Timothy McSweeney

I read Do you want to be president? and Short Imagined Monologues. The first one was interesting and has a very complex language. I would have liked it if it were much longer because I didn't really get to a specific topic or idea. This was more of an intro to what this man has to say on today's politics and campaigns.
The Short Imagined Monologues, the one of James Bond was terrible. I thought it was a satire but it was also serious and not once was it funny. It mocked Bond but mocking such a vague and plain character has no merit. I don't think Bond is someone people like or dislike, he is just an action herowe envy because of his women and his cars. That's it. I don't think anybody admires James Bond because he is man who can fight ten others and his 5,000 dollar tuxedo is perfect at the end of the fight. His hair is always comed, and he always gets the best ladies. I envy him but not once has it passed through my mind of turning into him. That would be depressing; becoming an old guy who never smiles, doesn't have a family nor a stable relationship. He doesn't live anywhere and he meddles with disgusting people all day long. His british snobery is annoying and he is just a pawn to British Intelligency who control him so they can get rid of whomever they want to get rid of. This is probably why I disliked this article and didn't find it interesting nor funny, ha ha ha.

THE NEW YORKER

The article I read in The New Yorker was called The Lie. This story was about a man who works in a production company and he is married and has a baby girl. He is a very lazy man and has already used his days off and his sick days too. He tells his boss that his daughter is in the hospital and the second day he kills her in his story just to be exempt from work for one day. When his wife finds about these lies he walks out on her and this is the end.
I think this piece was very entertaining and is purely fiction. It talks about what this man is feeling with his life and his work and the fact that he wants to escape from it all. He is an alcoholic and is only deepening himself in that state. I think this is a crisis that happens to all men when they have to maintain a family and are actually living a grown up life. I would hate it if this happens to me because at some point I have to leave this pink bubble we are raised in and meet the real world. I think it is worthwhile reading contemporary authors because of this reason that they deal with modern issues and everyday life.

My Brother (PART IV)

It was very hard to see my brother leave on that truck full of singing men. They were all very anxious and scared to see if what happened during service was as they had been told. The stories about the army are terrible and on the first week, we found out they were true. We had the privilege of visiting him on Sundays so we went to see how he was. I have never seen him as skinny as he was that day. He was completely sunburned but the hardest part was seeing his spirit. He knew he had to deal with that for the next year, he knew this was serious, he knew he had to stop fooling around, and that this was real. That is real life.
In the army they called a partner of his “gomelo” because he lived in Bulevar Niza which is a middle class neighborhood. They thought he had studied in Colegio Nuevo Reino de Granada which is a popular school they had all heard of. This was excellent for him because they would have devoured him if they knew what his life really was and where he came from. He just told them he lived up on the mountain because they did not know what Rosales is and he certainly did not want them to know this.
The first few days, their superiors want to prove their higher rank and to earn some respect. This is why they purge the men so they clean their system and feel like shit for the whole week. They were woken up at 3:30 in the morning by a loud whistle and several screams because they were in a huge room with 200 bunk beds. From there they proceeded to the bathroom where they had 30 minutes to shower. This may sound great but not when you have to share 10 showers with 200 other men and everybody has to finish within the 30 minutes. All of this with freezing water from the mountains. When they took longer, those that hadn’t finished had to crawl their way out of the bathroom with one of the superiors smacking their back with a wooden board. Their apparel had to look impeccable so a tiny wrinkle or a boot with a dull area was severely punished. The boots who were brand new had to be as shiny as possible but they had to make them shiny with only their spit. My brother said he took at least 2 hours making them shiny but after these first times, it got a little easier. The food was terrible and very scarce so he was hungry for the 20 hours a day he was awake. He told us the thing he missed the most were the hamburgers. Every single week we go to El Corral so he missed this so we came up with a great idea. The second Sunday we were able to go, we infiltrated a burger with large fries and a coke and it was a glorious moment for my brother. He devoured that burger.

