funny thing this netscape

yes the version of netscape 8.0.4 (based on firefox)
has this little feature that is making my life way easier, since you can either display the same page as you'd see in either firefox or explorer, just by clicking on this little arrow

i am a silly designer dealing with CSS standards for an application, if i get my application displaying OK for firefox and explorer i am all set (albeit my boss' opinions -read barking) since those are the 2 browsers people are most used to

this function of netscape saves me couple of minutes per hour, since i don't have to open the damn URLs in both browsers, i can just check in Netscape and voilà! with the selection of a checkmark i am all done

now there's many little issues and tricks for optimal CSS-ing, some really stupid like that fact that explorer can't read "mid" numbers in some basic stuff like the height of an area, if you have 176 px it is going to round-it to 180 px, on the other hand, firefox is better with details like that, but, hey what am i going to do? kill all of the explorer users? or force them into changing to firefox? i don't even have myself a decent browser at home, i deal with a imac g3 with explorer 5.1 for mac and mozilla, i can barely check my bank account at home, and to post photos at 23 i have to do one by one, therefore i don't, oh and by the way my finder for mac os 9.1 doesn't not support my canon camera so i can't even download the damn photos

so i understand, even if i am a web designer, what is to be in the oldest of the techy's, if an application runs in my computer, believe me, then it means that a neandearthal man can gett it started with probably a few rocks and stickies...

ok but back to the style sheets...

i rather fix my graphics to display OK on both browsers even though we as designers know the big difference between 1 or 2 pixels but i guess that's the trick but standardization and globalization or while working at a non-profit (like the san diego blood bank) where with few resources you got make things pretty (like the blood bank newsletter printed in just 2 colors) or here, where i have to standardize a look that will display OK no matter how outdated or hyper-ultimate is your freaking browser

it is easy to design for all-tools-users but we gotta remember there's people without so much technological resources out there and they are still mean to enjoy of our applications

voilà, i am glad the weekend is over, not 'cause i love to work
but because at home i have that crippled computer that doesn't let me
"explayarme"

ha! monday intentions

a great resource for CSS in advanced styles and other tricky tricks please check this amazing website A List Apart http://www.alistapart.com/

prophecies of self-indulgence

a headache again
so strong
blinding a lost day?
a sunday
i got a cold

i said i would write
or picture or something
almost 40 years
and back to the same nonsense

again still not a plan
have let behind some many
usually unfinished or broken

too many and too little
to pick up the pieces
and re-start one or the other

you can be a child forever and always
just don’t forget
children
are always growing

trying to be done
with at least
the self-indulgence

friends family
care
realizing
they are something
lucky I have some of them

my head just hurts so much
the sun out seems purifying
another walk
another sunny sunday

sábado abril primavera

oficialmente
abril
oficialmente
primavera

saturday nor daily

it seems did it make it
strong coffee
and a late morning
happens

those sort
of connections
de café
convents
and inventions
that was what about
i was talking

o saw last night
stoned the movie
stoned at 9.50
damn photos i can’t download
freaking procrastination
since december
crippled computer
surviving

anyway the movie
was ok
more on it later
still didn’t cure me
from insomnia
if nothing

here saturday before noon
so it is officially morning
slept 3 hrs
natural
for what is worth it

now into caffeine
and disgraces resplendent
with the sun of the south
of this california

don’t tell me on
geographical compartment
the desert is close

and middle of the days
still happen

to walk in the sun cold
while time’s clicking

natural insomnia

no retorts
not there tu
not me somewhere
nor the small squares
beautiful reminders/pacifiers

hectic/
not recalled

silence

afraid insecure
if invading
a simple thought
is too strong?

retreat
safer
and
distance is
longer

sent sent
no come back

a blank mind needed
not invading
not even with thinking
rather in a
way of disappearance
i feel i despair
lately

distracted was
runs fast
not idea where
or how to open a front door
some times

a link not since
have been muted
maybe something i wrote?
maybe something i thought?
and long travelled...

