Iceberglandia

In just a matter of days, I’m gonna be getting off a bus in my little one-horse town in Mexico. As soon as I do, I will gather my things and walk out into the streets, where I will lay down my suitcase, and while I wait for a cab, I will raise my hands in the air, stretch, produce an evil grin, and then, as I rub my hands together, I will exclaim: “Let the sinning commence!”

Oh yes, my friends, there will be excess, there will be debauchery, there will be gluttony, lust (hey – there better be!), sloth… It’s gonna be awesome!

Hey, I deserve a couple weeks to do whatever I want! But of course, being in such a remote corner of the world, I won’t be able to post here until January. That means, until next year. So, I guess this is goodbye for now.

I do hope everybody has themselves a Merry Christmas, or its equivalent depending on who your invisible friend in the sky is, and of course we can all join hands (figuratively, at the very least) and receive the new year together. Unless we’re in different time zones, in which case we’d be holding hands for, like, a really long time… and that’s just awkward. Anyway, Happy New Year!

Couple of things before I go..

Remember, the Guadalupe Reyes marathon is under way since yesterday!
And, all I wanted for Christmas was to be with my daughter, but alas, evil forces are at play. I’ll let you know how that went.

Peace, and see y’all in 2008!!

The Iceberg.

I have been considering writing about facebook for a while now, but I didn’t want to come off as whiny about just how socially retarded and how lame I am, even here on the internets.
Let’s face it, popular I am not. A social bee? well, let’s put it this way. Less people talk to me now than in January. And I’m only talking about 2007.

So, what drove me to finally address the Facebook topic?

I have publically shown my disdain for networking sites such as MySpace and, yes, Facebook. Why? Ha, ha. People in general are stupid. And, as such, they like doing stupid things. And with public profiles that allow such a broad spectrum of stupidity, the results are spectacularly awful.
In one such instance of my public disdain, I guess I mentioned it to one of my friends from back home. Recently, I found his somewhat hidden profile (by typing his name and seeing the university he attended a couple of years ago, I decided that it was, in fact him), and added him to mine.

Mind you, said friend hasn’t bothered to reply on MSN for quite a while now, not even when I wrote to wish him a happy birthday – in September. So while I was browsing around the ‘net today, I was surprised to see a little window pop up saying that he, of all people, had written on my wall (and not my SUperWall, or my WonderWall- more on that in a bit), I wondered what was up.
Turns out, he had just written a snarky comment about why, if I hated networking sites with such a passion, I decided to betray myself by creating a profile on Facebook.

I’m happy to explain.

First of all, I’ve had this profile for ages. It all started when a co-worker who used to talk to me but has since opted for an Iceberg-free lifestyle sent me an email inviting me to join. Naturally, at first I was reluctant, but after seeing her profile and seeing other co-workers’ links, I thought maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I was/am, in fact, in dire need of a social life, so I decided to give it a shot.
After setting up my profile (where I didn’t even bother to use my name – that’s how seriously I take things), I decided to browse around typing names and seeing what came up. Surprisingly, I managed to find profiles from people back home as well.
Oh, yes, it was good.
But then, the stupidity I so much despise about these sites started showing. And I don’t mean to offend anyone who finds such delight in what I call stupid, it’s just…
See, things have gotten so bad now, that every time I log into Facebook, I am informed that a random contact is now a fucking vampire and has bitten somebody else (who, in most cases, I don’t even know), followed by an invitation to turn into a vampire. Or, as if I had been awake the night before wondering, I am now informed that some other contact scored 80% on some shitty movie trivia test, and I am invited to take the same test. Or, even, as if I really gave a shit, I have to find out one of my contacts is attending some unknown goof’s birthday party. Or who added who, or how such-and-such and someone else are now friends…
And it gets worse. I’ll receive, daily, at least 3 or 4 messages in my email saying random people have posted on my FunWall! or my SuperWall! Or my Fuck!WhatAnAwesomeWall!, things I don’t particularly have.

