The last semester of my undergraduate career has officially started. My schedule seems daunting, but even scarier is the fact that I’ll be stepping into the real world in May. I can easily remember a time when I could say “the real world is four years away, no worries.” Three and a half years have gone by, really fucking fast.

René, one of my best friends and provider of standby airfare, came to visit. He gave me a nice new perspective on New York. Consumerism is prety much rampant in Manhattan, the best example being Times Square. It’s basically one huge “on sale” sign, ridiculously bright so you won’t miss it. It looks as clear as day even at midnight. The pure consumeristic decadence of such a place is overwhelming. I’m sure walking through Times Square could be likened to walking around the Roman Forum in the golden times of the empire, and we certainly thought of it like that.

Huge contrasts can be seen all through the city. You have the synthetic glory that is Times Square, and then you have the shitty houses seen on the Airtrain ride from the airport to the subway station, be it Jamaica Station or Howard Beach.

I also introduced René to the online procrastination tool known as Facebook. He has already taken advantage of it, creating a group called Al carajo con Starbucks. The mission statement is as follows:

Al carajo con la expansion de Starbuks en Puerto Rico. Malditas sean las personas que deciden comprar cafe malo por un precio alto en uno de los paises que mejor café tiene en el mundo. Estamos Unidos por la defensa del Café del Pais y en contra de la explotacion de Starbucks. Viva el Café de Puerto Rico!

As avowed coffee addicts, we both loathe the crap Starbucks sells claiming to be coffee. We encourage anyone to steal napkins and sugar from their establishments. Like René posted on the group, “The only worthy thing starbucks can do for me is remove the mucus from my nose.”

from: Alexis Vigo
to: (omitted)
date: Dec 25, 2006 7:49 PM
subject: of past and present medical problems

You know, my intellectual curiosity has been stiffled. I recently asked my dad about my grandpa’s MRI and CT scans. He has no clue where they are. This blows.

And now to segue onto the actual purpose of this email, my grandma (on my mom’s side) died of a stroke back in 1997, but I didn’t find out about all the details until a few days ago when we went to visit my grand-aunt, my grandma’s sister. Just to be clear, I’m telling you about this ’cause you’re one of the few medically inclined people I know, so you’ll appreciate what I have to say about it.

My grandma died on April 12th. Two weeks before, on Good Friday, we were all in church. Apparently my grandma saw something that startled her to the point that she squeezed my mom’s hand prety hard. She later told my grand-aunt by phone she saw something. My grand-aunt couldn’t specify.

The two weeks pass. My grandma was feeling really sick, so my mom took her to the hospital. While in the emergency room, she had a cup of coffee. About half an hour later she had her stroke.

All of those details set off some alarms in my mind, so I started asking questions. What did my grandma say she saw? Again, neither my grand-aunt nor my mom could specify. Was the hand squeezing voluntary or uncontrolled? My mom said she was prety sure my grandma did it on purpose. As I keep at it, I find out that at hospital, after having her coffee, my grandma started complaining about a really bad headache and said to call the doctor. There was a point in which it seemed she wasnt understanding anything anyone was saying, and then later on she couldn’t speak, only mumble incoherently. Finally, she couldn’t move at all, going unconscious.

My best guess here is that she had a massive bilateral stroke that cut off blood flow to the left hemisphere first (language). The thing is, I think she had a mini-stroke during Good Friday two weeks before, either to the amygdala (fear) or the occipital lobe (sight).

My intellectual curiosity is killing me right now, but I don’t think I can ask my mom any more questions. I don’t want her getting sad or anything reliving the last moments with my grandma. Right now I feel maybe if grandma had gone on blood thinners sooner, she could have lived a little longer. It’s weird trying to make sense out of this nine years after the fact.

Anyway, thanks for letting me empty my thoughts on you.

-alex

My friend Carla wrote a really good entry on her blog that I just had to comment on. It turned out I had so much to say I decided to put it up here. I suggest you read it before going on.

