Chicken Soup for the Ah Soul

Changing Babies

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:40:00 +0000

There were a couple of downsides to moving way out in the country in north Edinburg, Texas: 1) The cable lines don't run that far, so we were forced to get this satellite internet called Hughes Net for a while, which is like a hundred billion dollars a month, freezes on you after you use up a certain amount of bandwidth and have to wait 24 hours before it starts running again; and 2) it's way out in the country in north Edinburg. So, we got rid of that bull-shit company. Sent the equipment back to them after a couple of weeks and figured we'll just go back to caveman times with good-old dial-up. Now, we had already called AT&T like a hundred billion times asking for their DSL service, and we got the same reply: "We don't go all the way out there." The bastards. So, when we called to set up a regular phone line last week, they asked us: "Ah, and it shows you're available for DSL. Are you interested in getting that?" The bastards.

So that took care of the first downside. To quote a good friend, "score!" Now, as far as living way up north, to get to school/work four times a week is not so bad when it takes less than 15 minutes as opposed to more than one hour from Rio Grande City. But to visit my parents in the weekends, it's those 15 minutes to get to school, plus another more than an hour to get to their place. It's not as bad as other people have it, but it's still annoying. It's like one of those television infomercials where the people are having a really crappy time and they say, "I just wish there was a better way," only there was no upbeat male narrator voice giving me an 800 number and trying to sell me Lipozene.

About a month ago, right before Linda and I were leaving to see my parents, I pulled out the road map from one of our kitchen drawers and studied it. I'm pretty good with maps and getting around anywhere in the Valley. By the time I realize I'm lost, I usually end up right where I knew I was going to. I found this highway on the map, 490, that's less than a mile north from our house. If you were to take this all the way west, you wind up at Highway 755 about 20 miles or so north of Rio Grande City. I told Linda we'd try out that way. She asked if we should eat first. I said, no, we'll stop and pick something up at a gas station. So we took off. The road was everything I imagined and more: nothing but farmlands, like one other car on the road, 65-mile-per-hour signs, and not a pig in sight. Then we stopped at McCook, Texas.

There really isn't much in McCook. There's a closed down school to our right side with about two classrooms and a four-way stop crossroad with gas stations on each side. We picked the one on the right. The screen door squeaked when we pulled it. It looked like a regular convenience store you find in the Rio Grande Valley, with the exception of nothing but white cowboys sitting around a small table eating hamburgers. They all had this north Texan hick accent, kind of like Danny McBride from Pineapple Express. This guy in blue jeans, denim western shirt, and a cowboy hat even looked like Danny McBride. Most of them started walking out as soon as Linda and I walked in.

Linda went to grab a couple of drinks while I stood by an old-looking kitchen they had set up. That's where the cowboys had gotten their hamburgers. I waited to be attended. An older man sold lotto tickets to a customer who sounded like a friend to him. An older woman, probably the clerk's wife, went to the back room, where they had a bunch of crap thrown everywhere. Linda joined me while I still waited. Then a man with glasses came up to us and asked her in a huge hick accent: "What's your name?" Linda answered. "Ask me what my name is," he said. This is when I realized he was retarded.

He kept saying strange things to us, like, "Ask me who's going to pick up the phone at my house," and "Are you pregnant?" to Linda, "Are you going to have a baby?" He said things like, "I don't like changing babies" and "Ask me how old I am," and when we did, "I'm 27 years old," but he sounded like he was five. Meanwhile the father observed us from the counter. I thought he would be proud or happy his son was talking to us, but he just looked annoyed. It's cliche, I know, but it looks like he was about to say, "We don't like your kind around here," and that would be understating it. The wife was most definitely not serving our kind since she passed by a couple of times without even the slightest, "I'll be right with you," to help us in the kitchen.

Even if they don't serve our kind, I could probably get away with it. Linda might not be so lucky. She's too dark. Now that I think of it, they were probably hating on me for marrying down. I told Linda to just grab a couple of bags of Doritos so we can go. She did, we paid, and we took off, slightly glancing into the rearview mirror from time to time. We passed the four-way stop sign, and then more nothingness. No neighborhoods. A house was set up down a small dirt driveway to the left, a trailer home about a mile later to the right, but mostly crops. The Hills Have Eyes came to mind. There was even the absence of cell phone reception to complement that. We got to Rio Grande City in about 50 minutes from house to house (without counting our encounter with the guy who hated changing babies, of course).

Due to gas and time, we still take this road to travel between Edinburg and Rio. We took it to come back today and realized there's a cult, er, a church a bit south of the stop. There was a single car there, so I assumed the entire town must've shown up for mass. It's a simple ride when you don't stop at the store. You don't want to stop at this store, though probably do now. The time we stopped and then took off, I reached for my Diet Coke in the cup holder, opened the can, and tasted saltiness. I looked underneath it: JUN 16, 2007.

Love you dearly,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Edinurg, TX

Everybody Dies

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:59:00 +0000

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying." --Woody Allen

Every weekend I come home to see my parents, I'm reminded of a life I left behind. Even less than a year ago, when I was still living in Rio Grande City and driving to and from school twice a week, I felt that disconnection from the town. I think I even started feeling that way when I worked at the video store there. And it's a town you really have to be part of. It's not a metropolis like McAllen, Texas (inside joke) where you can get by your whole life with just knowing the people around you. In Rio, everyone knows who you are. Sheriff gets busted for possible dealings with cartel, everyone's like, Hey, that guy helped me get a job. No way he's guilty. Local retard rapes a girl (trust me, there's no way he's not headed that way), people say he doesn't know any better. Everybody knows everyone here.

Linda and I were replacing her cellphone in town when my sister called asking me if I knew who Danny Echavarría was. I said I didn't. "How can you not know who he is?" she asked; "he went to high school with you. You must've known him." If I remember correctly (and I probably don't), my class back in 2003 had a little over 500 graduates. Now, most of them knew who I was. Either because I was one of the different people, or "freaks," or because I was the one who quit band, or I left bad impressions, or just maybe because I was one of the first people they called up there to get our fake diplomas. I, on the other hand, didn't care much for the people that were all the same, or "idiots," knew fewer than a quarter of the band students who stuck with it until the end to go on to college and not band anymore, didn't really look for impressions other people made on me, and fell asleep when I got back to my seat to avoid listening to five hundred other names.

Turns out, my sister didn't even get the first name right, and it wouldn't have made a difference because I still don't know who the guy is. On Friday, he shot another guy in the face because they were supposedly fighting over a romantic interest. Local newspaper doesn't say anything about the romantic interest. My sister didn't know anything about it. She just said that after shooting the guy, the shooter was the one to call 911 to say he had shot his friend. I didn't know who the other guy is (or was) either. He's two years younger, so I have an excuse. But the police Chief Dutch told reporters the "suspect walked over [to him after the argument] and popped him," which I thought was an interesting choice of words. I personally would've gone with "busted a cap on his ass... or face."

Another guy died in an accident around the same day--maybe even hour. This one, I did know from band. Same instrument. He was one of the drum majors the year I quit, so I pissed him off a bit. Truth is, he'd cry frequently when band directors would get after him, when the band would get a first division at Pigskin (which everyone always expected anyway), and on several other celebratory occasions. So, he confronted me when I quit, letting me know how tough it was for all the little trombone players now that the two remaining senior trombonists were drum majors and had to look out for the entire band. I said, "Well, why don't you cry about that?"

After hearing about all this, one of the clerks at the cell phone store complained, "Everybody's dying" the same way one would complain about food always coming out cold. I found this hilarious and laughed. Now, my conscience told me I shouldn't be laughing. It shouldn't be funny. People are dying and popping other people in the faces. Shit, that could've been me. Even if I don't really drive around Mexican border towns without a seatbelt on or mess around with other women, let alone give anyone the smallest reason to pop me in the face. Death shouldn't be funny, should it?

I started going to church again, which, for a catholic person, is a lot better to choose to go than to be obligated to. (Like one my classmates said, "If you set out the cake, people will come get some. If you force feed it to them, they'll spit it out.") The priest read about Jesus being in the desert for forty days and, during his sermon, asked if we were afraid to die. I'm more than sure I'm not. I'm afraid for those who actually value me as a person: Linda, my parents, a few friends--maybe a couple. There are things I'd like to do before I die, my list before I pop off, but in the end, it's going to happen sooner or later. Everybody's dying. And I don't regret making the accident guy feel bad because he was a douche to me in high school and middle school. The shooter guy, I didn't even know. Linda said he used to wiggle his ears a lot like Alfalfa.

Happy popping,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

Source: The Monitor: Man charged with murder hours after shooting.

A Conversation With My Earlier Self, Or Not

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:20:00 +0000

Preface: I don't know if I've ever mentioned--or have but both of you forgot--that I used to work at Subway my senior year in high school. I told the band directors that I quit band because I needed to work. That's a lie. I just felt the bastards would've been too hurt by the truth: I had all my art and PE credits and band wasn't something I was going to do for the rest of my life. Work was the last thing I needed to do. This became obvious when my boss at Subway had her favorites, was more concerned with keeping the place clean than the customers happy, and gave me four hours of work per week. Loved those $20 checks.

Preface 2: One Sunday night last month, Linda and I drove to Subway to pick up a couple of sandwiches. I had a mountain of papers to read and grade and wanted to get them out of the way to have Monday to do my own schoolwork. It was around 9:50 PM when we stopped. The place looked like it was about to close. The worker cleaned the counter. The worker looked a lot younger than me, almost an exact image of how I looked when I worked there 6 years ago. Thin-rimmed glasses, light-complected Mexican, chubby, Subway uniform. A senior in high school, if not just starting out his community college education.

The following conversation takes place between 9:50 PM and 10:00 PM. Words are to the best of my memory.

Act 1 - The Order
Shoney: Are you closing up already? Because if you are that's fine.
Employee: No. We're still open. We just start cleaning up a little early so we won't have to do everything after we close. We get home earlier that way.
Shoney: Okay. I just don't want to be your last customer of the night, ruin everything, and have you spit in my sandwiches when I'm not looking. (He looked like he was down-to-earth, so I thought it was safe to joke around like that. I wasn't being accusatory in any way.)
Employee: Oh, no. We don't do that here. It can cause contamination. Besides, we don't close till 11. We just like to start cleaning up a bit early so we won't have to do it all after we close.
Shoney: Do you get home earlier that way?
Employee: Yeah. So, um, what do you... Would like for to order for food Subway?
Shoney: Two footlongs on wheat please. One Italian BMT and the other Chicken Teriyaki. (Yeah, I wasn't eating red meat then either.)

Act 2 - Cutting The Cheese... Secret
After all the technicalities of whether or not the sandwiches should be toasted (yes), the kinds of cheeses (mozzarella for Linda, provolone for me), and vagies and condoms (too many to list), our conversation takes an interesting, ground-breaking turn.
Employee: You liked our pepper jack cheese when we had it, right?
Shoney: I didn't even know you guys had that cheese. But, yeah, I like pepper jack cheese.
Employee: Well, we're not supposed to tell you this, 'cause it's kind of a secret. (I'm thinking, shit, what's in the food now?) You know our Italian Herbs and Cheese bread? Well, really soon we're going to have a new bread but with pepper jack cheese on top. Shredded.
Shoney: Dude, that's amazing! (Sarcasm concealed beautifully.)
Employee: Yeah, but don't tell anyone. No one's supposed to know. It's a secret. Vegies for the Teriyaki?
Shoney: Onions, bell peppers, and banana peppers, but could you add them before you toast the sandwich?
Employee: Hey, that's the way I like it, too.

Act 3 - Gas
Employee: (after some silence) So gas prices are lower now. That's cool, right?
Shoney: I guess so. I still have to drive to Edinburg twice a week. So the prices are still a pain in the ass.
Employee: Still better than before, though. I remember when they used to be like almost five dollars. In some places up north, like in the north states, it's still expensive over there.
Shoney: The minimum wage is higher up there, too, so things work out the same in the end.
Employee: The minimum wage is supposed to get better down here, too. Well, mine's going up. I'm supposed to be getting a raise soon. (Have I mentioned the Subway owner is a cheap skate bitch? One napkin for a six-inch, two for a footlong. No exceptions. On Halloween, she made us put up a sign on the door that read: "Sorry, kids. No candy." I misspelled everything on that sign on purpose.)
Shoney: I don't mean your salary. The minimum wage.
Employee: Yeah, I know. And I'm getting a raise soon. Are they going to be combos? (No.)

Final Act - The Mirror Image
Employee: So, do you, like, play any video games? Some PS 3, X-Box 360?
Shoney: No. I haven't had a chance to play in a while now. Just don't have the time anymore.
Employee: Well, what is it you do that doesn't give you time to play video games? (This is the part I realize a special kind of kinship can exist between two people that happen to play video games. Here, I thought video games were more common than that.)
Shoney: I'm working on finishing up my masters right now, for starters.
Employee: That's all?
Shoney: (Did you not hear, "for starters?") No. I'm also teaching two Composition classes right now. (He stares at me like I'm pathetic.) I have fifty-some essays to grade when I get home. I'm picking up a sandwich at 10 at night because I don't have time to make myself a sandwich at home. So, no, I don't have time to play video games.
Employee: Well, I work here, and I go to school. I find the time to play video games.

Afterword: I didn't say anything. He looked as if he really believed he was doing important work for mankind--at least the equivalent of teaching college students, not just our future, but our more imminent and certain future. With Starr County being the most obese county in the nation, I bet working at Subway is important work. Its employees change the way we all eat out: We go spend a lot of money on the easiest thing to make at home. Either that's the truth, or I need to start playing more video games.

The end,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

Loose Hope

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:28:00 +0000

If I could illustrate how good and bad these last few months were since I last made contact, it would look a lot like those heart monitors you see in the movies and TV shows. I've yet to convince myself they exist in real life; I still think it's just a bunch of nurses taking shifts, monitoring your pulse with their hands. I assumed I'd get to see one when I got a heart attack, but that's not happening for a long time. I've only touched red meat once since I got back from beautiful Mexico this past July. And, yes, I've pulled that off wonderfully. That one time I touched the steak, I really just wanted to hold it to my nose and smell it good. Kidding. Linda and I turned seven that day, so I said no restrictions on food.

