We should change football rules

We should change football⁽¹⁾ rules. I am convinced  these rules aren't  fair and we must change them.  This  idea came to me after seeing the Qatar team defeat the Milanese of Fly Emirates 4-0.

As good communists, and in the name of justice, we can’t allow this unfairness to continue. There’s too much  opportunism  in the sport.  The game must change so that all teams have roughly the same chance of being  European champions  (after we fix the  Europeans  we can fix the rest of  the world,  just be patient).

The aim would be to avoid seeing players like  Kevin-Prince Boateng scratching their  heads this way after such a pasting:

I know Boateng, like the other player who scored a goal in the first leg in Milan (Sulley Muntari) is from a  Ghanaian family. These guys play for the Fly Emirates team in Milan because they pay very well,  and will not suffer the same pain as an Italian who really has Fly Emirates in his blood.  But all these players are members of the proletariate, and we must also consider the mental health of people living in those  loser cities (my condolences to Manchester).

 We can  make things better. I worked this out  with other members of the communist party secretariate, and we concluded   the key is to reduce the advantage more talented players have.  So we propose to  start with a change of rules, to help slower players who have worse aim to get as many goals (or at least almost as many) as very talented  players like  Leo Messi.

It occured to us  this can be done simply by widening  the goal to reach almost the entire width of the football field. As you know, today  the arc is a toddler, and it's  really hard to score a goal from a distance.

 

A wider arch many would allow ordinary players score lots of goals. So we propose to widen it , to make it  look like this:

 

This way goalkeepers won’t  stop anything!

Then,  to be sure even more equality reigns in the sport, we can remove the silly rule that says a player is offsides  (that is,  out of position) when he’s  standing on a spot the referee doesn’t like.

I know, I know.  Now you “experts” will say  this rule has its complexities, but that's not true. A referee can’t  run as fast as today’s  players. This means he can’t see if the player is out of position or not. And I tell you that because besides being a writer and Communist Party activist, I was also a football referee. And I could never run as fast as the players did, nor  could  I see exactly what was going on. So I raised the flag when I felt like it.  And this is  exactly what  referees do. Everybody knows  it.

I think these two changes will suffice. We can start this year, during the European club championships,  to  see if the results are favorable and spread out the scoring . For example, if we see the Unesco team win the whole enchilada, then we’ll know we are on the right track.

European football Glossary:

Fly Emirates - AC Milan

Qatar - Barcelona

Bwin - Real Madrid

Unesco - Málaga

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Footnote 1.  In the USA they think football is American football, and they think football is soccer. This confusion arises from their refusal to adopt the international metric system.

Chavez’s corpse should be plastinated

On March 8 the Babalao⁽¹⁾ of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, announced that the body of former President Hugo Chavez would be embalmed and displayed in a museum in Caracas. This goes along with the ancient tradition of preserving the bodies of saints and important people, and  put them on display  for believers. Interestingly, this religious tradition is practiced  in many communist countries, it was used with Lenin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh.

As a good communist, I peregrinated to Moscow and Beijing to visit Lenin and Mao respectively.  And if I can I will visit Chavez when he’s  mounted in the museum display.

I know that seems silly, to go on a pilgrimage to see Chavez in a museum, but it is a quasi-religious tradition adopted by the communist community.  Besides, the idea is not to pray to the dead, because  communists don’t believe in anything. The idea is to stand in line for many hours and then come back with a postcard showing the dead in his glass casket.  That gives one  special status, like a Catholic who goes to  see Santiago de Compostela, the apostle who saved the Spanish when he  jumped on a horse and helped defeat the Muslims at the Battle of Clavijo.

Of course, Santiago is different. I don’t think he really rode on a white horse and killed seventy thousand Muslims in one day.  But the belief that this occurred allowed a handful of Spanish to defeat the Moors.

 

The problem we have is that neither Lenin nor Mao  help in a battle for communism. They are completely useless.  To show you how crappy they are serving as communist totems, today the Soviet Union doesn’t  exist.  Communist China was delivered by its own leaders into the claws of savage capitalism with such relish  that today China  has more inequality than the Yankee empire.

Hell, the Chinese are so sold out  the only thing they are lacking is being part of the British empire. Those quislings are capable of requesting  the British  monarch  to  serve as their head of state,  and be available to bitch at  the  Politburo when it misbehaves.  Hell, if they do  join up,  they  would become part of  the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and China! That'll be a huge empire. Take note, Yankees.