insomnia
insomnia

natural
read and sleep is not coming

can’t stop wondering
i hold out

a dream
an unreal
a something
can’t get a hold
of my own peace
somehow

if i could flat out tell you
yet

what to do?
not pills anymore
not fiction solutions
a natural pain

like the one
of being for some
an umbrella
on a day
that is not raining

if still breathing
unexpectedly
change it
the world

the world can
in a second
all be changed

yet afraid in my waiting
i am forgetting
i am not the only spectator
just because with me nothing changes

not mine
not again
not something
i just don’t know
how to blank-mind-it
if just...

just letters against
white screen
on a cyber space
rented

late on a lonely night
paying the price of
not sure what karmatic
error

that eats my guts
you might forget it
but i feel inundated in my own
ignorance

the damn valve closes
and believe me it is not orange

i wish i felt safe to walk late the streets
but can't even find the front door
for a starter

an umbrella
in a day
that is not raining

no wonder

hair gel

first the eyes were shot
palms up against them strong
those holes in the crane
that hold them

other own bones known
are cross, on top
to count this horrible night
over

opened raised
rightist light through
thick wet straws of my own hair

many months i forgot
to notice it or wear it down or to cut it
now i touch it and strands
go all the way down to the shoulders
thick and messy
didn’t see it this long growing

blurry then vision of
green little pearls shinny and
fuzzy from the pressure hold-ed
patterns on white soft of
aunt’s embroidered hand towel

it is the bathroom
i discover
my customary sacrifice-stone holder

the woman at the radiology test
smelled like a fresh shower
months ago in that morning

i remember the test
and her
ago as i wonder
if every morning
a man smells her hair
or if he touches it softly
it is fresh and silky
and smells well
as i re-call her

i wonder if her skin
is touched with love
at late nights
or kissed good-bye
in cloudy mornings

or if like mine
is cleaned and perfumed and soft
yet lonely
grows older

dark
the holes the marks
on my eyes
grow deeper
of the holes
stronger

tonight this painful bathroom
smells as her hair
it was familiar
since i entered
and before the pain
i smiled
since i noticed

friday night lonely sandwich

el día de antes no es el día de hoy
las palabras huecas sin eco siempre son
palabras por las ideas o por el sonido
¿el mensaje o puramente canción?

si las lees rápido, necias son
si quieres entenderlas
no es con la cabeza
es con el corazón

aquí la diferencia
entre buena literature
y un mal poema
como este
sin razon…
desabrido
sin un buen sazon

i am hungry i want a sandwich

a white van

sometimes you live in a city that you weren’t born into
sometimes you feel completely grounded to a place
(a city or a house or even a little space)
and you feel is completely where you belong

that was me many years ago in divinely crazy mexico city
i swore i would never move out of its traffic
its pollution and over 500 years of historical bonds

i was a fish in the water in the wild subway metro
and drove all around the city fast
and knew every corner by heart

yet one day i left
and regardless of chance, coincidences
and plenty of metaphors
i ended up living in san diego

i wasn’t meant/supposed to be here
i was on my way to san francisco when i first stopped
i was never too attracted to the southern californian vibe
i remember the friend kurt aka nowork comment to me
at a sandiegan well-known record store
bere, i don’t picture you here in san diego
a beach town
i thought of you more in boston
or some big city with history like that

yet
fortuna chances and some twisted faiths
i am here in san diego
and after 5 years it finally starts feeling like home

and again i remember what my friend helmut
an over 70 year-old german man living in
minneapolis for the past 60 years told me
when i just arrived here fresh from mexico city:
san diego, bere, is somehow looking after you
since i found immediately a little studio
a creative-director job
and got a little car that today i finally own

i was still on my way to somewhere else
i have been on my way to somewhere else all these 5 years
i was settled but not convinced or aware of
what’s really going on
as usually happens with me
with many situations in my little life
a slow learner have always been/will be

today i woke up and strangely and even if sad but san diego felt home
not because i have embraced the southern california style of a life
or because i am too lazy and even if overprized is easy living here

actually i think i realized it was home for the very first time
when just a couple of weeks ago
while crossing very distracted a street by my house
in lovely neighborhood of normal heights
i was almost run over by a white van

ironically enough the white van had printed a logo
paradise valley hospital
national city california
that place! that hospital!
it is were i was actually born!!

