1. CHUD: Chud’s been around since I can remember in terms of my internet life, and it’s made the introductions between me and some of my favorite movies ever. The Host, Crank, Old Boy, Tony Jaa, The State, Battlestar Galactica, Slither, the second chance I gave to The Iron Giant, and so many more were discovered through the site. I like to think that Chud is one of the main reasons why I like the movies I do, and it’s definitely made me wise up on what’s good and what’s bad out there. Often considered a blog (though I don’t really see it, but whatever) operated by Nick Nunziata and with some of the best web journalists out there such as Devin Faraci, Alex Riviello, Russ Fischer and others, they cover movies, TV, comic books, DVD and BluRay and have a whole array of columns such as The Devin’s Advocate, The Sewer Subterranea and CHUDSploitation, and others. If you’re looking for something more beyond the run-of-the-mill blockbusters and media darling shows, CHUD is the place to go. Watch out with the Forums, though; they’re the most intimidating place on the internet, because everyone in there is smart and scathing. They eat their young. I’ve lurked for years and whenever I pick up the balls to sign up I run into a thread where everyone’s ripping each other a new one in such sharp, imaginative ways that I feel out of my league.
2. Gorilla Mask: The premise of this site is fairly simple. Every day you’ll come in and check out the daily links of random nonesense on display and you’ll waste your time in the most effective way possible, staying true to their site’s motto: “Killing Productivity, Seven Days a Week.” The site posts all sorts of stuff, from image galleries to articles, videos and curious tidbits you can only find on the world wide web. Their back catalog is well-stocked too, and it’s very easy to search and findwhat you’re looking for. From this site you can also discover many different places on the web where you can waste your time with much gusto. Just keep in mind that some links are NSFW, if you’re worried about that sort of thing.
3. Area 5/CO-OP: I’m proud to say I’m a gamer. Always have been and I think it’s pretty safe to say that I always will be, passing the habit along to my eventual kids. With the internet it’s easier to get news about the latest games coming down the pike and it’s a much cheaper venture too, given that the internet is free and all that jazz. Using its full potential though, the guys from Area 5 (formerly 1UP staff) created a true gem for every gamer out there, recently updating and fine-tuning it to what we know today as the CO-OP Show. Originally the 1UP Show, after what I like to call “The Great 1UP Fallout” which is something you’ll have to read about elsewhere, many of the creative forces behind 1UP had to relocate elsewhere. Happily they’ve all managed to get back up on their feet, and CO-OP has to be seen as nothing short of a triumph. Tune in every week for the best video game show, online or otherwise… just be prepared to suck up a lot of bandwidth, ‘cuz this greatness don’t come cheap. Also, check out the site’s links section full of awesome video game related podcasts and other goodies.
4. io9: If you’re into sci-fi, then you’ve probably heard of this website. If you haven’t, then you should: io9 is kind of the BoingBoing.net of Sci Fi, or rather second cousin who’s more into the genre. In this site you’ll find reviews and commentary on everything sci fi, be it books, TV, movies or anything in between. There are also smart, snarky articles on subjects that span anywhere from alien abductions to Donnie Darko. For what it’s worth, the site is part of the Gawker network, where you can easily jump genres from Sci Fi to celebrities, to gadgets and video games, and others.
5. Post Secret: One of the first websites I ever came across with, I have it in high regard for what it’s been able to accomplish. A web 2.0 site when Web 2.0 didn’t even exist, the site is a simple blog were people send in postcards with their most intimate secrets anonimously. The site’s creator/curator, Frank Warren, then updates the site every Sunday with a whole batch of secrets. The postcards are sweet, depressing, uplifting, discouraging, eerie and facsinating all at once. There have been several books published with thousands of secrets, and many people owe their lives to the website (it’s no coincidence that the website has a link to the US Suicide Hotline). I go there every week to renew my hope for humanity.

I hope you enjoy the sites. I might do more of these in the future, so stay tuned, I guess. Do you have any websites you usually go to that you’d like to share with the rest of us?

My dad is a little resentful. And when you have the son of the man that instigated “Just Cause” running the (arguably) most powerful country on Earth with the enthusiasm and expertise of a 5 year old in a sandbox, it’s understandable. Could be a number of reasons that make me feel rather distraught when talking to him, but I try not to because he, like many Panamanians and specially those who lived in the lower-class areas of the capital, have a blind rage towards Americans as a whole, and it’s a shame because it’s the source of how some Panamanians will go out of their way to take advantage of foreigners. And like my father, Panamanians have many of these pre-conceived generalizations that damage more than they do good.

He started talking about what happened at Virginia Tech earlier this year. Very tragic, for sure. I will not discuss what my dad thought of it because it’s mean spirited and sad, but the point I’m trying to get to is more about the fallout of events like these when you have young kids do horrible things to people who don’t deserve it, where experts and news outlets tried to rationalize the reasons as to why this Korean college student snapped and opened fire on campus. My dad went into how an image was found of him holding a hammer at the camera, and how they tied it to violent Asian movies (most specifically “Old Boy”). He started to go on a tirade about how movies, video games, and TV are where kids today are getting these crazy ideas and how its their fault. Look, I’m a reasonable guy. My world view is pretty radical, and that’s why I let people rant off without filter because we share the same rights. Every now and then though, you get someone who is so deliriously off-base that I feel compelled to set him/her straight.

Dad: […] psycho kid took the idea from the violent movies they churn out today. Did you see the image? He picked a movie from his country to act out his tirade on VT!

Rob: No, he didn’t.

Dad: What do you mean? It’s all over the news! (Note: my dad, though he hates the US government, ironically stays glued to Fox News…)

Rob: They’re lying.

Dad: What? Don’t tell me that movie is one of those weird ones you buy off the internet…

Rob: As a matter of fact…

Dad: Oh. My. GOD!!! What are you thinking? Those guys are crazy! They’re the same ones who make those violent video games! I saw an episode of “Law & Order” about it.

