los gatos' nemeses

Sherlock Holmes had Professor Moriarty
Batman has The Joker (amongst others)

and it seems like everyone has a nemesis
in this paradoxical life
my friends Los Gatos have their own nemeses too!

herr Gato's nemeses are two mean Blue Jays
I have seen these 2 blue jays taking swooping dives
at poor herr Gato, one of them actually hit him on the head!
Gato just went "meeooowww"
and look all disconcerted after the hit
after a second dive, the Gato decided to run into the house...

I read online that this behavior is common on Blue Jays
they are very territorial birds and while they are nesting
they will 'attack' dogs, cats, and even humans! who
would come close to their nests, this is called "mobbing"
makes a lot of sense...
I have a bird feeder outside my house
surely they are nesting now and therefore the mobbing at
poor herr Gato, curiously enough, I haven't seen them
attacking frau Kitty nor me


here one of the Blue Jays, the feeder was full of other birds before
he arrived (mourning doves, finches, etc.) he screamed at all
the other birds so they all left and now he eats alone, as he likes it

now Frau Kitty's nemesis is a much dangerous one!
is a BIG female cat, who lives next door,
she comes around my home very often,
I have seen her since I moved here, years before
los Gatos arrival to this area
she sort of socializes with herr Gato,
dependingm on both their moods
they play or chase each other but sometimes
they do fight too...
but it's not the same with frau Kitty! whenever this big female cat
sees frau Kitty, they both start hissing right away, and it takes only
a few seconds for the mean big cat to attack her!
frau Kitty tends to fight back when herr Gato attacks her of plays tough
but she runs away from this cat right away!!
she knows it's no game and she's terrified of her
and surely the mean big gata
wants to shred frau Kitty to very small pieces
I am pretty sure it is 'cause they are both females
and since the bigger female cat has lived for a while in this territory
well, she feels the threat of frau Kitty's presence
I worry many times when frau Kitty goes outside
'cause this 'gata' really hates her and she's at least twice the size
of Frau Kitty, but frau Kitty is much faster, younger, and agile,
so she knows how to runaway from her...


here frau Kitty's nemesis drinking water outside my house
this photo is through a screen door


los gatos don't like to be at my house that much
specially herr Gato, he is more of an outdoor cat
but when their nemeses are around, they feel safer
behind the screen door

interesting how even in nature, enemies exist
i surely have a very dull life, since I cannot think of
a nemesis for myself... maybe in the past I've had a couple
but I guess not too hateful, since I can't recall one

oh wait!
maybe this girl i went to school with
i was in about 4th grade, her name was Cecilia,
she used to bug me at school all the time
she was older than me for a couple of years
so she wasn't in my class but i'd see her
at the end of the school days while
we waited for our parents to pick us up
and on recesses sometimes
she had a sister in my class, Alma,
who was actually my friend and unlike her mean sister
a really nice girl
i used to wear a lot of turtle necks 'cause i always had
a sore throat...
Cecilia used to seat next to me and then pull
the turtle neck of my sweater
all over my face and sort of shocked me!
i was a very shy girl so pretty much did nothing
but to swallow my range and sometimes cry...
I think Cecilia was my very 1st enemy,
up to this day, I remember
the frustration and horror of seeing Cecilia coming to get me

apart from that mexican bully girl I cannot
recall another one enemy

i wonder if you friends reading
have a nemesis in your life?
a real 'archenemy'?
doesn't have to be a person but also
could be a situation you dread
or a food you won't taste?
any intimidating fears?
if so, i'd like to hear your story
we could have a common web-blog-therapy
huh?

horror at the dentist / compassion

yesterday, June 10th i had an awful reminder of physical pain
not even the root canal experience was this bad
they had to cut my gum to take an impression
for the new coming bridge in my mouth

not sure why, but the anesthesia was not working right
the dentist would inject me and work in my mouth
for about 10 minutes when i started feeling pain again
then he would have to inject again...
instead of 2 injections of anesthesia
(the usual amount for this procedure)
i had to have 6 injections!!
the dentist said that probably 'cause i was so nervous
the anesthesia wasn't working properly
also, since i am asthmatic i cannot use regular anesthesia
and that could've been a factor too, he said...