no matter how attached i am and will always be to
mexico city its landscapes its turbulences
its art
i was born in national city san diego county
and fortuna brought me back
so fortunately enough an intriguing reminder
with a fast van came at
you were born in this city
is that a cause enough?
if not, remember you life can be taken
in case of not enough joy and if don't appreciate it at all

it was frightening not ‘cause i am actually
afraid of death since i am not
i am just afraid of leaving without having
told people how important they are
and how special life is
and how fragile

today happily except for a couple of replies
that i owe
like to beto, and ina, and tanya
i have the rest told about their art
and importance and all

in case a white van from national city
comes to haunt me down again
and i also i told my mom how much i love her
and to remind of that to my dad too
since even if apart they can contact each other better than i do
i even left some stuff here bloging wrote down!

how convenient all this is

i have not intentions to die
but peace comes to my heart
so from here to eternity i owe to nobody nothing
not even a dime!
(well of course not counting the credit cards or stuff like that)

and freedom flushes through my veins
and i realized that paradoxically and
without a single draft or a careful plan:

i am living again in the city that i was born in
i came back 30 years later or so…
i hope that is enough of a good reason
or for me
a reasonable cause

we shall see we shall know

the dying cow

today i am trapped in between the feet
of a dying cow
and she won’t stop kicking my skull
and being a cow i still love her soft

a white cross and two black chimneys against a blue late sky
imaginings awareness cryptograms to convert and
resulting a in a very small component
to live for
verdict a broken individuality
grounding thousand mistakes

changing divinities
on your trail of revenge
you revenging from

yet i was not ever a judge
nor a witness
even less the accusatory
nor the accused

yet somehow i end-up being executed
at once
from the friendly closeness i presented
with a smile

a connection fading
days become longer and sore

the palette colors on a canvas
could have been dissimilar?
if you haven’t seize one day my path?

innocence lost
can’t remove can’t go back can’t eradicate the facts

a white handkerchief
flutters high
and then subtle and gentle it falls
against a scenario of
a building built out of square solid rocks

an inside patio
surrounded by the edification
that square hole
the one your ignorance digs every day in my core

the hankie is humid and white
as i thought was your soul

you are just shifting
and i am lost
yet out of a private calamity
i have never been for too long
maybe in 36 years
for 2 minutes or so
while, one day in your arms
and that was all
but you won't believe me so

you and unknown goddess to beseech to
me back to my dying cow
she needs my attention
to feed her on the pieces of what's left of my soul

back to my soft lonely own
a sheep i follow while blind

the forgotten and beautiful maeve brennan an irish woman and a new yorker

a couple of years ago i read about this amazing irish writer Maeve Brennan and her sad story, below a link and a few stolen words from an article by Angela Bourke


"One morning in 1981, writers and editors arriving for work at the New Yorker's 43rd Street office found a very small woman in a long, untidy black skirt, with grey, unwashed hair, sitting in silence outside the office partition on the 20th floor.

One young editor, Mary Hawthorne, was intrigued enough to question colleagues about the visitor. She learned that the unkempt old lady was Maeve Brennan, once a glamorous star writer on the magazine, lately blighted by mental illness.

Brennan sat silently in the office until evening and returned the next day. Then she disappeared and Hawthorne never saw her again. Brennan was an Irishwoman and a New Yorker; an intellectual and a beauty. She dazzled everyone she met and wrote some of the finest and most widely read English prose of the 20th century, yet in her lifetime, when Irish writers were celebrated as never before, she was practically unknown in her own country."

Maeve wrote among other stories
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin

she also lived an apparently tortured and secret romance with Philip Larkin, and wrote this book The Philip Larkin I Knew

read the complete on-line version of this sad story here
Maeve Brennan

also a review link from The Observer (Guardian Unlimited Books) of Angela Bourke's book
Maeve Brennan: Homesick at The New Yorker