Author: Ruestrasse

The Mexican Aztec tiger is still missing its teeth – Brief Notes series

Posted on by Ruestrasse

Mexico is back in the limelight, in a way that reminds many of a pre-’94 era when its then President Carlos Salinas said to his American counterpart in the impeccable English of a true technocrat – “We don’t want help. We want business.” This rhetoric would set the tone of a period in which the NAFTA became the center of discussions at cafes and restaurants, a concept that at times held an approval rating amongst the educated sector of the population so high that Ecuador’s recently reelected President Rafael Correa would envy.


Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador
Fast forward to today, the country has found itself the beneficiary of macroeconomic dynamics in the developed world which have resulted in cash being poured throughout its geography in a way that has created problems of sustainability as well as principal-agent conflicts with leaders of local municipalities, prompting the rating agencies to have a field trip downgrading their debt several notches at a time. But that is fine as long as the 30,000 ft picture remains stable, if one is to look at it through the eyes of of the broader investor community.
Mexico grew just about 4% in 2012, more than countries like South Korea (2.2%), U.S. (2.2%) and the Eurozone’s – 0.5%. But it also lagged Chile, China and southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Indonesia. Its 4.5% average annual growth of the last three years may seem like a solid indication of growth stability, until contrasted with the – 6.5% of 2009. So maybe Mexico is now in fashion because it seems to have broken a trend of lackluster growth during two back-to-back “opposition party” administrations, when it barely managed to inch an average of 1.9%, just about the annual population growth of the period. If we talk of the last thirty years, the average approaches zero and definitely falls behind its demographic growth trend. Can we talk about true progress when a country’s economic growth hasn’t been able to keep up with the expansion of its population?
Another constructive argument could be that the economic stability and relative policy consistency of the last 25 years is only now paying dividends. Well, there are important reforms pending (fiscal, labor, energy, education, etc.) and archaic public entity models that desperately need to be updated (the likes of PEMEX for oil and CFE for electricity). Still, the international community seems optimistic the current President can find a way to foster the necessary alliances and build consensus to push them through a belligerent Congress more focused on their political career than in compromising to achieve anything. Sounds familiar? A clear example, anyone who dares to talk about private capital infusions or qualified professional management for the national oil company will find ferocious opposition from all political factions. There are just too many sacred cows that remain untouchable, a fact counterintuitively exacerbated after the apprehension of the leader of the country’s teacher’s union Elba Ester Gordillo.
Former boss of the Teacher’s Union


My take: I have seen this picture before, and unfortunately it does not end well. The stars align to support a brilliant economic future for the country (high oil prices, revival of U.S. manufacturing, a global environment favorable to EM economies, abundant natural resources and favorable demographic dynamics, geographical advantage over its main competitor to export to the U.S.). Yet, politicians and industrialists alike waste the opportunity because of petty self-interest. Smith’s invisible hand will not help this time around, and may even get in the way. Unless government policy is strongly biased towards the improvement of the middle and lower economic class living conditions through a true educational reform that prepares the population to exploit the opportunity, we will see a an exacerbation of the income polarization trend that has produced the world’s richest man. If conditions remain unchanged, we will witness a deepening of the national security problems that have resulted in the de-facto suspension of the government’s ruling power in large parts of the territory. I would caution about the long-term growth prospects of this economy until sustainable far-reaching reform is achieved in this field, more than energy and health.
It is still too soon to believe Mexico is on its way to turn into the economic Aztec tiger (jaguar?) many expect, following the steps of its Asian counterparts. What remains true is this country has, once again, everything in its favor to do so.
Sources:
– Mexico Municipal Debt debacle as highlighted in Moodys and S&P notes like “Moody’s downgrades Acapulco to Ba2.mx, ratings under review for possible downgrade”. Moody’s Investors Service. January 15, 2013. http://www.moodys.com.mx
– “Tigre Azteca” by Sergio Sarmiento. Reforma. Feb 18th, 2013
– “Mexico: Aztec Tiger – Mexico Institute in the News”. Wilson Center for Independent Research, Open Dialogue and Actionable ideas. January 31, 2013. 
– “The rise of Mexico”. The Economist. November 24th, 2012. 