by the end of the procedure (that took about 2 hours)
my lips were sore, so my throat
my nose full of water and dust, and crusty blood
and then the anesthesia had faded again

i haven't been in such a physical pain for a while now
this pain of a cut gum also is very different from a
migraine pain, i wouldn't recommend neither of them

and i am not sure why while i am at the dentist
i always think of the 1800's and before times
when nor anesthesia nor dentists existed
i always think, what if i were a 40 year old woman
living back in those times?
probably i'd be dead by now of tooth pain
or any other of my maladies
must've been awful!
no pain-killers, any sort of comfort
and then i always cry thinking of our
ancestors and all they've been through

also i thought yesterday, not sure why,
maybe because of my large dose of the pain
of Michelangelo Buonarroti and the fact
that he was long time dead
(i admire Bounarroti's work of course
but i not really that much 'into him'
so why my thoughts run to him? i don't know)
but i thought of him
and on how sad is that he's dead so he can't
see the herds of people who admire daily
his Sistine Chapel or his David
and then i felt this horrible empty feeling
that most be how you feel when you are dead...
i felt, why, if even a big guy like
Michelangelo can't be here to share his dose of glory,
then, why? all this existence of pain?
I felt bad for Michelangelo, for myself,
and our human race
i felt afraid of pain, and i felt afraid of death....

and in the midst of all the pain
i was reminded of one of the human feelings
that make one feel worthy to be alive
a feeling i admire the most in humans
compassion
sadly there's not much of it going around anymore
people tend to think more of themselves
without asking about other's pain
we care about our own finances, our own pains,
maybe we care about our relatives or friends
but the global feeling of compassion for humanity
every day seems to be fade

but yesterday, this wonderful man, David, showed a
big deal of it towards me...

David, is my dentist's technician
a humble smiling Mexican man
he saw my tears of pain rolling down my cheeks
after the procedure, and he said,
you know what? this is just not fair
even if I was already holding on my hand a prescription
for vicodin and other anti-inflammatory drugs
he went to grab the dentist and asked him
to give me one more injection of anesthesia to numb
my gum for the amount of time it would take me
to go drive to the pharmacy, get the drugs
and they to take effect

David's attitude reminded me of myself
of my care towards the gatos i take care of
i have to go thru a daily amount of pain to take care of them
i am asthmatic and have a marked CAT allergy
still, i know there's nobody else to take care of them
specially of the allergic one, and if i send them to a shelter
they will be euthanized in about 3 days
my mom says i am an idiot for risking my health
but my argument is that i have the possibility
to go to a pharmacy, get allergy pills, and i even got
a set of opposable thumbs to open the pill's bottle
and what about them?
i feel as a human who happened to appear close to them
i have the responsibility of helping them!
we cannot just ignore creatures and pain
'cause they are inconvenient and they don't go
with our life-styles, sorry, but that for me is bull-shit...

human traits were not given to us for free!
but to help each other and other species as well
is the least we can do after having altered their natural
environment to adjust it to our own comfort
we owe animals and nature and whole deal of care!
so anyways...

David reminded me of what being a compassionate person is
David got out of his regular duties of just helping cleaning
during the surgery and assisting, moved by my tears
of course, after his words i cried even more!
moved by this man
who barely knows me and still gets moved
by a stranger in pain

lately, i've been thinking a lot about compassion then
even before this episode
and i've realized that sadly
compassion seems to be a characteristic rather feminine
men tend to be colder and more objective to pain
while women, we tend to melt when we see another human
or animal in distressed
men do care, i always get "I am sorry" and "Can I help"?
questions from my male friends
(not my best friend Perro, he's always there when I need him
but then again he's not to count on the bulk of people either)
and i know there are some really sensitive men out there too
but when it comes to pain and help
they seem to paralyze
they don't stand up and cure your wounds
as most women would do
i guess 'cause of the maternal instinct we have embedded
also 'cause our bodies tend to go through so much more pain
so it's for us easier to relate to it instead of running away

so wondering what this compassion feeling is all about
i went to the silliest but probably most logical place
to find a meaning, a dictionary (dictionary.com of course):

com⋅pas⋅sion
  /kəmˈpæʃən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuhm-pash-uhn] Show IPA
–noun
1. a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

and also found this wonderful quote that confirms
some of my suspicions about 'womanly' feelings:

"Womanly ingenuity set to work by womanly compassion."
--Macaulay.

Macauly put my attitude towards the gatos in some wonderful
womanly quote... i ignore my own sickness in order to try to
alleviate these furry creatures' pain...

