Sheep Guts, as Shakespeare wrote

“Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?”
--Benedict

Whisked away to the mountains of Jarabacoa, I was treated to a brief concert this past Sunday evening. Molly-Ann Pereira, sister and old friend of mine, is a professional violinist and she and her student held a private Fiddler on The Hilltop program for all lovers of… well, music.

The audience was a mixture of music lovers, proud parents and fellow musicians from all corners of the island. The backdrop was the private home of a former Washington, D.C. official and his million-dollar mansion in an area known as Los Pomos.

Said barrio in Jarabacoa is better described as a series of hilltops, spiked with villas and mansions from ex-presidents and bank directors and the likes. Even Bobby DeNiro is said to own something up here, although I put those rumors down to the fact that he has been shooting his newest film close by (M. Damon, and A. Jolie in the good company of B. Pitt recently wrapped their scenes in Santiago). In short, it was style and art in best company, as well as the most amazing rainbow since the Flood.

A series of minuets by Bach initiated the program, much to the pleasure of blushing parents, who proceeded in applauding every squeak, squeker, squeaken that came from the stage, even if said song was not yet completed.

We progressed towards solos by Brahms and Boccherini that deserved the applause they received and worked our way through Bach minuets, only to be interrupted by the lady of the house who rushed to the aid of one or both of her viciously cute Taco Bell dogs that had tumbled off a stair while engaged in a brutal yapping contest -- in response to Bach I should think.

I hoped to experience an evening sans Batchata, but no dice. Molly-Ann delighted the present audience with a classical cover of a much-hated (by me anyway) Batchata song. But I must admit that in her hands even this dreaded music sounded close to magnificent.

The highlight in my humble opinion (then again, I may be partial) was the presentation of the upcoming, break-out artist Toni, who delighted us in a very Jewel-like fashion with her newest single. Being American she nevertheless managed to present her song in excellent Spanish, accompanied only by the audience’s heartbeat and her guitar.

The evening completed with wine, roasted chicken and home-brewed ginger schnapps and Yours Truly shooting his mouth off and generally annoying everyone with his Zoolander imitation (see the picture where 'ol Blue Steel has the honor to be flanked by two students and the lovely Toni).

In short, the usual crap when I'm around.

But, hey, how many times do I get to return to my home-town? This was a first in a while, and regret it I do not.

PS: The next day I crashed (I don’t attend) a wedding in Santiago. I managed to shoot a few VERY lovely pictures of our good friend Natasha -- however she threatened with disembowelment and eternal banishment from her blog should I ever dare to publish them. Despite th fact that I am gutless, I will comply. As my buddy Jeremy once said: “Hot women! They are all Cylons!”

Don't You Just Love It?

Dont you just love this face? Call me crazy, but it's adorable!

What Makes Me Who I Am

I, as have you most likely, wonder on a daily basis just who I am. I know who I want to be, I know what I’d like to be and I know who I should be. But am I any of the above?

I’m a sap, that’s for certain.

No, really, my biggest fault (or virtue, take it as you may) is that I am partial to human suffering. I make the wrongs of the world my own fault. I believe that it is a trait many of us share (you know who you are), but I am especially cursed by it, for it has made me who I am, brought me into ASL, etc.

I shall elaborate.

The other day I watched the espionage-thriller The Constant Gardener, a movie based on a novel by my fav writer John le Carre. The movie is very graphic in the depiction of poverty and suffering in its African setting (rated R as I later found out… oops). Not so much in a “Oh my, those poor people!” kind of a context, but rather more like “Look! Let’s do something about it!” -- Which is the subject of the film, in a nutshell.

And that is the story of my life. I hate to see people suffer… more so if there is nothing I can do about it. It gives me the chills, my stomach cramps up and tears well up.

Not in sadness.

In anger.

This feeling harks back to my first encounter with poverty in the mid 80s. I was a giddy intellectual of 7 and thrilled to visit ‘America’ for the first time with my family. We toured much of both coasts, stopped by Disney World, leaped over to NYC, then across to San Diego and met friends far and wide. All things a child should remember forever.

Yet I don’t.

My memory leaves me blank.

Except for a visit to a little town called Tijuana.

I don’t remember much of the city. But I do remember the people. I recall the incongruous contrasts: a boy my own age asked me in Spanish “do you also speak English or do you only speak Tijuana?” A family in nearby San Diego we stayed with looked wide-eyed at my parents for speaking Spanish with me and my brother, instead of our native German: “Why do you speak Spanish with them?” -- as if Spanish was a four-letter word. I guess that California for you.

But my fondest and at the same time most dreaded memory was of an old woman sitting on a street corner with a baby in her arms, extending her begging hand towards me as I passed.

Me. A 7 year old wisecrack, chipper enough to blister paint off walls.

After a few paces I stopped. My brother (4 at the time) heeled and gazed at me. I couldn’t just let her sit there. At the same time I could not walk back: some type of fear had gripped me. It may have been shame. My wallet was at the time in a terrible hungry condition (well, that hasn’t really changed, come to think of it) and I had to my name but a tiny coin of the lowest value. Demonstratively I emptied the wallet until I found this one sorry coin and handed it to my brother to give it to her. He waddled over to her, plunked the coin in her hand and returned. I knew it was worth nothing. I knew it was a joke. But it was all I had.