See, the problem is that just any fucking dork can create these little pieces of “entertainment”, so there’s millions of them lying around. And what with the ability to post videos on the normal “Wall”, I’m starting to log in less and less. There’s only so many brain cells I can have commit suicide per week.

My profile is there, merely for informative purposes. One of the upsides to Facebook is that it’s the only way I’ve become reacquainted with friends and family from years past.

Hey, who’s to say someone will one day stumple upon my picture and fall in love with me and… HA HA HA, sorry, I just had to write that “out loud”. I derive much pleasure from self-mockery.

No, but seriously. It’s a nice tool for finding people, it has potential. It’s just too clogged up with unnecessary applications.

So there you go, my New-York-Rangers-loving friend. I hope you find this article informative, and that your thirst for the knowledge of my Facebook background has been quenched to your satisfaction.
Oh, and speaking of quenching thirst, may I request, in writing, as is your preference, that you clear up an evening in your schedule between the last days of december and the first week of January?

The Iceberg.

Six years ago, I had to endure one of the hardest tests in life. Just weeks before, my mom had stopped working. That’s when we knew it was bad. She had worked through the hardest periods of her life. She had dragged herself to the last work hour, despite her condition.
Suddenly, she couldn’t do it anymore. If her last employers have a conscience, something I doubt, they’ll have something to carry forever.
But, suddenly, she couldn’t work anymore.
We tried everything. Fuck, I even took her to a homeopathic charlatan. But one day, she was interned in the hospital. A sunday. And I couldn’t take it.
My drinking increased, and I guess I always expected her to make it. She had made it out of so much more, dammit.
On friday, after I left the hospital, the stupid doctor assured us she would be all right. I went home to attempt to sleep for a couple of hours.
At 6.30 PM, the phone rang, and even though the telephone was downstairs, I heard it. I woke up to hear my (now ex)wife talk in a condescending voice. I knew. Then she called me.

It was my sister Vivian, who delivered the news. All I could do was collapse and blurt out crying. Pardon me if the memory of the moment is not accurate, but I guess my ex hung up the phone.

Half asleep, half drunk, half broken, I drove like a motherfucker to the hospital. I endangered many lives, including my own, but in retrospect, hey, how would you drive upon hearing the person you’ve loved the most for all your life just died?

I arrived at the hospital, I rushed to her room, and I saw her. I swear she was just sleeping, and I would have sacrificed anything for her to wake up. But then, my father collapsed into my arms.
My sisters were across the room. I hugged them, and didn’t shed a tear. Someone had to be the strong one. I took that responsibility. And I’ve hated myself since. So much easier, it would have been to cry and feel the need to be consoled. But no. My family needed me, and I was there.

My brain blocks the memory of when they took her away. Somehow, I managed to sleep for a while.

Her wish was to be cremated. Many versions abound, but what she told me was that she wanted her ashes to be spread on a beautiful field in England.

Many people came to her funeral, mourning, wake, or whatever you call it when people gather to pay their last respects. From what I hear, she looked beautiful in her casket, but I never had the strength to look. When they closed the casket, I held on to it, as if touching a piece of wood would accomplish anything.
I never cried, I never spoke, I just crumbled from the inside. But I couldn’t afford to look weak, after all, I had vowed to be the strong one for my family.

All I had to fall on was my ex-wife, but she also was tired. So I asked her to go home and sleep. Then, I had no one. But the evening wasn’t about me. It was about my mother.

Some of her students showed up, my grandfather and one uncle showed up, my dad’s mom and his sister, a random assortment of other people, and my friends.
Most of my family and friends knew her, and they knew she was a great human being, but nobody knew her as well as I did. Well, of course, my dad did, but other than him, I’m proud to say I was my mom’s best friend.

I will never forget the moments. The mother/son moments. Like when she saw me get drunk for the first time in my life (at age 16), over a broken heart, and she didn’t judge me. Or the moments when she held in her arms her first granddaughter, my baby. Or, had she been alive, her holding my hand for the whole week I was in the hospital after my heart attack. Or when, even against her will, she bought me the Judas Priest “Painkiller” shirt I wanted. Or when I explained to her that “Rust In Peace” was Megadeth’s way of saying nuclear weapons should be disposed of in outer space. Or when I brought upon her a golden smile by downloading “The Dave Clark Five” songs.