Heated Constitutional Debate in Venezuela – Amended AP news piece

Posted on by Ruestrasse

Heated Constitutional Debate in Venezuela
2013-01-09 17:14:13.365 GMT

Caracas, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s joke of a congress has voted with its ass to postpone the next inauguration of President Hugo Chavez, which was scheduled for Thursday, to allegedly let him recover from cancer surgery in Cuba. Critics say that violates the country’s constitution, which chavistas insist has never ever ever happened before.

The issues at a glance:

WHEN SHOULD IT HAPPEN: Article 231 of the Venezuelan  Toilet Paper Constitution says a new president “shall take office on January 10, by taking an oath before the a National Assembly made of crooks and opportunists.” But it  adds: “If for any unforeseen reason, real or invented, the President of the banana Republic cannot be sworn in before the National Assembly, he or she (but really Chavez) shall take the oath of office before the Supreme Nachos Court.” Chavez loyalists, aka those that fear for their lives if justice is to be made, note that clause does not explicitly mention a date for a swearing-in before the Court, and argue it can be carried out at a later date, or whenever his majesty feels like showing up. Critics say the constitution is clear that one term ends on Jan. 10 and another begins, even if with the same old ruthless President, so officials appointed by Chavez in his previous term will no longer have legitimacy after that date. No one in the debate was able to define this strange term, “legitimacy”.

IF IT’S DELAYED: Opposition politicians argue that the only option to postpone, or hopefully cancel this useless and meaningless ceremony, is for Congress to approve a 90-day “temporary absence” for the president, leaving the so-called head of the National Assembly as interim president for 90 days, to receive and promptly implement instructions from Chavez, a period that could be extended for an additional 90 days as many times as necessary. Vice President Nicolas Maduro, globally unknown and politically irrelevant until Chavez got sick, and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, also restless because of the imminent demise of his cash cow, argue that Chavez remains in his duties as president from a hospital bed and that he should be granted more time to recover or just die already and get this mess over with.
THE COURT: The extremely incompetent opposition leaders say they plan to bring the issue before Venezuela’s Supreme Court, which has no authority under Chavez whatsoever but claim the authority to rule on constitutional questions; with the only problem being their awful track record in getting things done like kicking Chavez out of the power. On Tuesday, it rejected a challenge brought by one lawyer who argued that Cabello should temporarily assume the presidency because, let’s be serious here, Chavez won’t leave until death or later.
Jan/09/2013 17:14 GMT

