29 September 2010

Fear Trumps Growth

Allow Me to remind you of a hee-yuge topic that you don't hear squat about anymore: cutting government jobs.

If you've read My previous remarks about this, you'll know I'm far from surprised. I even quantified My lack of surprise by stating that (non)governor Luis "The Larva" Fortuño would not exceed 7,000 firings in his 4 years (not) at the helm. According to the government's own figures, the number of jobs actually reduced as of June 2010 was barely 2,600...and this from the (non)administration that wants to trumpet high numbers. (So what I'm saying here is that they're lying.)

The two primary reasons for the (non)firings--sorry, force of habit: non-firings--is that We have used the government employee system to prop up Our political economy (emphasis on "politics," denial of "economy") and because We, as a nation, are a bunch of cowards. We refuse to face up to the very simple facts that (a) We are responsible for this mess, (b) We prolong this mess and (c) It is up to Us--and only Us--to fix this freaking mess.

We won't. At least not in the sense of proactively grabbing the leprous bull by the horns and making the changes We need; it'll be change coming from "everything's screwed up to total uselessness," and change is thus forced. And you know how popular and painless forced changes are...

The hullaballoo, the angst, the ridiculous excesses from Fools, protesters and pundits with the brains Nature gave a flea's ass all come down to this: silence. Inertia. A return to "failed business as usual" because, what the hey, Obama sent checks! We remain where We are--and shouldn't be--because We lack the courage to stand up to the challenges We have created for Ourselves and thrash out solutions for growth.

The saying goes that a cowards dies a thousand deaths, a brave person only one. Tell Me, Brethren, how many thousands of Us are dying a thousand deaths...day after day after day?


The Jenius Has Spoken.

27 September 2010

Pigs Held Up To Apples

Sat in a bakery for close to six hours. One that has pastries made at 5 a.m. and sold at 3 p.m. One where lunch is available at 9 a.m. and pretty much still there at 5 p.m. Where bread comes only out a handful of times a day, because the money-maker isn't the food, but the video gambling machines that take up almost half the commercial space. Would take up more if it weren't for having moved an equal amount of glittering cabinets across the street to form a Medieval-themed Game Room.

Sat in the bakery for close to six hours. Surfed the Web, wrote several pages of stuff, read a book, watched the rain...watched the employees. Ah, the employees. Wage-earners that form the backbone of what We laughingly call Our economy. You'd recognize the types:

1) The young one who skimps work with clever ease: Young lady, early 20s, with two kids that she "has" to call every 15 minutes or so to find out of their "cough" has gotten any better. Spends 6-7 minutes on the phone, discussing the news, soap operas, recent shopping, future shopping and how she's "swamped" with work. Hangs up, says "May I help you?" to a client, then walks away to "check something out in the back." Comes back a few minutes later, wonders aloud about her kids, then again, then again, then again, then still again until she picks up her cell phone and makes another 5-minute call. Does this several times--never tends a customer directly--leaves at 1:50 to "pick up her kids"...who are being brought to her by a friend as she speaks. The kids look hale and hearty, not a sign of a cough within a mile of either one, bless their little hearts. No hugs, no kisses for the tykes, but a brief screed to the friend about how "miserable" her job is. Her friend asks if she can leave as it's still not 2 p.m. The young lady makes a sour face and says she's done enough and the owner (of the bakery) can go screw himself if he dares to mention she left a few minutes early. They all pile into a late-model car, cherry red, and she pulls out into traffic without looking. The kids are not in car seats.

2) The government bureaucrat in private employ: Woman in her mid-30s, about 12 pounds from upping to "fat" from "big-boned," blonde hair a tribute to chemical abuse. Sour expression all the time. Looks at customers as if they were interruptions in her otherwise unbreakable stream of semi-conscious self-loathing. Smiles with her lower lip only, like a constipated baby. Makes bitter remarks to customers she's seen hundreds of times, makes even more bitter remarks to co-workers, especially about the bathroom's general level of cleanliness. One answers her repeated remarks with "When was the last time you cleaned it?" to which Our Bitter Kvetch responds airily "It was several months ago and I can't do it anymore." She claims a bad back hampers her, but she readily agrees to walk every delivery to nearby locations, even those with several box-loads of cakes and donuts. Takes almost an hour to deliver 4 boxes two blocks away. Her excuse coming back was that the walk made her feel dizzy. Not ten minutes later, she aggressively badgers a co-worker out of walking a delivery of 8 bread loaves to a nearby café. The woman says she can be back in 10 minutes and the Bitter Kvetch says she can too. Comes back 77 minutes later, complains about the heat making her dizzy, then grabs her lunch (11:42 a.m.) and takes until 1:26 p.m. to eat it. Notices Me making notes and typing and asks if I'm working for her boss. Grunts when I reply that neither of Us is. Leaves at 4:06 and loudly proclaims she should get overtime pay for those 6 minutes. Three hours later, I happen to see her walking around the town plaza, still in her bakery uniform (neon-green T-shirt and jeans two sizes too small) and not a sign of dizziness in her step.

