It's not just "OUR People"

I saw something on the Internet last week that made me throw up in my mouth a little. Rather than continue from there I will provide you with the article. I apologize for the lack of photos, but I'm actually quite disturbed by the images and I don't want to see my dinner again, I will however include links so you can witness the complete and utter wrongness for yourself. (*Also, I'd like to give myself a big pat on the back for copying the text with my eyes unfocused so I wouldn't have to look at the pictures... YAY Me!)

Puerto Rico corpse kept upright for 3-day wake


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A Puerto Rican man has been granted his wish to remain standing — even in death.

A funeral home used a special embalming treatment to keep the corpse of 24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina standing upright for his three-day wake.

Dressed in a Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, Pantoja was mourned by relatives while propped upright in his mother's living room.

His brother Carlos told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper the victim had long said he wanted to be upright for his own wake: "He wanted to be happy, standing."

The owner of the Marin Funeral Home, Damaris Marin, told The Associated Press the mother asked him to fulfill her dead son's last wish.

Pantoja was found dead Friday underneath a bridge in San Juan and buried Monday. Police are investigating.
Hosted by Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Now then, as I said it's not just black people doing bizarre and ridiculous shit, apparently our brown brothers and sisters have lost their damned minds as well. Good to know. I'm guessing it's just as cold in PR as it is "in duh D." But the real question is how, at 24, are you knowingly living a lifestyle where it's a really good chance that you will die at such a young age? So much so, that you notify your family ahead of time that in the event of your untimely demise, you'd like to scare the shit out of the kids in your family and be posted up in the corner of your mom's crib in sunglasses and a hat, dead.

We all have family members who do things they probably ought not do, and I'll admit losing them is still hard because we love them but this is just crazy. I'm an adult and would not be in the same room with a standing dead guy, let alone allow my daughter to bear witness to such a thing. Not "no" but "HELL NO!" I'm not knocking the family for carrying out his last wishes but couldn't they have just had a cardboard cut out made and let that be "him standing up?" In a way they are glorifying the lifestyle he led by having done this, the hat, the sunglasses, the pose the whole setup, is probably the reason he's gone at 24 to begin with. Keeping it hood, being gangsta, whatever the hell you call it, it's still a wasted life, and why honor him in such a way? If anything he should be used as an example of how you don't want to live, to these kids that think it's so cool to carry guns, and sell drugs, or whatever.

This guy was 24 years old and he's not here anymore, aside from the morality factor, it's just dammit creepy. The kids who were there should have been traumatized, hell I'm pushing 30 and I'M traumatized. If the children were not disturbed by the image of their dead primo chillin in the corner, then the family really needs to wake up because there will be more wakes far too soon in their near future.

Time to Head Back

Hola todos!
In a little less that 48 hours I will be heading back to my Southern Baptist university. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm glad to be getting out of my hellacious home town, but at the same time I'm going to miss my family (and my cat.)It gets kind of lonely, I mean most (if not all) of the people I come in contact with living on campus are so much younger and so much more serious about religion than I am. I chose this school based on my major, and once I got there I fell in love with it. I've been to several different schools and none of them compare to the one I'm at now. The people are genuinely nice and the instructors are interesting and insightful. The campus is small enough that I have met most of the people I see in passing.
The only downside is that I'm faced with yet another semster without a car (thanks to the Van situation)which means I'm not going to be able to work the way I need to in order to buy a car. I'm not nearly as apprehensive as I was in January but I'm still a little worried. Ready or not it's time to go. I feel like I'll never be done doing laundry, I lost weight so I got to shop through my old clothes, that I saved when I gained the weight, because I knew it would be coming off again. I almost don't want to save the bigger clothes because I'm determined to keep it off this time, but the practical person who lives in my head is forcing me to keep all of this stuff, "just in case." Wish me luck as I journey back into the world of the BibleThumpers and JesusFreaks (I say this in jest), hopefully it'll go better this time than it did last semester.

