Family Affair

While investigating my ancestors I found this quote from my great uncle, Friedhelm Maximilian Reinhold Scheck (“Corky” or "The Corkmeister" to his friends), before he was chased out of Germany in 1938. “Somewhere on this planet a piano is falling ten floors to the street below. The challenge all humanity faces is to find a way to put Adolf Hitler between it and the sidewalk.”

Perhaps I should make my fictitious great uncle a regular feature here.

Black Beans in a Pressure Cooker

This is a very basic dish but perhaps I can teach you a trick or two. Pressure cookers are the only way to cook beans. These black beans would have taken three hours to cook in a regular pot.

Graffiti in the Digital Age

In an era where a successful YouTube video can receive hundreds of thousands and even millions of viewings it’s a wonder that teenagers still bother to buy cans of spray paint to defile any and all public surfaces.

In all of my years here in graffiti-plagued Spain I’ve never actually seen someone out tagging. I’ve seen a few graffiti artists at work but these two groups are completely different. A good 90% of the graffiti can simply be classified as vandalism without any artistic pretense. Most of this form of destructive graffiti is simply tags, spray-painted signatures of the idiot committing the offense. As crude as these tags may be they must be thought of as communication in some form, quasi-literate as it may be.

Don’t these kids have cell phones? Why don’t they upgrade to Twitter? It’s the new graffiti and although it's just as stupid as tagging you don’t have to buy paint. If you need more characters than those alloted on Twitter then may I suggest getting a blog? It’s free and you don’t have to go out at 04:00 to do your dirty work like with graffiti.

Miracle Street

If you really believed in miracles would you have bars on your windows? I may be mistaken but I think the miracle in question is the so called “virgin birth” so if they are trying to avoid that again I think that steel bars make for a pretty poor prophylactic. I like how in Valenciano they don’t even call Mary a virgin; she’s just God’s mom. It’s like they’re saying, “Sure, we’re Christians but a virgin? Let’s not go overboard.”

People here aren’t too religious but I think we can all agree that the water into wine stunt would be pretty cool.

The Most Inspirational Video You Will Ever See!

I've decided to become a life coach...or the director of an insult clinic. Being able to accept crticism is the first step towards a better you!