A man drives past a farmer holding a pig up to an apple tree so the porker can eat the fruit. The man stops and says to the farmer, "Why don't you knock the apples down for the pig to eat?" The farmer, puzzled, asks back: "What for?" The man says, "To save time!" The farmer thinks about it for a second, shakes his head and says, "What's time to a pig?"

I'm probably the farmer in this scenario, wasting My time with pigs. But I'm not the only one. We coddle these pigs, holding them up to give them an undeserved benefit they could get otherwise. We coddle these pigs by giving them permanent jobs they can't be fired from, no matter how useless they become. We coddle these pigs by letting Our tendency of "Ay bendito" tolerance let them get away with behavior and inactions We should never tolerate. And before you go off on Me about the abusive bosses and supervisors who seed terror in their employees, ask yourself this: What do We have more of? Slackers at every level outnumber the abusers by an ample margin.

Yes, I also know the blame for holding these particular pigs up (and there are men who fit this category, only not mentioned in this post) belongs to the bakery's owner, who compounds his mistake by having his 4.6-on-the-Richter-scale herd of a daughter on the payroll as "Assistant Manager," a girth, uh, girl, so besotted with herself she thinks she's (a) attractive and (b) thus entitled to getting away with her whims. She doesn't pull her weight (if she could, she'd OWN several bakeries by now) and that spreads to the other employees.

Maybe six hours in this bakery was four too many. Time sharpened by boredom has a way of exacerbating My sarcasm and overall tendency to make fun of stupidity. But when there's so much stupidity to mock, there comes a point where even than gets dull. But for the next few weeks, when I watch employees going about their zombie ways, I'll remember the bakery, until some other place and time give Me another angle and level of pigs being held up to apples.


The Jenius Has Spoken.

24 September 2010

Check(mate) This Out

Jeepers.

Just when you thought the local department of (mis)education could not possibly shoot itself with an even bigger caliber of stupidity, out comes the mega-monster howitzer of stupidity to fire this shot into Our collective numb skulls: We have now dropped chess from Our schools...because it promotes "sedentary behavior and obesity."

Don't give Me that look. I ain't lying. A centuries-old game proven to develop thinking skills, proven to challenge minds of all ages to stretch, to ponder logical actions and plan ahead, in short, to become better thinkers and learners is no longer an activity supported by Our pus-riddled educational system because you have to sit down to play it.

To paraphrase Ignatius Reilly, I can feel My sphincters slamming shut.

The barely-literate reason for dropping chess is based on "a concern about the increase in obesity," which according to this absolute freaking genius of a department, can be directly linked to being sedentary. And since SO MANY of Our students play chess and SO MANY of Our students are overweight, ergo "Let's Drop Chess, That Evil Scourge Of Healthy Weight!"

My head hurts.

In My desire to help morons stop being morons, a futile exercise, but indulge My follies please, here are three things We can eliminate from Our schools that would have a much greater impact on obesity than just dropping chess:

1) Close all the bathrooms. They foster sedentary behavior and you don't have to be a (mis)education department drone to know that students spend way more time in bathrooms than playing chess. Oh, and smoking is tied to heart disease, a factor in obesity. Just saying.

2) Close the cafeterias. It has been proven in several major studies done in obscure eastern European countries and Topeka that amongst the leading causes of obesity is overeating. Look it up. Not only overeating, but also eating while sitting down. My word! At least in chess you are moving one arm without any food in it!

3) Close the damn schools. You want to eliminate sedentary? Then close schools where "Shut up and stay seated" is the order of every day and where the intellect is stimulated to the same degree bouncing a pebble off of Mount Everest leaves a scar. In chess the few students who participate are active, thinking participants that according to the morons are getting fat by doing that, so what can they say about all Our students being passive, near-comatose lumps getting fat because of the system?

Nothing. They can't say a damn thing. They can't think, they can only react, like worms prodded with a twig in the anus. Or the head. It's the same organ in their case.

Dropping chess is a clear admission that Our educational system has no clue, no idea, not even the most feeble concept of what's needed to improve Our schools, the same schools where teaching is a joke, sewers run rampant and no one in the system knows what the dropout rate is because it involves using math.

