The Ikea Syndrome

It all started with a good idea. Why pay for someone to build you a wardrobe when you can go get it at a warehouse, build it yourself and save some euros in the process? So there we were, screwing and hammering around, blissfully happy to be building our first furniture items with our own hands, almost as proud as a kid playing Lego.

It was a good concept that could be exported to other areas, right?

You wish.

I've spent all summer trapped in a sort of Ikea-ish nightmare. It's been a WTF moment after another. It all started with the hard head scratching of buying a Ryanair ticket, which is Byzantine to say the least ( how much do they weight? do I want insurance? am I paying with a credit card? will I carry oversize luggage? a bicycle? where do I leave? how many bags do I want to check in? why do I need to give all those details at least six hours before I go to the airport? what do they need the issue date of my passport for?). Another much better one was flying to Nice and finding out that I have to print the stickers for my suitcase myself on an automated machine, this time for Iberia --which is not, repeat, not, a low cost airline.Seriously far from it.

But the Best of Them All has been being sent to this sorry excuse of a student residence in Nice where not only they expected moi to clean the room before I leave it to the next unsuspecting student, but ALSO, and this is where it gets bizarre, the pillow (not, mind you, the pillow cover, but the pillow itself), AND the mattress cover (paying, bien sûr, for the laundry costs myself). And all of this, by the way, before 9.30 AM. Oh, and incidentally, the lady was not pleased with my cleaning so she decided to charge me 48 Euros for the cleaning I had already done, anyway.


And all of this while treating me as one of her employees (and believe me I feel terrible for her employees), and, on top of it, arguing that she was doing it to KEEP THE COSTS OF THE RESIDENCE DOWN!!!!!! (lie: there are cheaper residences in Nice, who actually hire professionals to do the cleaning). Humorously enough, she also mentioned that the only people that complained about this ingenious arrangement where Spanish, which also put her in the category of a racist biotch in my book, but never mind.


(Aside rant: The name of this lovely place is France Riviera (on Nice, Rue de France) and I would reccomend it with all my heart if you enjoy sleeping on a sofa bed with a mattress so old that is split in half, and sharing your neighborhood with the créme of Nice's prostitutes at night. And being yelled at for various things, e.g. making too much noise with your flipflops on the stairs, talking too loud or effing turning your lights on in your own room: "il faut économiser", she said, to the poor suffering soul).

But bear with me. The gist of this is, she made a huge effort to explain to me that she was treating me more condescendingly than any boss I've ever had (and heck I've been a waitress!), to KEEP THE COSTS OF THE RESIDENCE DOWN.
This philosophy, as you might have gathered from above, is spreading with the whole crisis spirit. With the excuse of making things cheaper, companies of all sorts are actually turning their customers into employees. You might have noticed how some supermarkets already have this nifty machines that allow you to work as a cashier for them (well, they give you a discount... oh, wait, no, they do not), or how hard it is to find someone to put gasoline on your car lately. I wouldn't be surprised if soon enough we'll find ourselves carrying our luggage to the plane or paying to use the capuccino machines at your corner coffee house.


The problem is, first, I can never be as good at doing all these things as a professional. Second, someone has probably lost his or her job because suddenly every customer is giving 10 minutes or their time to that company, and usually, and
that's the terrifying part, for free. Now think about all the money that those companies are saving on salaries, and all the time of your life you are giving them. Terrifying, huh? Well, I suggest we demand our employee discounts next time these guys ask us to do their work for them. Otherwise, my humble suggestion is 1) boycott 2) complaint and 3) do the 50s husband thing, i.e. mess it all up so badly that they give up on us, because we're too stupid.


(Related to my frustration are the article IKEA is as bad as Wal-Mart at Salon.com, and the book that inspires the article, Cheap, the High Cost of Discount Culture. They're more about why cheap is not necessarily better, and surely explain all this much more eloquently than I do)

Brains, not bombs.

This week there has been two terrorist attacks in Spain, from the "separatist" group, ETA. They want an independent Basque country, and instead of using their BRAINS to try to convince the Spaniards that their motives are worthwile , they've used BOMBS. The first attack, in Burgos (bit far away from the Basque country, by the way), has left hundreds of people homeless, as they targeted a building where the civil guards (a sort of police) live with their families, destroying the front of the building completely. The second one killed two young men (also civil guards) in Majorca, even further away from the Basque country. Their only crime was, apparently, to be protecting the thousands of people that live in Majorca or come there to spend two weeks in the sun.