Returning to the main theme, we Communists could worship  a politician who has been dead for a while. We  could try to find  somebody like St. Vincent de Paul, who founded the Congregation of the Mission intended to help the poor, and also helped form the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity. This saint is highly respected and is in a glass coffin for people to see. San Vicent used to say  "helping  the poor is to be preferred to anything else", this could be the new communist party slogan!

The problem I see with this approach  is that if people really  believe it and expect it to be fulfilled, we party leaders  won’t  get  the large houses, or that extra  share we have coming.  And then all this communist talk  isn’t worth it. So I think it's best to have a seasoned saint like Santiago, who fights with a sword but also has a reputation for helping the poor without overdoing the last part.  We need an icon to help us kill seventy thousand capitalists in one day when we have to do it. And let's cut back on the helping the poor part, please.  It is best to have a symbol of saintliness who fights real hard, and help us to bury the empire, as Nikita Khrushchev told us we would do someday.

Chavez can serve this role. His body has to be preserved and displayed. But I am of the opinion that we must go further,  and adopt a modern practice to preserve the body, so he can really serve us as a powerful icon for many years.

Embalming  corpses is common practice in the United States.  The yanks even  have college courses for embalmers, and embalming has become big business. People,  we can’t  continue copying the Yankee empire all the time. This is disgusting.  Plus they say the Russian embalmers Maduro hired gave up and say he's too ripe to put through the treatment.  So we have to do something different and original.  We have to have a little imagination from time to time.  My proposal is to have the  body of former President Hugo Chavez plasticized or plastinated and displayed in a fierce pose. If possible with a riding stick in his hand.  Mounted this way, Chavez  will give us a boost we can’t possibly get from a  dead man stuck in a glass case.

What  does plastinated mean? Plastination is a technique developed by German chemist Gunther von Hagens. He is the one who runs the Body Works (Koeperwelten)  exbihit. Plastination involves several steps: 1. the body is placed in  a tub full of acetone, which replaces the natural fluids; 2; pressure is lowered and this evaporates the acetone, and the vapors are removed;  3.  plastic polymers are  placed in the tub, they penetrate the body and turn it into something like a plastic statue.

Plastination is much better than embalming.  It  meets  Maduro’s  desire that Chavez's body last forever. Or at least  for a thousand years. I think it's a great idea. It's original, has never been used on a  politician’s corpse, and the body can be mounted in a way that inspires us Chavez followers to fight hard for communism.  I propose a pose  showing Chavez mounted on a horse, placed on  a pedestal in a museum hall where the faithful can see it close up, something like this:

People, I know it's radical, and some of you  will have a bit of nausea, but it must be done, because capitalism isn’t  going to surrender easily.  And if  the Chinese really do get into the British Empire, it  will be really tough to  convince anyone to cooperate with us so we can  build the communist workers' paradise. Please support this  idea, pass the word along to your friends, and let's see if we convince the Politburo to do it.

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Footnote 1.  The “Babalao” is a witch doctor in the Caribbean “Santeria” cult. The white dress indicates the person is pure and can communicate with the spirits of the dead. Maduro apparently thinks  he can convey the idea that Chavez speaks through him by dressing in white. There are rumours around, they say Chavez practiced Santeria and had Bolivar’s body disinterred  and  used in Santeria rites.  Some believers in Santeria and the related Maria Lionza cult think Bolivar’s ghost became enraged when Chavez took him out of the grave, and killed Chavez with a deadly cancer.

How I learned to play American football

This is the story of how I learned to play American football. When I left Spain to live in the U.S., I started  high school immediately, and of course  I had physical education classes, which in the U.S. they called "Gym".  Because it  was the beginning of the school year, the first thing they did  did was sit me down to watch  a film about American football.  The film explained  how the game was played at a professional level.  I remember  the speaker was a man named Frank Tarkenton, quarterback of the New York Giants, and he talked a lot about how to throw the ball, which isn’t like a real football, instead it’s pointy at both ends.

 

I loved watching the film.  The ball spun, it had gyroscopic stability and this made it fly pointy-end-first, Therefore air friction was reduced, and this turned that misshapen ball into a leather bullet.