& so glad to have met a compassionate man yesterday!
a quiet mexican nurse with a helping smile and hand

if you are in a position of helping someone today
maybe feeding a hungry bird some crumbs of bread
or rescue a spider from a trap
or share a Subway sandwich with a homeless guy
i say, go ahead! then you will feel like a human again

nico bibio copeland compiled by dj sandwich

back in 2005
while i was room-mating with my
friend Perro
he thought me how to "mix" records
vinyl LP's that is
and also CDs
then i became the DJ Sandwich...

he had a pretty neat set up
of 2 LP turntables and 2 CD turntables
connected to a mixer and all hooked
to his computer

so it was pretty easy to record digitally
from vinyl and create "mixes"
a couple of days ago I came across
the very short mix of 3 songs

the somewhat somber mood of these 3 pieces
except for the last track
seem to match these June's gloomy days

the sun is rather shy in San Diego these days

here the 3-song mix
remember this is a vinyl recording, from LPs
so you can hear some minor scratches on the LP of the Rumble Fish soundtrack by Copeland



some info on the songs
track 1
Nico - No One Is There
a cryptic somber song by controversial and beautiful
once vocalist of The Velvet Underground, Nico
taken from her second album
The Marble Index
here an allmusic.com review of no one is there

track 2
Bibio - won't know which track it was!
but it is from their album fi
an experimental musician from England
his music is much newer than Nico's
but somehow the feeling of this song
at least for my taste, seems to follow up
a bit of more info on Bibio

track 3
Stewart Copeland's - Brothers on Wheels
from his very first soundtrack
Rumble Fish
by the way, a superb film directed by Francis Ford Coppola
if you haven't seen it, rent it now!
filmed on sharp black & white
with some surprising color splashes
a classical ala greek American tragedy

Ps. the photo above is from Ocean Beach in 2005
in another June gloom, i used this photo
as the 'cover' for this mix on the internet radio
i used to post on my website before i had this blog

luna llena y tetris

a full moon illuminated night
after a beautiful-blue-skied-
with-big-fluffy-white-clouds day
in San Diego
a blurry sort of bad photo
but that i think captures a bit of the dramatic
effect of this full moon with clouds



just waiting for a little witch to appear
from behind the branches of the tree
ridding her broom while cackling

and celebrating the 25 year of Tetris
i decided to play some online
hours later and with sore index and middle finger
i post this and go to zzz
here in case you want to loose yourself on the 80's too
free tetris

rain on the weekend is always better than a sunny Tuesday with an unexpected root canal

the weekend was gray and drizzling
for two days i didn't see the sunshine
and that's a lot to say for San Diego

yet, it was a good weekend
my cousin JC was visiting
so we went to a couple of my
favorite places around the city



we visited again my favorite used
bookstore in the Hillcrest area (my prior neighborhood)
Bluestocking Books


this photo above is from this weekend
and here an older sepia photo of this beloved place of mine
i remember e-mailing this photo to the store owner
and telling her to use it if she'd like to
i think is the same photo she included on her website!
i am flattered!

and then we had a hot plate of Phở
at my favorite Phở place in El Cajon Blvd.
Phở Hòa



I have eaten Phở in other places
but this is for far the BEST Phở not only
in town, but after reading many online reviews
apparently is even better than many Phở in
Saigon itself, oh well well
no wonder why my mother insists on going there
at least twice while she visits
(here a sunnier shot of the happy cow)

and so it was a good weekend
but a little of tooth pain started sinking in
so today i decided to visit the dentist
only to confirm that i have an infected canine
and below a bridge, so with no more time to waste
and in the same visit the dentist tells me
i must have a root canal, the sooner the better
so, just like that, without being 'mentally'
prepared, nor prepared in ANY way
after what i thought might be an almost preventive
visit to the dentist, i had a root canal
only a couple of hours ago
of course there's the magic of anesthetics
sadly i had only local anesthesia, so i was
rather aware of the procedure

and as i type, i feel it wearing off
leaving turn to a mild strange pain

ah i just hope the Advil works so i can sleep

i guess i'll rely on the good moments of
the weekend, the mild rain in the morning
my fingers caressing the books at Bluestocking books
and the wonderful fragrance of a hot plate of Phở at
Phở Hòa

i still have many visits to the dentist until
this procedure is done, but at least the worst part
is behind... i truly hope this was my last ever root canal