Mexico post 2012 election – Brief Notes series

Posted on by Ruestrasse
At the height of a bitter political campaign this year, the average Mexican citizen found himself forced to decide amongst 3 alternatives: 1) the continuation of a regime that had left thousands dead in a war with little hope for success; 2) the return of the party that ruled uninterruptedly by denying the most basic democratic ideals to the population for the majority of the 20th century and; 3) a candidate that openly promised a change so radical that it threatened the interests of the large conglomerates, unions and historically stable political groups.
It was the PRI, the old party that combines the words “revolutionary” and “institutional” in its name, that on election day concentrated the residual vote of those who felt uncomfortable with the other two choices to decidedly win the Presidency. The good news is that the country managed to avoid the ambiguity of 2006, which left President Calderon with a crisis of legitimacy he was only  partially able to overcome, if well into his term. The bad news is that large and important sectors of the electorate (the young, the intellectuals, the inhabitants of the rural areas) strongly oppose Mr. Peña Nieto’s background, party and economic plans. Interestingly, he has found important allies in the departing President’s party, PAN (National Action party), for many of his most market friendly proposals. This has happened at a time in which his own party has thrown sand at the wheels of his promoted Labor Reform as it would have negatively affected the unions, to whom his party has strong historical ties. These dynamics so early in his presidency are a representative sample of the muddy and turbulent political waters Mr. Peña Nieto must quickly learn to navigate in order to be able to have initiatives of larger reach and greater impact than those he promoted in his home state approved and implemented. This is no longer the age of the old PRI, when whatever the President said became law.
Switching gears to the economic front, if growth ends at 3.8% in 2012 the economy will have grown at an average annual rate of 1.9% under Mr. Calderon. This 1.9% reflects the impact of the 6.5% fall in growth in 2009. During the same period, the  population has kept a 1.8% growth rate, roughly indicating there has been only a marginal improvement in GDP per capita. There has been no recoil, but this is hardly the desired result of the self-titled “President of Employment”.  Vicente Fox, before Calderon, didn’t fare much better. Mexico grew at an average annual rate of 1.8% then, adding six more years of low growth for the country.
More recently, things have started to look brighter even for a country with a keen ability to turn opportunity into disaster. Mexico has grown at an average annual rate of 4.3% on the back of a healthy exports sector that has benefitted from increasing Chinese wages, proximity to the large U.S. economy and a cheap currency. Despite the anemic growth of the “sexenio”, the social security administration, IMSS, registered an average of 367 thousand jobs created per year. It is not an impressive figure, but at least one that has helped maintain a sense of macroeconomic stability and signals some progress in the battle to incorporate more workers to the formal economy. Still, the number remains below the 1 million necessary to provide formal jobs to all that join the labor force. What stands out is that this job shortage, an important factor behind the resilience of the drug crisis, took place at a time when oil maintained record high prices, contributing to increase the disposable income of Calderon’s government. Where did all the money go? Well, it was spent. Net spending in 2012 was 60% more than in 2006; and three times the 2000 figure. The problem is that much of that money went to less productive uses like promoting the Presidential image, increases in already generous pensions for public servants (who can retire early and with very favorable benefits) and to fight the war on drugs. Finally, part of this excess revenue went to gas subsidies, which contribute to exacerbate wealth inequality by providing a financial benefit to the higher economic class that can afford one or various vehicles at the expense of everyone’s taxes.
Despite the human and financial cost of the war on drugs, the European debt crisis and the effects of the systemic crisis of 2008-09, Mexico had a great opportunity to achieve escape velocity in its race towards becoming a formal member of the economically developed world. It couldn’t properly exploit it then, but destiny has been generous with the country and seems to have granted it another (perhaps brighter) opportunity under Peña Nieto.

The high-school reunion

Posted on by Ruestrasse

And so I missed the ferry to the island of Saint John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. That meant I had to wait for about 2 hours at this rundown dock in Saint Thomas for the next one. My beer-locator GPS allowed me to quickly scout the area and identify a small bar called “Tickles” only a few steps from the dock, where a cold drink would surely make the time go faster. A plump middle age man on crutches approached the bar. I helped him get on his stool. We started talking after he thanked me and I asked the bartender for “the strongest drink in the establishment for a wounded veteran”. We both laughed a bit. He then ordered a Red Stripe instead. I gestured the bartender that I wanted one of the same, and asked her to keep bringing them.

Our conversation was dull at first. By the third beer, he had already shown me pictures of his two kids, told me about issues he was having with his wife, complained about his tyrannical boss… the works. Then we jumped onto the topic of our school years. Good times… It turns out he had had his 20 year high-school reunion only a month ago. We joked about how we want to make sure our former classmates turned into old fat wrinkled middle-age men and women with flappy arms and dead-end jobs. Yes, we agreed that is everyone’s secret hope. “What can be more satisfying than shaking hands with the former football star, king of popularity, now turned into a bloated, bald, data entry specialist?” – I said, without even stopping to think my new friend was a somewhat large, almost completely bald middle-age man who could very well be a data entry specialist judging by his glasses and worn jacket elbows. He laughed when he noticed my expression of regret for what I had just said, at the end of my almost unfinished sentence. He then laughed some more, tilting his head back to accentuate the effect. Then he told me a story.

He was a bit of a bully when he was in school, but over time made amends with his victims. One of his old targets, Tim, came to the 10 year reunion back in 2002. He was completely bald. Brad, my new friend, laughed at Tim’s cue ball for a head as soon as he saw him, tilting his head back the same way he had just done. Tim smiled widely, and replied – “You are not doing too well yourself!”. Brad was balding a bit already, so they both had a hearty laugh and grabbed a beer. They talked about the teachers, the hotties, the jocks, the cheerleaders… There was no shortage of funny stories about life in and outside the classroom. Brad confessed to Tim they could have been great friends, had the strange social rules that prevented nerds from fraternizing with the cool guys been abolished.

