The idiot woman syndrome

  I am not the discoverer of this syndrome; I had enough troubles passing natural science. The discoverers are scientists from Rokambol. It affects one in thirty women imputed and charged. The age range prevailing is over forty and residents of exclusive housing developments are more affected. From what I have read it is believed that it might be related to pesticides from gardens or cheap perfumes of the domestic workers. Symptoms include lack of long-term memory, idiot face, cattle eyes, candid and misplaced smile, and the absolute inability to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

 

  In severe states, it is accompanied by the inability to recognize their own signature, inability to identify where the money comes from to buy all kinds of objects, apparent submission to male and disproportionate growth of the facial surface when asked questions of patrimonial nature. Those who could read balance sheets, income statements or had knowledge of mutual funds, banking, mortgage and personal loans etc, lose these skills to the point of not knowing how to accurately answer basic questions such as "how much money do you have in your purse" or "how much is a Hermès handbag”.

 

  There have been reported cases of the idiot woman syndrome in men also, but experts have ruled out that the cases are of real individuals. First of all, to suffer the idiot woman syndrome you must be a woman. Secondly, because his cattle eyes and especially his candid or idiot smile does not correspond to the reported cases in women. For this reason, the scientific community is inclined to think that in cases that may appear, some or all of these symptoms in men would be examples of untruthfulness, made up due to interests, a chronic face or what a more recent study by Smith Lavender and Cifuentes qualifies as "liars".

 

  Symptoms appear when the patient is exposed to judicial or police presence. There is no evidence that the vision of togas, scales and other items related to justice is the only cause of the symptoms, although an investigation by the Nóos Institute showed that overexposure to court records could lead to a worsening of basic math skills and amatory hallucinations regarding partners or former partners with some type of shared equity displacement.

 

  The recommended prophylaxis prescribed, among other precautions, examine bank statements carefully, do not trust money that appears on its own, as well as items that emerge among the family with no explanation, like Jaguars or mansions in the upper area of Barcelona. Also read documents before signing, read the Financial Times three times a week and when the first symptoms begin to appear, take a plane to Brazil and dance in carnival. 

 

  And finally, I must mention the existence of a critical current formed by naturopaths, accountants, and the "Association of Mothers with Criterion", who deny the existence of the syndrome. They describe the affected as sassy and offenders. The dissidents think that judges, prosecutors, lawyers and journalists who take the bait are the ones that suffer this syndrome. Good thing we have science to silence this group of enlightened.

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Feminist

  The contracts that Spanish teachers were forced to sign in 1923, included among its provisions, the prohibition to dye their hair and travel in a car with another man other than their father or brother. They were forced to be home between eight pm and six in the morning, unless it was to attend a school assignment and had to wear at least two petticoats. Needless to say they were not allowed to walk around the city ice cream parlors. The ice cream parlors were places of doom, especially the ones that had handmade products, but we'll talk about that in another moment.

  These obligations and prohibitions, and many other recent ones, seem like laughable anachronisms now that they have disappeared from the face of the civilized earth as naturally as ripe fruit falling from a tree or Windows Vista crashing. However, as we all know and prefer to forget, its abolition was the result of a century of struggles of many women: the feminists.

  I´m a feminist: And you, fat or skinny sir or madam that is reading this, are also one too. Well, I give the benefit of the doubt, and maybe you were or would have wanted to be in the last meeting of Josep Anglada from the extreme right, were he manifested (always so original) that we must blame everything (everything in its entirety) on the Muslims (Moors in his slang) and Latin Americans (in his slang, wog). In that case it would have been strange that he was a feminist. But I presume because of your good and rare taste to read my texts, that you are, despite everything, using the terminology of Mariano Rajoy a "normal person".

  “I am not either a feminist or a male chauvinist”. “I am not a feminist, I am feminine”. “I don´t radical ideas, I don´t believe women are better than men”. “Of course, I am not a feminist because I don´t hate men...” Anyone who has not said or heard some of these unfortunate phrases should cast the first stone. If you are Angel Luna (the stone is a metaphor) refrain in any case of throwing one.

  While other trains of thought, such as socialism, liberalism or even environmentalism, have managed to maintain the prestige of their name (or their brand) despite their failure or omission. Feminism, which has succeeded in essence, integrating naturally in everyone's mind, has gained little recognition; misunderstood and dismissed as an abandoned cocoon that a butterfly leaves; we could say in a cheesy way. And maybe it wouldn´t be so important, if it didn´t unfairly drag down the same path of oblivion and even contempt, the women and men who elaborated and fought for feminist ideas obtaining rights that we all enjoy. Recently, there is a tendency to mask the unappreciated name of feminism, preferring to use the more acceptable term "gender" as a last name that comes from a good family, a good number of words, such as politics, education, problems, research, observatory etc.

  What is feminism? The Spanish philosopher Amelia Valcárcel defines it as that political tradition of Modernity, egalitarian and democracy, which holds that no individual of the human species should be excluded from any asset or any right because of their sex.

  Who were their predecessors? As noted on many occasions, it is not innocent that in the collective imagination we continue caricaturing feminists like ladies with mustaches who hate men. Nor that throughout high school and my career in law were they once mentioned. But they did speak about the essential canonical law and indispensable Justinian law, but not a word about Mary Wollstonecraft or Olympe de Gouges, to name only two. No wonder that when you talk about "gender" issues, sometimes we do not know where we come from, what we want to do and where it is trying to go, lost behind a strange and pilgrim at(@). Everyone will understand what I am talking about.