I can't wait until they officially ban the sedentary crime of reading...

The Jenius Has Spoken

[Update: 25 Sept 2010: The vacuums that be (cuz they ain't "powers") have reinstated chess in the curriculum. Reading is still under scrutiny...]

[Update: 21 Sept 2011: Armenia makes chess mandatory in all schools, because it "helps children develop responsibility and accountability for their actions." Yeah, Mammon forbid We teach that crap to Our kids...]

22 September 2010

More About Piss

Seems like a week ago it was all about penises, now it's all about pee...That's what happens when I focus on politics in Puerto Rico.

According to news reports, the legislators and other government personnel are now going to have to undergo mandatory drug tests. In essence, they will have to pee in a cup and refusing to do so will constitute an automatic "Guilty" label, with unclear consequences.

Let Me start there: Much as it pains Me--and believe Me, it does... a lot--to defend these scum, a person's refusal to take a drug test once should not constitute an automatic penalty, especially when that penalty is unclear or worse, ineffective. Say that legislator Pusforbrains refuses to take the drug test and is then summarily executed. Much as I like that scenario, it's wrong. The penalty is too harsh. On the other hand, if he refuses the drug test and nothing happens because nothing enforceable can happen, then I'd rather see the scumbag die. The reason is obvious: a procedure like this, without penalty, changes nothing and just becomes an additional public expense that no one cares about.

Now the present and future pissers are upset because they'll have to provide some of their precious body fluids for scrutiny. On that point, I don't give a rat's ass what they think. Shut up and pee. If you had policed yourselves better, you could have avoided this. And screw you for thinking you're above the rest and thus exempted from doing what you mandated so many others have to do. Hypocrisy is the first cousin of deceit, so stop the incest right there, right now.

And because the biggest mouths often have the emptiest brain pans, Let's preemptively strike at their future refusals by taking one of their member's (pardon the pun...aw hell, there I go again...) off-the-cuff boasts and have the legislators pee live, on camera, in televised sessions where the preliminary results are flashed onscreen for all to see. Alcohol level? Yeah. THC? Sure. Cocaine, heroin, LSD, frog sweat, ecstasy, PCP? Hell yeah. Let's turn this into a bi-monthly media circus where pee is the content and the pissers are on trial. It might even be fun to have a real-time poll indicating what We think each legislator's kidney output will show. And when one happens to fail drug test--when, not if--We get to participate in another poll on whether he or she will fail again and thus be executed.

Or whatever. You catch My drift. Because unless We put some muscle behind these drug tests, legal, political and social, We're bound to have 100% attention on the first test, 50% on the second and none thereafter, no matter who refuses or how many times they rig the game to keep their piss from a lab. At that point, they wouldn't be pissing for the law, but pissing on it. Again.


The Jenius Has Spoken.

20 September 2010

Censorshit

The first political cartoon re: caricature was figuratively the snake in the Garden of Eden. For all We know, the "maker" of an offer to "Eve" was a robed figure with a tricorn hat who ended up being portrayed as a snake.

So given this long tradition--one that had expressions in the Roman and ancient Chinese Empires, for example--imagine My surprise to find out that the local cow barn known as the Election Commission has declared that political caricatures are no longer allowed, that the cartoonization of public figures or public figure wannabes is now verboten.

Really. Censorship is one thing, but this is even more idiotic, worthy of a new term: censorshit.

The doctrine that allows cartoonists and others to draw public figures, mainly those in government, in order to get their often humorous messages across, has been long defined across time and nations. If you want to see how far We've redefined the doctrine, look up 19th-century political cartoons from Great Britain and the U.S. of part of  A.  Note how many figures were portrayed as sympathetic to black peoples or colonial natives by being "Negrified," and this at a time when black people were considered subhuman, thus rendering the person "less than human." Political cartoons portrayed Abraham Lincoln as a retarded gorilla. Boss Tweed was shown receiving bribes. British and French leaders were routinely displayed as murderers, thieves and even rapists. When was the last time you saw a political cartoon that showed a political figure as a criminal, unless they had been convicted in a court of law? Or shown as being less-than-human in these banal politically-correct times?

You see the point? Political cartoons back then were vicious, often deliberately deceiving images that were nearly impossible to contest because of the limited media channels of the day. Now, political cartoons hew to a more respectful line and compete with dozens of other media channels to create an impression of a public figure, the same public figure who can use those same media channels to create his/her image.