I'm not going to enter the discussion of whether the Basque country should be independent or not. But for the first time in the Spanish democracy, they have a non-nationalist government, democratically elected, and, if nothing else, that is a good thermometer of how a good part of
Basques feel about nationalism. Most nationalists definitely do not support ETA either. As for me, I'm not Basque, but I'm from Madrid. However, I've had my fair share of attacks here (including the death of a professor from my university). I'm really tired of this. This blog is part of a virtual demonstration against ETA and its methods.


Ps. I'm moderating comments for this one, I don't want to get flooded with political comments from either the nationalist or the non-nationalist side, as I won't be able to monitor this in the next few weeks and I won't allow any insults to be posted here. The way I see it, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, whatever it is, until you use violence to make your case.

Unreality TV

I love Susan Boyle. I love her in the way I love Ugly Betty in all her international versions, and, clearly, Hugo. Oh, and Spiderman. It's always nice to have the underdog suddenly getting karmic revenge and becoming the hero, for a day, for a minute or for three increasingly bad movies. The problem is, Susan is pretty real. She's a flesh and blood woman with a splendid voice, and since I heard her audition video for the first time something seemed slightly manufactured over there. I mean, how flabbergasted could the jury be when the camera has been following her around?
Well, apparently they had very good reason to follow her around, as there had been talent scouts looking for her for the program (they explain it better at Susan Boyle and Paul Potts: Not Quite Out of Nowhere - TIME). Well, good for her, and good for the program, but I just wish they had been just this bit honest about it and save us the "oh dear so surprised really" speeches, because, people, Cinderella stories depend on fairy godmothers and hard work.

Now, this was Susan in 1999. She deserved it big time, already, ten years ago:

Too often on television we are sent these messages that your life can change suddenly, and for the better, and we don't hear the stories of tough luck, frustration, dusting off and starting again. That's the fun fact of reality TV --it seems so indistinguishable from reality itself that unless we keep a cynical eye open at all times we overlook the constructions, the editings, the half lies and the make up. Or did you think that dress suddenly happened on poor Susan? Two scenarios: someone told her to wear it, or nobody told her not to wear it. In any case, my guess is people in the public would have laughed a lot less if she had come in different clothes. And yep, that's what I call manufacturing.

Serendipically, today I've also encountered the news that Elle Magazine, French edition, has decided to run an issue on stars without make-up, or photoshop , i.e. to Susan Boyle them a little.

...but just a little. Real beauté comes

with an electric fan and tweezers.

And damn good genes.

This is something that happens quite regularly on glossy magazines, like, once in approximately every five years. The lesson seems to be something like "hey, you can be beautiful without make up, but not so much, so, hey, feel good about yourself, but duh, you better get some products, it's totally worth it. Oh, and did you notice how pro-women issues we are?." Well, thanks. No, really. These issues have to appear every five years or so, so that the new generations stop and think for a second about something schools don't usually make them think about, i.e. reality in the media is ma-nu-fac-tu-red. Make up and hairdressers are nice, photoshop and surgery, ok, not so much, but in any case I do hope that Susan gets some in the near future because, damnit, she deserves it (certainly that's what google seems to be implying by having "makeover" featuring so prominently when you search her name in it). But please don't come and tell me later she woke up one morning and her hair was suddenly longer and straighter please.

And the best of luck, really, on the media jungle she's just gotten into.

The holiness of the multiplication table

...didn't know this film existed! I definitely have to get a copy :)



Inherit the Wind

The joy of torturing telemarketers

Call: 13.28

Me: (pick up the phone) .......
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫ (really)
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........

Me:.........
Telemarketer: (hangs up)

Call: 13:32

Me: (pick up the phone) .......
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫ (really)
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Me:.........
Telemarketer: (hangs up)

Aaah... I've got a new hobby.