Rob: You’re very misinformed.

Dad: They’re all terrorists, Robert. Crazy fucking terrorists!!!

Rob: Look, that’s the sort of stupid, misguided response they always say. I don’t believe that’s the case.

Dad: Then what do you think is the case?

Rob: It’s the parents’ fault.

Dad: What?!

Rob: Of course! Parents who don’t pay attention to what their kids watch or do, and don’t explain to them the difference between right and wrong, will come out screwed up! If parents are concerned about violence in the media, those same parents who use the TV set as a babysitter, I think they should use the parental warnings that are put everywhere on entertainment so that stuff like that doesn’t happen. It’s the parents’ fault if they don’t pay attention to them.

Dad: Video games don’t have parental controls!!!

Rod: Yes they do. The ESRB system is in the front cover of every video game.

Dad: That must be recent!!! I’ve never heard of that, it wasn’t there when you were a kid!

Rob: Yes it was. It was set in place a little bit after the first Mortal Kombat came out, if I remember correctly.

Dad: No, no… you have to understand the pressure. I had to buy you those games, Robert. You’d throw temper tantrums and wouldn’t stop until I bought you what you wanted!

Rob: What’s that got to do with it? If you were really concerned about it you would’ve sat down with me and explained that it was a game and I can’t actually rip out a person’s spine.

Dad: I had the job at the bank. Besides, you’re smart! You could tell the difference from what is right and wrong early on.

Rob: there you go assuming things. What if I wasn’t? If I turned out to be some deranged killer would you have blamed the games I played of the stuff I watched on TV? I’ve played video games, watched violent movies and TV all my life and I’m not plotting to do any killing sprees. But that was because of me and my luck because I’m not dumb. But to blame entertainment and not parents’ irresponsibility to be there for their kids is hypocritical. To blame TV, movies, books and video games for nut jobs and terrorists is, at least to me, a direct insult to the society you live in. You’re basically saying that people are too irresponsible and dumb to police themselves, so the media has to do it for them. The media has so many warning labels… every movie trailer has a warning; shows on TV with mature content have a warning and now every show is labeled with a rating system, the ESRB is for video games… there are warnings everywhere, and if parents can’t or don’t want to use them then its their own fault if their kids turn out screwed up!!!

Dad: […] I have to give you that…

Rob: When you do it on a national scale, no matter what country it is, you’re insulting it in the most degrading way. The controls are there. If they don’t want to use them then it’s their problem but they should stop blaming it on everything else but themselves.

Recently there have been talks about introducing a sex education book in Panamanian schools, aimed at children between 4^th and 6^th grade. The book is currently implemented unofficially in 80 schools across the country, but now there’s a controversy going on because it has been put for the senate’s consideration to make it an official textbook sanctioned by the Ministry of Education. I found out about this due to a news report on the subject, and the whole problem is that some people are very adamant about how early kids should learn about sex. The book goes into great detail into informing children on the concerns of the modern world in regards to unprotected sexual relations and sexuality. There are exercises that, for example, pose scenarios for the reader: “if you could be born again, which sex would you choose?” There are three options available, not two. There are chapters on unprotected sex, the use of condoms, masturbation, homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, monogamy, polygamy, sexual libido and taboos, what to do in the case of rape and how to prevent it along with the regular fare of a study of a person’s reproductive organs and what happens when they’re used for sex, what’s liable to happen during a first time, what happens when the male ejaculates inside the vagina, and other very intricate details about the joy of sex.

Panama, being a highly Christian country as is the case with all members of the Latin American part of the continent, doesn’t quite have the sort of populace that would embrace that method of teaching with open arms. Naturally, the report went into great lengths to show how appalled they were by the book, even if most of them didn’t even browsed through it. They asked the usual suspects: a priest, some people off the street, a member of the senate and teachers from both sides of the fence. It seems that the whole issue here is that a 9-year old kid is too young to know about sex.

My first Sex Ed. Class was when I was 12, in 7^th grade. All I remember of that is the teacher, who had the distinction of talking very loud and showering the front rows with his spit as he talked. These would happen once a year for 3 years until I hit 10^th grade in high school, and it wasn’t until then that I truly learned about sex… by having sex. I learned more from watching Skinemax (Fridays at midnight, without fail. Playboy took over Cinemax, and it was glorious for my raging hormones) than I did at school, and all the talk I ever got from my parents was the sentence that followed a book on Sex Ed. I was supposed to read but to this day is still in its wrapper. What’s a guy to do when all supposedly-reliable sources of information won’t supply it? Well, you go out and find the answers for yourself, of course! And like me, I’m sure many kids have sought out to find their own answers since parents and school either romanticize or don’t get into details of the dirty deed because, to them, it’s politically incorrect for children to be told everything. If parents are too busy to pay attention to their kids and are completely ignorant to parental warnings placed in all forms of entertainment, then all a kid has to do is log on to Google and search for “pussy.” Not only will he find out about sex, but he’ll also be exposed to every possible sexual fetish in existence! Of course, by the time they hit 13 and are ready to have “the talk” (according to society, anyway), they find out that they know more about sex than their elders, and power trips are never good no matter what we’re talking about.

Kids are in their learning prime when they’re young; that’s why teaching them about sex from a purely sociological and scientific angle is perfect, because putting religion in this is not going to help matters at all; it’s that sort of backwards mentality that creates people like the ones I see in the AlmanaqueAzul.org comments: the site has an entry on natural ways of protection when having sex, and every other day some poor fool (usually in his/her teens) posts a comment begging everyone that can help to point out a solution to their unwanted pregnancies. There are girls who have posted that are 6 months into their pregnancy and are still asking for ways to get their period to start again, because they’re scared they “might be pregnant.” It’s this kind of idiot that we should be trying to get rid of as a society, and the only way to do that is to educate them early. Whether the church and parents like it or not, children will run into homosexuality, bisexuality, other kinds of sex that do not necessarily create babies and they will, and I repeat, will masturbate. Get over it. I’m of the opinion that the better informed you are before getting into something, the better. In the end, the only person that’s going to be knee-deep in it is you. So, if they want to teach my kid about sex early in his life then I’m all for it; that way I can finally watch the movies I like without him/her asking me questions every time some girl pops a tit. Knowledge is what makes people smart, and when kids have a thorough learning curve that isn’t sugarcoated or passed over like the one established now, Panamanian society just might have a chance at becoming better.