From the limited research that I’ve done on [Samuel] Huntington, I know he is a political scientist and Harvard University professor who has gained widespread attention for his position on immigration, which he considers a threat to mainstream U.S. culture.

I think Sam Huntington is full of shit, but even worse, I think is he is purposefully deceitful. He’s made the argument before that Cubans in Miami are a threat ’cause they are too rich and that Mexicans in the Southwest are a threat ’cause they are too poor. Anyone with basic knowledge of logic would be ashamed of such an argument.

What [Mike] Davis refers to as ‘nativist hysteria’ is exactly what Huntington conveys in his article. His isn’t an article of unbiased, straight sociological analysis of the facts but rather a prime example of xenophobia praising Anglo-Protestant identity and the debasing of other cultural-value systems: “There is no Americano Dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.”

The man has no credibility. He is a hack. But enough about him. Carla touches on two topics I find fascinating: the semantics of Hispanic/Latino, and language education.

The U.S. Census has tried to create a category that would accurately describe the individuals who share Latin American heritage. Its answer was the word ‘Hispanic’… Hispanic comes from the Latin word for Spain and Latino is Spanish for Latin (or a shortening of latinoamericano, as is sometimes suggested). So if I use Latina to describe myself, given the aforementioned definition, is it because the language of my ancestors is Latin or derived from Latin? If that were the case, what about other cultures/nationalities with Latin as its derivation (i.e. the Romance languages – Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian, French etc). Are Italians Latinos? I don’t believe that’s the definition intended by Latino. So what about the term stemming from a shortening of latinoamericano? Then are the Spanish Latino? Certainly not; Hispanic yes, Latino, no. The problem with Hispanic is that it is inclusive of the Spanish and so is associated with European descent. What about the indigenous and African roots in Latin America? That isn’t accounted for in the term Hispanic.

Well then, what about Latinos born in the U.S., are they not fully Latino/fully American? I know from personal experience that some people prefer Hispanic to Latino because, as Davis mentions, it’s more gringo friendly and less threatening whereas Latino is more contentious and empowering to those who use it to describe themselves; the word itself is in Spanish!”

You have a nice semantic question here. So, Hispanic or Latino? I’m going to have to introduce some terminology here: analytic and deductive definitions. An analytic definition is sort of like the dictionary/etymological definition, while a deductive definition is one based on how the word acts, how it’s used in context.

The analytic definition of Hispanic is suggested to be what comes from what the Romans referred to as Hispania, the whole Iberian Peninsula. That would basically include anything derived from Spanish and Portuguese culture. Latino, on the other hand, is suggested to be whatever comes from the Latin language, therefore encompassing much more than Spanish or Portuguese cultures, which you already mentioned (France, Italy, Romania, the people that speak Rumansch in Switzerland).

The deductive definitions are a very different thing. In practice Hispanic and Latino mean almost the same thing, with the exception you pointed out before that Hispanic is inclusive of Spaniards. I believe there was some good logical reasoning when coming up with Hispanic to use in the Census. The problem here is that it only works well in the Census, and nowhere else.

The problem with coining a word for a specific purpose is that for it to survive it has to gain the favor of what (in this case who) it refers to. The Latin American community in the US had already found a term they liked, Latino, which even though is logically inferior in my opinion, is now the marker of cultural pride.

Latino has two distinct advantages over Hispanic that makes it much more likable as a word. It’s in Spanish, therefore much more appealing because that’s the language of the culture. The second is that because it’s in Spanish, it is more morphologically versatile. What do I mean by that? You can express male and female grammatical gender: Latino, Latina. You can’t do that with English ‘cause it has no grammatical gender.

So to conclude that, as much as I like logically sound choices, the sociology of language can be highly illogical at times. People are the carriers of language, therefore they decide what wins.

I tackled one of the topics. Let’s go on to the other one.