The reunion went on until the early hours of the morning. It seemed as if everybody loved everybody now. Brad and Tim promised to stay in touch, even if the former lived in Chicago and the latter in Seattle. Hey, what is social media for? They both opened Facebook accounts, but after adding each other forgot to check in ever again.

Tim died of pancreatic cancer two years later. Brad didn’t find out until a month ago, when he asked for his buddy at the 20 year reunion. They hadn’t talked again in 10 years, after promising to keep in touch.

A world of memories made his way into Brad’s memory in a disorderly fashion. Every piece of the conversation they had at the last reunion came back, and his comment about Tim’s baldness has haunted him since then. THAT’s why he was bald! It all made sense now. Tim wasn’t the balding type. He was just bald as a result of the chemotherapy.

I finished my seventh beer. It was a quick couple of hours, and we were a couple of quick drinkers. He had five, only because he had to balance the drinking with his telling me the story. After he said this, we stayed at the bar in silence for a few minutes. My eyes were fixed on the label of the beer. I finally looked back at Brad and saw tears flowing down his cheeks. A grown man crying is an uncommon sight. I stood up to give him the typical semi-hug men give each other in a situation like this. Is that what one is supposed to do in a situation like this? How to categorize a situation like this? A situation like this… With little experience in that department, I did what I could.

I heard the distinct sound of a boat’s horn. My ferry was coming to the dock. I gave a quick glance at my luggage to hint we should get going, and only then noticed he didn’t have any. “Where’s your luggage?” – I dared ask. He said – “Where I am going, I don’t need any luggage”. He didn’t come on the ferry, so we said our farewells and I left after paying the bill. “Keep the change” – told the bartender.

The wind blew on my back, making a mess of my hair as I waved to Brad from the ferry. But he was no longer there to wave back.