Information is just so easy to get now in the digital age where the Internet is king. If the chances of a child learning about sex by going online are diminished by having a professional at the kid’s school have a class on the subject, I’d rather have my kid go to school and then I’ll fill in the blanks. Then we’ll play “Gears of War.”

Here’s a postscript for you: in the video gaming world, the name “Jack Thompson” will have you spit on the face. This Florida lawyer is the most vocal voice in regards to blaming the media for the psychos that come out of America. Wikipedia can tell you all about him right here. Anyway, the comic strip posted alongside this editorial by the fine folks at CTRL+ALT+DEL is in response to one of Thompson’s more popular insanities: he bet $10,000 (to go to charity) if a video game manufacturer developed his premise into a video game. The synopsis is insulting:

Thompson’s letter describes a game whose protagonist is Osaki Kim, the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer who played a game about beating people to death with a bat. The game intro shows the court session where the killer is sentenced to “only” life in prison.

Osaki Kim then swears vengeance, and gets weapons, “even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.” Kim goes to New York to kill Paula Eibel, the CEO of “Take This”, the company that made the “murder simulator on which his son’s killer trained”, along with her husband and kids, then urinates on their severed brain stems (as in Postal²). Kim then kills the lawyers of “Blank, Stare”, the law firm that defended Take This, “with singer Jackson Browne’s 1980’s hit Lawyers in Love blaring.” Kim then destroys high-tech video arcades called “GameWerks”. Lastly, he goes to E³ on its opening at May 10, 2006, destroying all video game industry execs in “one final, monstrously delicious rampage”.

Along the way, Kim steals supplies from Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and Wal-Mart stores, and roughes up store managers and clerks, yelling “‘You should have checked kids’ IDs!’”

As a result, an independent video game developer actually created a game that tended to every one of Thompson’s requests, titled I’m O.K – A Murder Simulator. Thompson to this day has not kept with his promise, saying the bet was nothing more than satire. It’s ill-informed, misguided dinosaurs like this man that make me loose faith in the human race. Like Thompson, there are many Panamanians that judge things they do not understand with extreme prejudice, and these same people blame everything under the sun except themselves when things go wrong no matter what said things are.

Here’s Thompson in action, on Attack of the Show:

It’s not really my place to be talking about video games since there are other people who cover that front around these parts already but this is my party and I’ll rave if I want to: I’ve talked about the Wii before and since day 1 there’s been nothing but love. I saw this coming, like a tidal wave coming from the distance to wash us all over with digital goodness: The Nintendo DS, the company’s latest in a long line of successful portable consoles is a smash hit everywhere in the world due to its stylish look, awesome interactivity and, what’s most important, great games for all ages. You have your serious games to your more kid-friendly ones and then you have what NOA has come to call “Touch Generations.” They’re games that anyone no matter how young or old can play and enjoy… I’ll give you a recommendation: no matter how old or how serious you are, do yourself a favor and find a N-DS game of the “Brain Age” series. You’ll sit down, giving it the benefit of the doubt. And then the game starts… next thing you know, it’s been three days and you’ve lost track of time and space due to how challenging and, as a result, addicting they are. You’ll also improve your mind’s ability to process and remember things. Great games all around… you won’t be sorry. Anyway, Nintendo’s plan to try and attract non-gamers is wise: when you have games like “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” tainting the reputations of games all over and douchebags such as Jack Thompson not helping things, someone had to do something in order to prove all of the retractors wrong. Don’t get me wrong, though; “San Andreas,” and all of the other GTA/Rockstar games are excellent, but the company is known to be as the bad boy on the block and they take pride in it, to the disdain of the rest of the industry and delight to politicians who treat them all like muties. If you’re not video game savvy, I’ll put you up to speed: You’ve heard about violence in video games and how parents are quick to pin the corrosion of values in children and teenagers on VG companies and the games they make just as much as they’ll blame music, TV, movies, the Internet and everything else they can come up with as long as they don’t have to blame themselves for bad parenting. I’m not going to trail as far back as the Colecovision/Atari era because to name the crazy, paranoid studies done on these games in order to find sex and violence is them is so ridiculous it upsets me as much as what happened in the 50’s and the book “Seduction of the Innocent,” which attacked comics in such a vicious way that it created the Comics Code (on it’s last breath, might I add… since most publishers are waking up, realizing that “code” is as moronic and unfounded as the MPAA’s rating board with movies) and put out special interest comic book publishers out of business and almost forced the industry to a colossal collapse… of course, the industry managed to pull out but you can feel the repercussions of that witch hunt to this day. Anyway, I’ll say that the first high profile case of video game violence, and certainly the first one to catch the mainstream’s public eye, was Midway’s “Mortal Kombat.” Everyone knows about the game even if they’ve never played in in their lives, with its realistic (at the time) characters and the infamous “Fatalities” where you could burn your opponent to a crisp or rip off their spine. Since technology never stops growing and we don’t get any younger neither, as developers could do more things with hardware/software and games were allowed to be more complex and realistic, the conservative, ignorant middle-America started protesting against video games, citing them as ills of our society. When stuff like the Columbine school incident happened and suicide rates increased int he 90’s parents and the politicians they elected blamed video games for for it, as well as everything under the sun that they didn’t understand such as Japanese animé, Marilyn Manson, The Simpsons and whatever else they could come up with. Now, with a new generation in video gaming gaining force, there are more of these people who want the artform dead; the most vocal of them is the one named Jack Thompson. Below, some insight on the man’s relationship witht he video game industry… from Wikipedia:

On occasion, Thompson has sparred directly with the gaming industry and its fans. In 2005, he wrote an open letter to Entertainment Software Association president Douglas Lowenstein, making what he described as a “modest proposal” to the video game industry (alluding to Jonathan Swift’s satire of the same name): Thompson said he would donate $10,000 to a charity designated by Take-Two CEO Paul Eibeler if any video game company would create a game including the scenario he described in the letter. The scenario called for the main character to murder a number of industry executives (including one modeled on Eibeler) and go on a killing spree at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. When video game fans promptly began working to take Thompson up on his offer, he claimed that it was satire. However, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the creators of webcomic Penny Arcade and of the children’s charity Child’s Play, stepped in to make the donation instead, writing in the memo field of their check, “For Jack Thompson, Because Jack Thompson Won’t.” Afterwards, Thompson tried to get Seattle police and the FBI to investigate Holkins and Krahulik for orchestrating “criminal harassment” of him through articles on their site. Other webcomics have regularly incorporated references to Thompson, alluding to this incident as well as others.

In 2006, two Michigan gamers began a project dubbed “Flowers for Jack“, soliciting donations to deliver a massive floral arrangement to Thompson’s office. The flowers were delivered in February along with a letter aimed at opening a dialogue between Thompson and the video gaming community. Thompson rejected this overture and forwarded the flowers to some of his industry foes, with such comments as “Discard them along with the decency you discarded long ago. I really don’t care. Grind them up and smoke them if you like.”

I think Jack Thompson is an ignorant douchebag. He’s the same as others who can’t understand the meaning of freedom of expression and since they reject what they can’t understand, they try to impose their will no matter what. I read an editorial today on how this movie “Shortbus” is making waves because of its depictions of real sex on screen. Apparently the movie is great, and the sex is not gratituous but in fact it helps the narrative and fleshes out the characters in the piece. Now, just as the article pointed out, the people who wonder why if there’s real sex being shown in movies then why wouldn’t there be real violence should have their head examined. It’s that culture that assumes that the general public is idiotic and will therefore take in their entertainment as true the one that’s making it worse for ventures like these… “nouvo art,” if you will. The thought of it makes me fucking boil. But back to the video game discussion, with the video game industry tainted and losing ground, preventing it to become what it’s destined to be which is as legitimate an art form as movies and graphic novels someone needed to step up and take charge in order to clean up the industry’s image and, what’s more important, attract new gamers and make video games as a culture grow. The one company who brought the industry to the mainstream had taken a beating for almost 10 years I believe, ever since they released the Nintendo 64 and it underperformed… they were the victims of bad decision-making I’m sure… but it looks like they realized their mistakes and slowly but surely started making their crawl back to the top. With the way things are now, I believe Nintendo has stepped up to the plate and what I felt was going to happen from 2 years back is downright inevitable now… Mario will be king again.

Reading the details for the Wii makes me so giddy I think I’m going to piss myself. The way things are now Microsoft’s X-Box 360, the only console in this current generation already out, hasn’t been able to break out of its niche market, mostly American. That, and the only thing they’ve got going for them is “Halo,” which is the game title that put the X-Box brand on the map to begin with… Sony, the leader for the past two generations with the universally-know PlayStation brand has almost systematically shot itself in the foot with their latest console, the PlayStation 3. The thing is a beast from the reports I’ve read, but it’s just too expensive: it seems that the cheapest version of the console (a bare bones edition that’s quite frankly not worth a look at all) will be $600, the wireless controllers being $50, the games coming in at around $60 and other cables and adapters needed to make the investment worth your while amount to more than $1,000!!! No parent on their right mind will shell out the price of a used card for a video game console… and the X-Box is pushing it, costing practically half the price ($500 is still pretty steep but, sadly, more realistic that the reported price for the PS 3) Of course, these console will give you amazing graphics and they’re both equipped with online capabilities where you’ll be able to play with other gamers across the world, talk to them, check global stats and even purchase games online. The added value is that the PS 3 will be backwards-compatible so that means that the games from your former console will be playable on the new one… the X-Box 360 has this feature as well but only with select titles of the original X-Box. The PlayStation 3 was slated to ship out this Christmas but as of right now there haven’t been any playable games, no working consoles to display and marketing/shipment woes that have forced the company to push back the release in Europe to March 2007 (supposedly all other territories will have a launch for XMas but, as I said, we’re in September and they haven’t assembled the units yet).

So, with all of this happening, Nintendo waltzes in with the most attractive, mind-blowing proposal I’ve heard since I became an active gamer. There were many rumors about the “Wii,” but real release details were sketchy; supposedly you’d be able to download and play every game ever released on all Nintendo consoles dating back to the original NES, online capabilities that gamers already enjoyed with the N-DS portable and a very interesting, intriguing trade: graphics for playability. Enter the Wiimote: first of its kind, it puts a spin to what the console can do. Setting up special sensors on your TV you’ll be able to interact with games unlike anything you’ve seen before. The wiimote becomes whatever it is you need during gameplay because of said sensors: for example, in a baseball game the way you knock the ball out of the park is to use the Wiimote as a bat itself… swing and watch the ball fly. For first-person shooter games, you hold the controller like a gun and use the trigger by your index finger to fire. Box by clenching your fists around the controller and punch away. Swing a sword or even a lightsaber. Fish. Hunt for food by using your arrow… the possibilities are endless, and the Wiimote already catapults the Wii into Jetsons-like proportions. When speculation began regarding the price for this console, many realized that this would be the deal breaker regarding whether or not gamers (and the mainstream alike) would take part in Nintendo’s experiment.

So… how much, then?