My Brother (PART III)

The second month of vacations we spent it here in Bogota. My father grounded him because we had to attend this funeral service of a person who was very close to our family. He missed it and missed another service of the daughter of my dad’s partner. One night in which he was punished turned out to be the party of one of his friends. My dad was firm and with my brother’s insistence my dad had to say that if he left to that party, he would have to find a place to sleep. That meant that he was going to be kicked out of the house just because of one party. He left and we were shocked because we never thought he was so dumb to do so just for one more drunken night. My mother was very sad so she kept in touch with him for the first week and washed his clothes but after that he was becoming a burden on the families he stayed with so he went to my farm for the rest of the time. What happened there is still a myth to me because even the maids don’t know what was really going on. Sometime he went horseback riding at 4 in the morning. I don’t know if he was doing drugs or something but he was indeed acting crazy. He returned home after a very long talk with my parents, right before school started. 12th grade was pretty much the same thing so this is when my father decides to help him in a very harsh way. That was the only solution. If we can’t do it, the military can. Once he found out my father wasn’t going to pay his way out as the rest of kids in school, he started to burden us some more. Another trip came along but this one wasn’t as terrible as the first one. There were so many things to be done and so many places to visit that we hardly ever fought. The only thing that made my sister and I want to kill ourselves was the sleeping arrangement. We were in one room and my parents in another. Without my parents this boy turns into a devil and works his ass off to make the worst night out of each night. When we returned to Colombia things were very different because now he was taking off. Now the relationship was much better and everybody was in peace because he finally faced the fact that he was going and he was going to be all alone. My father was not going to make arrangements or any calls so he would get special treatment. My father wanted him to go out of this bubble we are all raised in and taste what Colombia really is. The whole experience was as important to my brother as it was for all of us in the family. He was the first in the larger family and the only one in his class so this was very special, at first.

My Brother (PART 2)

My brother has had several important stages in his life, him being a passionate but non perseverant man. When he likes something he will pursue that something with all his might but after a few months he quits and takes on a new passion. When he was little he loved bugs and animals in general. He loved fishing and doing things with my dad. Everybody thought he was directed in life towards something of that field. In his early teens he was a regular young man who had his friends and began going out with girls and started drinking and smoking I believe. At age 15 something radical happened. He decided to join this Christian community of some Peruan men who took him in. They went to retreats everywhere and he began cultivating a new passion, reading. He read night and day but not only the bible but philosophers and classics. His passion got up to a point where he was flunking most classes in school. This wasn’t as important as the news he gave us one night when he told us that he wanted to be a priest. We were all shocked but being a Catholic family we were not mad or anything. We were just concerned because of his well being. These men of the community had gotten that idea into his head and other crazy concepts too. He couldn’t look at women directly at their eyes but had to do so at their forehead. He lost all his friends, wasn’t passing school and his life was upside down. All of these factors made him explode on the inside and turn into something else. By the way, during that 2 year period when he was a religious man, things at home weren’t going as well. We kept on fighting as usual or even worse. You couldn’t talk to him because he was a wiseass who knew everything and corrected you as you were speaking. Anyway, the day came when he could keep that charade on for much longer. Becoming a priest is a calling from God, not from some fanatics who conscribed him as if he were going into military service. From one day to another he became the complete opposite and we suffered the consequences. He felt he had lost those 2 years in his life and had to do anything to get them back. He became a party animal and a destroyer of our family’s name. He didn’t ask for our help but decided to ruin his life by himself. This transition was made in the summer when he passed 11th grade and was about to enter 12th. Those vacations were dreadful because the boy had to party every single night, even if we were in city we had never been in. We were doing a trip to Cartagena by car stopping 2 or three days in the cities on the way and on the way back. Each day he escaped and the lies kept getting bigger and bigger until the point in which we were about to send him back to Bogota alone.

My Brother (PART 1)