i know i know
what a boring post!
but if you live in San Diego
(hint hint mister Smorg)
you have now the tip of where to eat the best Phở in town
and where to find used (and new) books in a lovely atmosphere

maladjusted

'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.'
- J. Krishnamurti

Ps. mein Kopf tut weh
Pd. me duele la cabeza

Requiem for the Boa

mister boa in a bag

today is a very sad day for the feline world
a super cool specimen of cat has died
my beloved friend Boa
who my beloved friend Perro took care of
for over 15 years of his little furry life
he had to be put to sleep today

after living with Perro for 15 years
Boa, the cat left us a trace of memories and adventures
hard to forget
i had the pleasure to roommate with Boa
for about 1 year and a half
and i've been knowing him as long as i've been
knowing Perro, that is, since June 2001

Boa had a great 'personality'
he wasn't your regular shy cat
oh not at all! maybe 'cause he was a stray
before meeting Perro, he indeed captured
the cheerfulness and savviness from the
streets of San Diego

I remember him, 'hanging out' at parties with us
his brother, cat Gibby, more like a 'normal' cat
(and not that Gibby is normal but...) but Gibby
would go to Perro's room and sort of hide of the
group of friends while we were drinking beer
and talking out loud... but not Boa!
he would just seat around us, even if falling asleep
paying attention to what anybody would say
fighting to keep himself awake
with a group a lunatic humans
(i bet he thought that of us...)
and he always behaved as a part of the 'gang'
& whenever there were people around
he would jump on some unknown guest lap
specially on laps of pretty girls
he was not a silly cat!
he really liked girls' laps
and he indeed made his human dad Perro
very mad at many times, jumping on top
of counters, decks, and forbidden spaces
until a couple of days ago
Perro tried to educate him
Boa always got away with whatever he wanted
and being his crazy self active cat
until this his last day in the land of the living


Gibby (full name Gibson) and Boa, back in 2005

and just as it seems to happen with humans
the cool ones seems to go faster, somehow
but I am glad that the Boa lived to age 16
and of having meeting him and getting
some of his feline cheerfulness

sure he's already having a blast
in cat heaven, rolling on heavenly catnip
and eating cloudy endless fish at all times

here a couple of photos of him from 23
a couple have several comments
worth mentioning, from friends in Europe
and New York city
Boa had his
moments of internet stardom too!

and as i've been learning
specially on this 2009
death is the only certain part of life
but anyhow...

long live the Boa cat in our hearts!

mogwai, tomorrow

Friday night
i am seeing Mogwai
at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach
always some structured melodic noise
is good to smear on one's soul

their Stanley Kubrick song



and opening for them
Dead Meadow
[worth checking out their website...]
never heard this band before
but they are with
Matador Records
and that's a good start
and if all their songs sound like this one
somber, dark
then i am gonna like them
yes, i think so...

of skunks and homemade music

it seems that i am making friends with
Pepe Le Pew, this little mister skunk
he's one of the three who live next door
sometimes i see two of them, or one at the time
they come around for cat leftover food and seeds that
from the bird feeder, lately, i've been sharing
scraps of food, left overs of fruit and veggies
since they are messy eaters, when i saw this red little
double dish at Target for only 0.89 ¢, i bought it
and mister Pepe Le Pew, he seems to like it!
and every night they are a little less afraid of me
just hoping they won't spray me!, but it seems
that we are becoming friends



and along with the discovery of this stinky friendship
last night came too this great homemade music
that my friend perro found on FAWM.org
February Album Writing Month

now this is a very cool website where 'amateur'
musicians composed & upload an album in just one month
and this is a short month too! being February it

perro (as Looprication) composed a great album
a wonderful piece of electronic heaven/mess
some tracks have some obscure great lyrics
click on the link below to listen to his songs
Songs for the Darkness, Songs for the Dawn


and yesterday he gave me a copy
of these duo that have a set of clever, ironic,
soulful, superb lyrics, with a very fresh sound
and music
worth checking them out!
Ben & Petie
every song is a jewel

and to think, this is only some
homemade music...

feliz día de las madres

Happy mother's day!
Zum Muttertag der Mutti das Beste!
¡Feliz Día de las Madres!


mi mamá, Doña Berenice Navarro in Autlán, México - December 2008

and a special congratulations
to my dear friend Lisa
who celebrate her first mother's day
as her lovely daughter Saskia was born
in April

thank you! to all the mothers in the world
who have taken the big responsibility with love
of continuing this rather unique human race