The Nintendo Wii will have a free online service hooked up via wireless networks. You’ll be able to download and store in your system every game ever released in these systems: the Nintendo Entertainment System ($5 per game), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System ($8 per game), and Nintendo 64 ($10 per game). The rumors about being able to purchase and download Gamecube and Sega Genesis games wasn’t divulged in the press conference. Peripherals (controllers, the “nunchuck,” a special attachment to the Wiimonte) retail at $40 and $20 respectively. You’ll be able to digitize your face and create a character modeled after you, which you’ll be able to use in games. there will be 30 games available at launch day, November 19th, and none of them will excede the $50 mark ($10 less than X-Box games). And the console…?

$249.99.

With third party support locked in, solid first party titles and the guaranteed fun it’s gonna be to play using the Wiimote, as well as the joy that’s gonna be me playing the original “Legend of Zelda” whenever I want tell me that this might be first time in my life I’ll lobby to try and get a console opening day. This thing can’t go wrong, and I’m so happy I could cry. Seeing Nintendo back on top after many years in obscurity is the kind of “Count of Monte Cristo” stuff I love, and if anyone deserves to lead the industry to new heights once more, then it’s Nintendo. It was about damn time.

Live blogging coverage of the conference in question, with more specific details, is here. More details here. The Bastardizer’s homepage is here.

It all started when I got out of my seat to go to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, and returned to my seat. A little while later the two stewardesses on the flight crossed each other in the aisle. They had a quick conversation that I was in earshot of.

“I locked off the front lav. There’s something in the toilet that’s preventing it from flushing. Run some water and see if you can clear it.” My face immediately turned red. The seat cover! I thought. It must have been too big to flush! I should have thrown it out!

I was so embarrassed. I tried to act normal … I took a sudden interest in the contents of the seat pocket in front of me, acted nonchalant and all. I watched as the stewardess got on her hands and knees in the lavatory and did unfathomable dirty work.

Sometime later, I decided it would be best if I forgot the whole thing happened, so I went to put on my headphones and drown myself in iPod music. But … no iPod. I panicked, checked my other pockets. Where was it? Not under the seat, not in the pockets, not … anywhere. I looked up to the stewardesses. One of them had run past me in a decent clip. She was carrying a green handbook. She brought it to the other stewardess. They flipped through the handbook, read a page, then made a call. The other stewardess had retrieved a blue metal box and was removing some equipment from it.

I put two and two together. I knew what had happened.

So I walked up to the stewardesses, both clamoring over the handbook, and tapped one on the shoulder.

“So, I had an iPod before I went to the bathroom, and now I don’t. I think I know what’s in the toilet.”

We had a quick conversation. I told them, “You don’t have to call the TSA or anything, it’s just my iPod.” They said, “Oh, but we already did.”

So now I’m starting to realize that this is turning into a big problem. They offer their condolences, tell me that it’s unfortunate, and I take a seat. Okay. So far, not so bad. I return to my seat and spend the rest of the flight trying to act normal.

That is, right up until the pilot comes over the intercom.

“Folks, this is the captain. I don’t want to alarm you, but we’ve found a suspicious device in the front lavatory. Now, we think it’s probably nothing, but in this day and age … you can never be too careful. We’ll be landing at Ottawa, where we will await further instructions.”

The cabin erupted with commotion. At that very moment, my face fell into my hands. What have I done?

We landed at Ottawa, and we were taxiing to the gate. Without warning, the airplane then lurched to a sudden halt.

“Folks, this is the captain. We’ve been ordered to make an immediate stop. Buses are coming to evacuate the aircraft.” We were to leave all of our belongings on the aircraft; we would be shuttled by bus to the terminal, where we would receive our carryon items.

My face fell deeper into my hands. Next came the waiting. Waiting and listening to more worry and commotion. A lot of us wondered if we could bring cell phones, wallets, passports, or customs forms with us. The stewardesses didn’t have any answers; they had never been through this before.

On the one hand, if I brought a cell phone, wallet, etc. etc., and they confiscated it, I would have to hunt and peck for it separately from my carryon luggage. But if I stuck all of that stuff in my carryon luggage, I would only have to find one bag when we clamored for our stuff in the future. I decided the smart thing to do was to stick everything in my carryon. But, I kept my wallet, because I knew I was in big trouble at this point.

It took them 45 minutes to round up not just a bus and air-stairs, but an army of police and customs vehicles. One of the stewardesses took me aside and whispered to me. “Get off the plane last, and talk to the constable.”

So I did. I exited the plane last, and spoke to the Ottawa police officer waiting at the air-stairs. I told him that the device was my iPod, and he took down my license number.

I continued to the bus. After a brief wait, it did NOT take us to the terminal. It took us to some industrial facility, where they housed utility vehicles. There, in the open garage, we were instructed to sit and wait. And wait we did … another 30 minutes or so.

This was possibly the worst part … While we were waiting I got to overhear the passengers talking about me. Well, they didn’t know it was me, but they knew someone had dropped an iPod in the toilet, and they made aaallll sorts of assumptions about this person.

“Why didn’t he have it on a clip? He could have clipped it to his damn pants.” Or, “Why didn’t he tell the stewardesses? Why is he hiding it from them and making us go through this?”

I could have corrected them. I could have told them that it WAS on a clip and I DID tell the stewardesses. In fact, it was a lot of self-restraint to just keep my mouth shut and not make things worse.

By this time the sense of guilt had left me. This wasn’t my fault. Anyone could have dropped his stupid iPod in the toilet. It’s really the government here. I mean, at this point the building contained six customs officials, an army of policemen, people from various security agencies, a bomb squad, and a couple of detectives. No one was doing anything. No one was taking charge. *I* didn’t create this mess.

The whole time, the officers were watching me. They had told me to keep in sight of them at all times.

Finally, five or six customs officers set up a table and made an announcement. “We will be interviewing each of you one by one. Please form a line. Before we have our chat, make sure you have your ID, passport, and customs information with you.”