 But the "Gym" professor insisted that I focus on the players playing in front, what they called  linesmen, because I  was considered cannon fodder for the front  lines, and was expected to come to blows with the largest, fattest guys on  the other side. So I looked at  the art of it,  which seemed to be squat, then  launch myself like a battering ram to  give my opponent a huge boost in reverse.  After running over the first guy I found I was supposed to  bend over, run like a gorilla  and grab the guy with the ball, who would be trying to run around me. The move recommended by Frank Tarkenton required that I put him on my shoulder, lift him into the air, and drive him head first in the ground.  

 

This move  was necessary to make him loose his wits and  release the ball.   I could  proceed to throw myself  on it,  and then make myself into a ball (like  a turtle). The turtle position was important because soon thereafter about three tons of flesh would fall down on me to crush me and make me drop the ball.

As we all know, American football is a derivative of English rugby, which they in turn learned from the Maoris. The Maoris used to practice this rugby before singing something called the haka and annihilating their enemies.

 

So the British copied these practices, they began to sing haka and play  Maori rugby. Some of this  tradition remains in  American football,  but to see the wild roots of this game, one has to see how it is played in New Zealand.

 

Returning to my football lessons…I have a good memory,  I was almost  paralyzed in Cuba doing judo,  and I had learned to do  street karate in Madrid.  I was ready. The art of playing  football as taught by Frank Tarkenton was easy to learn.  All I had to do was push, give and take a couple of hits, and then an unfortunate lad had to be stuck head first in the grass until he dropped the ball.

So eventually came the great day.  They took me out of the film room to play for real,  after learning the theory. Curiously, they  hung flags from everybody’s  buttocks, something I hadn’t seen in the Frank Tarkenton film.

Oh, and another thing, I had come from Spain,  and I didn’t  know any English at first. So what they said in the training films and what the "Gym" professor explained sounded as if it were Polish.  So, to help you get an idea and  imagine how it worked, I’ll put down in  Spanish what I said, and I’ll use Polish for what the professor said to me that day:

Professor: “Będziemy grać tooball flag”

Me: “OK”

Professor: Nie używaj niczego uczyliśmy cię

Me: “¿Eh?”

Professor: Będziesz kogoś zabić, jeśli używasz, co cię nauczył

Me: “OK”

Profesor: Po prostu idź tam i spróbować chwycić flagę de off faceta w tyłe

Me: “Si, OK”

I thought the teacher would understand that if answered in Castilian was because I was a little tired of his Polish. So he shrugged and blew his whistle to start the match.

I assumed the linesman  position like in the movie, jumped like a battering ram when I saw the guy in front of me toss the ball between his legs, and gave him a phenomenal shove.   The guy was huge.  But somehow I was able to put my head into his stomach, and made him collapse backwards. Then I saw that the guy with the  ball running towards me.  I grabbed him and threw him head first into the grass as recommended  by Frank Tarkenton.

The guy dropped the ball, and I threw myself on it hoping all would be well, because I knew three tons of people were heading my way. But nothing happened. I looked up and saw the "Gym" teacher running towards me with a red face and shouting in Polish.  I had no idea what was happening. Then  he grabbed me by the arm, led me to one side,  and  sat me down, still glowering  giving me his little speech while I shook my head to calm him down.

Months later, when I learned to speak English, and it no longer sounded as if it were Polish, I learned that we had been playing "Flag Football". It seems  we had hung flags from our buttocks for a reason:  they were there to be taken as a sign that one had knocked down the opponent.  Symbolically, of course.

 

Eventually I learned to grab the flags like the Americans did. They were thrilled because they had believed I was a savage who wanted to cripple my oppponents. Eventually my new playing style and the fact that I learned to speak English like a native made us good friends.  Later,  I  learned to play basketball and to recite baseball statistics like Americans love to do, but that's another story.

We must reverse global warming

I’m really excited because now  I’m convinced that we must reverse global warming. We all know that as the planet warms the polar ice melts, and this increases sea level.

 

Experts have recommended that we reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to reduce global warming and prevent a ton of people from drowning.

But  these experts haven't  thought of  something even more ambitious:  We can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep working the problem until the planet cools down and reaches the same temperature it had a long time ago, during the Ice Ages. Because if we get a lot of ice to  form then we will lower sea level to 100 meters or even more.