After teaching for one semester, I've found a new respect for professors that have been doing this for a long time. I went into this thinking, yeah, no more dicking around. I can actually put an F on a report card if that's what the student has earned. If I could illustrate how horrible that feels in real life, it would look a lot like maggots feeding off a kitten on the side of the road. I don't know. Maybe it gets better with experience, but I still have to hand it to those teachers that are out there, doing it for us, maintaining the balance, saying that adults can be left behind.

Speaking of being left behind, NBC aired the last episode of the canceled new series, My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater and the fat guy from the Time Warner Cable commercials. I can't speak for a lot of people (and I don't really think they'd want me to), but I absolutely loved the show from the beginning. It had one of the best premises I've seen in a long time, and then NBC finished it off at nine episodes when they had 13 filmed. So, I thought there would at least be some closure, but, no. They finished it with a cliff hanger. God I hate NBC. I swear, if it didn't have The Office, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, My Name is Earl, Heroes, and Deal or No Deal when I'm bored and feel like watching how easily people throw their future away, I'd stop watching it completely. Worst Enemy was the best new show of the season. By far, better than J.J. Abram's disappointment Fringe, which is really just a shitty rip-off of The X-Files without the awesomeness. And a hellofuva lot better than that dumb vampire porno show, True Blood. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk, Alan Ball. We could've done so much together. But you wanted to dick around, literally.

Speaking of vampires, this vampirism thing has really got me up to here with its stupid crap. If I could illustrate just how shitty... No. I won't even go there. My sister's marriage is on the rocks. I'll let you know why in a second. I just want to clear up that stupidity doesn't run in my gene pool first. She read the book Twilight in two days, went off to watch the movie, and then realized that she wanted to be loved the same way the vampires or whatever love. Not kidding. The story and characters have brainwashed her (which I just realized right now actual vampires do) and things are falling apart. One of my mom's client's daughter broke up with her boyfriend of four years after watching the movie together. I'm sure these aren't the only two cases.

I could care less about the Twilight books or movie. I picked it up at Barnes the other day, opened it to a random page to see what the big hype was, and my little niece, who will probably be damaged by the divorce soon can write better than that. Whispered: And she asked me how to spell "karaoke" today. So, now I make fun of my sister (more) to make her realize how dumb she is. I tell her not to go out in the sun or eat pizza, and she says: "The vampires in Twilight can be in the sun. And they eat pizza." What the hell kind of vampires are those? At least Alan Ball makes his fuck. Then again, he'll make anything fuck. So, ladies, if you find yourselves leaving your significant other because he doesn't treat you the way a vampire does, a fictional character, made up by the silly fantasies of someone who calls herself a vampire writer--let alone a real one--no, don't kill yourself. But stop... being so stupid. It's like me leaving Linda because she won't go to Paris with me to uncover hidden secrets about Jesus Christ. And you know what, newly unhappy couples, she would go to Paris with me.

So I know I said my semester was more like a heart monitor--not the dead kitten with the maggots--and I just gave you the flatline stuff. A lot of good things happened to me, too, but I won't bore you with them. People only seem to want to read about the bad things anyway. Jesus's birthday is coming up soon, and all we care to know is how that Wal-Mart guy got stomped to death by all those shoppers on Black Friday. It's depressing. I know. But I'll give you one piece of good news. A couple of months ago, I our region's newspaper, The Monitor published a travel article from me (I'll post the link to it as a comment). I tried to let you know on Myspace, but it would post seven times on your subscriptions, but wouldn't post the blog itself. If I could illustrate how much Myspace sucks some times, I'd ask you to read Twilight.

I love you,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

Friendship. Friendship? Again?

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:05:00 +0000

Well, I've been granted a job at the university again--this time teaching a couple of English 101 Composition classes. This explains why I've taken out all of the outdated information from my Myspace that incriminates me as a cult satanist. Most of the information I deleted was too old anyway, even from when I used to work at the auto parts store. That was years ago. And I can't even relate to the guy I was yesterday. Yes, I still have some things in common with the Shoney from back then: my infatuation with Jack Bauer, I still think Guns n' Roses is the best band in the planet, and I still think children are evil. But mostly, things have changed with the new me. Like, I don't chew with my mouth open anymore.

This also explains why I haven't been posting in a while. Not only am I having trouble finding the time to post. (Time knows the best hiding places. I found it hiding under the bed for this post.) But I've been feeling so restricted lately on what I can or can't write. Can you believe this is my third draft of this post? The Shoney from before wouldn't have have cared about what to post. I wrote about pot in my last post, which was before I even knew I had a teaching job. Even now I'm wondering if I should take out my cult satanist joke attempt up there, thinking one of my employers might stumble into this and take it seriously. I just figure there are atheist professors at school. So, even if I were a cult satanist, how is cult satanism any different than atheism?

I thought about doing the whole "private" thing--go off the radar completely and abandon any hope of making new virtual friends. But then I realized how stupid it would be for me to have a private Myspace. The phrase alone sounds like an oxymoron. It's like trying to sell your car via an ad on the paper and telling the staff person to only let your friends see it. I realize that not everyone uses Myspace as an outlet for their writing, and thus, the private feature makes sense (if you're under 18) if you just want to maintain contact with your friends.

Even still, when did friends stop emailing each other? It might be just my own personal taste, but I'd rather much get a personal email--even if it's a negative one of friend being mad at me--than a stupid, glittery comment that says, "Hope You're Having a Fun Friday" that fills up my profile with potential spam. Do you not see the link attached to them? Those graphics mean nothing to me because it doesn't prove that you thought of me when you clicked on "Send to all of your 1,348 friends." Phone calls aren't so bad either. At the same time, they might be as awkward as the comments that go: "hey... long time no c... how r u.. im god... workin as n englich teecher now..." It's like, shit, just send me glitter, then.

I'm kind of screwed when it comes to friends. Have you noticed I haven't been writing an "s" at the end of it? It's not a type-o. It sucks that the friends you can count on the most live in another city, on the other side of the state (and Texas is a pretty big state), or in a different state altogether. And, yet, it's Myspace that keeps these friendships alive and now I can't find Time to get on Myspace. And from the looks of my inbox there, neither can they.

I guess besides losing time, I realized upon deleting my old information that I've also lost my definition of friendship. My mom asked me the other day why I don't hang out with my old friends anymore. I told her that if I wanted to hang out with a bunch of girls, I'd go get a perm and that's bad business for her because she's a hair stylist. I don't know what happened with my old friends. I grew up; they didn't. Or vice versa. I don't have the same connection I had with them back in high school. They're all turning into stupid assholes, or I'm turning into a smart one. I don't know. Maybe it's all of that. Even though I might be the first to mention it (for all I know, they've probably said something of the matter in one of their silly LAN orgies), I know it's not just me. It's all of us. Most of them have my phone number or know where to get it. And if all else fails, there's always glitter.

I love you,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

What's in my head, zombie.

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0000

I played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis today. Remember that one? It's the Playstation classic, re-released for Gamecube, which is the one I have. I used to kick ass in all the Resident Evil games. Playing this one for the first time in eight years made me realize I've lost my touch. I tried it on "Hard Mode," which really is the regular mode since in "Easy Mode" you start off with almost every single gun imaginable only to find each one again in the course of the game. Maybe they should have a "Super-Easy" mode where the zombies actually blow up if they come near you.

After a while, I eventually started to get the hang of things again. My ammunition wasn't running low. I always had a good supply of healing herbs. How the hell they bring your status from "Danger" to "Fine," I have no clue. Does Jill eat them? Rub them on her wounds? Smoke 'em? That last one seems to be the one that makes the most sense since she does roll them up into a piece of paper. I avoided the Nemesis whenever I could. Died a couple of times, but with our progresses saved, we can all escape the afterlife. And then, when I was about to fight the Nemesis at the end of the game, I heard a pop. The television went black, though I could still hear the background music. The lamp that supplies the television with picture and light busted, and I need to replace it. The guy said I would have to replace it every four years. It's been four.

So I decided to blog today, staring at the disconnected, turned off television every once in a while, reminding myself that I cannot watch it. Sure, I could always go into the next room 20 feet away, but it's just not the same. The TV in that room is not 60 inches. The truth is, I don't even know why I want to turn on the television or why I did when it was working way back then, ten hours ago. I have the shows I like, but none of them are on this season. So I'd probably look for movies on AMC, TBS, TNT, or FX; see who's screaming at the olympics every time they hit a ball on USA; Colbert/Stewart re-runs on Comedy Central. But just looking at them, not really watching.

I keep missing cable television in Xalapa. Most of the programming was American, in English, with Spanish subtitles. Their movie channels (about eight or nine of them) would always show good movies without one commercial. Well, there was always one towards the end of the movie where they would announce which movie would come on next. They wouldn't even censor anything. You could really appreciate the stupidity of I Love New York more, when it's not being disguised under all the bleeps. Though in the subtitles in Spanish, they would put stuff like "$%#$%." I watched Die Hard, the first one, on a different channel, and that network didn't have a problem with subtitling, "Yippie-kay-yay, hijo de puta." It's not really the correct translation, but still.

English bad words weren't the only things they would let slide. Mexico didn't really seem to mind us watching blood, guts, and violence, too. They gave Troy one night. The real version. Not the pussy one AMC plays that makes the Greeks look like geeks and the Trojans like... I don't know, condoms. While browsing channels one day, I stumbled upon E!. They were giving Wildest Spring Breaks or something like that. It was no different than a Girls Gone Wild infomercial without the flashy, colorful stars over their boobies and cha-chas. Sometimes, at night, on the movie channels, they put on some porn for the hell of it. It was almost like television heaven. It just needed HBO.

I'll have a replacement lamp in time for my shows to come back this Fall. I've been watching some of them via computer thanks to school anyway (which starts again next week for me). But I still don't know why I'm missing the television whose programming I don't miss. Is it like some kind of impulse to just turn it on and see what's on? My friend, now he's addicted to television. I remember once when the electricity went out and he just sat on his chair, looking at his reflection on the black screen. But maybe that's the mission of the television--to make zombies out of all of us. The smart thing would be to get rid of the television, but no, I'm paying $200 for a replacement lamp. That's like thirty decent meals there. But for now, I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll read a fucking book. Or smoke some herbs.

I love you,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

For the hearing impaired.

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 03:19:00 +0000

I spent a ridiculous amount of my day today looking for a job on the internet—more specifically, looking for one of those companies that lets you read the subtitles on your DVDs. Know which ones I mean? Not the blocky, annoying, matrixy characters on a black background that get in the way of television programming, but the more subtle, pleasant white ones you get when you hit the SUBTITLE button on your DVD remote. I know I haven’t been translating English and Spanish for a long time (almost a year now), but based on what I saw my six weeks in Mexico, someone really needs to step in and show them how it’s done.

Before I get into the subtitles, I have to speak against dubbing. I missed out on three movies in Mexico because I refused to see them dubbed: Kung-Fu Panda, Wall-E, and Get Smart. Luckily, I caught the last one in local American theaters before they pulled it off. I know the first two are for kids and people over 15 have absolutely no business watching it (let alone, people over 30), but Kung-Fu Panda advertising was ridiculous in Mexico. They were putting stickers and pogs and Twinkies and chips. I found a tattoo of it in a pack of FUD brand hot dogs. No joke.

It’s not the fact that it’s in Spanish that bothers me. I speak it well; I understand it beautifully. It’s the lips. How they move differently than what people are saying. That’s what annoys me. Even you put in an English movie into the DVD player and the sound is a little behind or ahead of the video, I can’t stand that. I can’t enjoy what I’m watching. Take Night Watch, for example: an excellent movie made in Russia with a Russian cast and based on a Russian novel. I saw it, for the first and second times, dubbed in English. Though they did an excellent job with the whole lip thing, I enjoyed its sequel, Day Watch, a whole lot more in Russian with English subtitles.

You can’t really appreciate the acting fully in a dubbed movie because you’re not really listening to them act. You’re listening to someone completely different, probably changing the original tone of the scene even if for just a little bit. The main reason I wanted to see Get Smart was Steve Carell. Super Agente 86 had some famous voice actor I’ve never heard of named Tata something. Kung-Fu Panda advertising in Mexico was excited for Jack Black—praised Jack Black—and he didn’t even come out in the movie in Mexico at all. Not even in any of the pirated copies sold at any corner. Cinépolis’s website, the main cinema place in Mexico, advertised its show times as Spanish, and that’s all over Mexico.

I get it. There are illiterate people who want to enjoy English-language movies, too. That’s completely fair, but can’t dubbers keep it in their pants until the movie to come out on DVD before ejaculating all over it? I really doubt a lot of illiterate people go to the theaters. Keep the subtitles. Subtitles are great. They’re out of your main point of focus, tucked neatly at the bottom of the screen, and it doesn’t ruin the movie. Plus, when you’re watching it in a foreign country, it makes everyone in the theater shut the hell up because they’re trying to read. In Xalapa, Linda and I always got the jokes first.

Now, the ugly side of subtitles and translation. Taking it from the top, there’s always some jackass—even in America—completely destroying movie titles. You don’t do that to someone’s work of art (or attempt at creating it). You don’t take del Toro’s Laberinto del Fauno and market it as Pan’s Labyrinth. That’s like re-titling it Insane People in Spain. You either keep the original title, or you call it The Faun’s Labyrinth, which, even though it doesn’t sound as pretty and catchy as Pan’s Labyrinth, is the direct translation. Only the creator should be allowed to change his title. The recent movie I didn’t bother to see for obvious reasons, What Happens in Vegas, was re-titled in Mexico as the Spanish equivalent for Love Insanity in Las Vegas. They did the same thing to the Jim Carrey movie, Fun With Dick and Jane by calling it Insanities with Dick and Jane. That’s fucking brilliant, Mexico. Let’s just add the word “locura” to any movie title; that way it sounds more interesting because it’s “crazy!”

M. Night Shyamalan’s recent flick, The Happening, also suffered the wrath of a horrible translator when he dubbed it: El Fin de los Tiempos (or, “The End of Times”). This guy from my class in Xalapa—some dude from Wisconsin that, when he spoke in Spanish, sounded exactly like Microsoft Sam from the Speech Control Panel when you type in a bunch of Spanish words—said the Mexican title was more appropriate than the original. I disagreed; I thought something like La Ocurrencia would’ve suited it better. But that’s not the point. If someone wrote a biography on Microsoft Sam and I translated it, I wouldn’t re-title it: Samuel Computadoras… Loco.