One person asked, “What if that stuff is still on the plane?” The customs official responded, “Then we will have a more formal chat.”

I got in line with the rest of the people, but shortly thereafter two police officers took me out of line. “Come with us.”

They took me to a discreet corner. They brought out a tape recorder. I was told to put my hands up on the wall and spread my legs, and I was frisked from head to toe. They removed my wallet, disassembled it completely, and placed each of its contents in its own plastic evidence bag.

“Now Tim, for the sake of the tape recorder, I want you to state your full name and address.” I did. “Now, each of us will state our name and position into the tape recorder.” There were two detectives from the police department, a detective from Customs, and two members of the bomb squad.

Then started the questions. They were easy at first. They asked me where I lived. What do I do for a living? Why am I unemployed? How come it’s taken me 4 months to find a job?

They asked me why I was visiting Canada. I was to visit a friend I met on World of Warcraft, Cara. They took down her name and what I could remember of her address. They asked me how we met.

“In an online game.”

“What online game?”

“Umm … World of Warcraft,” I responded meekly.

“What kind of game is this?”

“It’s a fantasy game … it takes place online.”

“Fantasy … like it’s got wizards and warlocks?”

“Well, it’s got warlocks.” (And they need to be nerfed.)

They asked me to describe my relation to Cara. I told them that people meet up in the game and go on adventures together, and that Cara and I were in a guild together that I was the leader of. They confused the concept of a guild with the game, however, and I had them believing that I was the Lord and Leader of all of WoW until I was able to correct them, and explain to them what a guild was.

So, when they put the pieces together; namely, that I was visiting a female person that I had met over a computer game, their next line of questioning went down an obvious path.

“So you and Cara are friends?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you known her?”

“About 5 months I think? Maybe less.”

“Do you have a romantic relationship with Cara?”

“No.”

“Do you want a romantic relationship with Cara?”

“No.”

“OK, so … if you and Cara were drunk together, and she turned to you and said, ‘Tim, let’s go–’”

I interrupted him. “Excuse me … what’s the point of these questions?”The detective hardened. “Let me make things clear. I ask questions. You answer them. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes.” I paused. “I just don’t see how this is relevant.”

He spoke right in my face. “I’ve got 5 good men going into that airplane right now. Five of my best bomb squad guys. If there is any reason that I should be concerned for their life, then I need to know now. So just answer the questions, and do as I say.”

Now the questions became really pointed. What do you think about 9/11? What are your views on the Iran issue? Do you think government is too big, too powerful? Would you ever “make a point?”

He asked me if I knew how to make a bomb. “I have a degree in physics, and I’m not an idiot.” Of course I knew how to make a bomb — what kind of question is that?? The better question is, WOULD I make a bomb? The answer is no.

They tried to trap me with some of their questions. I noticed they would try to get me to contradict myself. Like, I had earlier mentioned that I had never met Cara in real life, so they would later nonchalantly ask me when I had last seen Cara. Stuff like that.

He told me there was a similar bomb scare in LA today. He asked me if I was connected with it. He asked me if I was connected to the “liquid” thing from Britain.

Finally, he was done. He and the two bomb squad guys left. The customs lady followed up with more prying personal questions. She asked me more about Cara, how I got to know her, how we interact, etc.

The interviewers would periodically withdraw to talk about me in French, then return with followup questions. I was picked apart by these questions. They wanted to know how I could pay for my ticket, being unemployed, and what my motivations for visiting Cara were. They had me on the defensive the whole time.

She had finished her interview and I was then returned to the garage where they were questioning everyone else on the plane, one by one. I waited for another hour or so as the bomb squad did their thing (I assume). Eventually, they loaded everyone up on the bus to take them to retrieve their stuff. Except me — I and two others were to be inspected by Customs.

They took my photo, asked me to wait in the cold for 30 minutes, and then escorted me to a red van. Along the way I passed the detective who had first interviewed me. He was carrying a green paper bag. He called me over.

“I just got it back from the bomb squad. It’s an iPod. Do you want it back?”

“It’s been in the toilet.”

“Yeah, it’s messy.” Then he walked right up to my ear. “Tim, you’re not in any trouble anymore. Nothing you say now is going to be on record. I want you to answer a question honestly, just for me, not for my agency.”

“OK?”

He whispered into my ear. “Did you … did you take a dump, and then drop your iPod in the toilet on accident?”

“No!” I yelled a little too loudly. “Like I said … I didn’t notice it was missing until after!”

“OK, OK. I believe you. You did great, Tim.”

I got my wallet back and was escorted by police to the van. I waited some more on this van, and finally it took me to a harmless immigration office. I waited some more there, the whole time being watched and followed by police officers. Finally, they escorted me to the baggage claim to fetch my stuff, and took me to a very private room with some bomb-screening equipment and tinted mirrors for windows.

It was me and a gruff, humorless customs official. He unpacked my luggage entirely, ran the contents of my wallet through a bomb sweep, and carefully examined all of my belongings. He then asked me to turn on my laptop. I did, and he began using it. I saw him open Spotlight and begin searching.

“Do you connect to the Internet on this laptop?”

“Yes.”

“Have you downloaded any images?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Do you have any pornography?”

“No.”

I waited in total silence for about 10 minutes as he kept searching and searching, until I finally asked him, “What are you looking for?”

“Contraband,” he said without looking up at me.

“Such as?”

“Child pornography, hate propaganda.”

“Child porn I can understand, that’s illegal. But hate propaganda is protected speech.”

Now he looked up. “What country do you think you’re in?”

“Oh, it’s illegal in Canada?”

“I honestly don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. I get to decide what goes in this country. Do you have a problem with that?”

I paused for a long time while I thought about what I should say to this. “Yes.”

“Yes, you do have a problem?”

“Yes, I do. If it’s illegal in Canada I’ll understand, but saying ‘I don’t want it in my country’ isn’t good enough when you’re a government official.”