Bye Bye Bernie... you'll be missed

Today is a sad day. Not just because I got screwed by the mechanic. The world just isn't as funny as it used to be. Let me explain, I'm one of those people who are picky about everything, shoes, men, makeup, my hair, people, movies, books. I'm just picky. So it should come as no suprise that I'm picky about my comedy as well, I love Richard Pryor, and Redd Foxx, I also loved Eddie Murphy( the previous incarnation not the kiddie movie king), and those Blue Collar Comedy guys. This year we lost one of the greats, in George Carlin and now we've lost Bernie Mac. I loved his stuff, he talked about things that while were not particularly nice were converesly very real. I'm the type of person who likes to laugh and stuff that was funny ten or even twenty years ago, still cracks me up today. So the Kings of Comedy is one of my favorites, I laugh until my stomach hurts, and at odd random moments some of the jokes pop in to my head and I laugh some more. The thing about Bernie Mac was how expresive his eyes and facial manipulations were, I mean yeah the stuff he said was funny but making his eyes bug or the disgust he could show just by moving his eyebrows is what got me. So I'll say a prayer for his soul to have reached heaven safely and hope that the angels have something similar to a potty mouth jar; between him and George Carlin the language up there will be decidedly different from their usual fare. Bye, Bye Bernie, have fun telling Jesus dirty jokes. I leave you with my favorite of Bernie's bits- Send the kids out of the room or slip on your ear buds... you already know what it is with Bernie.

The Van Saga: A Tragedy in 4 Acts

So the back story is that I had my engine go bad on my van, it was taken to someone other than the person I usually dealt with when I had car trouble. The guy sabotaged it, He drained the transmission fluid and then when it was checked by a relative I went out and bought transmission fluid but he didn't put it in there, letting me think he had, in short the transmission went out AGAIN! I had recently had it replaced. So now I need an engine and a transmission. Needless to say I was pissed, so I took it to the guy who I usually use. The whole time we'd been doing business he'd tell me how many people wanted to buy the van, so when I took it to him this last time and didn't have the money to get it fixed, I asked him if people had still been asking about buying it and told him that he could sell it provided he found me a car. That was well over a year ago.

In this time I got accapted to the school of my choice and the whole time I had been calling him checking to see if he'd found me a car yet. This went into overdrive once I found out I would be leaving in January. I called him so often I got tired of the sound of my own voice. In the end he never found anything which meant I didn't have any transportation back here from school, so I signed the title over to him in case he did find a buyer and I wasn't able to make it the 200 plus miles home to sign it over.

I made several trips home and on each trip I'd call him and he'd give me some bs about how he had a car and he was just waiting for a part to come in. Always call me back Monday(Tues. etc) And when I'd call it still hadn't come in.

So naturally when I came home on summer break and had a job it became more important for me to have transportation. Finally, he offers to give me - the van back=provided I pay him the cost of repairs. It's been over a year and in that time someone ELSE has been driving the damned thing. He would've had his money had he stuck to the plan and now I'm supposed to pay him because he didn't? So I got angry, decided to take his sorry ass to small claims court but a piece of advice led me to call him and make him an offer.

My proposal was simple pay me $500 and he could do a rain dance around it after setting it on fire for all I cared. I had found a car that didn't cost much more than that. He agreed, said he'd get the money to me this week- I was supposed to go get the car TODAY! I called him Tuesday he said to call him the next day so I did and he gives me some bs about waiting for some ARMY guy to pay him for a job who should've been coming in that afternoon- call him in the morning. I work 9-5 so I told him that my mother would be picking up the money to make sure it got in the bank before 5:30 when they closed. I wasn't able to get on the phone until after lunch so I called my Mom and gave her his number for her to call him. He told her he was waiting on some lady to bring him the money and he'd call her when she did. And he promptly stopped answering the phone. I left several messages and he doesn't call back, I even tried calling early this morning- no dice.
All this has done is piss me off to no end and I'm really out of ideas. I've sent emails to two of the news stations and I'm considering sending a few to the paper. At this point I'm ready to make a sign and stand out at his place of business, talking to everyone who comes in about how he ripped me off. I wish it was legal to torture him until he gave me what I'm owed. Anyone out there who has any ideas I'm all ears(er eyes... you know what I mean.)