If there is a restaurant that could be as divisive as the politics between republicans and democrats that restaurant is White Castle. People either love or hate the place and its famous (or infamous) slyders.

I’ve been living in Minnesota for 5 years now and never placed a foot in that joint, Carolyn says eating there is more degrading than eating at KFC, however, I’m from way south and I don’t know why, but we like fried chicken.

Never being able to give my opinion [not that it matters] when lovers and haters argue about White Castle, I knew I had to do something about it. So, yesterday I drove to one and took the step of faith. I didn’t know what to order so I just got two bacon cheeseburger (see picture). I knew the slyders were small but I was surprised to actually see how small they were, no wonder people order 5+, I downed the two in about 2 minutes…it was fun.

So, what do I think about it, well…everyday I’m more convinced I should become Swiss, I usually find a way to stay in neutral grounds during divisive arguments. White Castle will not probably be my place of choice whenever I’m hungry, but they are not as disgusting or gross as haters make it sound like. One thing was obvious though, the ingredients were the lowest quality ingredients you could ever get, plus, I checked the nutritional information today and I’m thankful I only ate two of them…But they are really fun to eat, so small

I couldn’t stop listening to this song last night. It is addictive.

Schoolhouse Rock

The Olympics are just around the corner, this is something I’m always looking forward to every four year along with the World Cup; it is way more exciting to see sports events where countries compete against other countries with athletes/players whom actually are from the country/team they represent.

The Beijing Olympics are going to be very interesting, I don’t understand how China being a communist country just like Cuba or like Russia was before gets honored in many aspects in a way that Cuba is not or Russia was not, aren’t communists supposed to be the enemy? Alright, this post is not about politics, or human rights, or pollution, this is about food.

Yes, Asian countries are famous (or infamous) for having quite a different taste for food, I heard Jay Leno saying that they are even taking dog off the menu in restaurants, he said it during his monologue, so I don’t know whether it’s true or not.

Somebody sent me this very graphic presentation of the different kinds of food can be found on the streets in China, or at least that’s what it claims. I’ve never been to China and I don’t know if it’s actually in China, the people look chinese. Enjoy.

Fast Food In Beijing (PDF)

This morning the car transitioned into the 100,000 miles world, I think my eyes teared up a little bit. As soon as the odometer hit the 100k mark I felt the car jerk a little bit and it started driving a little bit different, I don’t know what it was, maybe I need to have it checked

I’m pretty positive that it’s all going to be down hill from now on. Especially these days when cars are not made the way they used to, but that’s another subject for a different post.

Sorry about the blurry pictures, it is not easy to take a picture at 6:30am in bad traffic, while changing lanes and getting on a clover ramp.

Scientists say that the human brain is not fully developed until one reaches 21, and that’s the reason why teenagers have poor judgment and make a lot of wrong decisions.

So, here is my question, how come we have to make one of the most important decisions of our life at age 17-18? I’m talking about college, career, profession… We just graduate from high school, we barely know how to take care of ourselves and boom, we have to decide what do with our life.

Could this be reason why most people are very unhappy with their jobs?

Money is quite a controversial thing. Some people have too much, others have too little. The ones that have a lot want more, the ones that have little want more. At the end we all think we don’t have enough.

It is really easy to get lost in this culture of consumerism and materialism, without realizing how privileged we are and the moral obligation we have (whatever your beliefs are) of helping those less privileged without judging them, regardless of their circumstances.

Once I heard if you had another form of transportation other than walking, another set of clothes to wear other than what your are wearing right now and another choice of food to eat other than what you ate this morning then you were in the top 9% richest people in the world, I thought that was pretty shocking.

Do you want to find out how rich you are compared to the rest of the world? Then go to Global Rich List enter your annual salary and hold on to your chair. This website does a pretty good job putting it in perspective.

• This is an American owned, organized and ran contest but it is far more popular in other countries than in the US.
• According to Wikipedia the contest was started in 1960 and it lists the USA as the country with most wins, however, it shows the US won in ‘54 and ‘56…hmm
• After the US comes Venezuela with 5 wins, the latest one was last night!
• Miss USA fell down last night again, looks like it is becoming a tradition.
• I don’t know how it was played in the contest but the CNN article reads Miss Venezuela was once kidnapped back in the homeland. I don’t know if that’s something I would be proud about my country.
• The contest was hosted by Jerry Springer and the Spice Girl Melanie Brown. I don’t know, but I feel quite disturbed to have Jerry Springer and a Spice Girl host anything together.

We all have lists, especially the western culture, we love To-do lists. Everyone have their own bucket lists, things they think are a must-do before dying. I personally, don’t have one, first because I’m not good with lists, second there would be too many things on that list that I wouldn’t know where to start. I read this list (See below) on another blog and thought it was a very interesting idea. I didn’t write the list below and I think there are some items that are very irrelevant, others don’t translate very well and others I don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s pretty funny nonetheless.

