Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

I am a sucker for zombie movies . I don't know why. I can't explain what compels me to love those brain-eating hordes of the undead, but I do. 28 Days Later, Night/Dawn/Day/Land/Diary of the Living Dead, Sean of the Dead, Resident Evil, Evil Dead... I gotta love the undead. It all started in the summer of 2005, when I worked on the Gordon College grounds crew with a guy named Dustin Davies. That guy loves his undead even more than I do. Several times a week, he would get me to sit down in his darkened dorm room and watch whatever piece of cheesy cinematographical gore-fest that was on the menu for the day. And just like that I was hooked. We watched movies in every horror sub-genre known to man... slasher films, old school horror, supernatural, and monster movies. The latter was the one that I really got into. Give me any creature from a werewolf to The Thing, and I am a happy man. But for some reason the Zombies were the ones I really took a liking to. Perhaps I like zombies b...

I have been missing american friends lately. Not specific ones, mind you; but the whole clan. When I visited Alex in London, he asked me if it was difficult not being able to speak english with my friends in spain. The question caught me off guard, because I had never thought of it. But yes, I realized that I did miss being able to speak english. Alex is a perceptive guy, and though I am bilingual, he knows that I am bilingual in different ways. Yes, I am a native english and spanish speaker, but I have learned and used the languages in different contexts. Spanish was the language I grew up speaking with friends, watching television in, hearing on the street. English was the language of my family life and my studies. What Alex was aiming at was the fact that most of my deep friendships in life have taken place in English. This is also true of my intellectual pursuits. I have always done most of my reading in English as well as my main studies. Because of this, English has become the la...

I’m sitting in Starbucks right now. I come here when I have to work. I get easily distracted at home. There are too many things to keep me from my work: food, the guitar, the Wii, and most of all, the Internet. I am dreading the day that the whole world is connected to the web. It will spell doom for us internet-aholics. By now you are probably wondering why I am writing a blog entry when I should be working, especially if there isn’t any Internet for me to post it with. I am in the middle of a bit of a writer’s block right now. I am sitting by the window and the sunlight is coming through the tree leaves outside and painting my table with dappled sunlight. It is one of those brilliant early summer days that make the world simply exquisite. For once, the music in starbucks is just right, filling the shop with the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel. How am I expected to work in these conditions? They say that the best way to beat a writer’s block is to write, even if it has nothing to do wit...

Once again, 2008 doesn't disappoint, and more bad news comes my way. It isn't something I feel like talking about here, nor should I, so it will remain unspoken of further. Nevertheless, this past week has been a difficult one, bringing a lot conflicting emotions to the surface. My heart has felt sluggish and hyperactive. And any resolutions that have come out of this have done so sluggishly, like bubbles in a tar pit, tensing, stretching and finally popping in resignation. But as always, life isn't all bad. And I fight myself over which feelings to indulge; sometimes craning my neck towards the skies in search of silver linings, while other times I blow on those melancholic embers which seem to permanantly to burn somewhere inside me. But often this struggle between the negative and the positive, and the paradox of life's duality, simply exhausts me, and I am forced to disconnect. I have done a fair bit of that this week: going to the park with some poems, working myse...

6 stages. 100s of bands. 3 days of music. Guessed it yet? Primavera Sound , my favorite music festival has come and gone once again. The summer is a blast of fresh musical air pumped out of a church organ. Spain tends to have a terrible music scene dominated by all varieties of MTV top 40 pop. We rarely hear anything that involves original thought, authenticity or creativity. Spain has gotten stuck in the musical philosophies of the early 60s and mid 80s: make music to sell, whether it be cheesy love ballads or sellout rock. Personally I blame it all on Franco (we have a tendency to either blame everything on him or say everything was better with him), who squelched the development of Rock & Roll in the late 60's and early 70s. While this was bad enough, it pushed back musical evolution in this country so that we missed the advent of the 70's punk scene. I think that was really the saddest thing for spanish music, never fully arriving at a proper philosophy for rock and its...