So what's wrong with Our retarded Fools that they have to whine to the Election Commission for protection from the drawings that awful meanies make and hurt their disease-addled peabrains so much? These thin-skinned amphibians are behind this censoring, making shit of shinola. It's simply another manifestation of how these cockroaches with atrophied sex organs have reached a stage where they feel they are untouchable, immune to daily life and society's rules. These amoral vermin forget--if they ever knew--that they serve Us, and that if they choose to launch themselves into the public arena, then they tacitly accept that their presence in that arena means they are fair game--fair game, mind you--to be help up scrutiny and ridiculed within certain boundaries if the person doing the scrutiny feels doing so is appropriate. 

What's next, full censorshit of any and all attacks on these vermin? No more Larva, Mad Führer, Jellyfish, Gluttonny or anything that might harm these intellectual and moral fleas? Puh-lease. Yes, Our political campaigns have become cesspools of attacks and innuendo, but the path out of that swamp is not censorshit, it's maturation. Grow up, you fucking freeloaders. Grow up or get the hell out of the arena. If not, then accept that as long as you're in the public eye, sucking on the public teat, making hash of the public's cash and being a frequent nuisance due to your often unbelievably idiotic incompetence, then We, as the people who elect you or those who choose you and are thus the people you serve--that you serve, fuckhead--then your are My target when I feel like it. Short of slandering you (and the law is pretty clear on what constitutes slander) then, as I have said before, you are My bitch. 

Deal with that instead of trying to hide, you pus-brained worms.

The Jenius Has Spoken.

17 September 2010

Pissed On

This won't take long... 

Have My Brethren noticed the relative quiet of churches and their self-appointed leaders lately? For several years, the voices of reverends, pastors, ministers, bishops and other folks living off the flocks were daily fare for Our media. Could it be that the yapping dogs got tired of the yapping weasels? Or with less prejudice, that the press-people bored the church-people?

I don't see that as a problem except that the impression left behind by this relative absence is that churches and their cross-eyed drivers are doing even less than they did before for Our society. Regardless of My personal lack of belief in anything these folks have to say, it is an undeniable fact that their presence and role in society is fairly important...or at least given the number of believers, it should be.

So I applaud the divergence from politically-based sermonizing while tapping My foot at the continued "Me first" attitude that most church leaders tend to display. You know, the late-model luxury car, 5-bedroom house with private security and "God says I need a plane...to do His work" posers who piss on their followers, the sheep that slurp up the human yellow water and think it's golden holy elixir.

P.T. Barnum said there was a sucker born every minute. Maybe Our success as a society is in developing a way to give birth to two suckers a minute, or giving birth to more P.T. Barnums with a religious bent. Or both.

The Jenius Has Spoken.

15 September 2010

Us(S.R.)

Some of you are old enough to remember the U.S.S.R. and its seemingly endless litany of "5-year plans" that ultimately decimated the economy and led to the collapse of the union into the fragmented republics of today. Ended the Cold War, it did.

The defining characteristics of the old Soviet economy-wrecking process were top-down planning,  a complete elimination of entrepreneurial development and a huge black market. Over the past 40 years, Puerto Rico has had a seemingly endless litany of government-sponsored "this year's plans" yoked to increasingly anti-entrepreneurial legislation that has nearly decimated Our economy, while simultaneously creating a huge black market. We're a democracy with an economy run (into the ground) as a communist state.

"Now wait a darn minute, Jenius," some of you might say, "You can't call Us a communist state 'cause We're a capitalist democracy." Semantics. If a man invites a minor to his workplace and then rapes the child, the end result is a crime, right? Now replace "man" with "priest," "minor" with "altar boy" and "workplace" with "church" and the end result is...what? Not a crime? Really?

We call Ourselves a democracy, but Our "leadership" has the almost nil turnover rate of the Politburo. We call Ourselves a capitalist economy, but We have a business creation process that practically bars the creation of new businesses and laws in place that forbid Us from actually engaging in trade with foreign nations. We call Ourselves a capitalist democracy when in fact, We evince every major hallmark of a communist-led stagnant economy. 

Face the facts: We are a capitalist economy only to the extent that We have a Constitution that allows free elections to elect the same idiots and an economy that lets dollars buy politicians openly (only We call it "lobbying" and "party support" rather than what it is: bribery.) Other than semantics, the end result is the same: an economy in a downward spiral, sucking worse than ever.

The good thing about this is that the solutions are self-evident (except for statehooders):

1) Stop electing the same idiots: We may be stuck with idiots, but electing new idiots changes the system. At this point, any change has a better possibility of being an improvement than a step backwards. (But then again, never ever underestimate the power of stupidity.)