Huntington states that ESL courses are not sufficient – not a remedy but a crutch. What he suggests is full English immersion. However, Davis (in Disabling Spanish) argues that ESL does work, but developmental bilingual education (DBE) has proven most successful. What I don’t understand is why Latino children who speak Spanish only are seen to have a handicap. Spanish retention and English proficiency should be seen as favorable. Huntington seems to suggest that only when Spanish is not retained has a child then reached full English proficiency. That’s utterly absurd. Why should we be afraid of bilinguals? Fear that if one isn’t proficient in both Spanish and English he/she will be out of a job is just ridiculous.

As much as I think the man is full of shit, I agree with him on ESL courses. But it’s more complicated than that. First of all, I think ESL as a whole is a piece of shit program and not the way to go at all.

The reasons people give for ESL is that you can’t interrupt a child’s education only to teach them English. “They will fall behind blah blah blah…” They teach the regular classes in Spanish and then spend a little more time in English class, but that’s not enough. This is where I agree and also depart from Huntington’s opinion. The children need full immersion English classes so they can learn it as quickly as possible. But you don’t just stop there. Once the child has a functional proficiency in the language, steps should be taken to preserve Spanish, the first language. That’s where developmental bilingual education may come in. During the whole process they may fall behind a bit, but I think it’s a better alternative than falling behind years on end.

A second language is something highly valuable in the work force. People go through a lot of trouble to learn a second language when they’re older. It’s a scientific fact that it’s much easier to learn a language when younger. Taking away a child’s language just because it’s stigmatized for no good reason is wrong. I would go as far to say that it is immoral.

Cliccare qui per le differenze fra gli italiani e gli altri europei.

This is fucking ridiculous:

NORCROSS, GA. – In some ways, the traveling taco stand has become a symbol of the rise of Hispanics in the US. Here in Gwinnett County, Ga., it wasn’t any different – until lawmakers outlawed the $1 street-corner taco vendor last month…

…Last month, the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners became one of the first in the country to ban mobile taco stands, which officials said were cluttering street corners. One Gwinnett politician described the proliferation of rolling taco stands as “gypsy-fication.”

What would the alternative be for the taco stands? The cheap American-made imitation Taco Bell?

In resisting the sudden and growing influence of Latino culture, some cities and towns across America are requiring the use of English and restricting culinary mores and even the Hispanic tradition of sitting on the front porch.

Can we say xenophobia? Actually, how about imbecile?

This was originally a forward sent to me by my mom. Here we have some Turkish soccer fans:

And here we have Brazilian fans:

The forward also had the following message:

Der wahre Grund, warum Brasilien an der Weltmeisterschaft teilnimmt, die Türkei aber nicht.

Der kleine aber feine Unterschied zwischen Brasilien und Türkei!

It’s pretty clear why Brazil is a five time champion and Turkey is not

I should have posted before, but I guess I needed some time to let last week’s events sink in. I only got to see Marija for one day, which pisses me off, but at the same time I’m glad I had that day with her. I only have one good picture of Marija ’cause my camera started acting really weird and then ran out of batteries.

She’s actually looking at her camera in the picture (she hasn’t sent me the ones she took yet). That scary looking dude sitting next to her is her dad. He has quite the kung fu grip in his handshake. Very intimidating man. It also didn’t help that he spoke no english, or any other language I know for that matter.

Since Marija’s sister, Antonija, was there too I would frequently switch to italian when speaking to Marija. At one point the conversation went something like this:

Me: Aspetta. Tuo padre sapeva chi ero io prima di oggi?

Marija: Si. Anche la mia mamma sa chi sei.

Me: Ohhhh, va bene…

You guys can figure out what the above means on your own.

We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary during the little time we hung out. We just walked around Central Park and then Midtown. They kept asking me where stuff was, stuff I didn’t actually know the location of. Always frustrating…

I left them at Penn Station at the end of the day. She said she might make a trip to Los Angeles to see some cousins. A layover in New York perhaps? I don’t know yet. Let’s hope so.