To be honest, when I heard  global warming was increasing  sea level I was really happy, because I live 500 meters from the beach.  According to my estimates, if things continue as they are, in 20 to 30 years  I would be living  right on the beach. My only concern would be who pays to clean up the rubble when the buildings located closer to the beach get flooded and collapse into the sea.

But then  I thought it over, if the sea level rises the beach  will disappear, and my favorite pizza parlour  in El Campello will be underwater. So I started thinking, what if we do it the other way around?  What if we  lowered sea level to the level it had 20,000 years ago?   And I concluded it has a lot going for it.

Look at the new Mediterranean map (the arrow indicates the new waterfront):

 

As you can see, in Spain’s case, the coast changes significantly, and overall the country grows quite a bit. The government  would have to build new roads, power lines, and of course new cities on the coast.  I imagine  this would reduce unemployment.

Now let’s see what would happen to the United Kingdom and France.  These two countries would be joined and come together to form a single, very happy country, because they would have a combination of   the British economy and French cooking, all at the same time!! It would be known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and France. This of course requires the French don’t get ideas and guillotine the royal family.

 

Other countries would grow even more, for example the United States have much to gain territory in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The Americans and the Mexicans would have to do the same as the Spaniards,  and move to the new waterfront.  Cubans will  have a much shorter raft trip when they escape. New Orleans (Louisiana), now located in awful  marshy terrain and below sea level,  would be on dry land.

Of course, lowering sea level over 100 meters will require hard work. We have to reduce CO2 and methane emissions. To reduce CO2 emissions to an acceptable level,  I propose to  build 256 giant nuclear power stations.  And to reduce emissions of methane, the greenhouse gas that nobody mentions because  it’s not convenient for the livestock industry,  we have to stop eating beef (methane emissions are caused by cows’ farts).

I know,  not eating meat is going to be tough, and the  Fukushima incident  makes one think whether nuclear power is a good idea.  But I think winning all that land from the sea is quite tempting.  If we agree to  replace beef with chicken and pork, and accept a nuclear accident and some radioactivity once in a while, it’s worth it.

I've also  thought of the high probability that once the English Channel disappears and the UK and France are one country, we would have a huge invasion of Brits heading this way, to Spain.  But this British invasion would make Spain into a very rich country,  because at this time the excess housing stock is killing the economy, and those Brits would want to buy a lot of apartments and houses.  The way I see it, unemployment would disappear because everyone would be building again. What a happy ending!

European Football, La Liga, and Diplomacy

When one moves from country to country  one must become a  local sports fan. This is very important to be in good terms with the natives. I've been very lucky because the Spanish  professional football league is the best in the world.  It is very pleasant to live in a country where everyone knows the game and can talk in depth about it and where the national team always wins.

 I have jumped head first into football,  and spend hours watching the games on television. I don’t go watch them at  the nearby  bar, because here in Alicante most fans are rabid Qatar followers, and I am a loyal supporter of Jinko and Bwin.

 

To show you  how good local soccer can be, a few days ago I had the  great pleasure of seeing  a tremendous  game between the Spanish team  Bwin, led by the Portuguese Mourinho, against the English  team Chevrolet.

 

The latter has a very old coach called Sir Alex, who was very gentlemanly  and polite after the Spanish beat Chevrolet 2-1 in Manchester. All of this because  the Portuguese player  Luís Carlos Almeida da Cunha (Nani)  kicked  Spanish defender Alvaro Albeloa in the chest.

Nani was given a red card for this outrage, which I’m sure scared little Alba,  Albeloa’s daughter, when she saw the blow the savage Nani had inflicted on  her father.  The game was very enjoyable after that. The Chevrolet were reduced to ten players and proceeded to lose like God ordains.  This allowed the Bwin  to move on to  the next round in the Champions League, and left the dreaded English out of the competition.

But wait, there is more… for those who don’t  keep up,   Chevrolet is the best team in the Premier League, and  by far. But Bwin was only  third in the Spanish league at the time. First was the Qatar team, and second was  Azerbaijan.

It gets better. The day after the Bwin victory over the Chevrolet, I could see the fifth place  team in the Spanish league, my beloved  Jinko,  tie a hard fought game  in its opponent’s  stadium, the French giant Fly Emirates. The French are led  by the superb  Swede footballer  Zlatan Ibrahimovic. They were second in the French league  just behind Southern  France.