That’s not the worst thing subtitlers do. While in Xalapa, Linda and I got into the show Two and a Half Men (in English with subtitles). In one of the episodes, for example, Charlie Sheen says something like, “See you on Wednesday,” and the subtitles will say “Tuesday.” Jon Cryer says: “It’s been three months,” and they’ll write in a different number. I’ve seen them do this a lot, especially with dubbing. (I suppose it has something to do with the whole lip thing so it won’t annoy people like me.) They change lines of dialogue completely when dubbing from movies I already know by heart (like There’s Something About Mary, which came out a lot in Mexican cable) just so it can somewhat fit the lips.

A lot of people learn different foreign languages by reading subtitles, matching the words read with the words spoken. Cassandra from the movie Wayne’s World, though fictional, partially learns English by watching Police Academy movies. Yes, she’s not real, but it’s not completely false either. Someone without a foreign language education will go through life thinking domingo is Wednesday and cuatro is seven. The world is ending. People are burning alive in the middle of the streets. We’re being bombed. It’s the end of times. Meanwhile, the new Mexican guy at work will walk into the office and seriously say: “Waz happen-ing?”

I love you,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

Valley of the shadow of death.

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:01:00 +0000

I came back home from Xalapa to find that old, Rio Grande Valley climate at over a 1OO° Fahrenheit. I missed home—missed it a great deal. Though I didn’t miss getting inside my car after not being behind the wheel for six weeks only to feel it burn through the skin in my hands, the sunshine on the seats burning my ass, and feeling the waves of heat inside make it hard to breathe like when you open a hot oven. Can you believe some locals are crazy (or stupid) enough to leave their babies inside the cars? Don’t worry. Even though no one really likes babies, those people usually end up in jail anyway.

In Xalapa, the day summer officially started, it was somewhere between 65 and 70 American degrees. I’ve never felt a June and half of July like that. Imagine the loads of cash people save by not needing air condition. In the apartment, we only had one fan. At night, before we went to sleep to the silent screams of a parrot (or a mentally challenged boy) screaming “Mamá! Mamá! [Pause.] Mamá!” over and over, we’d just place the fan in front of an open window. By midnight, it felt like winter all over again. I’d like to think it was a parrot because we’d open our eyes in the mornings and still: “Mamá… Mamá!” It even became like a jingle for me; I’d have that sound stuck in my head like the songs they overplay at the local rock station. I’m back already and still I catch myself screaming, “Mamá… Mamá!” when I’m feeling bored.

An hour and half away from Xalapa (and a little over 4,OOO feet below), the port of Veracruz was more than likely as hot as south Texas. Perhaps a little more comparable to the temperature at South Padre Island, what with the sea breeze and all. The beach sand in Veracruz is darker than the one I’m used to in South Padre. It’s completely brown, sort of like a mud color. The sand here is whiter, like the one you see in the movies. A bit off the coast in Veracruz, there is a small island called La Isla de Sacrificios, or Island of Sacrifices. It’s something like a military base now, for Navy use, I think, but you can only wonder what it was before with a name like that.

I’m taking a Travel Writing course right now, which I’ve yet to go to. I missed the first three meetings in exchange for my brand new material from Mexico, and when I showed up to school last Tuesday for the fourth official class meeting, ready to meet a new set of older friends, they kicked me out of the campus. I went to the library to print my work, and that’s when they told me they’d be shutting down the entire campus because of the hurricane.

Back in Xalapa, I never told anyone that I talked to that I was from the Rio Grande Valley because not even people from Texas know where the Rio Grande Valley is. I could be talking to someone from Dallas and they’ll ask, “Is that by San Antonio? ‘Cause I’ve been there.” So I told them south Texas, right by the border. Do you know how hard it is to find a road map with the Valley in it? You have to find one of Mexico and then go up with your finger. And I admit, the Rio Grande Valley is not the most interesting place in the world. Kansas is probably more interesting.

But at the same time, it’s sad that it takes a disaster for other people to notice this region. People knew where New Orleans was way before Hurricane Katrina. We don’t have Mardi Gras down here, but I’m pretty sure there’s a topless season at the island. Hurricane Dolly wasn’t as destructive earlier this week as Katrina was a few years back. Merely two hours away from the Gulf of Mexico, and it always dies down before it hits here. We just get the occasional sprinkle. Closer to the Gulf, I saw in the news that neighborhoods were flooded, homes were lost, walls were broken, and the electricity went out. Our internet went out for several hours. And we lost a signal with a few channels, including Comedy Central. And they think they had it bad.

I love you,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

Xalapa, Jalapa, Shalapa

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:15:00 +0000

First of all, I’d like to make it clear that even though I’m still in Mexico, I’m not dead. Xalapa, Veracruz has been really good to me for the most part. It’s a pretty busy city; a lot busier than back home. I was expecting more like a small town kind of place—completely forgetting that it is the capital of the state. But yet the culture is still very present. The best way to describe this place is that it’s like a city whose roots refuse to let themselves be taken by the grip of modern, technological life.

I haven’t had a chance to update the past few weeks since, while I had planned to stay at a hostel that’s right by the school I’m attending, their idea of free internet is an old computer in the lobby you can use for thirty minutes a day. I busted out of there my second day there and found a nice apartment nearby. No internet, but at least I didn’t have to share a room with five other people, was furnished with cable television, kitchen, and living room, had my own bathroom, and it was less than $300/month.

The downside: it got really lonely there and everywhere I went. I had to get Linda to come down with me, and she did. She’s been here a couple of weeks now, and she likes it, too, since there are cafés like fucking everywhere. No wonder life moves fast here.

I think I’ve been losing a lot of weight here in Xalapa. Every other street is another hill to climb and since it’s mostly a commuting city, you walk a lot. I’ll have more details on the city later, but before I leave, let me get to some comparisons.

Mexican and American cultures (or the lack thereof), you can barely compare. They’re two different things on different spectrums. It’s like comparing a lily to a sirloin steak. But they do have some American things in Xalapa, especially corporate food chains. No, I have not been eating only that while I’m here. That has been minimal and for experiment purposes only.

The first thing I tried was Burger King—that seems to be the actual king of American fast food in town. It tastes the same as it does back in the States. The fries taste the same, burgers taste the same, chicken tastes the same. However, they do sell these jalapeño poppers filled with cream cheese that are better than any other ones I’ve had in fast-food restaurants. But (or “and” if you like it this way) they’re not spicy at all. You’d think that in Xalapa, the city the “Jalap”eño is named after, would have spicy chiles at Burger King. They’re still good, though.

KFC sucks here. They don’t even call it KFC in Mexico. Here, they call it Kentocky, with an “o.” And not just the residents, but their official television spots as well. The food tastes very bland, even the Original Recipe (called “Secret Recipe” here). It tastes like they just cooked the ingredients and forgot to add flavor to them. Or love. If the Colonel found out about this, I think he’d turn racist.

McDonald’s (or MeDonals)... now that’s a different story. Everything tastes better at MeDonals. I had the nuggets the first time I went by myself. Not only did they taste like actual chicken, but they actually had texture. When I took Linda, I had the Double Quarter-Pounder with cheese, and no, Mexico doesn’t give a shit about the whole metric system John Travolta goes on about in Pulp Fiction. Here, they actually call it Cuarta Libra con Queso.

Then there’s Pizza Hut. I don’t think I’ve ever had a pizza delivered where the cheese still stretches as you’re taking a slice from the pie. Pizza Hut also tasted better than over there. The name doesn’t change here. It didn’t taste like it came from a chain restaurant. The ingredients tasted authentic, the cheese was awesome, even the bread was really good. And I don’t even like bread.

Finally, I have to give a shout out to the Cinemark equivalent in Mexico, Cinépolis. For less than $3, you get the same service in sound and video quality that you do in the States. The snacks are very decently priced. It’s like $2 for the large popcorn, $2.50 for the large drink. Less than $2 for a hot dog. You know how they charge you like $5 in the States? Then they also have a café at the movies. You can take burgers, sandwiches, and shit to the theater and have lunch while you watch the movie. And everyone in the theater is quiet. No phones ringing or anything. I guess because they’re all trying to read the subtitles, but still. And they sure know how to do a commercial.

For Them to Say I'm Asleep

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:54:00 +0000

Oh, and one last thing to catch up on before I switch my gears to present day: for those of you who haven’t heard, after six-and-a-half years of dating Linda, we decided to get married. An older man working at the court house desperately tried to talk me out of it. “I know what I’m telling you,” he said, “I’ve been married for thirty years and it’s a fucking nightmare.” Right in front of Linda, too. I told him marriage wouldn’t change what I have with her right now; it would just make our relationship official.

It was a long process since the computers were down at the new local court house. We had purposely not eaten that day so we could go have a little celebration in a Mexican restaurant just on the other side of the border. The food, of course, was delicious. We walked it off and took photographs in the plaza right in front of the restaurant.

It was at that moment that the alertness started getting to me. I couldn’t keep from looking over to see if my shitty car was still there every thirty seconds or so, and I hated myself for it. Hated myself and the stupid media for potentially being part of the reason that makes me be afraid of my home country. Our government is building a wall to keep these people out for whatever the real reason is, separating them from their families; how can we not expect them to retaliate by taking it out on a car with Texas license plates just there on the side of the street—their street? I know I would.

A few months ago, I wanted to walk across the bridge and go to Nuevo Progreso, which is a small town with a whole main street of vendors and great restaurants and cheap medical stuff. When I presented that idea to my sister, she screamed, “No!” as if I were getting in the car already. She said she heard on the news that at the moment, it was packed with the mobsters native to the Mexico-U.S. border. (You can’t really say their name in public; an acquaintance of my mom’s got her head shaven for talking about them in a beauty salon.) Now, my sister is the most close-minded person in the world. A couple of weeks ago, Linda and I told her they were building a Muslim temple in McAllen, had the moon on top of it and everything. “Let’s burn it,” she said. We asked her why, and she said, “Because they’re terrorists.” The sad part is that she couldn’t understand her own logic, even if we said, “They’re terrorists?” Anyway, after her mobster explanation, my mom looked at me serious and said it was true. And she’s not even an American citizen.

I don’t want to be afraid of Mexico; I love almost everything about Mexico. And by almost everything, I mean the people, the culture, the food, the history, the markets, the small towns, and the food. Everything except the government that pushes its people away, and I’m pretty sure if there was better government, this whole mobster border business wouldn’t be as serious. I mean, they’re even recruiting government employees—offering them better pay and protection. And I know idiots like Mencia make fun of Mexicans, saying stupid crap like, “Oh, you love it so much, then why don’t you go back?” Well, I know that if I had a full-time job there that would pay me just enough to support my wife and one kid and have a little bit left to take them out to eat once or twice a week, I’d be there in a second. Preferably South Mexico, by the Yucatan Peninsula.

By next May, I’ll more than likely have my Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Which means, this is the last summer of school that I have left—possibly for the rest of my life. I had a choice to study abroad in England or Salamanca, Spain with the university, but I’m choosing to go somewhere else on my own. “Isn’t it very dangerous there right now?” my old undergraduate advisor asked when I told her the news. “It’s dangerous anywhere,” I said. “But the government there is real bad,” she continued. I finished with, “And our government is a work of art.” I’ll be taking a couple of courses for the next six weeks in Veracruz, which is by the Gulf of Mexico coast. My love for writing in Spanish has basically inspired me to do this. I’ll be going alone, leaving this Thursday.

So, the next time we virtually meet again, I’ll probably be sitting in the lounge of the hotel I’ll be staying in. Yes, I’m half-scared about going off on my own, but I’m also half-excited. I’ve never been to that state before, and apparently I have family a few towns away from where I’ll be staying. So that’s good. Of course, I’ll be taking contemporary Mexican literature courses, and if something bad ends up happening to me while I’m over there, I know in my heart that it’s something that would have happened anyway.

Until next time,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

No Happy Ending?

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:25:00 +0000

I don’t think there’s much else I can say about the accident. I really shouldn’t say this since the case isn’t closed (and when will it?), but since when has that stopped me? My lawyer forced me to go to therapy; I didn’t really need it. If anything, it was a waste of time.

Basically, the nurses take a couple of plugs connected to this machine. They stick them on your back, set the voltage to your preference, and then you get little shocks that don’t really make you feel better. Fifteen minutes later, she comes back in and screams, “It’s alive!”

Then they use this other machine to get an ultra sound, which I thought was really cute. I could see my baby on the screen they had set up. Finally, they get this freezing lotion and give you a short massage. That part actually feels nice, especially when they ask you to turn over and finish you off.

I didn’t get to work a lot this semester, mostly because I had to schedule my therapy sessions around my school schedule, which meant I had to go get massages during workdays. And from all the entries I was able to post in Spring 2008 (not one), you might be able to see why I found myself reading and writing for class in the waiting room while everyone around me went on and on about their car accidents. It was the toughest semester so far. The only good thing that came out of it was a deeper passion for writing in Spanish. I took a Spanish Creative Writing course, and I love it more and more.

I got a lot of shit about my age this semester and, though I shouldn’t have, I really let it get to me. In a non-fiction course of six students, I got a lot of comments about how my writing reflects my age, even from people I didn’t expect it from. “Yeah, it sounds like a 22-year-old wrote this,” was one of the negative comments I got on one of my essays. I really don’t know what that meant. Then she kept calling me boy throughout the semester; she’s only six years older than I am. Another classmate, in his mid 30’s, who by the way tried to rip me a new asshole in his critique of my last piece, implied that I was too young to be enrolled in the masters program.

I accept the fact that I was the youngest guy in the classroom (maybe in the whole freaking MFA program at the university)—most of the people in class were in their late 20’s and 30’s. But this whole age hierarchy thing was something I thought would be over once I became a sophomore in high school and juniors and seniors stopped calling me freshman in a fashion not so different than a white supremacist calling a black person the n-word. Not as extreme, of course, but same fashion. But to get this age bullshit at the graduate school level is just a little much, isn’t?