2) Sweep away legislation that slows down business creation: Most business legislation in Puerto Rico is protectionist, i.e., meant to make it difficult for new businesses to compete with established one. Blame the local business organizations and professional associations like the Centro Unido de Detallistas (whose acronym--CUD--makes perfect reference to them being dumb as cows), the Chamber of Commerce (whose acronym--COC--means they're screwing Us) and the local Bar (who are lawyers...enough said.)

3) Use the Internet to create foreign trade: Let's see the U.S. of part of A. try to keep Us from selling goods and services to the nations of the world. Oh, right! We don't know that there are other nations in the world... 

4) Embrace the black market: Not the illegal aspect of it, but the sheer vitality and can-do spirit of it. What has remained of the former U.S.S.R. economy? The black market's ugly side. The truism here is "If you can't beat them, join them...before they take over."

And lest the commonwealthers feel slighted, most of the blame for this crapfest of an economy falls in your bailiwick, since 1952 in fact. So don't go pointing fingers, unless you're looking in the mirror.

The Jenius Has Spoken.

[Update: 20 Sept 2010: John Stossel describes how misguided/crooked politicians are further undermining entrepreneurship in the U.S. of part of A. in order to benefit their established competition, fronted by money-flinging lobbyists. Ah, corruption and communism as evil twins.]

13 September 2010

The Shaft (And A Cliff [Note])

Here's the latest shaft--literally--We are on the receiving end of: A gas pipeline crossing the Island from the south coast to the north coast, then making a 90-degree turn east to San Juan.

The idea, if such a beautiful word can be attached to this sack of crap, is to pump natural gas from the southeast coast (using the old oil refinery location abandoned since the 1980s), crossing the west-central mountain region, cutting through communities, schools (even the campus of the University of Puerto Rico in Utuado), recreational facilities and pure Nature, then heading east mirroring the roadways to reach the electrical generation sites west of San Juan.

Do tell.

The ostensible (by that I mean, "the lying") reason is that by using natural gas to partially power Our electrical grid, We can reduce the overall cost of said grid and--here it comes--the consumer can save up to 30% on his or her future electrical bill.

Really.

I'd impressed with this pathetic excuse for an idea if not for these three fatal flaws, and by fatal I mean "Get the hell outta here with this moronic scheme":

1) We have no natural gas, except for that produced by Our Fools in government, which if tapped properly, could power Us to Mars and beyond at just under Warp 2. So the idea here (and there is an idea here) is to hook up gas-collection tubes to each Fool's mouth and ass (the mouth producing 478% more gas than the ass, except in a few isolated cases) and trick them into thinking a large audience is watching their every move. Voilá! Enough natural gas per hour to power the Asian Tigers and Burkina Faso.

2) The gas pipeline would negatively affect hundreds of acres and thousands of people, not only during construction, but in its operation. It's one thing to have a gas pipeline stuck in the middle of nowhere; it's another to have some huge shaft sitting amidst a population density of over 1,050 persons per square mile. Maybe only John Holmes could pull that off and he died of AIDS.

3) This gas pipeline is not in any way a solution: it is simply a boondoggle. It has no intention or goal of solving any problem We have related to Our crumbling energy grid. The gas pipeline's only true purpose is to provide a cash box for the syphillis-addled monkeys We (mostly) re-elected 2 years ago to spread around. It's a way of creating a "new" market for natural gas--to be regulated by the government, of course--that screams "kickbacks." It's a way of favoring certain interests over others in the purchasing of lands for the intended shaft, a process The Larva's chief of shaft--staff--Marcos "MouthFart" Rodríguez is a proven whiz at. And to complete this reaming and build this hollow steel dildo, the whole (mis)construction process will make the Tammany Hall fiascos seem like Romper Room skits. (Go look both of those references up; I'm busy here.)

You know the worst part? In Our modern political system, just announcing this shaft creates a business boom, part entrepreneurial, part corruption, all needless because its sole purpose is to funnel money into special interest and government pockets for something that doesn't exist. This "project announcement" creates nothing, adds no value to Us and only serves to play "musical cash" that We underwrite when the Fools--MouthFart, gas-passing, methane-heads--cram some legislation and special bond emissions down Our throat to pay for this scam, thus completing one of the proposed double penetrations.

And for you statehooders out there, what I'm saying above is that the government's a dick screwing Us. Let's call that sentence "The Jenius Cliff Notes," as in "We're going off a cliff here."


The Jenius Has Spoken.

10 September 2010

And Now, For Something Completely Different...