The army here in Colombia is a much respected institution and everybody loves it until it is their turn to join it. The military service is obligatory for all male citizens once they turn 18. This is a very important decision because your life is divided into before the army and after the army. I know this as a fact because my brother went to the army. He wasn’t exactly the guerrilla fighter but he was in the battalion 24/7. He made a part of the president’s guard which is supposedly the best place you can be in. I am going to start from the top, from the point my father decided to make my brother leave to where he is right now.
Whilst growing up my sister and I have had a very special relationship or a good relationship. We understand each other, we respect each other and we treat the other as if a true brother. With my brother, the middle child, we never got along. He was what we like to call the black sheep. Not one day passed when we did not fight or argue for stupid little things that turned into a big problem. He was quite the bully with me and I feared him. Here’s where my sister came in to defend me and they got into terrible disputes. My brother is not a person of words and he lacks speaking skills so he defends himself with his fists. My sister and I have that gift so we have great comebacks and always know where it hurts. Besides my brother has always been an athlete so his physical strength was much greater than that of Andrea and me. It all ended with Andrea throwing the remote control at his head or a glass of whatever was around and he would chase her as she locked herself into her room. My parents are always working so they came home to hear the bad news. Sometimes we had to call them because when my brother lost it there was nothing much to do. He always turned to be the bad guy because he had done all the bruising. Most of the time he was the bad guy, but my sister was also to blame because held this amazing power over him that every little thing she said affected him in a way you don’t understand. I am the little one in the family so my parents somehow side with me but they weren’t mistaken. I sided with them when my brother got against them. I don’t know what it is but I seem to understand them very well so I know what they want and what they expect out of me. My brother and sister tend to be rebels or think they are rebels so they tend to become a regular head ache for my parents. Now days our relationship is much more mature but my brother and sister have this tendency to make everybody crazy, making everybody notice their presence.

Machines and men - Creative Writing

Cars are man’s best invention. I do not understand how it is possible that they have only existed two centuries ago. How did they do back then when they needed o get places and transport things? I think horses are excellent and I love riding them but not for three whole days just to get to my farm. Now it takes me 2 hours to get there because of my most precious vehicle. My real passion for cars is not the fact that they transport me but their beauty and their speed. Speed gives me adrenaline which I love and no other motor vehicle gives this sensation. Motorcycles are also an excellent source of adrenaline but they are really dangerous to use in the city. In the countryside motorcycles are the best and they are very entertaining. Either way if had to choose if I had to ride or only ride in one of them for the rest of my life I would choose a car. A car has so many aspects to it that you never get bored. Each time you drive it you get a new feeling and a new reward. Here in Colombia it is kind of stressful to drive because of the taxicabs and buses that invade the road as if it were theirs. It is also very dangerous because they would cut you just to save a few seconds and they pick and drop people off in the middle of the street. They drive as they please so you, which are in the smaller car, have to yield. Anyhow these idiotic drivers will never ruin my ride because I don’t let it affect me. When it does I get enraged and become a very angry driver and my heart starts beating faster and I really don’t like that. Besides as I said on my February 4th rally violence in this country is not only lived on the mountains and jungles but also in Bogota, in your school and in your car. I am going to put my small grain of sand by becoming a better driver, by yielding more often, by driving at regular speeds. I am not going to drive at the specific speed limit because the person who made those does not drive. In the Circunvalar the speed limit is 30 in some places: you would crash if you went at that speed because everybody else goes at 60 or 80. Another thing that really pisses me off is Colombia’s highways. When they become only a two way street you get blocked immediately behind a large truck and you need to pass it because you can’t go 30 km/h all the way to your farm. Because of this we have invented a system in which the lines on the street tell you when you can overpass. The problem is that continuous lines are all over the place so according to the law you are committing an infraction when you pass on a continuous line. Finally when you arrive at a dotted line, the cops are there with their cones checking for speed limit and doing a control. I think every single person on the road detests those men. They only serve the purpose of getting the crazy drivers off the road. A good thing there is in Colombia nowadays is the fact that you can call these men when you are on the road and tell them that there is a man going at 200 km/h and is going to make a stupid mistake and maybe injures those on his way. The only problem to this is that since we are in Colombia nothing happens to these men.

What is a blog?

1. The difference between a blog and a book is the way in which each of them is written. A book is a closed topic while a blog wants you to think and wonder around. Blogs are written in a messy fashion when the book is orderly and edited. Anyone can write a blog and it is immediately published and someone will read it but a book is very hard to write and to get published.
2. Blogs have become much more interactive and full of further information. People not only comment but invite others to exterior links and to many different topics.
3. I might read a blog to see what people think on a subject and topic I am going to see and to see how much controversy it creates.
4. I don’t think blogs are very objective because people just blurt out what they are thinking and many times they are not wishing to contribute to the expansion of the discussion. I do not trust people so to me blogs are always subjective.
5. The title would be El Mero Bloggero.