The right to go naked

We were having this discussion at work. A police officer is being judged these days in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) because he threatened a man to arrest him if he didn't dress up. You see, the young man was on his bike, COMPLETELY NAKED. There's no law against this. He has his right to go naked on the streets. I just don't feel comfortable with this law. I was labelled as "backwards" and old fashioned. Isn't that nice? Anyway, it was a friendly discussion. But still... what do you think? I feel this young man had a lot of free time and instead of spending his days just parading naked to stand for his right to go naked (silly since he does have the right to do that) maybe he should be doing something useful.
Do clothes bother you so much? How would you like to go naked to the supermarket (in the summer, of course)???

Homage to a Catalonian Christmas

This is a very good video about Christmas Catalan traditions. It's a bit long, but interesting. I'm sure we must look quite strange! What do you think?

Pan's Labyrinth trailer

I alredy posted about this movie once, I loved it. It's nominated for best foreign film, and it's a beautiful mixture of reality and fantasy. About the Spanish Civil war and a legend!

The Hudsucker Proxy

I love almost all movies from the Coen brothers. This scene is from The Hadsucker Proxy, enjoy!

God bless this man

He is Crawford Williamson Long, anesthesia pioneer. I went to the dentist.

There is No Gene for the Human Soul

This is also from Gattaca, the credits at the end of the film...

My movies: Gattaca

Are we headed this way? In a near future, will we want our children to be "designed"? Now we have the "right" to "terminate" imperfect creatures, and even create a child to save a sibling. How far should this go?

The not so nice speech!

Another great moment in The Great Dictator. And the last I post here, go rent the movie!

My movies: Bananas (1971)

This will not be among the best movies but I had a good laugh. Directed by Woody Allen when the Vietnam war was going on... and he probably wasn't that happy about it, even though Bananas is set in a Latin American country.

The use of Christmas decorations...

The Great Dictator - speech

Another of my favourite movies. For those who haven't seen it, it's the final speech. Chaplin is a "fake" Hitler... Aplicable today?

I think she wants to start her own blog... should I let her?

Kissing Hank's Ass

Is this what religions are about?

Once I met a terrorist....

Well, not exactly a terrorist. A mercenary. A member of the GAL. His name was Georges Alphonse Mendaille. I had just begun working in a local newspaper and someone told us he was living in a small town in our area. I was fresh out of university, but my boss decided I should be assigned the "easy" task of interviewing him or at least, talk to him. I figure my boss knew it would be nearly impossible but wanted to see how close I could get. Needless to say, I didn't feel confident at all, but nevertheless I tried to get to his house. I couldn't even ring the doorbell, though. As soon as I parked the car I had several policemen (in plain clothes) approaching me. I was not to get any closer, so I set to the stupid task of waiting to see if he left the house, where he would go, what he would buy, stuff like that. As weeks went by, I got tired. I wasn't making much progress. In fact, I hadn't even gotten a clear view of his face though I had seen him in pictures. So my newspaper assigned me another task: A poll. Yes. I was to interview people in that town and ask something like "Are you comfortable having a GAL terrorist as a neighbor?". It seemed easier, and had been gathering some answers when I decided to take a break and have some coffee. I entered a café and saw three men standing by the counter. One of them looked oddly familiar. I thought: well, I need more people for my poll, so I approached them and asked my question. The three of them were smiling. The oddly familiar man said no, he didn't mind having a GAL terrorist as a neighbor. His accent... I should have known... French accent... "I just need one more thing, what's your name?"... he smiled. "Don't you know??" I BLUSHED. "You should know by now, you've been following me for weeks..." And I knew. And the other two men were in fact some of the policemen. I wished earth would have swallowed me!!!!

Love letters and books

This is actually a love letter from my father to my mother, written in 1955, when they were still dating. Their language was Catalan, but since Spain was under Franco’s dictatorship our language was in fact forbidden and they had to write in Spanish. It would have been hard to write in Catalan for them, since they could not even learn it at school. Or even speak Catalan at school, it had to be Spanish. Things I learned while reading his letter:
1-He used English sometimes. It’s a language he always liked.
2-He wanted my mom to buy the book “Vile Bodies”, by some Evelyn Waugh.
3-More interesting: their plans for the weekend. He was telling my mom about the “liberation party” at his hometown. I asked him what it was about. Well, whenever Franco’s guys would enter a town that day was the “liberation day”. And they should celebrate every year. How ironic is that.
I was going through some old books and papers at my parents’ (today was my mom’s birthday and we spent the day there) and found some interesting old books. Like this bunch:

One of them (Randall and the River of Time) is about “a man enslaved by the desires of a scheming woman”…. Now, no publisher would have that on the cover of a book today! It’s just not… politically correct.