two, then, fifteen pigeons disappeared in Andy's cavernous mouth. Andy had found his zone.

Granted, he wouldn't have minded it if all 24 of the pigeons had been slaughtered first, bled, plucked, gutted, and plopped into a sizzling cast-iron skillet, and served with some nice white wine, maybe a Chardonnay. His parents, having traveled extensively, believed that children should be exposed to alcohol at an early age to develop a palate and to demystify it: two birds with one stone. And now, two birds were in the way of a king-sized Twix bar that had Andy's name on it.
 
"Andy, Andy, Andy!"

Andy closed his eyes and thought of chocolate. For a few long seconds, all he heard were his labored breaths and his furiously pumping heart. In that short period of time, he found himself at peace with everything in the world. He was a little meat balloon, gently drifting in the oceanic expanse of space and time. He was in the moment- no, he was the moment. One with everything.

There was a faint ringing in Andy's ears that grew louder and louder and erupted into cheers.  Suddenly, Andy snapped out of his daze and discovered that he had eaten the second-to-last pigeon rather quickly, its down feathers still hanging in the air.

One, final, terrified bird fluttered frantically in its bamboo cage.

"C'mon! Do it kid! One more!"

"Do it, Andy!"

"¡Uno más!"

The voices of the crowd rattled the flimsy metal table.

At that point, Andy understood that he was part of something bigger. Yes, he had told certain people at the camp that he would eat 24 live pigeons if that meant getting a Twix bar from the junk food underground trafficking ring. Yes, consequently, certain undesirables found out and placed money on the outcome of Andy's performance. He had expected the consequences. But tonight, Andy knew he was more than a racehorse. He had seen those thousand-yard stares earlier. Now, he saw excitement, joy, a spark of life! A glimmer of hope in otherwise shady lives. Tonight, just for a moment, Andy was the light at the end of the tunnel, a snow day. He was Santa's presents underneath the Christmas tree. He was presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"Yes we can," Andy told himself, "yes we can."

***

It was a crisp, overcast morning the next day. Sparrows flitted above groups of groggy campers shuffling to the track for a few laps around the track before eating a nutritious and healthily-portioned breakfast. Somewhere, a group of girls gossiped and laughed, while another group of boys calmly debated the finer points of Pokemon. They would later find out from their counselors that a midnight police raid put an end to Andy's much-rumored gluttonous marathon as part of a crackdown on illegal gambling venues, and that Andy, for his part, had had his stomach pumped and was being treated for Salmonella poisoning.

Oatmeal Cookies

"Do you have the baby?"

"Yes, he's asleep."

"Are you sure? You know if la migra hears us- it's more serious this time."

"I know. I gave him some Benadryl some minutes ago."

"Good girl. He's wearing his diaper, right?"

"Yes! Quit worrying- he's wearing it, okay?"

 "I'm not worried, I just don't want you fucking things up like you did last time."

"I fucked things up? You're the one who-"

"¡Cállate! Ahí vienen. Here they come."

A Suburban crunched quietly on the desert floor until it stopped. The passenger door opened and a man stepped out. Eye contact. A contemptuous smirk. He spoke.

"Miren qué bonita familia- What a nice family. Let me guess: José, María y el niño Jesús," he said.

"Our Lord and Savior," came the practiced reply. 

"Well, well, well. Good answer. We're Christians in these parts too, you know? We're dedicated to spreading the Gospel far and wide, ¿entiendes? So I believe you have something for us in that regard."

José looked at María, then he nodded at her and she began to remove the baby's diaper.

"Perfect. But we'll handle that part," the man said.

María frowned at the man. He smiled back at her. José motioned with his head insistently, and she handed over the sleeping baby to the man.

"Gracias," said the man, and he returned to the Suburban with the baby in his arms. The passenger door closed.

 A few minutes later, the passenger door opened and the man stepped out, still holding the baby.

"Nos trajiste buen producto. You brought us good product- some good shit, eh?" he said handing the baby back to María. The baby was unharmed, but he wasn't wearing his diaper anymore.

"At least you wrapped the product well this time," the man said. "Last time the two of you were here, el pinche niño pissed all over the brick we were supposed to sample. You were lucky we're good Christians and gave you a second chance to redeem yourselves"

Ya regresé

Hace dos años dejé de escribir en este blog. No fue intencional, simplemente sucedió, pero el blog empezó a morir desde antes, por ahí del 2011. En ese entonces estaba en un punto de mi vida donde comenzé a perder el contacto conmigo mismo. Mi situación de vida era cómoda y me inquietaba eso. Tenía que haber algo más. Por eso dejé mi novia, trabajo y departamento para entregarme al servicio público siendo maestro de escuela pública. Un sacrificio, de verdad. Al entregarme al 100% a mi programa de docencia, dejé de leer, de escuchar música, de crear arte como lo hacía antes. También puse a un lado mi amor hacia mis raíces indígenas. En fin, me abandoné poco a poco.

Empezó el abandono con posts que eran puramente visuales o copais de letras de canciones que me gustaban. Contenido original ya casi no hubo, es decir, tristemente, que algún pensamiento original que tuve en ese entonces no merecía la pena expresarse dado la falta de tiempo gracias al torbellino de clases, trabajos, mudanzas y noviazgos. Además, Facebook se prestaba para fácilmente compartir opiniones, ideas y artículos con una audiencia cautiva. 

Borré la vieja dirección de Tlahtolli cuando aprendí acerca de la cooperación, intencional o no, entre Google y la NSA. Más que nada fue un acto de rebelión malpensado, pues el propósito de un blog es de compartirlo con el público. Pero el daño ya estaba hecho. Ya no le vi más propósito al blog. Lo respaldé y lo dejé. Están ahí dos años donde no aparece ningún post como prueba.

Recobró vida el blog cuando decidí darle un poco de mantenimiento, pues ahí andaba abandonado en el Internet, con un formato default en una dirección que ya ni recordaba. Se me había ocurrido devolverle su formato original sencillo para el año nuevo. Poco a poco, mirando el viejo código y editando el XML nuevo, algo en mi que pensé que estaba muerto volvió a nacer. Me di cuenta de cómo me hizo falta tener presencia en Internet a la antigüita. Está bien que todos estén en el feis en el tuíter o en el tombler, pero yo necesitaba a mi blog.

Es difícil de explicar, pero las redes sociales son como jardines cercados, mientras que el blog es como un parque público. Para mi gusto hay demasiada actividad en la red social que me altera, actividad que no ocurre con el blog. Si alguien lee y le gusta el blog, bien. Si no, tengo a nosecuántos amigos en Facebook que me darán al menos un like. Así que para propósitos de este blog, no hay necesidad de aprobación ajena. Se siente bien eso tanto en el ciber espacio como en la vida.  
 
Así que, estamos de vuelta, querido lector.