Shit, there are so many memories. In fact, my very first memory from when I was a kid, I don’t know how old I was, but my mom was holding me in her arms as the afternoon sun shone through our apartment window. She was wearing a dress with an apple on it, and fuck, no matter how I die, I want my last memory to be that one.

I know I’m the catholic church’s worst enemy, but there are times when I do hope there is a heaven. My mom deserves it. And, to an extent, I do believe that wherever she is now, she is looking out for us.

I still dream about her, quite often. Sometimes, I’ll wake up thinking somehow she’s still alive. Other times, I’ll just acknowledge it was a dream. I prefer the first kind.

Anyway, she’s been in heaven for 6 years. In a way, she was lucky not to see my divorce, my sister stabbing me in the back, or the rest of her family collapsing into a universe of suck. 

I miss her. A lot.

The Iceberg.

I am guilty of something so bad, I should be put to death. I commited an act so heinous, so atrocious, that my descendants will be ashamed of me for generations. So vile, in fact was the intent of my actions, that it has brought humanity to a new low. Animal rapists, coprophagists and babykillers may now walk proud amogst their peers, for there is someone much more evil, much, much sicker, and far more demented.
Hell has now just room enough for me, and satan cowers in fear upon hearing my name, for I have commited the grandest sin of all. I am evil incarnate.

I walked.

Yes, I got shit at work, for walking. I know, I know, I make it a point never to discuss work-related stuff here, and I am well aware that it is in my best interest to keep my mouth shut (or my keys unpressed, mind you), but in the interest of objectivity, I cannot censor myself at times. DAMN!

See, it is by now obvious that the manager of my department at work dislikes me on a personal level. Since this is not the time or the forum to discuss how I arrived at such a conclusion, let it just serve as a background to my tale.
Today I stepped into work for my overtime shift. Not to do my normal activities, mind you, because of the company’s Christmas year-end party, but because they needed me to do something else. I was minding my own business, when my supervisor came up to where I was. After a brief chit-chat, he mentioned, almost in passing, that he had heard a comment. He proceeded to ask me if I was walking yesterday, because the dept. manager had seen me walking, and from what he (my supervisor) heard, he (the manager) was quite upset about it. I briefly explained to my supervisor the nature of my having to walk, and simple as that, he told me not to worry.
Now, I hate, and I mean, it really gets on my nerves, when someone tries to tell me how to do my job. So far be it from me to do the same, much more so if it’s someone much higher up in the food chain. But instead of “getting upset” over a mere insignificance, aren’t managers paid to think? Couldn’t he have, in the spur of the moment, thought up a hundred different scenarios in which I, The Iceberg, would find myself in the need to walk from one side of the plant to the other?

A leisurely stroll, it was not. The whole situation which led to me having to walk across the plant is this: I had been asked to do somebody else’s job (as is common). Said job required me to be off my forklift. When people see an empty forklift, they take it. Supervisors, material handlers, setup technicians, material coordinators – everybody is in the practise of borrowing forklifts. Yesterday, my coordinator decided to take mine. As I found myself on the opposite side of the plant to the one I’m currently assigned to, I had to find a way to get to my area and start doing my job. Which presented me with a conundrum. Being unable to fly, being that there’s no body of water to be seen (much less one that connects the two areas concerning my travel), and without the option of teleportation, I guess my diminutive brain could only muster up the option of walking.
Oops!

And now I have learned not to wake the wrath of my managers by doing something so mundane as putting one foot in front of the other.
If only there were some other way of getting around this… let me think. Ropes hanging 20 feet apart from the pipes on the ceiling, so I can swing? Nah… A shuttle service that drives around the plant? Guess not… HEY! I GOT IT! How about, making it mandatory to not take other people’s forklifts! Eureka!

The Iceberg.