I must be a bad person. About a year ago, I made a huge discovery. I had been getting recurrent phonecalls from a health insurance company, which I kept politely rejecting because, well, I'm a very polite person. However, one of these calls had to be made at 9.00 AM, in July. Let me tell you something about myself. I'm Insomniac. Ca-pi-ta-lized. I have serious problems sleeping, and heck, when it is the summer time and I finally can catch up with my sleep and sleeping late, waking me up for a stupid promotion is like feeding a Gremlin after 12. A Very Bad Idea.

So when I picked up the phone and I got the usual telemarketer yapping about their usual healthcare insurance thing, I just hanged up on her. No more "sorry, not interested", no more "sorry, I have to go", no more "sorry, could you please delete me from your list", no more "sorry, I asked you FIVE TIMES to delete me from your list". I just hanged up on her. And, hey, it felt GREAT.


Enter Telefónica, the Company We Love to Hate. This company has a very peculiar notion of public relations which includes systematically pestering cellphone owners of all sorts using a very scientific method, i.e. calling, randomly, all six-digit numbers starting by 6 and checking if there is a person on the other side of the line. Then they ask you for your name, and then they spam you with whichever stupendous new offer they have concocted on their evil dome.

The weekly meeting of the marketing section.

Enter 1485. I've been getting some calls (which, given my experience, I never answer) from these guys and I decided to do a little research to find out what they've been up to lately. Turns out, there might not even be a person behind the calls, but a sort of calling machine to more effectively pester cellphone users. The fun really begins when you pick up the phone and... no one is there. They're just checking if you might be so that next time a real person all-suffering telemarketer can call.

Well. Turns out I haven't enjoyed a dumb telephone call so much since those long lost summer days of making collect calls to foreign country switchboards.

Looking forward to the next one XD.

The Hitler Channel

The Boy in Striped Pijamas (2008)

(...) Loss of urgency, loss of documentary conviction, and loss of recognition, offset by a net gain in jokes about the Hitler Channel: these are the outcomes we may expect as the pace of Holocaust film production continues. These will be the consequences of an end-of-the-year schedule that brings Defiance, Valkyrie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, Adam Resurrected, and Good—because only the most determined optimist would expect all these movies to aspire to the condition of Yad Vashem.
(...)

Nextbook: Lest We Remember , by Stuart Klawans

Reading the article above, I couldn't help but wish someone in Spain wrote something about our very own Franco channel. It seems to me that all nations have their own traumas/phobias, and if the American one is the Holocaust/Hitler, the Spanish one is the Civil War/Franco. As the author goes about a moratory on Holocaust pictures, I also wish there was a moratory in Spain about the historical period of 1936-1975. Of course that would do away with half of my country's filmography. IMDB lists 119 titles, and even though some of them are not Spanish, and even though a few Spanish films have not been listed, it gives you an idea of how exasperatingly exhausting the whole thing is.

Los Girasoles Ciegos (2008)

It has nothing to do with serious historical documentation and research (I have absolutely nothing again our Law of Historical Memory,explained here), not even with doing serious documentaries (although there isn't exactly a lack of those, either). I'm not even saying that all these movies aren't worth watching. Some of them are even good. But as Richard Corliss argues in Defiance: Beyond Holo-kitsch (through which I got the link to Lest We Remember), very often these movies don't make us remember these events and think about the consequences of the Holocaust/Spanish Civil War [/insert historical trauma here], but they merely become a suitable background to guilt-trip the audience and the critics, thus distracting them from how much some of these movies...er... actually suck. And I quote(because I love sounding academic)

It has become not just a topic but a genre, one that, at its most reductive, exploits the awful melodrama of that chapter in history to badger viewers, intimidate critics, elicit easy tears, and serve as a back-patting machine for serioso directors.

Defiance: Beyond Holo-kitsch,by Richard Corliss

Defiance (2009)

Ok, so maybe not all these films are even bad, and probably not every director means all this harm consciously, but it sems that that overflow of Holocaust and Spanish Civil War films makes us miss the forest for the trees. They become the artistic equivalent of Godwin's Law, i.e.:

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states:

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Godwin's Law,by the Almighty Wikipedia.