Since my age difference was one of the first things to get acknowledged in the semester, I got the feeling that my opinion stopped mattering in the class. Like I was too fucking young to have any useful input to help them better their writing. I could see their stares saying, “Oh, what do you know? You’re only 22. Let’s hear what the 40-year-old has to say.” So, you could imagine the show I put on when I turned 23 during spring break. “I’m finally 23. My IQ level went up; I feel smarter and wiser already. You know what, I’m gonna start worrying more about them politics and issues. Border wall, my ass.”

And it’s not just with that class. This age shit is material I’ve dealt with before, even in this blog. I know I act very immature (for my age?) at times—keyword act. I have a lot to learn about life, as I’m sure we all do. But just because someone is five or ten years older than me, does that automatically mean that they have less to learn than I do? Why do people continue to be judged based on age? Some people have to mature quickly and live life on their own at 14, while others get everything handed to them by their parents until they’re dead. When I did get to work substituting in high school and a student was acting like a dumbass, I never said, “Oh, it’s okay, she’s only sixteen.” I said, “Oh, it’s okay, she’s a fucking dumbass.”

You know what? Fuck it. If it’ll take seven more years for my writing opinion to start mattering to others, well, then there’s nothing I can do about, is there? Except maybe continue aging, but I can’t speed that shit up. Can’t say I want to either. I’m enjoying being the stupid, immature 23-year-old only people my age and below care about. To my older classmates, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. Let’s all be adults about this—old adults. Because in the end, if nature plays its course, your ass is dying first anyway.

Thinking I handled this well,

ShoneyRamone.Com
Rio Grande City, TX

Breaking the Law. Why Not? Breaking the Law.

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:52:00 +0000

In my last post, Phillip commented on my fear of driving on the expressway. To clear things up (and to reassure myself), that’s not the case at all. Now, after the accident, I have to admit that I do get a little nervous every time someone starts to tailgate me... violently, for the lack of a better word—especially when I’m not the only person in the car. If I’m alone, by all means, be my guest, fucker. But what my old readers fail to remember is that I was a driver for three years, delivering auto parts all over the Rio Grande Valley. My pre-accident driving life, on and off the expressway, was beyond a comfortable one. The reason I always take the back roads to and from school is that I fucking hate traffic. I always have. I’m sure a lot of us have had the thought while stuck in traffic of a post-apocalyptic world where we’re the only ones driving on the highway. I fantasize about this in the most awkward places, like the shitter.

Botolf, as usual, tried to stay positive about my crash situation by saying that I at least got a new car out of this. Let me tell you about my brand new 98 Dodge Stratus. Before anything, it eats gasoline like crazy. Al Gore would hate my guts. The back windows, they don’t work, so my passengers will have a blast drowning if the case presents itself in the future. The alarm likes to go off every once in a while for no reason—and not the siren kind but the continuous honking one. The brakes make a funny buzzing noise whenever I slow down, and it’s a miracle when I get a static-free radio station. It even sounds crappy when I connect my iPod to it and that’s because it’s receiving the signal from six inches away. I know what you’re thinking: “Then why’d you get it, dumbass?” Perhaps I should’ve hunted better for a car; I admit it. But when you’re a college student, you kind of have to settle with whatever the $2,700 can get you before you fall further behind in classes.

Oh, there’s something wrong with my car. The tint from the back windshield is so fucked up, it takes the whole point away from the rearview mirror. You can’t see anything, including the cop that was following me a couple of weeks after the accident. I was driving with Linda to school on the back roads, on my way to only turn in a scholarship application for the summer. (Yeah, I wasted about $80 in gas that week.) It wasn’t until the cop turned on the sirens that I immediately pulled over. I had been going five miles below the limit on a single-lane highway, so I wouldn’t even have had a chance to fail to use my blinker. Apparently I must’ve been doing something really wrong since the cop with the shaved head and tattooed left arm opened with a serious: “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but I’ve been chasing for half a mile.”

I explained my windshield situation to him before he moved on to threaten Linda and me with taking us to hail for evading arrest? Once again, I was going five miles below the limit. How is that evading? I showed him my license and insurance at his request; he did not even look at them. He failed to tell me why I was stopped to begin with. Was I stopped because I wasn’t stopping? In this situation, I’ll admit that I was almost shitting my pants. This guy looked like he was about to pull out his gun and start shooting if I so much as scratched my nose. How else does one react to: “I was already reaching for my radio to call someone to shoot your tires?”

I don’t have a problem with cops. I used to work with them in the local prison. Most of them are boring, normal folk, but then there are those that barely graduated from high school and made other students’ lives a living hell that go on to become policemen to feed their families. Still, you’d think you should have to feel served and protected by them, right? I tried to report him, but he didn’t even give me a name or a badge number. Just the department he worked for. Could’ve been a pseudo cop for all I knew. I didn’t even think to look at the license plate number. In my defense though, I was too busy looking at his hands. He made a u-turn behind me and drove the other way. My knee was shaking over the gas pedal on the way to school.

Still a lot of material to cover,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

The Ketchup Game

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:56:00 +0000

I find it best to start this game with the crash, the one that turned this past February into the worst month in the history of unblogged days. It was the day before Lent, in the morning, and I gave up beef and flour. Really. Beef. Me. Gave it up for forty days straight. Attention Christian fat people: diets work so much better when you make a promise to God. I mean, I don’t usually do the Lent thing; don’t really believe in it. This time around, I just said, “What the hell,” and did it anyway. The fear of damnation alone made me prove to myself that I could survive without the beef.

Still, you’d think that being the first time in 23 years that I plan to go through with Lent that God would not spray me with a little bit of his most expensive Unlucky You fragrance. There are basically two roads I can take to and from school in Edinburg, Texas. One of them is a lonesome back road known as 107, haunted farm roads for miles before you pass by this place straight from The Hills Have Eyes meets Dangerous Minds: deformed gangster peoples. Then there’s more of the nothingness before finished up the 1:20 trip from my house to the university. This is the road I always take, early in the morning and back late in the night.

The day before Lent, though, I told my friend who carpools with me: “You know what? We should try going through the expressway today and see if we get there sooner. If we do, we could sleep for an extra twenty minutes in the mornings.” So, I skipped the back roads, driving straight to La Joya, a small town with ticket-happy cops. We come to the expressway, and I have to take a piss. I consider getting down at a gas station in McAllen; but I can wait until I get to the school.

Linda calls me. I tell her we’re taking the expressway. “Good,” she says; “that’s probably a lot safer than the empty back roads where you can get mugged by some crazy hitchhiker.” The thought of a crazy hitchhiker had never crossed my mind. Ghosts, yes, and I always looked out for those late at night. Still, “I don’t think the back roads are more dangerous because you don’t really come to a stop. As long as you keep the car in motion, no one’s getting in. The expressway is actually more dangerous. There’s all this freaking traffic right now whereas the back roads have nothing.” A while after we finished talking, it was like 7:30 in the morning. The entire city was getting to work.

There was a line on the exit ramp to head towards Edinburg. I managed to stop, but as I looked in the rearview mirror, I noticed that the guy driving behind me wasn’t going to. I started getting on the shoulder to get out of his way, but he hadn’t even stepped on the break. It was a queer feeling, and I mean that in its literal sense. And I’m not saying that because I was rear-ended hard by a guy driving a car. It really felt weird as the car pushed mine off the expressway, the adrenaline rushing all over as my car formed a U and ended up facing incoming traffic off the expressway.

There was blood everywhere. My friend started screaming like a girl... I’m kidding. No blood. The back half of my car was totaled. The trunk was all crushed, and even though no windows broke, there was somehow broken glass behind the seats, both of which were permanently bent all the way back like cots. I got out of the car as the guy that hit me was walking towards me, asking if we were okay. His passenger was injured. The truck I would have hit had I not gotten on the shoulder was only a little dented. I had taken the big hit. The cops and the firemen got there, took down all the reports, towed the other guy’s even more totaled car, and told me it should be okay for me to drive mine away.

They failed to notice my gas tank was busted (and I had just filled it up that morning). By the time I got to my destination, it was practically empty. It was already a piece of shit car; it couldn’t attract babes even if it wanted to. But it had once made it to Temple, Texas in one tank of regular unleaded gas. That’s like 400 miles. Not bad for a 98 Monte Carlo with over 100,000 miles in it. And now it’s gone, the lawyers are still working on the paperwork since I was not at fault, and I will not rest until the guy that destroyed my car gets life in prison for what he did. But yeah, that probably won’t happen.

Welcoming myself back,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

The Day After Christmas

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:56:00 +0000

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how. — Oasis

Welcome to another edition of the monthly ShoneyRamone[dotcom] blog. Before I turn this into another set of words where I explain my very much delayed update, don’t look at this as an opening statement in my defense since we all know I’m guilty, but rather as the things that have been going on in the last month and a half. I missed out on several holidays and events, but then again, what are holidays now besides days where you’re stuck in traffic for hours because a car at the very front of the line is upside down next to another? Which was really a position I found myself during Thanksgiving—stuck in traffic, not upside down. Other than that, I don’t really remember much about it. The food was okay.

Writing wasn’t the only thing I’ve been distancing myself from these past few weeks. Christmas was pretty uneventful, but only because I made it that way. The family did gather at my house, brought hundreds of pounds of meat to grill (including a dead goat that was placed inside a large ice chest in our dining room with its head sticking out), but I decided to spend that holiday being lost with Linda. And I don’t mean lost in that sense.

I didn’t really have money to get anyone anything for Christmas, even though I’m really against buying people presents for Christmas. But you can’t say that anymore without someone spitting in your face and calling you a liar. It’s like saying you read Playboy for the articles or like Diet Coke because it tastes oh, so good. To avoid people telling me shit, I just got my niece and nephews presents. My niece is into all that Hannah Montana and High School Musical shit, which are pretty retarded shows, but what are you going to do. I got her this purse at Wal-Mart.

The day after Christmas, my stupid cousin finally moved out of my parents’ house and got himself a wife. Why do I say stupid cousin? He was born the day after Christmas, leaving him at only one present per year, but that’s okay. He had no way of controlling the day to come out of his mother’s womb. But he did have control over the date to get married, and he didn’t have to pick his birthday, the day after Christmas. Now the stupid wife has to think which she should say first after happy, birthday or anniversary? Bah. It won’t last anyway. Oh, and I didn’t go to the wedding.

My family at the wedding all thought I was at my other cousin’s house, who also happened to be celebrating his birthday, the day after Christmas. Little do they know that I decided to skip that, too. It’s not that I have anything against that cousin as I do against the one that got married; in fact, I feel he might be the only one out of all the twelve cousins in my mother’s side of the family I still have a connection with. I didn’t go to his party because I know how he celebrates them: a bunch of computers hooked together via a network running video games where they all get to kill each other. Don’t get me wrong. I love video games. I just bet you they don’t even talk to each other at the parties. They just type whatever it is they have to say. SHIT. I WENT UP A LEVEL AND ONLY GOT TWO MORE MAGIC POINTS. Then someone in the back of the room starts laughing, gets scared, and types I MEAN, LOL.

I know it’s strange that I stopped writing at around the time shows started being affected by this writers strike thing that’s been going on. I don’t know if the couple of you that actually care started wondering if I, too, had gone on strike because Myspace refuses to pay me to post my writings there. For the record, I’m against the writers bitching with their picket signs, but that could be my very biased opinion because The Office has been shut down, 24 has been delayed, Heroes was cut short, and there hasn’t been a new Daily Show and Colbert Report since the last time I blogged.

I’m looking at this on the bright side, though. Taking advantage of the fact that writers are being greedy and not putting out. This is the perfect time to catch up with shows I’ve never watched before or go out and buy the DVD sets of older shows that have ended. I went out to Cockbuster to rent the first discs of the first seasons of The Sopranos and The OC. I had never seen a single episode of either one. Never caught on with Tony Soprano, and one of my favorite bloggers, Siknerd over at siknerd.com claimed that The OC was way better than 24. I fell asleep after half of the first episode of Sopranos. It was shit. I don’t know if it was because of the way it was set up, or because I just don’t like mobster films and shows. Hate Scarface, have never been interested in The Godfather movies; what the hell was I thinking?

I actually gave The OC two shots instead of one. I saw the first and second episodes, and maybe Siknerd likes it because he actually is from the OC, but I just found the show stupid and full of retarded teenage problems and lame one-liners like, “Welcome to the OC, bitch.” Then the adults in the show pretend to be important with their own set of problems. “I know you’re married to another man, but could I borrow $100,000 because my wife wants a pony?” But who knows? Maybe these shows get a lot better and more interesting as the episodes keep rolling along, but the best ones have to get you from the beginning.

A couple of weeks ago, Linda and I rented the first disc of Lost. We had been meaning to check it out for a long while now, but in the midst of 24, The Office, 30 Rock, My Name is Earl, Heroes, American Idol, The Soup, and all of the shows that Linda watches on Bravo and I don’t because they’re for the gays, it’s kind of hard to pick up a new show. I’m glad we picked up Lost; it is one hell of a show. And in closing, I would like to say that in the last two weeks I didn’t join my family for Christmas, I didn’t go to my cousin’s wedding/birthday bash, didn’t show up to my other cousin’s birthday bash over at the World of Warcraft, I didn’t blog, I didn’t work, basically didn’t do shit because I chose to watch 71 episodes of Lost with Linda, usually day and night. So for all you guys out there, if your woman is willing to watch a marathon that big with you—eating nothing but McDonald’s, Burger King, Whataburger, Jack in the Box, and Mexican take-out—that’s a woman you’ll have a very long time. Or at least until the cardiac arrest kicks in.

Hope that didn't suck,

shoneyramone[dotcom]
Rio Grande City, TX

Substitute

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:29:00 +0000

No entiendes ni palos? Debes de estar leyendo la version en español en puraleche.net.
___________________

Late Wednesday night, I got home and got out of my car, and as I extended my right hand to keyfuck the front door keyhole, I noticed that my set of keys were not as heavy. I had quit the video store that night. Busted a nail trying to get the key out of the key ring, used it to lock the door, and then tossed it through the movie drop-box—metal sliding against tin before making a tiny thump as it struck wood. I took one last look at the large sign out front—still out from the last electrical outage—and said goodbye to all the ghosts and phantoms that will surely miss throwing the Clash of the Titans box at me.