I think the question of what is it going to be like after we die must bother everyone on this planet one way or another, if you think about it, we will spend way more time dead than alive. We get so focused about this short and temporary life that we give very little thought to life after death which is a more permanent and lasting condition. On the other I don’t think we should put too much thought about life after death either, I think it was Socrates who said something like “When I’m around death is not and when death is around I’m not”.

Whatever your religion, philosophy, belief or the lack of it, one thing is certain: We will all kick the bucket sooner or later. So, my question is: Do you have a Bucket List for after you die?

I Like the following quote from Socrates:

“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”

50 Things To Do After You Die

1. Question if there is life before death.

2. Prove the existence of god.

3. Scare at least one person at midnight, .

4. Stop believing in ghosts.

5. Depending on where you are at, go on a vacation to hell, otherwise (if you were a bad person), spend a few days of vacation in heaven.

6. Haunt a house.

7. Wait for the final judgement.

8. Think about how all your money is worth nothing.

9. Miss your iPod.

10. Move objects in the real world, for no reason whatsoever, just for pleasure of it. It might not be easy, you must practice a lot.

11. Stop worrying about being overweight.

12. Talk with Einstein about the relativity of time and scold him for helping create the atomic bomb.

13. Forget about lists of things to do before dying.

14. Listen to a heavenly choir.

15. Reflect on how absurd the phrase “I think, therefore I am” is.

16. Stop cutting yourself.

17. Talk with your dead relatives. Be nice to your uncle you always hated.

18. Forgive.

19. Walk through a few walls.

20. Fly. To write this post I asked several friends for suggestions and about 4 of them said Flying in the first place. I had no idea that the dead could fly.

21. Use the phrase: “Buy one death.”

22. Stop your Internet addiction.

23. See the naked woman of your dreams. Careful, she must be alive, otherwise you can cause a big problem in the prevailing system.

24. Tell Judas he was a son of a *****.

25. Try to experience reincarnation.

26. You can try swearing, but expect consequences.

27. Read the poem “Instantes” and ask Borges how does it feel to have written so many wonderful things and be remembered for something he did not write. Hopefully he will respond he is not the author.

28. Chat with Klimt, Picasso, Dali and Botticelli, ask their opinion on Photoshop.

29. Experience an exorcism in first person.

30. Quit smoking, it no longer makes sense to kill yourself.

31. Organize the ultimate football [soccer] game:
Team A: Zamora (ESP), Giacinto Facchetti (ITA), Lucien Laurent (FRA), Luis Felipe Monti (ARG / ITA), Bobby Moore (ENG), George Best (ENG), Garrincha (BRA), Ferenc Puskás (HUN ), Sándor Kocsis (HUN), Just Fontaine (FRA), Guillermo Stabile (ARG)

Team B: Lev Yashin (RUS), Obdulio Varela (URU), Stanley Matthews (ENG), Fritz Walter (GER), Giuseppe Meazza (ITA), Helmut Rahn (GER), Didier Waldir Pereira (BRA), Juan Alberto Schiaffino ( URU), Victoriano Santos Iriarte (URU), Matthias Sindelar (AUS), Josef Bican (AUS / CHZ)

32. Play the Ouija Board like you never ever did before.

33. Find out if Elvis and Jim Morrison are really dead.

34. Find out which religion was right. Pray to God it wasn’t the atheists.

35. Meditate about what Confucius said: “If you still do not know life, how could it be possible to know death?”.

36. Travel in time. It happened similar to “fly”, many people who had been scientifically surveyed ensures that while dead you can break time, and best of all, it’s almost impossible that you can generate some paradoxes.

37. Try to communicate with a medium.

38. Resolve some famous crime.

39. Dine with Jesus and the apostles. Probably have to wait an eternity for an appointment, taking into account the large number of dead people who want to do the same.

40. Meet someone famous in your same condition. It may be easier if the personality has been dead for quite a while, you won’t have to stand in line.

41. Create your own chapter of Dead Poets Society.

42. Forget about the iPhone. You can communicate telepathically, that’s what my friends who want to Fly and Travel in time tells me. Add: establish telepathic communication with the world of the living.

43. See dead people.

44. Communicate with your living partner and make a vase of clay.

45. Ask Moises whether it was true that the commandments were in fact 15.

46. Forget about visiting Marilyn Monroe. The waiting list is longer than for religious personalities. One that is modest and accessible is St. Francis of Assisi.

47. Be compassionate to the vampires.

48. Question why the living decide who the saints are, there is nothing democratic about it.

49. Say Beetlejuice 3 times.

50. Although it might be disgusting, try the ectoplasm.

Link (Spanish)

Listen to this 911 call. It is a very interesting case where the man on the phone shot two other men who were breaking into his neighbor’s house. Yes, his neighbor’s house. He claimed self-defense, What do you think? Should they guy go to jail or he did the right thing?