Similarly, we can probably calculate artistic stagnation by merely looking at how many Trauma movies are opening this weekend. Tragedy should not be yawn-not-another-one-please. Maybe we could restrict ourselves as audiences (we've got the power!) to one Holocaust and one Civil War movie a year?

consequences of gay marriage

couldn't let it pass.





more music charts

...and here's an online comic that will knock your socks off

I believe I've said it before --it always pays off to read Nalo Hopkinson's blog. This time it was a wonderful recommendation, the wonderful Bayou by Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan. I like to think of it as a cross between Toni Morrison and Hayao Miyazaki, and I'm really looking forward to the second instalment. I had no idea you could read comics this good online, so Zuda, the home website in itself is quite a discovery.

I leave you with a teaser ;)

Bayou by Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan

So many mistresses, so little time...

I've just finished the second season of The Tudors, and it's been exactly the same guilty pleasure as watching its first season or any season of Rome. It's great fun to see the beautiful costumes and the hyperbolic acting (John Rhys-Meyers, please cool it, will you). At the same time, however, you just want to smack them on the head with the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for all the historical inaccuracies they throw in just because. Margaret Tudor, especially, must be rolling in her grave for being merged with her sister and being portrayed like such a superficial $"·$%. As for the Atia of Rome, if there ever was such a thing as vengeful Roman ghost, I'm sure she will be there, holding a devout matronly rolling pin. (Of course, anyway, nothing will ever, ever, beat Braveheart becoming the father of Edward II for the sake of having Sophie Marceau squeezed in and having something of a happy end).

I'm not going Taliban on these people. Heck you have to film a movie or do a TV show, and I suppose nobody expects total accuracy when you have a limited budget and a limited time to stuff all the stories in. But if there is something that people like Simon Schama has proven with stuff like A History of Britain is that there are enough good stories in the history books to make such distorsions not terribly necessary. The problem, I think, is that there might be less boobs around, which seems to be the whole point of The Tudors and Rome at times. But oh well, being fun to watch as they are, all you can say is, bless Wikipedia for at least a few people in the audience will bother to check the facts out of simple curiosity, and that's good. The show becomes quite interactive that way -- at least for me. I'm becoming a complete expert on royal mistresses, who are all quite a curious bunch, what with all their ambitions, beauty (or lack thereof) and, more importantly, not giving a flying %&$%% about society's conventions. My favorite, so far, is Charles II's Nell Gwyn, if nothing else for this beautiful, beautiful scene, taken straight from the wikipedia article on her:

Nell Gwynn was one day passing through the streets of Oxford in her coach, when the mob, mistaking her for her rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth, commenced hooting and loading her with every opprobrious epithet. Putting her head out of the coach window, "Good people", she said, smiling, "you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore"

Oh how I wish The Tudors got spin-offed all the way to The Stuarts! In any case, I'll certainly watch the third season of The Tudors next year, even though I'll miss the great Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn --she didn't look a thing like the historical Anne but hey she definitely can act. A lot of the weight of the show fell on her shapely shoulders and I worry that the actress they've chosen for Jane Seymour -- and, well, the character of Jane Seymour itself-- will not be enough to fill the space of Anne's severed head. Unless they go on to create a completely different Jane out of nowhere (see above), or dispatch her in a couple of episodes. And on with more interesting stories, such as When Good Portraits Happen to Ugly People.


Ps. One day, I hope, someone in Spain will do The Austrias. Now that's fun stuff for at least seven seasons.

you'd think NASA is getting some kind of publicity money from the Galactica crew...

Kara Thrace, anyone?

A 400 year old supernova captured by infrared and X-ray telescopes. This is sooooo going straight to my computer's desktop :)

NASA - A Vivid View

Ps. Yeah, I don't know how I'm going to wait another month... sigh.

yaaayyyyyy cylons!!!

... that's how articulate I can be about this... XXDDDD

(again, don't watch unless you want spoilers)



eheeeheehhehhheee XD

a short story of pop'era

... it started off fine with this...



the three tenors popularize the beautiful Nessun Dorma before the 1990 FIFA World Cup
(the idea was to make opera available to a larger audience, and it did. Many arias are known thanks to these three guys)

... went on with this, still making musical sense...



Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballe sing Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics

(Freddie has proven he knows about opera since Bohemian Rapsody and knows how to not take himself too seriously. This is why it works)

... started going wrong with this...


