(Never)late thanksgiving thoughts

A few days before we got married, and Thanksgiving rolled in, I went to pick up Duffgirl from work. The kids at the honor society had written down their thanksgiving wishes on little sheets of paper. Here are a few of my favorites (in case you can’t read the last one, it says: “That my Dad came back to Guate”. Quite moving…

On a side note: there were several kids thankful for Farmville. If I had been their age, I would’ve also signed me up for that Now, my reasons for being thankful include: my lovely wife, health, friends, family, art (produced and appreciated), RedBubble, and cats in general (God, I love those animals, even though Cucho has been seriously messing with our sleep patterns).

I thought you killed yourself… that wasn’t you?

That funny line from one of my favorite movies, Garden State, brings me to a very short, equal parts shocking and intriguing, post. Remember how back in june I was all “fuck this shit, man”, when the assassination of a fellow guatemalan, lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, made global headlines? The international aid commission that oversaw the investigation came to this conclusion: Rosenberg’s homicide was orchestrated by himself. If your spanish is in shape, you might benefit from this document, which was presented yesterday at a press conference, and summarizes the comission’s verdict.

A Duffboy marries a Duffgirl, part 2

I forgot to tell you: ours was a low budget (well, sort of… thank god no one handed me a bill for dinner) civil wedding gettogether. Therefore, very few friends were present. Weeks before, however, we got many tokens of appreciation from many dear dudes and dudettes. If any of you should stumble upon this humble blog, you are an awesome person and both me and the mrs. are so very appreciative of you sharing time, money and efforts to celebrate us making our life partnership a reality. Thankies all the way!

There’s something romantic about our shoes

We just finished talking on the phone. Couldn’t help but share, like I did on RedBubble, that pic of our beat up sneakers, drying themselves from one of our walks to the lake. Duff Honeymoon, as promised

A Duffboy marries a Duffgirl, part 1

It feels like forever since my last entry. What can I say? After some serious praying and talking, we were able to brush off the drama that came with a small civil ceremony (and passive-agressiveness from the usual suspects). Next day, the Married Ones, we drove about 90 miles to a small cottage near a town called Santa Catarina Palopó, overlooking Lake Atitlán. During 6 days we lived inside our own little bubble: enjoying the scenery (and feeling sad about the pollution that's affecting the lake), the love-making, the gaming, the cooking, our sporadic walks to the lake (where I managed to swim for the first time in a natural body of water conversation with an incredibly nice and intelligent guy called Sidney (who rented the cottage to us), the falling asleep together in a room with a view, sharing our hopes and fears... ok, this calls for another post. It's getting way too long. Expect Honey Moon Duff, all this week.

We’ll tie the knot, or another more poetic marital metaphor

I’m sorry for not keeping you updated with some really big recent Duffboy News: I’m getting married in just about a month from now! We won’t do the big event thing, no religious ceremony, and almost no friends at the civil ceremony. Times are tough, financial wise, so we just decided to skip our rockin wedding idea (we’ll maybe save some of those elements for the photo shoot, weeks later), and keep it simple. Am I stressed? A little bit. Does the warm feeling of finally becoming husband & wife outweight the prewedding jitters? You bet your ass it does! Romi should be proud

This calls for an angry e-mail

It didn’t take long for me to be completely offended by this biassed article about Twitter use in Guatemala and Iran. I usually don’t write people to give them a piece of my mind, but this time the author -Elizabeth Lazar- crossed the line. I share with you my e-mail:

Dear Elizabeth:
 
As a fellow writer and guatemalan citizen (not to mention part of that evil cyber community), I’m trully distressed by the statements included on your article Is Twitter Really a Tool for Democracy? Clearly, you have not lived in Guatemala, or are aware of President Colom’s poor handling of our nation’s finances (the last campaign he lost, about 4 years ago, included soft money donations from corrupt officials of the Portillo administration… to which he pleaded complete ignorance), and of how the “poor farmers’s” support is rallied by local councilmen. The corruption of our current government is all around… ask people who work at culture state institutions, who are asked to “volunteer” part of their monthly wages to “The Party”, and who are basically forced to attend demonstrations in favor of Àlvaro Colom, if they want to keep their jobs. I suggest you start reading some of the guatemalan press and get your facts straight.
 
P.S. And as far as a political agenda of the cyber community… I doubt there is one, beyond the public display of outrage with this administration’s complete lack of interest in solving the crime and lack of security issues that have taken the lives of thousands of guatemalans -Rodrigo Rosenberg included- in about 18 months and counting.”

 Update: Liz was kind enough to reply a couple of times to this original e-mail, here’s the last of her responses:

“Given how inflamed things are in your country and how much is at
stake, I understand your frustration.
As far as I’m concerned, outrage is a much preferred state to apathy”.