To find out what happened and my opinion check out Nils’ Blog

What is wrong with this clock?

Hanging out at our friend’s house I was staring at this huge clock they have hanging on their wall and something really got my attention, for a moment I didn’t know what it was but then I realized they wrote number 4 wrong, instead of IV it was written IIII. All my life I grew up knowing that you couldn’t repeat one number more than three times when using roman numbers. So I couldn’t believe it was right to write number 4 that way, we did a quick search in Google Images and most clocks with roman numbers turned out to be same.

As I write this post I went to Wikipedia and it turns out that it has been a custom for quite some time in some instances to write number 4 as IIII instead of IV. That’s good to know, I guess they set the rules and then decided it was ok to break it some times, crazy Romans.

We all have embarrassing moments in our lives, me being the cheesy clown I am I have plenty embarrassing moments. Unfortunately I can’t share my most embarrassing moment ever in this space, but lucky you I just got a new most embarrassing moment ever.

We were at our friends’ house celebrating their little girl first birthday, we were the only non-relatives invitees of the party, so we are talking about 20 relatives in the house having a good time. Everything is going pretty cool, I’m cracking jokes, they laugh at my accent, you know, the usual. I go to the fridge to get a pop and as I start sipping it decides it wants to go down the wrong pipe, this is when things get interesting, and not necessarily in a good way. In previous instances I’ve been able to cough with liquid in my mouth with no problem, not this time, I guess my lips didn’t want to stay sealed and as I coughed I literally became a human sprite sprinkler.

That’s not really that bad until you have someone three feet away in front of you, and that’s really not that bad until that someone in front of you is your friend’s mom; and if you think it’s not bad covering your friend’s mom upper body with sprite coming out of your mouth at high speed, try this: The birthday cake is also within spraying range.

Of course, me being a quick thinker I made up the excuse up that drinking sprite and spraying your host’s mom in the face is how you express your gratitude back in my country. Chances are they will never go down there to figure out whether is true or not.

Carolyn is entering her last trimester of her pregnancy and now the feeling is starting to sink in that in just a few weeks my nights are going to be endless and my nose is going to wish it was disabled.

She is definitely doing a heck of a lot better than what I expected, I think she is even doing a lot better than me, I’ve been fighting so hard all the crazy thoughts of what it’s going to mean to have a child and how unfit I am for the task. If that baby knew who his/her father was it would probably go back to where it came from. So many unclear mixed feelings, so much confusion.

On a different subject, I can’t believe how cool we have been about not finding out the sex. It’s totally going to be a surprise when the baby comes because we both have been making bets about what sex we think baby is going to be. At the end one of us is going to be happy and the other one is going to be right, and I think most likely I will end up being right, therefore she will be happy. It will be interesting.

I saw the picture on the left when we went into a chocolate store and I chuckled because I’ve toying with the idea of getting real cigars for the birth day kinda’ as a joke, but I don’t know, since I HAVE TO BE IN THE DELIVERY ROOM I don’t know if I want to have one more thing to think about. Yes I’m a little bit terrified about being in the delivery room, that’s a concept I still don’t fully comprehend, so I’m not super-excited about it. Although there might be some sort of plan in place to make it interesting enough for me to be there, details will come later.

“It is wiser to allow someone prove himself wrong rather than get a headache trying to prove yourself right.”

- Leo

I guess they realized that having stores across the street from each other wasn’t such a good idea.

Link

Actual call from Tech Support, not me though…although I get this kind of calls many times too…enjoy

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Me: “Thank you for calling ***. How can I help you?”

Customer: “My computer don’t work.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Can I get the serial number off of your CPU?”

Customer: “My what?”

Me: “The computer tower.”

Customer: “Huh?”

(I’ll spare you the agony but, I went on for about 3 more minutes trying to describe the CPU and getting nowhere.)

Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t seem to be expressing myself well today. Can you describe to me all the computer parts on your desk? I’ll tell you which one the number I need is on.”

Customer: “It’s just a keyboard and a screen, like any other computer.”

Me: “Oh, you have a laptop!”

Customer: “A what?”

Me: “A little computer you can take with you. The keyboard and screen fold together with a hinge in the middle, right?”

Customer: “No, I don’t! I don’t know what is wrong with you computer people today. First the sales guy tries to sell me a bunch of sh*t I don’t need in this big box package and now you don’t even know what a computer is! Brand new today and it don’t even work.”

Me: “So…you just bought a keyboard and a monitor?”

Customer: “What’d I need all the rest uh’ that sh*t in the box for? This was way cheaper! I ain’t stupid!”

Me: “…”