In a month, on October 10th to be exact, My third story will go up on Yesteryear Fiction, a website featuring short pieces as selected by Earl Wynn. Then, 5 days later, My fourth story will go up. (Here are stories one and two.) Drop by and explore the site because Earl has a varied and interesting collection of stories, poems and hard-to-fit-in-a-niche writing well worth perusing.

The first of My two stories that Earl selected belong to an anthology, in e-book form, already up on SmashWords, titled "Thirty Stories." You can see it advertised on the upper left sidebar of The Jenius' main page. The upcoming two stories are from a second anthology, amazingly titled "Thirty More Stories," which will become an e-book shortly. The peculiarity of these anthologies is that each story was written on one page or less of standard (8x11 inches) paper, about 700 words per story.

This month (September 2010) I will complete another anthology, blending old stories with new and introducing a new "kind" of character, albeit by name rather than by intrinsic existence. (I think that makes sense.) In October I'll complete a fourth anthology, a collection of stories I wrote between 1996 and 2003 and then, by December, I'll come out with a totally new e-book, what would be My fifth this year, this one of totally new fiction.

It's obvious that this "sudden" emergence of The Jenius as a fiction writer is not sudden at all. Although some would claim much of what The Jenius posts here is "lying crap," the fact and evidence have shown that "lying" is not something The Jenius does. (Crap, on the other hand, is in the...eye...of the beholder...) My push to getting My fiction out int the world is in response to an urge I've had for decades, very much since I had My first story published in a local school "contest mimeograph".

Since 1994, I have written more than 130 stories. Of that total, only 7 saw the light of publishing, whether online or in print. That percentage of "success" seems to imply that the quality of the writing is poor, at best. But the fact is that I only submitted 8 stories for publication during that time, scoring with 7. Two were good enough to win against solid competition and serve as the centerpiece for the printed anthology "The Best of Times," available now on Amazon as a $199.95 "collectible." (Note: The flood that washed away much of My possessions in September 2008 took some 18 copies of the book and several folders of stories, ideas and notes. That still hurts.)

With the encouragement of My Special One, My family, friends and numerous near-strangers who have ready My stories over the years and been unanimously supportive, I finally decided that if I was ever going to do something with this writing thing I have, then the time to do it was now. It's a fact that the Internet and e-book technology have greatly leveled the playing field so that writers and other creative artists can place their works in the global public eye with greater ease than ever before.

In that effort, I am happy to have the help of X-cito Media, a local (as in "Based in Puerto Rico") e-business seeking to develop a presence as a digital publisher. Unlike traditional publishing, where space is at a premium, on the Web attention is the coin of the realm, the limited commodity that determines level of success. Part of the effort X-cito Media and I are making to attract that commodity is to quickly generate a catalogue of e-books, which brings Me back to My past. And present.

I love writing. I've been writing since I was 13 and can't imagine having anything like a career without writing as a part of it. For years I subsumed the fiction part of My writing in favor of...I don't know. Money, maybe. Practicality, perhaps. Some misguided attempt at being "serious" about My time. In any case, that lack of fiction writing tinged every success I had in other endeavors with a slight shadow of "but..."

No buts now. It's time to write as much fiction as I can, enjoying as I always have the process of coming up with a story that I would love to read and hopefully, find an audience that wants to read  that kind of story as well. Okay, there is one "but": No fiction in The Jenius. Hasn't happened and won't happen. For as long as I post here about what I see and think about My Island, it won't be fiction. Even though there are plenty of times when I wish it were.


The Jenius Has Spoken.

08 September 2010

Dealing With Scum

Aw, hell.

From Yahoo! News comes this little tidbit guaranteed to brighten My day and that of My Brethren. (Note: Sarcasm in full force from "brighten" on up.) U.S. Sex Offenders See Sanctuary in Caribbean Sun. And by "Caribbean" they mean "Puerto Rico."

Some excerpts: "...(L)aw enforcement officials say...sex offenders share the perception that tropical Puerto Rico, where restrictions are less strict than in many U.S. jurisdictions, is an ideal place to hide."

And: "Federal agents have arrested at least five other sex offenders over the last year for failure to register in Puerto Rico and sent them back to the U.S. to face prosecution on other charges, said Deputy U.S. Marshal Rafael Escobar.

He said the marshals are investigating 10 cases of unregistered offenders suspected to be on the island.

"I'm sure there's a bunch more," he said. "The Internet is there, and these guys are checking to see where the law is weakest."