The old woman, having observed me this whole time, lifted her arthritic hand and waved: “Gracias.”

I could have choked up right there.

I don’t remember Mickey Mouse hugging me in D World. I don’t remember the giraffe in the San Diego Zoo licking my head with its sandpaper tongue.

But I remember and old woman thanking me for giving her a coin of no value.

Was it this encounter that causes me to vote with my feet for the rest of my life? Perhaps. I have now learned to cope with poverty, but every time I pass a begging woman with a baby in her arms, the feelings crashed down on me like so much of an ice-bucket and I’d like to pull out a wad of bills and right the wrongs.

Or, as did Ralph Fiennes’ character in The Constant Gardener, grab the pilot of the evacuation plane and try to bribe him to “save them! If we don’t they will die!”

But, as did Fiennes in said movie, I would miserably fail.

I still don’t know who I am. I don’t know if I ever will (hey, that kinda makes me mysterious, don’t it?)

But I do know one thing.

Thank God I know the Truth.

DESIGNER VS. CODER

(Prologue: I wrote this brief story to explain how a website is created, at least the larger ones when several people are involved -- and yes, I'm often on the Designer end of this)

DESIGNER VS. CODER

Welcome to the Fight of Fights of Designer vs. Coder, the biggest sparing match since Bush vs. Kerry! Or Coke vs. Pepsi. Or Kirk vs. Piccard. Or whatever. You get the drift.

Crouching in one corner you will see well equipped with his IBM, his honed HTML, ASP and PHP skills and utter lack of taste and style, the ultimate number-cruncher and parse-juggler: The Coder! Give him a big “Live Long and Prosper” everyone! May the force be with him!

And pillowing in the other corner, groomed, styled and GQ-ed, readying himself with a Latte (artificial sweetener and soy), armed with his Photoshop 8, his Mac and an impeccable taste in Jazz: The Designer! Can I hear an “Inconceivable!” from the crowd? As you wish!

This is the fight of the eons and only one can win! It has been going on since the foundation of the World Wide Web (approx. 10 years) and is certain to continue well into the future! But who should prevail? The Coder seeks all that matters on the net: function, functionality, usability and function, while The Designer seeks all that matters in his (or her) opinion: truth, beauty, freedom and love. And we all know that truth, beauty, freedom and especially love have no function whatsoever. And yet, all these elements must coexist if a web site is to be created!

The match begins!

The Coder waddles forward and proposes point-click-cash for a business website. The Designer glides into posture and advises pretty-pretty-click-click-ahhh! The crowd goes wild. Those that applauded the Coder’s minimalism now swoon in awe at the Designer’s colors and glosses. The judge votes in favor of the Coder, because his proposition resulted in the much desired ‘cash’, but hands the Designer a door prize for originality.

Second round announced by the click-click of a mouse.

The Designer has gathered new strength after flipping through a House and Garden and refilled his Latte-warmer with a double-strength espresso and a Bailey’s chaser. The Coder doesn’t need such drivel. He has been IV’d to a Red Bull dispenser for the past few hours and has been feeling high as a kite. He coughs a few brackets and utters some insults in ASCII because he’s been having that Pi daydream again.

This time the Designer attempt to compromise, and offers up a hybrid: pretty-click-ahhh-cash. A nod from the judges. Subdued applause from the crowd. The Coder rages, lunges forward on all four and fires of click-cash, because it rimes with quick-cash. Someone in the crowd claps ecstatically, then stops as nobody joins in. Quiet. Someone coughs in the stillness. Could have been the Coder. Dang brackets. The judge is ambivalent and decides that it’s a tie.

And so the battle rages on, layout after layout, coded line after coded line. Both parties grow tired with every round. The Designer is close to a burn-out, the Coder to a burn-up. The judge soon wishes he had stuck with the prefabricated sites available for a-buck-n-a-half at some dubious site from India. The crowd has gotten bored and is reading theonion.com and the entertainment section of CNN.com and downloading illegal music.

But a verdict must be reached! Only one can win!

Resolutions are proposed. Sack the Designer, let the Coder learn Photoshop. Sack the Coder, let the Designer learn HTML. Sack the judge, sack the Coder, sack the Designer, sack the crowd, and let’s get back to pen and paper. But the decision ultimately rests heavily upon the judge, the person who ordered the site, or whoever has the responsibility to get the job done.

Here are the two possible endings to this debate:

1. The Designer and Coder humbly agree that neither can take the decision and call upon a third party, the judge. He decided which road to choose and which design to use and both the Coder as well as the Designer must follow that decision.

2. The Designer, according to natural selection the wisest of the lot, chooses to settle the issue once and for all. He floats past the Coder--who is on the floor on his back blabbering and salivating something about brackets and //W3C//DTD HTML 8.01 Transitional//EN with wide Red Bullified eyes--and uses a trick he learned from the Coder known as OPC (other people’s codes) and duplicates a proven site both parties have agreed they liked, changes the colors, images and text and slips it to the judge, good taste be dammed… or at least bridled. Since it is impossible to agree with a Coder one must sometimes let good taste be good taste and choose a path more minimalistic in nature.

THE END

A cry in the Dark

Indeed, I have been gracing the pathways of cyberspace for many ages, yet never actually managed to uphold a true blog of my travels and quests throught said realm.

Suffer no longer, world!