Useless Icelandic doors

Posted on by Ruestrasse

Catching a strong flu in the middle of the summer is only ironic if you associate the ailing to the cold season. The way it feels, the god of viruses is punishing me for bragging about not getting it during the winter. It also effectively prevents me from drinking beer, without which life as it stands can turn borderline unbearable. However, few things are more confusing to the body than a nasty flu combined with booze. Or maybe it is that I just haven’t tried the right drugs.
Maybe people shouldn’t bring their kids to a bar, out of respect to the other patrons. There is a loud child sitting at the table behind mine. Will the judge reduce my sentence if I explain that shutting him permanently was an act of self-defense? If that doesn’t work, I could make a strong argument about the obvious benefit of preventing a killing rampage at the place, ignited by his incessant yelling. His parents look sedated already, dragging him back and forth from the bathroom like zombies. They look at me with an expression that reads “you don’t know what an ordeal this is”. I look back, with one that says “ask someone else to jump onto your boo-hoo train, there is no sympathy here for you”. While going through these complex gestural communications, I thought of someone I know who feels the same way.
Larsson and Margret met at the line to register for one of the local high schools in Reykjavik, Iceland. In a country so small the Prime Minister will meet regular citizens in his office without an appointment, it is hard to reach puberty without having met pretty much everyone in one’s age group. These two hadn´t met before making the line. And make the line they did. They talked, and talked and then talked some more. It was the same boring fishing stories, the circular complain they had both heard a million times that Iceland had a temporary liquidity issue, not a solvency problem, the same clothing and the same thermal water anecdote. Because it was him, the way Larsson told them made Margret laugh. The way Margret listened kept Larsson hypnotized, and talking. It was a miracle hardly ever seen amongst slim people that these two found love right there and then.
They have been together for 23 years, in a house they bought at the peak of their love cycle, when the subprime crisis was but a theory. At the time, the stories he told her still made her laugh. And it was a sincere laugh, when she was in a good enough mood. If you decided to dig deeper, you would realize she only laughs by habit now. His jokes are the same; just not funny anymore. And he thinks he knows it, but is afraid to speak to her about it. He is scared that the glue that keeps them together is the little jokes, habits and gestures they have grown accustomed to in each other. In fact, their effectiveness has been fading slowly for a long time now.
Oh, and there is also the now 3-year old little girl that arrived uninvited at a time when they needed her least. If they had thought about parting ways then, the idea met the bottom of the emotional trash can quicker than the pregnancy test read “positive”. Isn’t it ironic just how negative a positive can be depending on one’s circumstances?
The time to choose came dressed as a pack of cigarettes. “I will go out and smoke a quick one”, he said to her. She didn’t respond.
He put on his favorite shirt, the one with blue and white vertical stripes. He loved how people looked at him when he wore it, probably thinking his departure from black meant he was Danish, or even English. He also brought his pencil and an old notebook to write, sat at the local pub and thought of ordering a Delirium Tremens. “No reason to lose your style”, he told to himself.
With one hesitant strike, he divided the first page of the notebook in two, left for pros and right for cons. But that didn’t help either. The cons column quickly filled up. The pros were few and far apart. Nothing compensated him for his lack of success at work, lost nights with the guys, lack of exercise because of his time investment in the family. But also, nothing could compare to the feeling of seeing her run, rosy cheeks and all, to his arms when he arrived morally defeated from work.
He couldn’t even drink the beer. After ordering, he realized alcohol would probably interfere with the effect of the medicine he was taking. Instead, he ordered some tea. Any tea. “Who cares what tea? It’s tea”, he thought. He sneezed on the notebook, covering the page he was writing on with green and yellow mucus. He tore it up with rage, realizing it was the noise of the kid in the nearby booth that made him angry. Looking at the bar’s door reminded him of his inescapable reality.
He asked for the check, but the bartender told him the tea was on the house. He smiled at him, looked one last time at the irresponsible couple with the annoying kid and stood up with the intention of leaving. He threw the unopened pack of cigarrettes on the floor and stared at the exit sign on the door. It was there that he fantasized making the conscious decision to give it another chance. Tearing the pros/cons notebook page into pieces was all he could really do to feel a bit better. Truth is, there isn’t an emergency exit door available to him anymore.

The dead cat that lives

Posted on by Ruestrasse

Life in Yala has got to be the slowest on earth.
The tropical heat of the summer, people dragging their feet everywhere as if
they were calmly pulling shrimp-fishing nets, the unmistaken look of acceptance
on their face. As if there was nothing they could do to change their sorry lives. In
a village where even the town’s idiot is boring, it takes a special kind of creativity
to avoid being sucked into the blob of work-obsessed / family friendly, farmers,
fishermen, laborers, cattlemen… This has to be the shittiest little town
in all of Thailand. Where is the nosy Guinness records official when you need
him?
Yala, Thailand


I am the son of Narong, next-to-lowest ranked
worker of the Muang Yala Municipal Slaughterhouse. We live next to my dad´s
workplace. People like to say that you will eventually get used to the smells
around you, no matter how bad they are. I never did. Waking up in the middle of
the night to run outside and vomit because of the revolting smell emanating
from Muang Yala will not only turn your stomach upon itself, but also the
stubbornest carnivore into a vegetarian. And if the foul smell doesn’t do the
trick, waking up from an afternoon nap with your face covered on a sticky
film of dead bovine remains burned less than 50 feet from you definitely will.
The reason people can’t get used to the smell is that it varies widely in its
intensity. It is not always there, but when it is it will invariably catch you by
surprise. It will sneak up your nostrils with the subtlety of the smoothest
life insurance professional salesman, coincidently another strong reminder of
our mortality and its unavoidable smell.

Even a glass-half-empty kind of guy like me
must admit not everything is negative about the situation. One of the
benefits of living next to a slaughterhouse is that you learn to accept death.
One of the perils, however, is that you want to teach others to accept it too.
I took it a step further, on the back of the fact that few things excite me
more than torturing small, defenseless animals. I too like to teach them
to accept death, only slowly. They have to keep up with the pace of the
village, don’t they?