Each month, about half a dozen sex offenders come to the island from the U.S. mainland and do register with local authorities, according to Puerto Rico police Capt. Margarita George, who oversees the island's sex offender registry. Nobody knows how many others fail to report in.

She said some are drawn by the lack of laws barring them from living near parks or schools — the sort of rules that have forced sex offenders to camp under bridges or in woods in parts of the United States. And failing to register is a misdemeanor in Puerto Rico — not a felony as it is in most parts of the U.S. Some, like Weathers, find themselves colliding with federal rather than local authorities.

Offenders have told police they can do things in Puerto Rico that are nearly impossible elsewhere, such as buy property, George said.
"

But Let's not focus only on Puerto Rico. Here's a sobering fact: "About 100,000 of the 714,000 registered sex offenders in the United States are unaccounted for, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children."

That a good number of those 100,000 might be coming into Puerto Rico is not the kind of tourism or immigration We want. That Our law enforcement officials are in the dark as to how big the problem might be is disgusting, but not as disgusting as what these predators have done and are capable of doing.

For now, We can see this as another in a long line of problems that take Our Island of Enchantment and simply truncate the phrase to "Our Island." But it's still Our Island and if We have to deal directly with this kind of scum--with all Our scum in and out of government--then deal with it We must.

If We don't, then let Me state that We deserve whatever happens to Us. We do...but not Our children.


The Jenius Has Spoken.

06 September 2010

Burning Issue

There are people--and I use the word loosely--that are advocating burning the Quran later this week, apparently as some sort of protest against Islam, although they often call Islam "Muslim."

As an atheist, I shouldn't give a tinker's damn, but I prefer to cast fuel on a fire and state that in response to the idiocy of burning the Quran, I too will burn a book. A "book of books" that as far as I'm concerned should be cast into the fire because it talks about Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, the angel Gabriel and Jesus. 

That book...is the Quran. Not the Bible, the Quran. A book that derives its tradition from many of the same sources that Christians claim make "their book" sacrosanct. (Yes, I said "claim." Think about it and you'll see not only that I'm right, but how right I am. And no, I'm not burning either one.)

So for the addle-brained cowards that want to burn a book they've never read, that mentions many of the key personages in the book they bandy about and haven't read either, here's a two word piece of advice: Shut up. Here's two more: Go away. And just for funsies, two more: Drop dead.

You moronic zealots have no corner on any truth, nor any concept of what your proposed action means, nor of the consequences it can engender. You are not on the front lines of a stupid war, so burning books in the comfort and safety of your own clannish compounds is nowhere near being an act of "bravery" and falls distinctly in the category of "retarded." If anything, you'll hear about the consequences of your idiocies when the international news reports you ignore and don't understand tell you that American citizens and soldiers somewhere far away were injured or killed when a zealot from their side decides that his idiocy needs to be expressed as well.

For you see, stupidity breeds stupidity. Islam is not necessarily Muslim and Muslim is not definitely and beyond question not necessarily terrorist. But burning a religion's holy book--for no good reason and yours, you moronic "Christians", is FAR from good--can only be considered an insult, especially as it flies directly in the face of the message of forgiveness, tolerance and generosity predicated by Jesus in the Bible and the Quran. And insults--despite religious spoutings--are rarely tolerated and left unanswered.

I can't stop morons from being morons and "Christians" from acting like thugs, which in this case is the same group. All I can do is raise My voice and say "You're wrong...again" and wonder why a concept so suffused with preaching values, morals and standards of the highest behavior is so very often the motivation behind the lowest and basest behavior that makes Us more like animals than humans.

The Jenius Has Spoken.

{Update: 9 Sep 2010: Here, in graphic form, is a much-briefer version of My post...including the underlying emotion to it all.

03 September 2010

8 People We Should Exile...or Worse

Okay, seeing as how I'm not exactly in a "Love thy neighbor" mood, here's My list of the 8 people We need to kick off this Island right now, immediately or sooner, preferably with extreme prejudice and with the abosulte least amount of effort at preserving their wretched physiques:

1) Antulio Santarrosa: The freak-faced coward hiding inside an old lady...costume. A one-trick horse's ass who's been feeding the public tripe, trivia and lies for close to two decades. A disgrace who has lost court cases that prove he is a bare-faced liar and yet remains on the air because he's the turd in the bean salad of Our collective brains.

2) Marcos Rodríguez-Ema: Current chief of staff of a larva, the pig in a blanket on the buffet of stuffed tripe vermin We have wrecking havoc at all sub-human levels of Our government. A ham-headed pseudo-wannabe stormtrooper suffering from chronic hoof-in-mouth disease.