Of course I'll miss it, some things more than others. I'm going to miss the perverts that would stop by to rent porn—though I have enough of those stories to tell for the rest of my life. I won't miss the condom wrapper I found in the adult room coincidentally on my last weekend. A brown Lifestyle. What are the odds? I'll miss being caught up with all the latest movies and get paid for that more than I'll miss not getting paid when I'm supposed to.

Truth is, I had to quit. Like I mentioned in my last post, my hours were severely cut like a high school boy after a bad break-up for not telling my boss and her favorite little slave that the electric bill is something you pay monthly. I still don't get that. They're both girls; can't they just synchronize paying the bills with their premenstrual cycle? Oh, yeah. My boss's slave likes getting pregnant as soon as she starts getting her period again, so that's a lost cause. However, my boss was angry all the time, so the electric company should really owe her $3,000.

Then they replaced me with the little slave's sister who doesn't even come close to being qualified to run the store. I'm not going to sit here and list every single thing that's wrong with her, but it's right to say that ever since she took over, the store has been falling apart as if she were playing Jenga with Parkinson's. Sure, she keeps the store ultra clean, but she's a woman. It's in her blood to be good at cleaning.

After the hour cut and thus the net income cut, I knew it was time to find a different or at least another job. I thought I might as well put my degree to some use and started substituting. Crazy world, that one, but I'll have more on that later. Within the month, it got to the point where I couldn't handle it anymore: substituting, the video store, and graduate school. I felt like I always needed to be somewhere else. I found myself starting to do homework on the days it was due. I started having uncontrollable fits of rage and began beating Linda just so I can know I still have blood running through my veins. I didn't have time to do anything else. No free time. No stories. No blog posts. Did you happen to read my last post? October 2nd. What the fuck is that? Okay, where's Linda?

It's been a couple of days since I went back to having one job, so I'm still starting to get the feel of things. I actually thought I had to go to work tonight. I'm glad I got a chance to get this post out, and though it's not in my usual tone of writing to its entirety, it's still sweet dicks. I have some things to look forward to, like free nights and weekends. Yes, like in cell phones minus the raping. My stories of video store perversion will turn to stories of high school perversion. (If you saw how these girls dress, that would make sense.)

But then I lift the keys again, and even though it's only one key—a key I can easily replace with another one of the same weight—I can't help feeling that difference. That confusion. Part of me tells me that quitting the video store was a mistake—despite the fact that the boss has decided to close it by the end of this month. The other part says that's the same way I felt when I quit the auto parts store, so fuck that.

Good night,

shoneyramone[dotcom]
Rio Grande City, TX

Between Aliens and Elians

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:57:00 +0000

Spanish version.

I hate having a cold. It's not that it hurts or anything; it's just how annoying it is to be having to blow your nose all the freaking time and how uncomfortable it is. And it's hot as hell outside. Don't you get get colds when it's... I don't know, cold? I just hope this is the one cold you get in the season; get it out of the way now before it actually becomes cold outside.

On work: We'll be staying open after all, but the boss decided to cut my hours and replace me with someone who can remind her that you have to pay bills every month. Which is cool, I guess. Less responsibility for me. Then when some shit with the computers goes down (since no one else knows anything about them), I can be like, "I don't know. I'm just a part-timer." That's going to be my answer for everything. Even when customers ask me what the new releases there are. It'll give me a way to amuse myself since they've cut down our internet and cable due to heavy Myspace usage. Not me. An old employee who had OCD on having to click on "Home" every ten seconds. Not the best way to spend five hours of working, but what are you going to do? Occasionally to amuse myself, I will look around for older movies that I haven't seen, telling myself that if they survived so long, some people must have really liked them. For the past week or two, I've been watching the Alien and Predator sagas.

What I got out of Alien
I liked these better than the Predator movies, and I will explain. It wasn't really like other movies with aliens. Most alien life is peaceful, kind of like E.T. The wackos from Independence Day are pretty evil, but they rely too much on their aircraft to get shit done. The aliens from Alien didn't. They were just these mean guys that were set out to destroy with no remorse whatsoever. You know, that and reproduce. Which actually got me thinking about why this country is so afraid of illegal immigrants (or "aliens"). It's how the monsters depicted in the movie are so much like us.

No, we're not all killers without any feelings, though some government officials claim we are. But here's how we are alike. First of all, Hispanics and Alien are by far more advanced than regular humans in structure. We're smarter and have a better defense mechanism. Our blood may not burn through anything (though that remains to be proven), but symbolically, it does. Some of us are so damn proud of our blood, that if you were to cut us, that shit would burn right through the ground. Second, though it's probably in the back of our minds, deep in the subconscious, Hispanics are really into reproducing and keeping the bloodline going. It's not as popular with us since we've become somewhat Americanized, but my grandmother gave birth seven times, and I've heard cases of fourteen or sixteen. It's survival, just like the Aliens saw it. And, of course, it's always better if we latch on tightly to a human (the "white man" ...or woman) and use them as a host to give birth to our citizen children. Now, you can't fucking tell me this is what the Alien creator was thinking when he came up with his ideas.

I watched all four movies, and I really have to say that the second one was my favorite--mostly because it really got you going and had an awesome cast. However, the first three follow through wonderfully from one to the other. I'm sure most of you have seen them while I've been left in the dark, but the plot basically follows as a mineral cargo ship picking up a signal in a planet, where they find a spacecraft with hundreds of eggs. A parasite from one of the eggs latches onto a member of the crew and he is taken back to the ship. After an examination, the parasite comes off of him after it has planted an alien inside his chest. Alien bursts out, immediately grows into an adult, and starts killing everyone one by one. That's the first movie. Part two is basically the same thing but with a lot more of them. Part three is back to one and in a different planet filled with only guys. So the creature isn't the only alien that shows up when Sigourney Weaver arrives in her panties. And Alien Resurrection is just really fucking creepy. The important thing to know is that the government was trying to get their hands on the Alien the whole time to use them for war and shit, deeming everyone else expendable. Which is true, the government doesn't give a shit about you. Now you know that.

What I got out of Predator
The Predator is very different from the Alien in the sense of how murderers are very different from psychopaths. Aliens kill to survive, reproduce, and... Now, that I think of it, what the hell do Alien feed on? Anyway, Predator kills just because it's fucking fun to kill. They travel from place to place, looking for some good game to hunt, and then they take the skull and keep it as a trophy. And I'm thinking, why the hell would anyone want to do that? If I were a psychopath, I'd bury the body and not keep all those possible dental records in the locker room as if they're something to brag about. And skulls all look the same (except Arnold Schwarzenegger's); what kind of buddies are you going to brag about by telling them that you killed someone half your size with a gun that could rip their bodies in half while theirs can't even penetrate a nail in your ugly-ass hand?

I also liked the second better than the first in these series. Don't get me wrong, I love Arnold. I could listen to him talk about politics for an hour and feel like I'm at a Louie C.K. concert, but Danny Glover also talks funny when he gets angry, which he does a lot in Predator 2. I guess you can say that it's kind of like not really liking the pilot episode of a TV series compared to the rest that follow. You know, because you have to set the whole story up for what follows, etc. Same goes with these saga couple. Another fun thing about Predator 2, like the second part of Alien, is that it has Bill Paxton playing the exact same character he plays in Aliens. And who doesn't like Bill Paxton? Why, he could take my mother to bed, and I would still like the guy.

The important thing to know about the Predator movies is that when everything else fails, go back to your roots and you will win your battle. That's what Arnold had to do in the first one in order to defeat the creature. Remember, go back to your roots. Read old books, like Shakespeare plays. Listen to the classics like Mozart and... Metallica. And the most important thing to know about the movies is that the government always has another plan, and you're not part of it. Your government doesn't give a shit about you; it just pretends it does in small ways like taking trans fat away from KFC (which is actually a very bad thing). Oh, wow. I guess three people aren't having heart attacks this year.

Conclusion
So I liked Alien better than Predator, which is why if they would ever get in a fight, my money would be on the Alien. I would want them to win. But good thing I didn't bet because what better way to end the saga than to watch Alien Vs. Predator? As a new admirer of both creatures, I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the movie. Mostly with the outcome, but the storyline was very far-fetched. I know. Aliens. How can in not be far-fetched? But it was different than the original movies. Yeah, it was entertaining once you get drawn into the plot, but I think that plot would have been better as a graphic novel. Someone should do a Chucky vs. the dolls from Puppet Master.

Your resident alien expert,

Shoney Ramone
Edinburg, TX

Wednesday Buffet: Work Edition

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:55:00 +0000

Spanish version.

Seafood Soup for the Ah-Soul
because it's an aphrodisiac

On a lighter note, Linda and I turn six today. Yes, she's been putting up with me since September 27th, 2001, only a couple of weeks after our government crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and blamed it on the terrorists. I realize the Wednesday Buffet is a day late, but I thought I'd save it for this wonderful occasion, which I'll be spending at school and work. Hooray. But that's okay, I guess. Since when do couples spend their six-year anniversary together? No. That's like the one anniversary where you have to make sure you don't see each other. Kind of like the groom seeing the wedding dress before the wedding. It's bad luck. If I see Linda during our six-year anniversary, I'd probably get shot in the face tomorrow... at work, right after I got my finger caught in the cash box pulling the seven bucks we made to give to the crack-head thief and instinctively yell, "goddammit!" just so bad luck can be sure I'd go straight to hell. So it's better this way. Trust me.

I was going to have the weekend off by covering for someone today and then make it to class just in time. But that person changed her plans and now I have to work the weekend. Isn't it so funny when you plan these things with your lover? To tell her, "I'm going to have the weekend off, baby, so we're going to go have a blast at the beach, have a nice romantic dinner, and the next day eat seafood until we die." Then two days before you're going to cover for that person, they end up giving you a call from work (mind you, it was the fourth time they called me on my day off to go to school) to tell you that she won't be needing to be covered on Thursday anymore. Well, there's always our seven-year anniversary, and seven is supposed to be a lucky number. I'll have my day off soon.

Cold Soup for the Ah-Soul
because there's no way to cook it
And wouldn't you know it, I got my day off yesterday. I received a call from my co-worker working the earlier shift telling me that we didn't have any electricity at the store. But it was strange since the business next door did have electricity. So she went outside to check the meter and found a red tag on it. Our electricity was disconnected. Naturally, everyone was pissed at me and blamed me because I'm the one responsible for that store. Of course, I'm not the one responsible for paying the bills and have no control over the checks to pay the bills, but those are just unimportant details when we're having so much fun playing the blame game. Obviously, the boss was pissed, going off on one of her rants, saying: "Why didn't he tell me the electricity was due? Why didn't he give me the bill? I'm going to close that fucking store?" Considering I haven't seen her or spoken to her in three months, she does make a point.

Why didn't I tell her the electric payment was due? Was it because I thought I could get a day off if we didn't have electricity? Could it have been because I wanted to lose some customers because I felt we had too many? I guess I must've forgotten that you don't have to pay the electric bill if you just didn't know it was due already. Hell, it was paid last month, why the fuck would it have to be paid this month, too? "I didn't see no damn bill for it." Yes, I'm sure that's it. So I drove out to the store at around 1:30 PM to cover my shift, saw three different cars stop by and take off right away, and found a sign on our front door that read that the store would be closed that day and open again the next day. The beauty of it all is that no one bothered to tell me that we were going to close the store so I could've at least saved some gas from driving all the way from the next town over. So I called the manager of the other store to confirm, and she sounded like I was responsible for all of this, too. So next time they ask, I'll just say, "I'm sorry. I thought electricity was free."

Fried Chicken Soup for the Ah-Soul
because black people are worth it, too
You all know I have plenty of stories under the Adult Room section; I'm sure at this rate I could write an entire novel out of porn addicts. Anyway, I thought I'd share another one with you. A couple of weeks ago, we had a new customer coming in to the video store to rent some porn. On one particular day as I was starting my shift, he came in to change his movie, claiming it would skip in his DVD player. I looked at the Monster Black Cocks disc and found nothing really wrong with it, but I was having a good day because Linda was at work with me, so I let him get a different one for free. A couple of hours later, he called the store and claimed that that disc wasn't working either. I told him I checked it, and that there was nothing wrong with it. "If you want," I said, "you can bring it in to the store, and we'll try it on the DVD player on the back." He agreed and showed up within twenty minutes.

Making sure the store was absolutely empty of customers, we went over to the television of the back which is of the movie Cars--there just for the kids to watch movies instead of running around destroying shit--and put his rental in. We watched the three or four phone sex ads together, which is when I realized he was starting to turn a little red. I was obviously doing this on purpose because even though we don't pay for our electricity, we're a business and we can't be giving out porn movies for free until they're able to get off. So I pressed Play inside Lightning McQueen's mouth, and the first scene came off. "So, at what point does it start skipping?" A white girl was sucking off a huge black penis. "A little farther into it," he said in Spanish. We waited until the guy started going down on her. "Seems fine to me," I said. "No, but it's at the part when the guy,"--he tried to act out the gesture of having sex doggie style while I just stared at his sweating face trying to explain it. "Well, let's keep watching," I said, "because I like to make sure that my customers get decent copies of the movies they rent." Ten minutes into oral sex, they finally started having sex, and the DVD wasn't skipping. He ended up paying for another one, and the good thing about porn addicts is that he came back a couple of days later to rent some more.

Giving it to you hard,

Shoney Ramone
Edinburg, TX

The Tree Amigos

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:59:00 +0000

Click here for Spanish translation.

"I used to be on an endless run. Believe in miracles 'cause I am one. I have been blessed with the power to survive. After all these years, I'm still alive." --The Ramones

I should start off by confessing that I'm not a very religious guy. I don't associate myself with any kind of church. It's not that I have anything against churches. Not that I have anything against priests--some of them could actually be pretty cool. I guess it's just that I really don't like people. And I know you don't go to church to socialize; you go to church to hear the word of God. I wish the people in my community felt that way, too. Either way, I have my own relationship with God. No, I don't adjust the statutes to suit my lifestyle. I'm a sinner. I sin... a lot. But I do have Jesus in my heart, or soul or wherever it is you keep Jesus in.

