I’ve been reading up on my books regarding SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I’ve got lying around as well as some stuff up on the Internet about it and quite frankly, it all gives me a headache. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been getting so many lately… truth be told, [...]
To put it in lamest terms, lately I’ve found myself with an acute lack of inspiration to write anything worth reading. Looking back at it, I could attribute this resignation with being tired from taking care of Porto and all the wonderful things he does, or recent work troubles, or somewhat personal issues; maybe it’s all of the above. Of course, since it’s in my nature as a writer to be an observer of human behavior, I find myself more interested in how other people’s actions (or lack thereof) affect me. If you’re looking for an informative piece on Panama or Panamanians and how they operate, I guess you’ll find something worth taking with you in this piece. If you want to read the musings of a jaded columnist with some snark and hilariously bitter social commentary, you’ll get a kick out of this joint. If you’re looking for news, get the fuck out of my porch.
Happiness joins the Extraordinary League of Emotions, sharing the round table with such greats as Love, Hate, Devotion, Lust, Faith, Destiny, et al. Be that as it may, the notion still doesn’t tell me a pip about what it really means. Since happiness is intangible it is also subjective; since there are as many definitions for subjective things as there are people on Earth, I came to the conclusion that a zeitgeist was in order. My discoveries, I’m happy to report, revealed the closest thing to “meaning” as I’m going to get to, despite my best knuckle-headed efforts.
People love music. It’s one of the first and most important means of expression known to man. People fall in love, find a cause, discover friendships and cure their ills every day thanks to the power of song. As it is with our current societies, though, sometimes being a musician (or an artist, for that matter) must come with a degree of corporate compromise: money. Virtuosos or not, an artist has to eat, and sometimes he/she has to adapt to what’s popular at the moment. In the end, the people rule even though sometimes it would seem otherwise.
Here’s a thought; In my daily commute of getting work done and my frag score up, I sink out and about into the internet. If you’re a regular here, this is no news to you. Anyway, one of my guilty pleasures is to peruse a couple of celebrity blogs… you know, those site where they [...]
Hello, boys and girls. So, it would seem that both me and the cats at Porto Diao took an improvised sabbatical of sorts during the month of January. We went out, lived, loved, got into great adventures, got drunk, got high, got depressed, got delirious, people came and went, some for good, others, for a little while, others got together forever in the sanctity of marriage, people grew apart, people came together, others still are.
This is the set-up: a man that’s known both online and off as Rob Rivera is lying down in bed thinking about the things people like Rob Rivera think about when they’re lying in bed (answer: chocolate) perusing the TV channels of his basic cable service. Mind you, my TV set has been busted for months.
In December of 2007, an article by legendary Panamanian author Enrique Jaramillo Levi graced the Opinion section of La Prensa, Panama’s highest-circulated newspaper. The short essay, titled “Escritores Ante Nuevos Retos” or “Writers Facing New Challenges” was placed on my desk after a long day on the streets, being charming and trying to earn my [...]
I read an interview on Marcos Beraha a couple of months ago, and in it this engineer mentioned that he’s always had the need to express himself through song and, with the advent prowess of the Internet, it allowed him to purchase nifty sound recording programs so he could record tracks right from home. Out [...]
Let me begin by saying that I am not an economist and the rabbit hole goes much deeper than I’ve managed to crawl myself into regarding the following, and this thesis is open for discussion in and out of my chunk of the internet. Having said that, I was having lunch writing down facts to [...]
If this comes off as ranty then it is because I feel particularly touchy when it comes to the capacity for injustice in man. I’ve been preparing an article on Noriega and the 1989 invasion to Panama, labeled “Just Cause,” and that, tangled along with things happening at work and my personal life that I [...]
In case you didn’t know, I like movies. I like the storytelling medium of moving pictures and, as an avid fan of tales on celluloid, I make it a habit to buy off-the-beaten-track titles I read about on the movie websites I frequently visit, and every so often I’ll make going to the video rental [...]
I’ve been called a megalomaniac before. A “pathological egotist.” I wonder why that is, but then again, if I didn’t have to wonder then it wouldn’t make me much of a megalomaniac because they have delusions of grandeur. Keyword here being “delusion.” People who are delusional usually don’t know it because they’re so into their [...]
I found PostSecret in 2005, mostly by accident. I wasn’t the person I am now but I was on my way, as in I didn’t yet know why people and their struggles fascinated me so much. In some cases, I didn’t know how attracted I was to the subject of human behavior and, in that [...]
It was Sunday night, and we were lounging about after a boxload of pizza and oversized drinks. We were waiting for 10:30 to come since that would be the moment we could walk into the dark movie theater and check out the latest exploits of detective John McClane in “Live Free or Die Hard.” The [...]