3) Richard Carrión: The Edward Smith of bank captains, only with duller buttons, propped by whitey interests (Ferré-Rangel et al), the government/banking butt buddy system and outright cronyism. Slick as shit and just as fragrant. A wilted vegetable on Our tarnished silver tray of times past.

4) Hector Ferrer: Too stupid to lead, too stupid to follow, too stupid to get the hell out of the way. A place-mat on the ransacked table of Our political system. Makes tapioca seem exotic by comparison. If he had a vision it would come from sunstroke. The next time has an idea, it will die of boredom.

5) Thomas Rivera: Thinks he's human, tries to act like one, but his acting makes Keanu look like Olivier transcendent. Thinks he can lead because he practices looking mad in the mirror. Is mad. Is not a leader. He needs to be told that adding dog piss to a bucket of vomit doesn't improve it's appeal. Then he needs to be told he's the dog piss and that the bucket of vomit is Our government. Be patient: think "old dog."

6) Kenneth McClintock: Cowboy's last name, horse's hindquarters for everything else. The plug that needs to be pulled to drain some of the latrine he's helped build. Will be pulled. Hard. Greatest talent: pure mediocrity. A tasteless burp as a leader, he'll be nothing but a gutless memory within weeks of being taken out.

7) Juan Hernández: If he grows up and becomes a man, could become Hector Ferrer. Like blanched parsley, just sits there, adding nothing, but catching the eye ever so often. When he speaks, silence is better. Has daddy's shoe imprint is tattooed on his ass and has asparagus where a spine should be. Like Hector, prefers thieves' scraps to honest work.

8) Jenniffer González: Get her before she gets Us. Has restraint only because she hasn't gotten what her greed wants. Yet. Then it would add rhino rampage to hippo hunger...with Us as the trample zone. Can't trust her as far as We could throw her...which ain't far, but should be. Very very far.

Done. And why no Luis "The Larva" Fortuño? If We kicked him off the Island, do you really think We'd notice?

That's why.

The Jenius Has Spoken.

01 September 2010

Lousy Relatives

Imagine you have a relative, say an uncle, an uncle We'll call, uh, Sam. Yeah. You have an Uncle Sam who's going to send you a cash gift, a little something-something as mad money so you can literally--please--go to town with it. But because he's sending several gifts, he sends them all to your cousin, a cousin We'll call, uh, Luis, or Marcos. Let's pick one, shall We? Let's pick the cousin that actually makes decisions.

So your cousin Marcos gets these cash gifts, that aren't for him, and Let's say that each gift is, oh, $300 or so. Not a lot, but a gift's a gift, right? So your cousin Marcos gets the cash and sends out a check to you for $60.

Come again?

Yeah, cousin Marcos writes you a little note that says he's going to keep the rest of the money--the rest of your money--until later. You know, for,uh, "your" benefit. Or something. Something.

Okay, someone has to say it: Fuck you, cousin Marcos, cousin Luis and every other flagrant thief in what passes for Our government. Fuck you sideways.

Now the basis for the cash gift cum stimulus money that the Obama Administration is tossing about is patently ludicrous. Small dribbles of cash are not a sound long-term economic stimulus plan (like say, oh, jobs) and in fact are simply an unveiled attempt to buy votes for November. That's crass, but there's a modicum of an attempt at helping others make a go of tough times.

What the local hyena posse is doing is beneath crass: it's criminal. Under what possible fucking legal basis is it permissible for the government to withhold these federal funds distributed directly to a citizen? Under the current "stimulus" package, there are no provisions made for retaining a percentage of the monies to be handed out, so where does this (non)administration get off keeping money that doesn't belong to it?

Here's exactly what I mean:  theft n. A criminal act in which property belonging to another is taken without that person's consent.

The only difference between what's happening with the Obama vote-buying cash and Our taxes and bond sale money since 2008 is that the thieves are no longer trying to hide what they're doing: they're just grabbing it and saying "Fuck you" to Our faces. They're keeping the money not to help anyone, but to continue their Ali Baba romp through Our fiscal rubble.

And the part that firebombs My scrotum about all this is that neither the money handed out by Uncle Sam, nor the open thievery of cousins Luis, Marcos, Thomas, Jenniffer and their faux-foes in the red(-handed) party will make not a whit of difference to Our local situation. We're no better than hammer-clubbed sheep when it comes to responding to government gone larcenous. We have a stronger response to a celebrity's plastic surgery than to having Our economic present and future raped like a Sabine. 

In the olden times, they used to hang thieves. Discuss.


The Jenius Has Spoken.