The term "miracle" has been used very loosely lately. I guess people are in such need of them instead of relying on each other to get shit done. Like a couple of years ago, my sister thought she was experiencing a miracle because the sun "was dancing." She said it was bouncing up and down and that it was a miracle from God. First of all, have you ever stared at a Texas sun at five in the afternoon? The shit is so bright that you can turn around and see it dancing on the other side of the world. And second, why would God want to make the sun dance? Yeah, he works in mysterious ways and everything, but he's not retarded. "Hm... I think I'll play some ball with the sun today." I don't believe it works like that.

Recently there's been another one of these miracles miracly enough to catch the news' attention. This old lady died in her house right across the road from my neighborhood. Within a few days, a tree outside of her house started to grow cold until some kind of ice substance formed itself on a couple of branches. She died on the 9th of September, and by that Friday, the house was packed with cars parked all along the shoulder of the highway.

People from all over the Valley were coming down to experience this miracle of ice growing on 90º weather. It had to be a miracle. People were getting in line so they could all touch this tree and the ice. They would use its dripping, cold water to do the sign of the cross on themselves, and some of them would actually bend down to drink it. It was the craziest phenomena of the town in years, and everyone was talking about it, trying to get newscasters to interview them. I don't get it. Aside from making it very difficult to drive by there, this tree didn't do anything. It didn't change people and it didn't cure any sickness they might have had.

If anything, it's probably going to get them sick, at least the ones that were touching and drinking from it. A little over a week after the tree turned into the latest hangout spot, a scientist went over to check it out and concluded that it was all some kind of worm plague that had been growing on the tree, producing the cold, ice-like substance. The crowds started disappearing immediately, probably ashamed at what a joke it all was. The dead lady's daughter--and owner of the property--had already been talking about starting to charge the people to get in, and she ended up having to put up a No Trespassing sign, more than likely quite embarrassed herself.

It's kind of funny, but now that I write about this, it saddens me, too. It's just amazing to me how quickly people back away from something they believe in as soon as a man of science claims their beliefs are wrong. Yeah, in this case, the science was right and I accept that. But it's a perfect analogy of everyday issues between religion and "science." I don't mean to be preachy, but some people can be real retarded. They're like a pack of sheep being chased by one wolf, easily swayed to believe whatever people tell them to believe. To me, this whole tree thing was stupid to begin with. There's no way God was communicating with us that way, and I don't know why they would involve Him in the first place. But to them, this tree was like God himself, and they took that way from them in just a few minutes.

And I know some of them are going to be on the mindset that if a scientist was able to prove their tree thing bullshit, then everything else they believe in has to be bullshit, too. It's pushing it a little too far, I know, but I believe that for some of those people, this whole experience was a stepping stone that will eventually lead them to disbelief. I don't know why those people can't just think for themselves and draw their own conclusions. Because all it took was one stupid person to say, "It's cold. It's a miracle from God," and then a bunch of people followed, starving savages going where the food's at. And I wish they wouldn't involve God in these silly things because we don't really need an icy tree in the summer to know that God exists and that miracles occur. Miracles occur every day. The fact that I woke up this morning is a miracle. And the fact that I was able to write this in time, I believe, is also one.

God bless,

Shoney Ramone
Edinburg, TX

Bullshit

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 04:28:00 +0000

All right. All right. Calm down, you two. I know I haven’t written anything in two months, but I do have my reasons. I have my good ones; I have my bad ones. And I will explain by starting with a theory. I think the reason I haven’t written in such a long time is because I haven’t been eating potatoes since a little before I stopped writing. Yes, potatoes. You see, at around the beginning of July, Linda and I went to pick up some food at McDonald’s. She had already stopped eating potatoes for a while as her own personal experiment, so she just ordered her item by itself with a drink. I got the meal. McDonald’s fucked up in a good way and put her set of fries in the bag anyway. Naturally, and this goes without saying, I was still hungry when I finished my meal and told myself: “Why the fuck not? It’s not like Linda’s going to eat them.” Linda said I shouldn’t, and she was probably right and all that stuff, but I told her this: “If I promise not to have potato anymore for the rest of this year, can I have these fries?” We made the deal, and we have sort of a bet going on to see who’s going to crack first.

I’m fine, really. It can just get somewhat irritating to order food at a restaurant where most of the side items have potato in them. Like, we’ll go to Denny’s or something, and the waitress answers, “We have French fries, mashed potatoes, country fried potatoes, hash browns...” I stop her. “What side items do you have that don’t contain any kind or form of potato?” She smiles, mouth full of metal. “You can add cheddar cheese and bacon bits to your mashed potatoes.” So, there you go. The answer to why I haven’t been writing. Potato is my writing fuel, and that teases me.

It’s easy to blame the potato when in the back of my mind I know the real reason why I haven’t been writing... Herpes. I don’t have them, but just think about it. Have you seen that commercial on television when the guy says, “I have herpes,” and the girl says, “And I don’t,” like she’s rubbing it in that she didn’t sleep around before they got together. And I’m thinking, shit, if their fictional relationship in their early acting careers is so strong that not even herpes can come between them (actually, herpes does have to come between them), then nothing should come between Chicken Soup for the Ah-Soul and myself, even if Chicken Soup had herpes. We can laugh at the fact that it had herpes like they do in the commercial, ride bikes together, and enjoy a sunset at the beach.

Okay. Seriously now. For two weeks of my time off, I didn’t write because my life was consumed by The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. That sounds more reasonable, right? That’s what single-player video games do to you. They take over your entire life until the moment you pass it. It’s kind of like masturbating. Who stops playing with themselves halfway into it? It’s crazy. No, you have to play with yourself and beat the fucking thing. So that’s what I did. And it felt good after I beat it. Ganondorf will not be getting up again from that one. Quick review: the game, overall, was awesome. I played it on the Gamecube, and I don’t want to hear that the Wii version is better. Come on. I don’t play video games to move around. Do you move your entire body when you masturbate and just let your hand stay still? Anyway, I was a little annoyed with the whole Link having to turn into a wolf thing in the game, but it’s something you get used to after a while. Kicking ass on horseback... well, kicks ass.

You know what else kicks ass? Work. It’s been kicking mine. Business at the video store slowed down quite a lot; the only customers are the ugly-ass, old fat guys that come in to rent Big Black Dicks, Small White Pussies. Believe it or not, I actually have a friendly guy who comes in to rent some and says, “God bless you,” when I give him the change. Isn’t that ironic? What am I supposed to say to that? “You, too?” A simple thanks has been sufficing for now, but for next time, I’m working on a, “Yes, He really is watching over all of us all the time, isn’t He? Well, happy yanking.”

Sometimes I really don’t understand why they keep coming back. I studied our porn selection. If it’s not a girls going wild type of thing, it is just the same thing over and over again. The guy goes down on the girl. Followed by the girl sucking him off. Then they fuck, and then the guy comes off on her face. Next scene. Oh, look, the plot thickens (amongst other things), and now it’s, that’s right, a different couple. What’s this? The girl is sucking him off first? And they spend lots of money on just borrowing these scenes for a couple of days. But why complain? If it wasn’t for their perverted ways, their lack of imagination, and their ignorance of the internet, we would have been closed already.

Closing the video store is in the talks, though. If it doesn’t pick up this season, we’re probably done by the end of December. So that’s another reason to add to the pile on why I haven’t been writing. Our staff went down from four to three, and so the workload increased. And the way things are looking right now, it looks like I might be searching for a job once the new year starts. But that’s okay. I’m not as worried about it now that I know the exact day it might close. I’ll be okay. At least I’ll be able to eat potato again.

Finally, I’m officially a graduate student now, so how’s that for taking up all my time? I signed up for this one class over the summer. “Studies in American Literature.” So, I’m thinking, hey, it won’t be so bad. I’ll probably have to read The Scarlet Letter all over again with that fornicator, Hester Prynne, throw in a little Melville, Mark Twain. You know, the works. It wasn’t until the first day of class that the real title of the class took its form on the syllabus: “Studies in American Literature: Hemingway.” So now I’m stuck reading a Hemingway book every week for that course. And I don’t like Hemingway. Yeah, I know he changed the style of English writing more than any other writer in the last century and all that pretty stuff, but he depresses me. I read his work and I’m not happy. I read The Sun Also Rises last week, and I could argue that his impotency is contagious to the reader.

I’m also taking a literary translation course. That’s actually very fun. And it has inspired me to open up another blog to reassure you that I’m back for good. If you would much rather read my work in Spanish, I will be posting my entries in both languages now. As soon as I post it in English, I’ll get to working on the translation. Unless of course it’s a contest, in which case I will wait until they’re both fully written before posting them. So I introduce: PuraLeche.net. It’s slang for bullshit.

I love you,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

The Good, The Snake, and the Blogger

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:31:00 +0000

Besides pretending to work at the video store like it’s what I live for—lately, I can really have you fooled with that one—I’ve done the only thing I can do for fun at the video store, watch movies. Our cable and internet has been cut off (so much for catching up with my subscriptions and playing games), and I can only take staring at the glass door waiting for customers to come in so much. So after watching my daily dose of The Producers (which, by the way, nobody won) to get me through the day by reminding me that there is still something to live for, I’ve been popping in some DVDs I had yet to see.

For the first time in my life, I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Why not, right? I liked Tombstone, and supposedly this is the best movie to come out of the old west. The film deals with a nameless Clint Eastwood (The Good), who makes somewhat of a living by constantly capturing Tuco (The Ugly), who’s a wanted man wherever they go. After collecting the reward, The Good proceeds to save Tuco from hanging to go fuck the next town over. Meanwhile, Angel Eyes (The Bad), who’s some tough guy with a mustache, kills people for money (no matter what) until he learns that there is a buried cashbox containing $200,000. This information comes to The Good and The Ugly, as well, which by then are already pissed off at each other and trying to fuck the other one over. Unfortunately for both of them, Tuco knows which cemetery the money is buried in and The Good knows which grave.

All of this leads up to the final scene of the almost three-hour long film, when the three of them must duel for the money. I won’t say who wins the duel, but by the nicknames given to them by the writer, one can only guess that it won’t be The Bad or The Ugly. I was lucky enough not to have a customer walk in during the final scene. Best one of the entire movie and beautifully choreographed with the music. And the movie really hits home as far as its message goes. Everybody has a price for fucking you over. The only person you can really trust is yourself, and even then that turns out to be difficult sometimes because as soon as you hear there is money buried in your friend’s backyard he doesn’t know about, your eyes light up and the theme to said film begins to play in your head. Two balls.

For some reason, I thought I had seen John Carpenter’s films Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. I played the first of the two and realized that I was wrong. The first installment takes place in the distant future—1997. It’s sixteen years after it was released, so cut them some slack. American has turned into shit, and the government has decided to put a barrier around New York City and designate it as this ultimate prison for hardcore criminals, like kid-touchers. Which really isn’t so bad of an idea considering our current state. After Air Force One crashes into this island, it is up to Snake Plissken (an ex-marine badass played by Kurt Russell) to go into the island to rescue him and a tape recording that contains vital information. If he is successful, Snake will not only go to jail, but the bomb that’s been implanted in his body by The Bad won’t go off either. In other words, this Solid Snake look-alike has no choice at all.

Fifteen years later, a massive earthquake makes Los Angeles break off from the rest of the United States, and what better thing to do with it than to turn it into another giant prison for the undesirables: Mexicans, Satanists, and retards. The asshole president’s daughter is brainwashed by the leader of L.A., Cuervo Jones, into bringing him a device that will cause satellites to shut down the countries of his choosing. Guess which one he might want to make the lights go out in. So it’s up to Snake again to go retrieve this device. Why, after he has done so much for his country already? Because they plant a virus in his body that will kill him if he doesn’t succeed in ten hours. This is exactly what I plan to do with my kids when they don’t feel like doing shit. I’m going to inject a virus into them and say, “Okay. You have two hours to clean your room before this kills you. Let me know when you’re ready for the antidote.” Two balls for each movie. Kurt Russell rocks.

Taking it to the big screen, Linda and I were finally able to catch the magnificence that is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Unlike any of the previous Harry Potter films, in this fifth one, Harry is learning more about his connection with Lord Voldemort, the killer of his parents. We couldn’t have asked for a better experience. I had my large Diet Coke and my popcorn with cheddar cheese seasoning, and—get this—a Spanish-speaking narrator sitting right behind us. “Uso magia fuera de la escuela.” It was on the 12:30 PM showing of the Edinburg, Texas Carmike this past Sunday. So if this person is somehow reading this, which I extremely doubt, but if by chance you are reading and know that I’m addressing you, fuck you. I hope you never watch another movie without someone telling you the plot throughout its entirety. Even if you’re home alone in Reynosa watching porn, I hope a ghost creeps up behind you and tells you, “That’s a penis, Pablo. She’s doing it because she likes it.” That’s the curse I put on you; Harry Potter promises it will work.

Aside from that, the movie itself was very entertaining. The complete opposite of The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Ass, this movie teaches us that we should learn to trust our friends because evil people don’t have them. And that’s what makes them evil. I agree with this month’s issue of MAD magazine, though. I’m tired of people saying, “This is the darkest Harry Potter movie yet.” By the time they make the seventh one, it’ll be an all-black screen. Order of the Phoenix actually was kind of darker. They even decided to do away with Quidditch. That’s another thing I didn’t like; they really did leave out a lot of key points that were given to us in the, um... literature. Two balls.

Finally, I’d like to thank all two of you who participated in my last Sopa Bullshit contest. Koi Ai Kitty and Jamie answered half each, and Jean-Paul put in an entire attempt. I thought my extended absence would have given a few more people to get their shot at a free movie, but I guess you guys aren’t really into musicals. Trust me; I’m not either. The Producers is a real gem, though. The real stories in the contest were number 2, when the circus performer nearly pulled my hair out, and number 3, the prostitute in the car. Jamie, I’m glad you stuck with the one that started with: “I remember being sixteen the first time I killed a vampire.” The mad lib, which I guess I can do away with for now, was “Someone else’s life is flashing before my eyes,” said by Nathan Lane in the movie during his Betrayed performance. I’ll start a pile with that one and put two in the next contest.