A little update on the kamikaze. After no sleep on Saturday and a failed attempt at sleeping on the flight to New York yesterday, I ended up shutting down while Katalina went to work. She was nice enough to let me sleep on her bed, if only after she went to the wrong airport to pick me up (I got in through JFK, she went to Laguardia).

After she got out of work we went to hang out with David, a friend of hers, and smoke from his hookah:

David filled up the hookah with pomegranate flavored tobacco. It went down very smooth. I highly recommend it.

Here David and Katalina are trying to decide what movie we’re going to watch from his extensive DVD collection. We ended up watching a really weird dark comedy in which one of the characters ends up being a pedophile and a rapist. The scenes with his son are prety funny, in a disgusting sense that is.

Today I ended up wandering around Brighton Beach scouting for some vodka. I found this liquor store called L’Chaim (which apparently means “to life” in Hebrew) around Brighton Beach Avenue. They had a huge selection of vodka. I’ll have to visit this place again in the near future.

Anyways, tomorrow I’m going to see Marija. Good night everyone.

Kamikaze: specific impulsive action performed in a situation in which the right combination of advantages and emotional benefits is perceived by the person performing said action as favorable, even if the actual circumstances are not.

The above definition describes some stuff I’ve done. Going to Russia was a kamikaze. Going to Italy was also a kamikaze. My most notorious kamikaze was probably going to Miami to see my favorite singer, Laura Pausini.Wednesday, September 21, 2005. Rafael’s ex-girlfriend, Luz, somehow got into Laura’s rehearsal for her performance at Premios Juventud in Miami. She called me so I could listen to Laura sing live. At that point I was obviously overjoyed, more than a little kid getting a christmas present. But that was only the start…

The above is a picture Luz took of Laura Pausini on the phone after the end of her rehearsal. You might be asking yourself: “Who’s on the other end of the line?”

Yep, it was me, and I have Luz to thank for that. She made up a story and convinced Laura to call me. The story was basically that I was her boyfriend and that I was doing a tour in Iraq. A call from my favorite singer would definitely get my spirits up. Luz, that story was ingenious. Thanks.

I was telling everyone about this when I get a call from René. René’s mom works for American Airlines. When I started college, she put me on her list of people that could use her stand-by tickets. René knows how to get into the system, so he called me to tell me he could get me on a plane first thing the next day if I wanted to go see Laura Pausini. Apparently Luz had talked to Rafael and René and said she had gotten free tickets for Premios Juventud.

And there goes the kamikaze. It’s obvious I would go, and it was glorious.

What’s the point of this post? Well, I’m making another kamikaze.

Marija, a croatian girl I met in Italy two years ago, is going to New York in two weeks to visit her sister who works as a model. She called me a few days ago to let me know.

I haven’t seen Marija in a very long time, but there’s the obvious problem that I’m in Puerto Rico right now. In comes René.

René offered me for my birthday standby to the destination of my choosing, and I’m going to take him up on this. I’m flying to New York to see Marija. I don’t know exactly when, but it will be around June 11.

I don’t know where I’ll be staying yet, but I’m sure something will come up.

Marija, se leggi questo, voglio che tu sappia che vado sicuro a New York e ti vedrò. Aspettami

Last night was a very weird but interesting night. We were originally going to the Loreley, but they were carding so that was out of the question. We ended up buying some wine and beer (bad combination…) and heading to Amir’s apartment.

Here’s Chad (another grad student in the german department) imparting his wisdom:

Some listen attently.

Amir lounges around after I don’t know how many cigarettes.

And Beth and I play at who can take a picture faster.

The highlight of the night was, amazingly, a discussion about circumcision. Said discussion was followed by several weird and hillarious events I will not mention here in order to protect the people involved