Now he was pissed. “Don’t fool around with me. I’m sure you want this to end as much as I do. So I will ask you questions, and you will answer. Do you understand?”

Another long pause while I thought. “Yes, I do.”

He continued his exhaustive audit of my computer’s contents, then returned it to me. We waited for a Customs escort, who showed me out of the room and back to the terminal. There they left me without saying a word, and I was free to go.

I found Cara and Andy, and my vacation in Canada began.

So, after a little less than 4 years I finally worked up the stamina to take out a Blockbuster Video membership card. It might be a dying horse in the States but over here it’s still alive and kickin’… at least for the time-being. The reason why I decided to fold at the feet of the video rental corporations? Key-K gave me the tip many a month ago of one Blockbuster Video that was different than the others… one where I would find treasures I never thought would exist inside a family-friendly establishment dedicated to home release cinematic endeavors. He hyped the living cojones out of me so I decided to go an by Pai Mei’s beard, I almost fell on my ass when I saw it: a whole corner of the place dedicated exclusively to independent film. And I’m not talking about the mainstream, crowd-pleasing, Napoleon Dynamite fuckers either but stuff like the Criterion Collection editions of Akira Kurosawa movies. The entire catalog of Alfred Hitchcock. Spanish films, French films, German films, really out-there en vanguarde shit that only people who are worth half their weight in knowledge would possibly know about. They had Infernal Affairs. Brazil. Fuck, they had God damn AKIRA. I was sold, I wanted to take the corner home right there and then…. but upon going to the less-than-amused clerk I wanted to sign up to the establishment so I could rent myself some Kurosawa goodness then the restrictions came. I’ve been told that in Canada, for example, all you need to do to get a video rental membership is ask. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a whole other story: first, I need to have with me the most recent water/light/phone bill. Having a credit card is always a plus, as well as 4 numbers where I could be localized. They’ll check at least the home phone right then and there, even asking me to call and tell whoever’s there to pick up the home phone because Blockbuster Video is going to call to check that there are people living there… yes, the logic of this escapes me as well. After all of this they’d type in your info and then maybe, perhaps who knows when you’ll get the membership card and will be able to rent the latest in movies on home video. That whole process kind of turned me off for months (years, actually) until last night, when I set myself the goal to suck it up and go over there (the Blockbuster Video I speak of is the one in Calle 50, for those in the know) so I can get my membership and start doing some serious movie watching. I picked out the light bill from the fridge magnet and went off at 10PM, knowing that they close at 11PM as part of my strategy to see if I could use the clerks primal desire to go home in order for me to get my membership a lot sooner than I actually anticipated… I was prepared for the worst though. I was ready… mind and soul in unison, brought together by the common threat of idiotic paperwork. I was out of there 40 minutes in, and if it weren’t for 2SXC keeping me company I would’ve surely punched somebody and/or would have bought a DVD from the semi-used titles isle.

The business of video sales/rentals has been booming these past few years and I’m absolutely glad that so many new places are opening that are brining new, innovative stuff to the table (I’m looking at you, Panama DVD) and what’s best of the whole thing is that if there’s one thing we as Panamanians aren’t anal about is our movie watching habits. Of course, there’s still the larger group in the pie chart that likes their movies for the same reason they like the things they do and that’s because someone else told them it was cool and they, in fact, have no opinion of they’re own but now there’s a whole load full of other options for people like me who are looking for more challenging stories on celluloid… and thank Marley that electronics stores are aware of it. I have a Region Free DVD player that plays both XVID and DIVX, bought in one of the country’s most famous electronics stores (that would be Multimax) for $49.99. 50 bucks and I can watch all of the Regions and downloaded anime/porn/shows I want. The player has all the bells and whistles too, and if I were to fork 50 bucks more I’d have home theater speakers blowing the socks off my feet… one of the selling point of Panamanian electronic stores is the ability of the players they sell of being able to play DVDs from all corners of the globe but most people don’t care since what they usually want to watch is the popular stuff you find at your mainstream retail chains and what not; that’s fine and dandy, but when you’re someone like me who likes a Korean movie 10 times more than most American ones then you have to pay attention to such things. It’s not every day that you run into a Region 3 DVD at Costco though, so the advertisements on the feature are downplayed since it doesn’t mean much to most people anyway… Panamanians are like most people that way, in the sense that they don’t want to understand why or how something works as long as it does, and I attribute it to the Panamanian’s uncanny ability to be lazy and conformist not only refusing to document himself on a matter that can either bring benefits or disgrace, and no matter what choice is made the Panamanian will just go ahead and take it up the ass, complaining how he doesn’t deserved to get fucked in the first place. Upon reading that last statement and realizing that he brings it all up on himself, though… yes, Panamanian, you do in fact deserved to be fucked up the ass for it.