Balls,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

Sopa Bullshit: Sort of a Nazi Hoedown

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:20:00 +0000

As I slowly start to come back on schedule—not only with the blog but with my life, too—I started figuring it’s time to bring back some of the things I’ve been putting off the blog for a while. The Wednesday Buffet editions, the only day of the fortnight when I have a good reason to stray off the topic of the entry. The weekend movie reviews, which still seem to be going strong (or weak, but still going). I got another letter to reply, too, and I promise this person doesn’t have a suicidal significant other. My interviews seemed to have died out, so that’ll pop in on occasion. But what I really miss the most is giving back to the readers. Just to let you all know that even though it’s cold, evil, and black, it doesn’t change the fact that it is still a heart. This is the return of Sopa Bullshit.

I’m still working on the online store to give out those prizes, and I’m waiting to have at least ten items before I start to promote it. So until then, movies are still magic. The prize for the winner of this round is the only musical I love, and in my opinion, the best musical in history. The musical that makes Grease look like Mold and Annie look like a little bitch. That’s right; I’m talking about the 2005 version of The Producers starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. In the last two weeks I’ve been trapped in the video store for sometimes thirteen hours straight, I have seen (and/or listened) to this movie about fifteen times and I never grow tired or sick of it. I’ve been singing along with the music and even moving my lips along with the actors. It’s a horrible habit; I know.

The rules remain the same as the last one, and please take the time to read these. Below this paragraph you will find five different stories—two of which are non-fiction. Your task is to guess which two are true or which three are false. Just in case I get more than one person with the correct answer (and I wouldn’t want someone else to take the two you were going to go with first), I’ve put in a second challenge. Following the paragraphs is a mad libbed quote from a movie somehow related to The Producers (same director, actor in a different movie, etc.) or from that actual movie. Hunting for this quote is not necessary. I’ll reward the prize to the person who comes closest to the answer—even if they’re the wrong words. For example: If I were to quote Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as, “I’m looking for a murderer,” then my mad lib would be, “I’m verb-ing for a noun.” If someone answers, “I’m searching for a penis,” and someone else answers, “I’m hurting for a squirting,” guess who gets the prize.

1. A customer walked in the video store the other day (and with the way things are going, this should be a lie already). He was bringing back a porno he had rented just a few hours before instead of holding on to it for the two days we let them go for. (Boy, when you come fast, right?) He asked me in Spanish, “Is this the only kind of adult movies you have?” I didn’t quite get what he meant. When it comes to porn, “this” has to be as specific as it can be or you’ll end up getting a seriously fucked up “that.” So I asked the first thing that came to mind: “Straight?” We don’t stock up on gay cock in the adult room—unless you want to count lesbians as gay. I don’t know why. It’s amazing how many high school guys are coming out for attention in Rio. Anyway, the guy looks like he gets freaked out at my question and says, “Oh, no. I meant do you have any adult movies with people that aren’t just, you know, doing it?” I tried to reassess the definition of pornography in my head and asked, “You mean like a story to go along with it? Like you want to know what these two people did before they decided to get into bed?” He looked like he started getting a bit embarrassed for even asking, but he went along with it and nodded. “I’m not really sure,” I said. “We have the Paris Hilton movie. There’s no plot in it, but you can kind of make up the plot already.” He ended up going back in the room to rent a movie called Fucking Clowns. Anything to help the imagination, right?

2. Speaking of clowns, when I was a kid, I would always get excited when the circus would come to town. My best friend’s dad owned the property where they would usually set up the tents, so we always got free front row tickets. I must have been about seven years old the time the circus decided to bring in a very cheap act: a young teenage blond dressed in trapeze clothing, lip syncing a popular Spanish rock song called Pelo Suelto by Gloria Trevi—which is basically a rebellious-ish song about doing whatever you want and wear your hair however you wish. So this girl danced to the song around the performing area, and out of all the people in the front row, she decided to come up to me. I thought I was in for a kiss or something, but instead she reached over with both of her hands, grabbed on tightly to my hair, and pulled it back and forth during the third chorus. It hurt like hell. If only we were in America; I would’ve sued her rebel ass.

3. When I started driving, I usually just drove in the small Mexican town I grew up in. People probably don’t even know what a license is down there. My idea of cruising back then is the same idea I have today—unless you have great friends with you (to talk to—not listen to loud Mexican music with), it’s a waste of time and a waste of gas. My friends from here decided to join me over there for a weekend, and we actually went cruising. My cousin who lived over there at the time—and who’s a total dick hole—stopped us in the plaza (which is the main hangout place for teenagers and prostitutes), got in the Jeep Grand Cherokee and told us to stop at the corner. Less than a minute later, he got a girl to get in the Jeep and we drove off while my cousin stayed behind. I have to admit that I had no idea what we were doing; I mean, I had gone to school with that girl in kinder and was in the same first grade classroom with her. We didn’t fuck or anything—nor did any of my friends in the Jeep. She just asked us to stop at her friend’s house, who apparently refused to come out when we called out her name because she was getting banged by two other guys. The youngest one of us got down from the Jeep and started knocking loudly on the door, asking the girl to come out. She never did. After a couple of hours of driving around and coming back to call on her, I dropped off the girl prostitute by the town church, and for a half-hour after that, the two guys who were banging the other girl chased us around the town.

4. Back in Mexico, my three dogs were some of the best friends I had. There was Keiko, a Chihuahua my sister named after the whale from Free Willy; Milo, a Labrador my brother named after the dog in The Mask; and the most loyal of the three, Smokey, but we all called him Negro because he was a black dog. My uncle’s property was right next door, on the other side of a large cement wall where he had several chickens and goats. The chickens would often go to our side of the wall, where, of course, they were chased down by Milo and Keiko. One day they actually killed one. A week or so later, upon going back from Texas for the weekend, we found the dogs dead. They were poisoned. My father suspected that my uncle—who also happened to run a meat store next door—dipped some steaks in anti-freeze and gave them to our dogs while we were away. We have a mesquite tree by the wall outside, and I would often climb it to feed the goats some for fun. The last time I fed them, I considered dipping the mesquite in anti-freeze to avenge my dogs, but I didn’t even know what anti-freeze was.

5. I remember being sixteen the first time I killed a vampire. When I first saw him smiling as he walked into Subway, I noticed his teeth were a little longer than they should be. I said to myself, “This motherfucker has to be a vampire.” He was pale white with dark droopy eyes that made it seem like he hadn’t been in his coffin for a while. The dude was even wearing a red and black cape. What the hell was I supposed to think? He walked in the restaurant with a plastic, orange pumpkin, and didn’t say a single word when he walked up to the counter and held it towards me. What the hell did he want? A blood donation? “I’m sorry, kid,” I said. “The manager didn’t give us any candy to give out today.” He put the pumpkin back down and hissed at me with his sharp teeth. I reached over to where we have the dried up breads for display, grabbed one, and stabbed the little fucker right in the heart.

Your mad lib: Someone else’s noun is verb-ing before my noun-s.

Good luck, friends. You have until Thursday night at the precise moment I post another entry. Please feel free to visit my site with the original post and enjoy an awesome clip from the movie you could win.

Vat nice guy,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

For When I Die

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:43:00 +0000

After enduring five seasons of Six Feet Under and experiencing that many deaths and how friends and families cope with it, I felt it was necessary for me to start planning out my own funeral for when I die. And with all the freaking steaks I eat, I think sooner would be a lot better than later. So, this is sort of my pre-need, but I’m mostly going to focus on the list of songs I want to be playing during my funeral and the order I want them played in. I could care less about the kinds of flowers they have as long as they smell nice. The smaller things like the food and the who should attend, well I’d like for there to be Pizza Hut and be buried with a slice of it’s possible and anyone can come as long as they aren’t pricks and bitches.

1. November Rain by Guns n’ Roses
I’d like for them to start out with this song, not only because Guns n’ Roses is the coolest band in the damn planet, but because I believe the song will help set up the mood as people are coming in. It also helps as a reminder that nothing lasts forever, even Slash’s killer guitar solos.

2. Gasolina by Daddy Yankee
But I wouldn’t all you guys to be sad for more than the nine minutes it takes for the song to finish. And what better way to make you all happy than with a reggaeton song? Personally, I don’t really like that genre of music(?), but even this early in my death playlist, I think this song will come out of nowhere and catch you all by surprise. And just think of the irony of playing that song if I died in a fire. “I like the gasoli-nah. Gimme gimme more gasoli-nah.”

3. Burn in Hell by Judas Priest
Yeah, I know it’s not Halford, but this Halford impersonator doesn’t do so badly at this song. This is the song that would probably freak people out the most. I mean, there I am. Dead and shit, and some guy’s screaming in a high-pitched voice, “You’re going to burn in hell!”

4. Heaven by Bryan Adams
On second thought, I’d rather not risk it. So scratch Burn in Hell, and play this song instead. Also, if the DJ should ever take full control of the soundtrack, please do not allow him to play songs like Running with the Devil by Van Halen, Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones, Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue, The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden, Right Next Door to Hell by Gn’R, Land Down Under by Men at Work, or anything by Cradle of Filth and AC/DC (especially Highway to Hell and Hells Bells). If it comes to that, stick to songs like Just Like Heaven by The Cure, Stairway to Heaven by Zeppelin, and Gn’R’s Paradise City and their version of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

5. Man in the Box by Alice in Chains
I just think it would be kind of hilarious to play this one. And Down in a Hole and Them Bones. Maybe Like a Stone by Audioslave if there’s time.

6. Rock me Amadeus by Falco
Why not, right?

7. Call Me by Blondie
This is the last song I want them to play before they take me to the graveyard. Just so you all can remember. But I do have some other requests.

Songs to play if I should be murdered with a gun:
-You Give Love a Bad Name by Bon Jovi
-Take me Out by Franz Ferdinand
-Shot in the Dark by Ozzy
-Hey, Man, Nice Shot by Filter

Songs to play if I should die by drowning:
-Suffocate by Cold
-Float On by Modest Mouse
-Every Breath you Take by The Police
-In Too Deep by Sum 41

Songs to play if I should kill myself:
-No Excuses by Alice in Chains
-Crazy by Aerosmith
-The Unforgiven by Metallica
-It’s so Easy and Patience by Guns n’ Roses
-Too Much Time on my Hands by Styx

Songs to play if I should have a heart attack:
-Can’t Stop by Red Hot Chili Peppers
-El Colesterol by Fito Olivares
-Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard
-Never Gonna Stop by Rob Zombie
-Tearin’ Up My Heart by N’Sync

Songs to play if I should die of cancer:
-Don’t Stand so Close to Me by The Police
-Keep Away by Godsmack
-I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones

Songs to play if I’m struck by lightning:
-Burning Bright by Shinedown
-Mr. Brightside by The Killers
-Having a Blast by Green Day

Songs to play if I OD on drugs:
-Hashpipe and Dope Nose by Weezer
-Mr. Brownstone by Guns n’ Roses
-Ram it Down by Judas Priest
-This is the New Shit by Marilyn Manson
-What’s Going On? By 4-Non Blondes
-Somebody Put Something in my Drink by The Ramones
-I Wanna Rock by Twisted Sister (Get it?)

Songs to play if I should die in a fire:
-Blaze of Glory by Bon Jovi
-We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel

Songs to play if I should die in an accident:
-Here in My Car by The Cars
-Drive by Incubus

Ready to die now,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

By the way, my great friend Jennifer Shipley is giving away some of her awesome artwork as prizes for solving puzzles. I already won twice, and I figured I'd let other people win. So go check out the cryptoquip in her blog if you guys are interested by clicking on her picture below.

On the Big Screen for a Change

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:59:00 +0000

Before I get to the delayed movie reviews (ironically due to renting them out for sometimes 13 hours straight this week), there is one last thing I want to say about our Dallas trip. We left Andre’s apartment on Friday at around 12:30 AM (Thursday night) because it’s way better driving at night than during the day when all the traffic piles up everywhere—especially in that that hellhole called San Antonio. Right before arriving in hell at around four in the morning, I was starting to fall asleep and needed some Diet Coke to wake me up. So we stopped at a McDonald’s in Schertz, Texas. And if anyone has stopped at this McDonald’s before, please let me know what the hell is in their menu. They had this picture of a turkey sandwich and some kind of burger with shrimp or something in it, amongst many other items I’ve never seen in a regular McDonald’s menu.

And I know I was half asleep, but I wasn’t hallucinating because Linda saw them, too. I even tried looking up a couple of people from that town to ask them, and only this 17-year-old girl got back to me writing, “Honestly i have no idea i don’t eat at mcdonalds.” So I write back, “Bullshit. The entire fucking planet eats at McDonald’s. Fattie!” I’m willing to bet even Israelis go crazy when the McRib’s back. So unless you were brutally raped inside a McDonald’s restroom and the plain sight of the golden arches brings back that horrific memory—no, I think that’s not even reason enough to give me the “I never eat at McDonald’s” bullshit.

In Sherman, Texas, Sarah, her boyfriend Chuuy, Linda and I saw Evan Almighty in the theater. Though I was skeptical about it at first (and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought this movie was going to be retarded), I’m glad we were able to catch this movie by default. Like a lot of comedy movies that actually turn out to be shit, the trailer for Evan Almighty made it seem like it was putting all the funny parts in it. Thanks to my extensive study of movie trailers and how they work, I know not to pay attention to them anymore. Trailers are usually very misleading. Kind of like Catholic women.

Evan Almighty, aside from the occasional funny ha-ha moments, had a very good plot to it and a very powerful message. Everything and everyone clicked very well in the entire movie, except maybe Wanda Sykes. Though she usually said something funny, I couldn’t help but be bothered at the fact that every time she opened her mouth to say something, it was to say some kind of relevant joke. She never said anything that helped push the plot forward because every single line she said had to have some kind of punch to it. Don’t get me wrong; it was funny most of the time she said something. But I just wish she would’ve been more of a character that was actually necessary to the plot. They could’ve cut her out completely, and the movie would’ve still been great. Two balls!

In this awesome theater in the Arlington mall called the AMC, Andre, Linda, and I saw Knocked Up. It’s actually kind of hard to place this movie in a specific genre. For the most part, it’s a comedy, but it doesn’t have most of those moments when some dialogue is supposed to make you laugh, aside from the scenes with the stoner friends. The movie however, was a very serious comedy that highlighted key moments in dysfunctional relationships. It really got annoying and awkward at times because it felt like two of your friends were arguing right in front of you. I don’t know. It's almost felt like the director was shooting real life. Maybe I need to see it one more time, but for now I give this movie one ball. I'd give it one-and-a-half balls, but half a ball is useless and probably cancerous.