A particularly humid afternoon, my bored eyes landed on the neighbor’s
cat. The animal was slowly strolling down the sidewalk in front of a fenced
patio full of fierce dogs the town’s crazy old lady lived with. All seven barked
furiously at the cat, which started walking even slower, feeling protected by
the wired fence while in a state of fascination at the scene. I walked slowly towards
the cat’s path, in an almost perfect 90-degree angle, carefully calculating our
combined speed to ensure we would meet before the end of the fence. The cat
kept walking with his full attention on the barking dogs, unaware of my feline
advance. My heart pounded out of control in ecstasy. I prayed it wouldn’t give
me away. I even stopped thinking, afraid the electric connections between my
brain cells would create a noise and give me away.

The cat noticed my presence a fraction of a second too late. I grabbed him
as he it turned its face to me and, without hesitation, threw him over the
fence. He tried to fight, but lost vital momentum in the process. Still, he managed to hold on
to the top of the wired fenced with one claw. Unfortunately for him, one of the
dogs jumped and knocked him down. In his fall, the cat seemed to avoid even
touching the floor in his desperate jump to escape certain death. He jumped and
ran around as fast as he could, but the patio wasn’t large enough to give him a
fair chance. The dogs quickly got to him, and mercilessly tore him to pieces as he noisily fought to get away.
I couldn’t move, frozen by a mix of curiosity that shut any impulse to try to
help him and the recognition that  the drama unfolding in
front of my eyes had been triggered by my own resolute actions. What did I expect? Was the cat supposed to leave the patio
bruised and with a cane, covered with Band-Aids as in the stupid cartoons I
watched every day? No. I had exercised my God-given free will to help murder
a living creature in a horrible way. And I liked it. And I hated it. And I was proudly
ashamed. 





Something broke inside me in the path to becoming a man. A brutal man.
A bully of mother nature, using her own power against her.


With all the commotion, my cousin Jeoun came out of her house, just
across the street where it all took place. Her tired face distorted in horror
as she realized what happened. She started yelling at me with anger,
while her eyes spat tears of blood. I wish I could write some of what she said
to me, but I couldn’t hear her. It was as if sounds had stopped reaching my
brain in order to give me the space I needed to fully experience the moment. I
had not only learned to accept incidental death, but also to teach others to do
so, if by force. Time is a great teacher that has the habit of killing its
students. I am no great teacher, but I’m good at killing my students.

I left Yala many years ago. In all this time, I have been incapable of
reckless actions of that caliber. Not because I became a better person. My
heart is the same tiny piece of coal it has always been. It is because of what happened the exact
moment that doomed the poor cat. Instead of running for his life, he turned is
head 180 degrees as our paths crossed and looked me in the
eye. It was the longest split second of my life. For what seemed like years,
his soul connected with mine. Beyond the tragedy, his sad eyes stayed tattooed
on my brain. Now, every time I see a weaker creature with the intention of
destroying it, something with claws makes me stop. I often wake up in the
middle of the night from a nightmare, where a sad gray cat looks me in the eye
with the saddest facial expression on earth.

Back in Thailand, I had the cruel spirit of the hungerless hunter in me.
I was his promised son.

Today, I must slowly walk through life with the anguish of knowing I had
the power of life and death in my hands, and lost it to a stupid dead cat. I lost it to the sad eyes of a dead cat.








Rivers flow into the ocean

Posted on by Ruestrasse

                                       

Wolves have a complex, hierarchical social structure. There are many levels and categories, but the main three are easy to identify, if at the risk of grossly oversimplifying their nature. Amongst males, there is the Alpha Dog, the leader of the pack. His complement, the Beta Dog, exists by the “live and let live” credo; settling for the half-eaten prey, the shallow cave and the less desirable – often sick – females in order to avoid conflict.

Anyone would characterize Micko as the quintessential Alpha Dog at first, second, and third sight. Still, there was often that peculiar sense that something didn’t quite fit. Something was just not quite right with him.