So, back in 1997 I got myself a PlayStation. There was a booming video game market rearing it’s 32-bit head and since I’m a game whore I wanted Sony’s new innovation which in just a little over two years dethroned Nintendo as the industry leader. I was perplexed, confused and downright serious as to what this frickin’ thing could do. There will be some of you who will remember this place if you’ve lived in Panama long enough but there was an Asian fellow who had started this video game store/play place called “Game Universe.” It was in Plaza Concordia for those who know where that is, and to throw you even farther back into the loop I remember that Laser Shots was still open there… go figure. Anyway, I went there because Smoth had told me that they sold special PlayStations with 2 controllers and a game of my choice for $200 and at first I thought it was somewhat of a wad of cash (even though I didn’t manage currency back then since I was 12, but my dad was and still is a technology whore and even though he won’t admit it he was almost as curious as I was over this thing) so I was somewhat hesitant; this is the part in the story-within-a-story that the pebble of wisdom rained down my top-heavy: this was a magic PlayStation. With this PlayStation, I could go to Game Universe and buy any game I wanted, from the ones I drooled over when I read PSM: The PlayStation Magazine to crazy Japanese ones I had never heard of for $10 dollars each. Ten. Dollars. Each. When most of my active-gamer life was spent going to the best toy store at the time (Felix B. Maduro, named after what I can only assume is Felix the Cat’s Latin American cousin) and buy Genesis and SNES cartridges for $80-$100 and looking at the new PlayStations at $300 and the “next gen games” such as “WipeOut,” “Twisted Metal” and “TohShinDen” going for 50 bucks a pop, the proposition felt a lot more enticing so that Saturday morning after Summer School my dad and I bought my one-and-only PlayStation, with “Rival Schools” as my first game. I absolutely loved that game, an arcade style fighter from Capcom, the people famous for practically inventing the fighting game genre as we know with a little title called “Street Fighter.” Maybe you’ve heard of it. When I punched the living shit out of Rival Schools I saved up my recently granted allowance money and bought another fighter, looking for the most Japanese, whacked out games I could find… all of them for 10 bucks. So who cares if the games didn’t come with instruction booklets and didn’t have DVD cases, opting instead for clear plastic CD cases? Hell I didn’t even care that the covers to the case where the cover and back art looked like they were printed with my 5 year old printer and that the readable parts of the discs didn’t have the copy-protection black color, instead a dubious clear green one? They were 10 bucks, man. My life was bliss for years to come, setting in stone what my policy for entertainment media: if I like it enough, I’ll buy a legit copy. If not, then hell… it was only 10 bucks anyway. From what I understand the business is still going strong, passing over to the now-at-the-end-of-its-rope current generation of XBoxes and PlayStation 2’s. After my discovery of how much stuff you can do and get over the Internet I never looked back to retail so I wouldn’t be able to tell you how things are over on that front, yet I do remember that they were busted for selling pirated goods when they garnered enough notoriety for their business model, a new one in Panama. $1.50 an hour to play the PSOne, Dreamcast, N64 or other system with the game of your choice, and if you liked it enough it could be yours for $10 bucks if you bought your system with them… if not, it was $50. This wasn’t only with games, though; my video rental place at the time (yes, I did use to have a video store I went to but it went belly-up after it was discovered that some of the movies they had weren’t necessarily legit) was also in on it, and with the discovery of the life-altering MP3 and Napster people would be burning downloaded songs off the Internet left and right. When I got in on the piracy soul train I realized what all the fuss with Game Universe was about and rather than reject it, I accepted it; truth is that stuff is too expensive. It was expensive then, and it sure as hell is expensive now. Games for 60 bucks, with no returns? Hell, talk about a leap of faith, there. I’d say the same thing about movies but that’s not really a problem here since a normal movie ticket is $3.99 and $2 on Wednesdays no matter where you go, with all the bells and whistles of theater chains in the U.S… yet when you’re at a traffic light street vendors will not only try to sell you candy, prepaid cell phone cards and whatever else they can get their hands on but they’ll also sell you pirated movies, straight from the Internet to the palm of your hand for 5 bucks or so. Hell, they even have porn. If I were to give you ladies and gentlemen a word of advice on these movies they try to sell you on the street, it would be to not get them. That’s sacrilege: even if bootleg movie technology has come a long way in terms of making the picture and sound quality better so that the difference between a legit DVD copy and theirs is as seamless as possible there’s nothing like going with a crowd and enjoying a good movie, let alone and buying a DVD full of extras and insight. Music, though? Another story entirely.

I have a t-shirt that, if we’ve hung out long enough you might’ve seen before. It’s black and it reads in very clear letters: “I steal music from the Internet.” Whenever there’s a concert I go to I make sure I take it. It’s not so much a Panama thing as it is a global thing now, and since the lines of what’s right or wrong are still blurry and what’s worse, that I have to fork out $17 of a music artist or band whose 1 song I like only to be disappointed by the utter shit that came along with it are just a couple of reasons why I haven’t payed for an album in years. Come get me, assholes. Even iTunes is overtly restrictive, and since Panama is always at least 3 years behind on everything trendy there hasn’t been that Internet boom yet to warrant a service such as iTunes or whatever to take wing. I’d love it if there was a system set up where I could buy music without feeling like I’m getting a prostate exam, but if in America it hasn’t happened yet it’ll start to snow in Panama before that happens… the concept of the “mall” as we currently know it was introduced 3 years ago, for crying out loud! But of course, we have Panamanian sensibilities thrown into that mix just like we like to do with every foreign influence we receive just so that we can call it ours and that, sadly, is where the connecting thread between malls and piracy is exposed… the knock-offs.

At the moment there are 3 major malls in Panama: Albrook Mall, Multicentro and Multiplaza. You can find cheap goods in all three, even Multiplaza which looks like the epitome of industrialism, kind of like the mall in either “Dawn of the Dead.” Of course, the knockoffs in Multiplaza are a little more masked but in Multicentro they’re easier to spot… the mecca is Albrook Mall though, and not surprisingly is also the most visited during the weekends… why? Because with $20 you can come out of there with a whole new wardrobe. I’m talking pants, tees, buttoned shirts, underwear, shoes… you name it. I’ve bought awesome pants at $2 dollars there. Shirts at $3 or so. It’s ridiculous, and even though they’re not as durable as say Kenneth Cole or whatever’s trendy it establishes the theory that in Panama nobody really gives a shit what you wear as long as it looks good on you and I can live with that shallow realization just fine. A lot of Panamanians are the type that want to give out an image of something they really aren’t, and if they can save a few bucks while doing then it’s by all means welcomed… and I can tell you first-hand that the quality of the clothes is above average; I’ve bought buttoned shirts from Albrook almost 3 years ago and I can still wear them no sweat. This can be said about most pirate goods that can be obtained quite easily in Panama for an affordable price and, in most cases, the quality is so unbelievable that you won’t know the difference until you notice there’s an extra “M” in the Puma track pants you have bought there for $5.99.