Andrea Bocelli gets a career by squandering a tenor voice on corny pop songs , e.g. Vivo por Ella

(note how Marta Sanchez, an otherwise competent pop performer, suffers greatly to catch up with Bocelli. This is what happens when you get opera trained people to work/compete with pop singers and they both take it seriously)


... quickly lead to this...



Il Divo. I guess it's better than being unemployed.

(I need someone to sit down and explain this video to me. Slowly. )

... degenerated into this...



The Ten Tenors. Bee Gee Medley?????!!!!! WTF?????!!!!!

(no, it is NOT a parody. Why you need to spend all your childhood and youth studying classical music to end up performing a choreographed Bee Gees medley with 9 other guys is a mystery to me)

... and finally, we got this...


...

I cannot believe I haven't posted in a month.

... sigh. It's been a busy month, though... the problem is, the longer you stay away from something, the harder it gets to come back. Posting something dumb sort of doesn't do the trick. But since it's been a Very Eventful and Happy Week in global terms, I guess I can post an Onion video that made me smile a few days ago...



Obama Undertakes Presidential Internship To Ease Concerns About His Lack Of Experience


That was lovely. Especially him "sitting" right next to Ibarretxe, the leader of the Basque nationalists... priceless... I honestly hope he brings dignity and respect back to the White House. And, since he's been to Harvard, we can be pretty sure this one knows at least how to spell those words.

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The T-shirt-o-meter!

I found this chart just hilarious. Cafe Press, the internet custom T-Shirt store, have decided to keep track on how their political items are selling, and well, the results are just fascinating... the only problem is that they have no way of telling apart the "for" and the "against" buttons and t-shirts, so one cannot now if what's selling is this...









or this...
Nevertheless, it's certainly the kind of thing the anthropologically curious can enjoy...


Ps. Oh that Sarah Palin... she sure is media-friendly...

Paul is coming

Las Viñetas de ELPAÍS.com (by Forges)

Careful with those fans... :)

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Sigh... I miss bagels...

The real, New York bagels, not the cheap depressingly boring varieties we get around here....

You Are a Cinnamon Raisin Bagel

You are warm, loving, and genuinely selfless. You enjoy comforting other people, and you easily fall into the roll of caretaker. Of all the types, you're the most likely to be an excellent cook. You tend to have something delicious for breakfast that you've cooked up for everyone.

What Kind of Bagel Are You?

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I told you, the woman has a common face... this time it's the Gallery of the Absurd

Whis is beginning to look like a monograph!!! XD

Gallery of the Absurd: John McCain & Sarah Palin: Rocky and Bullwinkle

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Yes, Palin wears Tina Fey glasses

Well, I told you so... Palin looks like Tina Fey. So I guess it was only a matter of time we got this... definitely portraits those two well...

"Can you believe it, Hillary?".................."I CANNOT!!!!!"

Warning: downer.

I was there, at Loquillo's concert, last Sunday. The song is a version of a poem that has always been a favorite of mine, especially as you can see a fragment of it at the Universidad Complutense subway station. True enough, it's probably not the best thing to read at birthdays, but still great in a depressing kind of way...



NO VOLVERÉ A SER JOVEN

Que la vida iba en serio
uno lo empieza a comprender más tarde
-como todos los jóvenes, yo vine
a llevarme la vida por delante.

Dejar huella quería
y marcharme entre aplausos
-envejecer, morir, eran tan sólo
las dimensiones del teatro.

Pero ha pasado el tiempo
y la verdad desagradable asoma:
envejecer, morir,
es el único argumento de la obra.

-- Jaime Gil de Biedma.

(and here, a chance to use my translating wheels)

WON’T BE YOUNG ANYMORE

Life was in earnest –
one realizes that only later.
As with all the youngsters, I came
to take life by storm.

I wanted to leave my mark
and leave with an ovation
– to age, to die, were only
the dimensions of the theatre.

But time has gone by
and the ugly truth begins to show:
to age, to die,
is the only plot of the play.

Introducing the Space Bear ---they survive naked in space and cure cancer...

And nope, they are not on the third season of Heroes...

SPACE.com -- Creature Survives Naked in Space

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