When he was a kid, he enjoyed engaging his friends into what he called “the exciting adventures of an otherwise dull existence”. While the others played sports, he played “burn the anthill”, or broke into the town’s abandoned houses just for the rush. Another example of his exciting adventures, he enjoyed going with friends to the cemetery at midnight to read the tombstones at first, but later to write snide graffiti signs on them like “I thought I was going to rise on the third day” or “Enjoying not hearing your nagging anymore, Adele”. He would sometimes go so far as to find out information on the living relatives of the deceased and refer to them in blasphemous writings such as this last one.

Micko was the kind of kid teachers complained about. He was not interested in formal education in the least. To a few, his attitude represented a waste of talent. But for most, his behavior was the result of the authority void in his fatherless house.

Micko eventually realized the importance of social assimilation – public acceptance – as unavoidable means to achieve his goals, oddly including financial security as a foundation of his personal Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. How financial security made it amongst the priorities of this otherwise chaotic mind was only one more element of the incongruence that defined his personality. How he then suddenly burned through everything he had once saved further puzzled even those closest to him. Nobody would have said his words were consistent with his behavior.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

                                     

The sands of time kept falling through. High school, college,… he got the best education money could buy. Many would agree he was a “natural born leader”; someone that people felt comfortable admiring, but not easy to interact with on account of his abrasive personal style. He proved to be someone who would one minute support a project/idea with infecting passion, only to unexpectedly discard it later leaving everyone involved puzzled and disappointed. How could anyone feel safe following such fickle character, strong at times, at others painfully unpredictable?

Natural Born Leaders

Every morning, the taste of blood in his mouth felt like yet another rock in his shoe, frequently adding to the list of grievances that made him irritable. Publicly, however, people rarely noticed he was uncomfortable. His capacity to conceal his true feelings carried the elusive smell of success by the standards of the rest. In his head, a fierce war of several factions to define meaning shattered the limits of his mental sanity. Daily clashes with other Alphas and an unquenchable territorial ambition, combined with an uncontrollable desire to defeat his peers, turned him into a formidable competitor in almost every area of life. Why did he feel the strong need to concede, give up the race and just play it safe with others; to have close friends instead of strategic allies? Why did he dream so fondly of the day when it would all end? And importantly, why did being someone’s second-in-command feel so wrong and painful? His roles in life after school had always been supportive of someone else’s dreams. He was always second – the vice chief, the undersecretary, the next in line… He did the work while someone else always got the credit. He lived in the shadows of the ones who got to enjoy the spotlight.

Is there no dignity in being Sherlock Holmes’ second, Dr. John H. Watson? At this point, the mere thought of helping someone else shine made him sick to his stomach. Why not him? Yet, a crippling sense of inferiority prevented him from enjoying success in any way other than fully his. Also, it wasn’t worth the effort if it didn’t mean somebody else lost. Any achievement was a failure if someone else got something better. A game in which all won was unacceptable, for he only derived true pleasure from games in which his opponents were utterly defeated – extra points if they ended up morally destroyed. Nothing made him happier than taking someone’s dignity and spitting it back on their face. He wouldn’t even hesitate to fabricate new enemies if deemed necessary.

With far more questions than answers, and his twisted incentives to live by, he led his army of misfits to create havoc indiscriminately. He hadn’t noticed before, but those that followed him were the rejected, the deformed, the amputees… In a word, they were the ostracized. With such tribe of oddballs, he spent his remaining days bending the straight, contaminating the pure, and perverting the innocent for his own enjoyment. That, until he chose to slash the thread of his own existence with a rusty, dull shaving blade. Through the savagery of his doings, he contemplated his own reflection in the pool of blood that soaked the filthy bathroom mat he fell on and now expanded into the tiled floor. In the growing pond of thick, dark blood, he saw his face slowly morph into the abyss of the unknown. Instants before dying, he finally found himself. Rather, he got to confront the man he built with unmistakable resolve over the years, effectively sculping his character with his actions.

Wolves have a complex, hierarchical social structure. There are many different levels and categories, but the main three are easy to identify, if at the risk of grossly oversimplifying their nature. Amongst males, there is the Alpha Dog, the leader of the pack. His complement, the Beta Dog, exists by the “live and let live” credo; settling for the half-eaten prey, the shallow cave and the less desirable – often sick – females in order to avoid conflict.