 

Spanish version

 

 

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Keys to ineffective leadership. Part 1

  It is possible that the capitalist system is falling apart, but we are increasingly asked to conduct our lives as if we were directors, or rather as managers, or directly as a coach. We do not have a problem but we are facing an "opportunity".

 

  We aren´t sociable people, but we are able to identify people who can help us or cause us difficulties. We don´t get into shape at a wellness center, celebrate Halloween, treasure a background and not a past —all this is bearable when your name is Aaron and Jonathan—. This is referring to the vital guidelines that have been replaced by corporate slogans or "management". You are the company. Your identity a brand, your face a logo and when you talk "you implement a communication policy". Of all the pseudo-theology of the company the one that has always seemed to me the most remarkable and mysterious is the one related to leadership.

   

  The bible of this new creed is composed by management booklets  —always from a North American origin—, that also always comes illustrated with little stories that are like know-how fables, that try to show the moral of the directive. They are also very fond of lists of rules of things that should or should not be done depending on the circumstances. One of those little booklets was published the other day by Diario Expansion (Expansion Journal); it could be purchased for two Euros and is called "Keys to an effective leadership". This booklet has an especially suggestive chapter called "how to care of oneself" (in normal English it would be how you can take care of yourself) and it offers a seven-step recipe. Please permit me to reproduce it.

 

1. Talk regularly with someone you trust. Examples of people you can trust are given: a partner or close friend. Perhaps the author is too optimistic.
2. Look for a tutor. In the employment list of tutors? I suppose it will be someone you know prior payment of the tuition of the Masters Degree.
3. Take advantage of seminars and personal leadership courses. (I suspect that the person mentioned in point 2 will be giving these seminars and might be the same person as in point 1).
4. Find a “sanctuary”. Clarification: a place to retreat and reflect regularly. For example a house owned by the mentor, which this person offers when you get leadership classes or when you talk to him or her as a close friend or partner
5. Don´t take criticism personally. (The criticisms of you tutor-couple-professor-landlord).
6. Practice relaxation techniques and take walks. It´s assumed that you will be accompanied by your tutor or a dog.
7. Don´t forget to exercise regularly. I don´t understand. Taking walks is not exercise? Maybe the dog is lazy. 

 

 It is curious that to protect yourself you must enrich your business school teacher. Once you don´t have a cent to your name, you can do it with others.
 

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Doctor Monsters Therapy

  Sartre said that hell is other people. A recent filmography has reinterpreted the phrase turning the others in beings and also into monsters, and also apparently willing to destroy our life, family and properties. Apparently.

  The cinema has always been a good instrument to measure global concerns, fears and obsessions. It is well known that during the 70s, the oil crisis, concerns about the present and the fear of what might come, impacted on the seventh art in the disaster subgenre, although it had begun time ago, it flourished during that decade with titles such as “Airport" (1970) "The Towering Inferno" (1974), "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), "Earthquake" (1974), "The Andromeda Strain" (1971) or "The China Syndrome" (1978).

  The cinematic metaphor that our collective subconscious —if such a thing exists— has chosen to express the discomfort of the economic crisis and the values of the second decade of the 21st century is in the subgenre of monsters. A look at last year’s 2012 releases is enough to check their proliferation. It might seem at first somewhat contradictory. The cinema is an escape tool and if anything seems to be populated with everyday reality of monsters. Why multiply them well in fiction occupying our leisure time?

  We have been attracted to monsters for centuries. We can find evidence of this in paintings by Carreño de Miranda or Goya. It is true that our reality is populated by horror classics that are still active and committing crimes. Creatures like Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Angela Merkel, the chief Carlos Fabra or the modern Rinconete and former head of Spanish entrepreneurs Gerardo Diaz Ferran, to name a few illustrious of the list, continue to terrorize the good people. But monsters are also those anonymous beings that resemble normality and appear to be numerous. Beings that are convinced of making life difficult for others and manifest themselves moved by viscous and petty threads. It won´t be difficult to think of a few, in your company, in your own community, perhaps in your family, or just the guy who will not shut up at the movies and at the end when leaving the movies (I´m sure, sure they do!) empties the ashtray out the window, while out of his mouth comes out a light fluid that falls onto the ground after a Triple Axel with two twists ... Ordinary People.

  And perhaps this is the most interesting finding of these monster movies, that under the pretext of the threat of extraordinary, supernatural and disfigured creatures, they emphasize the main deformity that the true monstrosity is often in specimens with a normal appearance. It is no coincidence that another illustrious monster, Mariano Rajoy, will not stop appealing (when he was in the opposition and would speak) to the "normal people" that "he does normal things" and "uses common sense" so they would join his faithful cohort.

 

  Sometimes the thesis of the monstrosity of ordinary beings is made explicit, as in Tim Burton films. Francis Ford Coppola told us that Dracula, although a murder only moved for love. But the animated films of the monstrous subgenre, supposedly made for children, which have recently fallen upon that there is nothing more monstrous than mediocre masses that blindly follow leaders and reject what is different, as shown in "For Norman" (2012), to cite a recent tape. Even in films where the monsters continue to perform with rigor their role to scare, persecute, torture, cut, slice, slaughter or consume the unfortunates who cross in their path, there is room for a more ambiguous interpretation, confusing the nature of monsters of the deformed beings with that of normal-appearing beings, as shown in the series "Rec" by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza.

 

  I at least buy the moral. Not accepting the difference or worse, pursuing ones that are different is in itself something monstrous. Moreover, the really monstrous sometimes masquerades as something normal, not only in people, also in organizations and even in the laws.

 

El Señor Gordo

El humor está aquí, en alguna parte

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Translation by Amanda Perri