A movie that deserves a third ball—only it’s impossible unless it’s a freak of nature—is 1408, based on a Stephen King short story. We saw this with Blas when we finally got back home. Driving from Rio Grande City east to McAllen had never felt easier. Highway 83 was so nice to me. The movie stars John Cusack, a writer who stays at supposed haunted hotels trying to make contact with ghosts. After failing so many times, he becomes skeptical until he stays in room 1408. Immediately, the room starts playing tricks on him, some of which I had never seen in other horror movies.

I appreciated this movie both as a movie on its own and as a great addition to the horror genre. I loved how it tried its best to stray off the whole startling effect current horror movies are trying to stick to. It’s really just a lame technique, really. Like having a retarded child sneak up behind you and shout, followed by, “I scared you. I scared you. Na-na na na naaa na.” It strayed off all the guts and gore images the Saw and Hostel Sluts #4 movies rely on to scare its audience. 1408 was just horror at its finest. There were some startling moments and instances when blood came pouring out of the walls of the room, but the director didn’t try to use those as scaring tactics. That’s what I loved about the movie. And there was no better way to end it, either.

The last movie on the review list (and for the first time, ever, all of which were seen in theaters) is License to Wed. And I don’t care what people think of Mandy Moore and/or Robert Williams. This movie was funny. I enjoyed every second of it, and I’m not just saying that because I paid money to go watch it. I paid money to watch Freddy Vs. Jason and House of a Thousand Corpses—I can admit when I wipe my ass with eight bucks at the movie theater. License to Wed was awesome, and if you’re a fan of the American version of The Office, I think you’ll enjoy the appearances some of the characters in the show make in the movie, especially Brian Baumgartner (Kevin), who is just as hilarious in this movie as he is on the show. Two balls.

It’s been hell since I last posted. I haven’t had a chance to get much done mostly because I’ve been working like 12 hours a day. The adultery guy quit last week, so I’ve been taking his shifts. And then three out of the three employees in our branch next town are sisters and happened to take their vacations together. So that blows. I’m sure this will all pass by next week. Thanks for sticking around.

Balls to you all,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

I'm on my Way

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:02:00 +0000

After our experience of Dallas, we headed over to Denton, Texas—the city where Linda was raised and knows really well. After the store at The Police concert kicked our asses right in the wallet pockets, we focused on eating something new we hadn’t tried before that wouldn’t be so expensive. For the people in the Rio Grande Valley, Taco Bueno is a lot like Taco Bell. Like most simple Mexican dishes, their menus are made up of pretty much the same things. Linda had had it before, but I didn’t even know it existed. The restaurants were all over the place in that entire Texas region. That, and Wendy’s. We saw so many Wendy’s everywhere that I can almost swear that there are more of those than McDonald’s restaurants. Taco Bueno wasn’t bad at all—I was especially pleased to see a restaurant half-full of white people chowing down on food influenced by Mexican culture (and there was a Wendy’s right next to it). Hooray for the fence just as long as you leave the holes in it big enough to pass the food through it, right?

Speaking of food, we passed by a billboard on the way to Denton that advertised another restaurant I hadn’t heard of before called Twin Peaks. From the looks of it, it’s a lot like Hooters. And I’m not talking about just the food. I was telling Linda, what is it with these restaurants opening up all over the place with breast euphemisms as their titles? And then you hear chicks complain, “Meh heh. I don’t like being objectified by pig men. Goo goo gah gah! I’m tired of them staring at my boobs all the time.” You know what? I’m going to open up my own restaurant for guys—and girls that look like them—to go hang out, drink beer, and have some okay food. I’m going to call it Big Tits: “The best breasts in America.” Then I’m actually going to put a blurred image of some tits on its logo, not some freaking owl or a pair of mountains. And when I get rich enough to procreate more Big Tits, I’m going the fancy elegant way with Vaginas: Upscale Seafood Dining. You guys can eat out there on me.

After tacos, we went to check out the downtown district of Denton—where they have the old courthouse that’s a museum now and the coolest used book store I have ever been to. On our first year together, I traveled by bus to see Linda and we went to that same area. Only it was snowing and it was also the first time I got to play with snow. The bookstore itself is two stories tall and a basement with a huge collection of books, records, and movies. Linda bought a layout book for herself, and I got an old edition of Matheson’s Stir of Echoes. After that we walked around the area and visited a couple of antique stores before we continued to head north.

On our way to Sherman to visit Sarah (you might recognize her as Koi Ai Kitty from Chicken Soup for the Ah-Soul), we went through Tioga, where Linda moved to live when we started going out. We passed through Gunter, where she went to high school, and then finally got to Sherman, taking a wrong exit there and making us late to watch 1408. We met up with Sarah and her boyfriend, Chuuy, and went out to eat at this casual placed called Cheddars. We don’t have one in the Valley, so I thought Cheddars had something to do with cheese. The joint was too good for its price. It’s set up like a Chili’s, only it doesn’t have a bar (that I saw), and the prices don’t come to bite you in the ass when you get the check. Sarah and Chuuy are as awesome in person as they are online, and I was surprised when they told me there’s nothing to do in Sherman. It looks like there’s plenty to do there. Then again, I’m satisfied with just food. We walked to the theater where we met, and we saw Evan Almighty (review in the next post). The theater was more packed than I had anticipated, considering it wasn’t the opening week. Guess Shermans don’t really have much to do.

Our next stop was Arlington—coming back to Dallas—and we didn’t get lost once on the way there! We stayed the night at Andre’s apartment, whom you might recognize from the fishy picture at my other site, readsomethingelse.com. We saw Knocked Up (review in the next post) at this awesome theater in the Arlington mall. I got to ride in the escalator; it was fucking awesome. That same day we saw the movie, we drove over to Fort Worth, and let me tell you all something about this Fort Worth: it is a strange fucking place. Don’t get me wrong. The residents of Fort Worth do live in peace inside their giant trees.

I personally didn’t like walking around there. They have soldiers everywhere you look and we were lucky enough to get close to one to take a picture.

Sometimes they just start running after you for no reason at all, and you have to blend in so they won’t notice you.

The old men from there look at you funny.

And even if it’s hard to believe when a black man tells you there’s a T-rex on your ass...

It’s scary as hell when you realize he was right.

I was happy to make it out of Fort Worth alive. We drove straight back to Arlington. That night, we had our last supper before coming back at Jack in the Box. We could’ve gone somewhere else, but I was curious to see how the taste varied several hundred of miles away. Besides, I had an appetite for one of those new sirloin burgers with cheddar cheese and grilled onions. While we were waiting for our orders, a lady walked inside the restaurant asking to speak with the manager. She wasn’t pissed at their service or anything; she just wanted permission to go through their dumpster to see if the man who pointed a gun at her face that morning and robbed her purse might have tossed it in there. I have to admit; I was a little freaked out by her situation. Yeah, we got to meet some terrific people in our trip—Andre, Sarah and Chuuy, the Chinese lady who refused to sell me the map—and we got to see The Police in concert. We got to drive through places that brought back memories—more in Linda than me.

But like I mentioned earlier, I’m so glad we took this trip because it’s just horrible the way people put down the Rio Grande Valley. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was complaining about the heat down here. And the thing is, I really missed home when we were over there. Yeah, we might not have the best university in the state, Austin, but at least I have no trouble at all getting to the one I attend in time from three towns away. We might not have the luxuries the big cities have like four-story high malls and escalators in our theaters, but we only need to take one exit from the main road to get to ours. And, yeah, hardly anything ever happens in the Valley. But I guess nothing is better than something most of the time. Oh yeah, last year this guy tried to rob a Church’s restaurant in Edinburg. He got caught a block away. And I know there are bad people everywhere (probably even in beautiful Devine, Texas)—and you can score pot in the Valley faster than you can get lost in Dallas—but this trip made me realize just how much I love home. So it’s your guys’ turns to come and see us.

Your best friend,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX

Please excuse the delay. One of the downsides to being a manager is having to show up for someone who quits on your ass.

Message in a Blog

shoneyflores@yahoo.com (Shoney Ramone) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:03:00 +0000

“People are strange when you’re a stranger.” —The Doors

After finding our motel in Dallas, I was able to get some sleep—which I really needed from driving all through the night—while Linda got ready for the concert. I was more excited about going to this restaurant called Dick’s Last Resort in downtown Dallas than seeing The Police. Once we took off from the motel and a few wrong turns later, we were completely lost and almost in another city. We phoned our friend Andre from Arlington to see if he could point us in the right direction, but we couldn’t even explain where we were. An hour and a half into trying to find our way, I stopped at a gas station to get a map of just Dallas since mine was of Texas. It was a 7-11 on Midway Street, and an Asian woman was behind the counter. Now, you might think I’m stereotyping in the following conversation. I assure you I’m not. This is exactly what we said word-per-word. I only remember this because I’ve told this story like five different times.

I asked her where the maps were, and she pointed to a magazine rack on the other side of the counter. I unfolded it and asked her if she could perhaps draw where we were and how we could get back to the interstate. “You buy or you no buy,” she said. “Oh, no. I’m gonna buy it. But I was just wondering if you could tell me where—” She looked like she was starting to get pissed off with me and repeated: “No. You buy or you no buy.” I started to think she wasn’t understanding me at all, so without thinking, I said, “Listen, you fucking Chinese bitch!” I’m just kidding. I tried to stay calm, pulled out my wallet, and said, “I buy. I buy.” She pointed back to the magazine rack and said, “You put back if you no buy.” Defeated, I put the map back in the rack, thinking I need to get myself one of those stupid GPS things.

On my way out, a guy came out from the back to stock some shit and I figured I might as well just ask him for directions. Fuck the map. He told me how to get back on the interstate, and we were able to find our way back. “Forget eating at Dick’s Last Resort,” I told Linda on the way there. “Let’s just eat somewhere close to the American Airlines Center, even if it’s McDonald’s.” Ironically enough, Dick’s Last Resort was only two blocks away from the arena, so we stopped to eat there. I mostly wanted to eat there because the menu looked really awesome on their website, thinking the food had to be awesome, too. I wasn’t really pleased with the food. It was okay, but the steaks from Chili’s taste way better than theirs. It’s a hang out place. Not a restaurant.

Parking in downtown Dallas is very inconvenient. They have these lots with numbered parking spots. Then you have to go to this pay station and shove money into a little slot with your key. After that, it’s all walking from place to place. Don’t get me wrong; it’s fun to walk around the city once you get the hang of car-dodging (kind of like Frogger), but I would much rather park in front of the business I’m going to. Even if I park way at the end of the parking lot. It’s just my own personal choice, but I didn’t mind walking around those few blocks of downtown Dallas. It was all right, and we had an umbrella.

I usually don’t like waiting in lines, whether it’s for a ride at the amusement park or for a movie premiere (which is why I hardly ever accompany my friends to wait for Star Wars: Episode 3 from noon till midnight; it’s lame). Waiting in line for the doors to open wasn’t bad at all. On the very front of the line next to us, there was a fat man that brought his oxygen tank with him. I kept thinking to myself and trying to whisper to Linda that seeing The Police in concert was probably his last wish before he died. I kept picturing him having an asthma attack while Sting started singing Roxanne and him quickly having to turn up the oxygen knob. This made me realize that in my next life, I’m going to be a fat, mentally challenged, homosexual black man with really bad asthma. And when I have an asthma attack, I feel like a killer whale without water.

While I was laughing at the fat guy in my head, a reporter and cameraman came up to Linda and me. They were mostly attracted to the vast collection of Police buttons pinned on her purse, including one of a shirtless Sting. The quick interview was mostly made up of them asking Linda questions of how young she was, the fact that the last time The Police performed in Dallas was three years before Linda was born, and various close-ups of her tits—under her Police shirt of course. Yeah, it was a little awkward when the cameraman moved the camera just a couple of inches from Linda’s boobs, getting shots the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area would see from their homes, but it wasn’t like they asked her to take the shirt off anyway. It was funny to see all the grandmothers on the line get jealous of Linda getting interviewed and not them.

The bastards get you with shirts at the concerts. We paid $35 for a tour shirt, which I didn’t mind paying for at all. It just meant we weren’t going to have anything fancy for lunch the next day. What really bothered me was that the t-shirt was $35, and a cool bag of The Police that we also got was ten fucking dollars. Sound reasonable? Okay. We also got Sting’s biography, signed by the man himself, for $20. That’s $15 less than the t-shirt. And they still sell good. I walked into the restroom and six different guys were changing their shirts to the ones they just bought. Bitches couldn’t wait to get home.

A rock band called Fiction Plane opened for The Police, which includes Sting’s son on vocals. They sounded pretty good for the most part, but people weren’t really that interested since they’re just starting out. This idiot behind us kept trying to show off to his buddy, shouting things like, “When’s Andy Summers coming?” and “I’m been waiting ten years for this.” I could tell that the other guy didn’t really give a shit.

At exactly 8:45 PM, The Police got on stage, opening with Message in a Bottle. I’ve been reading and hearing a lot of people complain about Sting’s inability to hit the high notes as he does most commonly in the chorus of Roxanne. First of all, people should cut him some slack. He’s 55 years old and sounds way better live than he does on the recordings. It’s just obvious that the more melodic voice from his solo work was showing in those songs, and though his voice was getting slightly tired towards the end of the two-hour performance, he had no trouble hitting high notes at all. Andy Summers, the guitarist, I had no idea he could rock out like he did on stage. And the drummer, Stewart Copeland, though dressed like he had just gotten back from the Tour de France, was, in my opinion, the best musician on stage, running back and forth between percussion instruments and shit. All these people complaining are probably just idiots who couldn’t get tickets.

An hour into the show, I had to sit down to take a break from standing and enjoyed the show via the three giant screens they had set up above the stage. Linda, however, didn’t sit down once. She sang along to every single song, crying every time Sting opened his mouth to sing. We could have driven back to Rio that same night on caffeine (just to make sure), and the entire drive would have still been worth it. But we didn’t drive back home that night. Our journey continues in the next post with real pictures this time. For now, please enjoy the clip to the right of the concert Linda and I were at.

I love you,

Shoney Ramone
Rio Grande City, TX