 

The European football leagues are great, because they  are located in countries that spend huge amounts paying  stratospheric salaries. For example, the best German team,  Telekom,  has  Mario Gomez playing behind  Croat  Mario Mandzukic.  A player like Gomez would not be sitting on the bench  in a normal team, but  Telekom has so much money, they  can afford to sit  Gomez just in case Mandzukic falls down.

Another team I want to mention is the Italian leader Jeep, whose best  scorers are Montenegrin Mirko Vucinic and Frenchman Nicolas Anelka.  Anelka is playing in Italy after returning to Europe from  capitalist China (what we called communist China during the Mao era). The Chinese, in spite of being  rich, could not pay what the Italian Jeep offered Anelka.

And that is why I like both football here, the best players in the world give  exhibition after exhibition of  superb skills with  feet and head which can’t  be seen in other continents, not even in Brazil.  They jump from country to country and mix together,  and this is what I call European sports diplomacy. There is no way that an Italian, an English or  a German can be reckless or rude with someone from another country when the chances are that his or her football  hero is a foreign player.  So  that's what happens to most of them, they become very polite people.  And this  includes Spain,  because despite being the best ever in terms of the quality of its players,  Spain  has Leonardo Messi from  Argentina dominating  the league together with his great team,  Qatar.

 

Nomenclature of European football:

Barcelona: Qatar

Real Madrid: Bwin

Valencia: Jinko

Manchester United: Chevrolet

Paris Saint Germain: Fly Emirates

Atletico Madrid: Azerbaijan

Bayern Munich: Telekom

Juventus: Jeep

Reality is a lie

Yesterday I was threatened by  a man who claims to be communist,  because I wrote in a different  blog that Venezuela was undergoing a slow motion  coup. This person exploded  when I mentioned that the coup was led by Venezuelans with links to  Cuban “president” Raúl Castro.

The son of a gun  said that he had the power to censor what I had written, and that if I didn’t  shut up on my own  he  was going to shut me  up, because what I write are stories,  and they are lies.  This made me  think  about the movie “Matrix” and the nature of reality. And after thinking about this for a while I concluded that reality is a lie.

 

I say this because there is no way a human being can understand  ​​how things are for real. We all think we know, but what we ought to know is that we know almost nothing. I can grab a photo of a gorilla head and some wires sticking out of  its mouth, and say that’s  Hugo Chavez  thinking about food shortages.  And if I repeat it every day,  in a few months many of you will start believing it.  

The worst part is those who realize  it’s a lie  won’t  say anything,  because they don’t want to stand out and look like fools.  They won’t say it’s just a gorilla mask because they want to look and behave  like everybody else,  and fear that  if they tell the truth they will get in trouble.

When I write that Cubans are involved in Venezuela trying to take the country I do it in part because I've seen  such things in my life,  I read and hear about what is happening, and I reach the conclusion that Cubans are involved in Venezuela up to their necks.  But I don’  have all the information to guarantee what I think and write is the truth.  However, it’s  my truth.

So, this man I mentioned in the beginning  reacted   violently. His beliefs are being threatened by what I write.  Or maybe he has  religion and believes that Chavez is going to be directing traffic in heaven.

When I write what I think I see,  some like it,  and others dislike it.  It was very interesting to see the reaction in the US  when I wrote about Chuck Hagel and the Republican opposition to his nomination to be Secretary of State.  Readers in the US hated it, but the Spaniards and other Europeans  loved it.  Obviously the reality of people who read the blog  in the United States is very different from the reality of those who read it  in Europe.

Each person’s reality is different.

Sometimes I write an article about  something I've seen in my life, or I see happening today, and I don’t post it  because if I let you  read it in the blog it  won’t  go down very well.  I’m afraid to write about things I have seen because you may hate me.

But today I decided I was going to reveal the truth, and confess to you  the Hugo Chavez I  showed you  before  is only  a  guy wearing  a  gorilla mask. 

 

That’s the  way things are in  life.  All we see are masks,  false realities  prepared  to convince us to eat this or that, to give Christmas gifts to people who really don’t need them instead of giving to the poor, to vote for this or that politician, or to support this war or the other,  and to back this abuse or the other.  They tell us  this is good for society, or makes money, or it makes us happy. And many people choose to believe  because they fear if they don’t they will be ostracized, despised,  or maybe even killed.