Then there’s the Rogue Dog; the disenfranchised member of the pack that lives on the fringe. They are the casted out who could never truly fit, and often stood out for socially unacceptable reasons. The Rogue Dog lives his life as an agent of chaos in the eyes of the pack.

Micko lived conflicted between the role of Batman, to which he thought he aspired, and that of Robin, to which he thought he was condemned. It wasn’t until the end – HIS end – that he was confronted with the truth. Gravity eventually did its job. Unbeknownst to him, he had always been The Joker.

Happy After-Vacation Thoughts (by Loretto)

Posted on by Ruestrasse

An independent contribution from a RIT follower

Sunken into the awful reality of having to go back to work tomorrow. I was so happy living in the denial of my life, that the shock of authenticity might be too great to handle.

Would it not be remarkable if this carefully crafted reality that I constructed for myself the last few days would indeed turn out to be part of an alternate reality to which I was launched during sleep? It most certainly would. Unfortunately, true reality cannot be crafted. It can merely be lived, “created” by the sum of our decisions; and not by an ever active imagination fueled by a profound sense of denial.

If only…

Loretto

Modern Fanaticism

Posted on by Ruestrasse

Counterintuitive as it sounds, it is easy for a person like me to identify with the weak national identity of the collection of human enclaves known as South Africa. I didn’t need to spend much time interacting with this multicultural, multiethnic society to somehow feel part of it; an unofficial member of one of its subtly rejected subcultures. Growing up in a resented bicultural society was enough. That experience has shown me we need more Nelson Mandelas and less Malcom X’s if we are to learn to forgive those we deem our enemy and just move on with our lives. The grievances are too ingrained; and too many if you insist on counting and classifying. We need more Ghandis to throw to the basement of oblivion those millenary grudges that hold us down; that prevent us from moving forward. This hate manifests itself in many ways and areas of daily life, noticeably including sports, where it is not only accepted but often encouraged. Sporting events make for wars, arenas are the 21st century battlefield on artificial grass. Blood is hardly ever shed anymore, reason why purists insist boxing can be considered to be in a less advanced stage in this evolution. Boxing as a more honest way to express hate for one another.

Nationalism creates, as does religion, the illusion of purpose. Beyond feeding and reproduction, there is an elevated motive that justifies our existence and allows us to belong. There is a structure, a reason, upon which reasoning beyond suffering, sacrifice, a noble spirit and altruism can be built. I shall lend my hand to my neighbor, as long as I retain the right to determine who my neighbor is. Today, my neighbor is he who thinks and acts like I do, prays to the same god and cheers the same team colors. Those who believe in a different god, have a different skin color, speak a different language or live in a distant land do not qualify for the neighbor exception.

Three key sources of population stupidification. Three different ways of political/ideological oppression. Nationalism, sports and religion. I no longer care if my phone gets hacked, or whether I pay more taxes to fund government programs to keep us “safe”. All I care about now is that my team wins for more than 1 goal in the next game in order to make it to the next stage in the International Football Tournament of… whatever. I am interested in making sure Chichen-Itza is elected one of the new seven wonders of the world, and I will vote for it without bothering to look at the other candidates. Oh, and I have never been to Chichen-Itza. But who gives a damn?

God is merciful. I am convinced that he will remember me, what I suffer, my sacrifice for my fellow man; since this suffering represents the key to eternal life in a place where I won’t be hungry or thirsty again. Without suffering, we would have never heard of Job.

If you are bored and you are selfish, clap your hands

Posted on by Ruestrasse

Boredom. At every level, and in every sense.
This is not the kind of fun I was promised.
With bars, and chutes;
and songs, and different types of cheese.
Not the one I thought about for years
of compulsively swallowing this pointless existence.

We make no difference in or out of this world.
Selfishness is intergenerational.
All I care about is what I leave behind me.
Selfishness knows no boundaries, and
death doesn´t end it.
It is how we are wired; the zenith of our survival.
My first thought is always selfish and often criminal.
It is what you know; and it is who I am.