I love old people. Not always of course, but they usually transmit a sense of tranquility and serenity to me. That’s why I relaxed when I found out who would be the head of the Employment Justice Council – the entity that would serve as the arbiter in the case leveled against me by my employer four years ago.
If I were to tell you — my friend — that we Cubans are pigs and chickens, would you be offended and get upset? You probably would. Or maybe not. You might think “chicken” is a fitting adjective for those who’ve endured a half century without raising their voices, and the term “swinish” could come in handy when describing the hygiene of our cities.
An energy crisis is looming over the world, and Cuba’s not exempt. Basic commodities and food will become scarce — like during the Special Period crisis of the ‘90s — but there will also be crises related to politics, climate, health conditions, ethics and with our mental patterns of behavior.
From an intellectual perspective, it’s commonly assumed that reggaeton is a negative phenomenon…regression from what has been achieved musically and culturally…a symptom of the degradation of taste and morality. And there’s no lack of people who suggest that many such evils originate with (or are caused by) the “revolutionary” process.
During the economic crisis of the 1990s, one of the deities of our Olympian society had the brilliant idea to promote the use of bicycles. Bought from China, they imported huge quantities of these rough-hewn and archaic devices which were well suited to our crumbling streets and the robust Cuban bodies.
The future scares me. We’ve passed the point of maximum world petroleum extraction — or “peak oil” — and in the coming years the supplies of that fuel will be insufficient to meet demand. Everything seems to indicate that the world we know will succumb.
Telesur programming has resumed in Cuba, but now it’s live and direct, not like those pre-recorded edited broadcasts of the past, that brought us what the island’s authorities called “The best of Telesur.” I’m left wondering why the change?
In a recent previous post I discussed my idea that sex, a rich source of pleasure and happiness, has been converted into a source of distress and unhappiness. One of these operations consists of developing — with the help of science — seduction techniques that are increasingly effective.
During these holiday seasons, I usually pick myself up and hide. I don’t like all the celebrating, and I find it exasperating to hear the squealing cries of pain made by pigs when they’re stabbed. The environment of joyfulness ends up making me sad.
Sex mobilizes an enormous amount of human energy. Cuban campesinos have expressed the enormous power of sex in old sayings such as: “A good ass pulls more than a mule, and a pair of hooters can pull more than a horse.