Hugo Chavez is dead

Hugo Chavez died on March 5, 2013. And I have to confess something that has me very worried. But first,  look at this photo of the president’s  announcement. In it  you can see Nicolas Maduro, the president’s  heir:

Maduro is the one in the middle, wearing the white outfit.  His wife Cilia Flores is on his left, as God commands.  On the right we see comrade  Elias Jaua, Venezuela’s Political Vice President as ordered by  Fidel Castro. The young man next to Jaua is Chavez’ son-in-law, the Minister of Science and Technology at the time . His name is  Jorge Arreaza. Maduro named him Executive Vice President (Venezuela has lots of vice presidents). 

Venezuela´s Bolivarian politics are a bit Byzantine (the Byzantine empire was famous for having incompetent emperors murdered by family and friends).  Maduro´s performance has been terrible, and I´m sure Raul Castro is really upset. This makes me think there must be something to the constant talk about "opposition magnicide"....that is, there are factions within the regime planning to dump Maduro and blame the opposition. This gets pretty complicated, but I´m sure that  If Arreaza makes a deal with Raul Castro he can replace Maduro. It depends on what´s left of Chavez´ mistique and whether his family commands any respect anymore. 

But let’s return to the main subject. Comrade President Maduro said Chavez died of cancer caused by the empire . Many people laugh at Maduro  because he is reputed to see talking birds, flying saucers piloted by tiny elephants, and imperialist spies everywhere. B ut I have received  information which confirms that,  for the first time in his life,  Maduro is telling  the truth:

The damned imperialists have a way to inoculate  cancer and give it to people they hate.  Look at this picture I was  sent by a  CIA agent I met in Maracaibo:

A  son of a gun mosquito with a little  tank  full of cance  killed Chavez! And this concerns me greatly, because if they sent a mosquito to kill Chavez, then the yankee imperialists are going to send me roaches, spiders, lice, whatever comes to their minds as long as they can load the chemicals in  that horrible little tank on the mosquitoes´ backs.

So now I spend all my time spraying myself  with repellent, and I smell like shit. I'm not sure that a cockroach  will be stopped by chemical sprays and potions, so  I'm into writing this in a room completely lined on the inside with plastic (like Dexter the serial murderer), and I have to eat food through a tiny tube.

I know I can’t stay  wrapped in plastic forever. I don’t want to end up looking like Hugo Chavez.

So  I will  write a letter to the CIA  imperialists in Washington and surrender. I know I  will be shipped to Guantanamo and they will  torture me, but I will not reveal you are my comrades in this struggle.  And I know if I'm good  Chavez in heaven is going to bail me out, and  I will sit on his right, and he will give me a Rolex and a dollar quota.

All you have to have is faith, and you'll see, one of these days Chavez and I will be resurrected, we will  come up here, and we'll chain ourselves in front of the TV cameras  nonstop for three days.  Because if there is something that Hugo Chavez and I know how to do is talk shit  like hell.

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This is dedicated to the government censors whose dedication ensures the Venezuelan people stay focused thinking about the revolution´s great accomplishments, and to Maduro´s supporters in the English speaking world who do such a great job making sure Maduro´s dictatorship stays in power. 

My friend Lenin

When I was young I  had a friend named Lenin. This was his first name; his full name was Lenin Antonio Restrepo Barca.

Lenin's parents were fervent communists. They spent their time in party meetings, sticking pamphlets on neighborhood walls with slogans about the proletarian revolution, attacking imperialism, and praising the achievements of socialism (such as "this month Soviet production of truck axles rose 22% ").

As we all know, children tend to follow their parents’ footsteps regarding diet, religion and politics.  This means my friend Lenin had an ordinary diet, was atheist and had been a good  communist since the moment he could walk.

I’m a pretty big guy. But I started school at four  because my grandfather had taught me to read and write that summer.   Lenin was older, but he was short and skinny.  I was the youngest and Lenin was the shortest.  This made us the class midgets.   And because we looked different to the others (and looking more or less the same  is very important in first grade),  we suffered  the other boys’ abuses together and became close friends.

Another thing that united us was my tendency to get into  books as if I were a termite, and Lenin’s character, because he liked to hear me describe everything I read, especially the stories of the Tiger of Malaysia fighting against British imperialism and how to prepare explosive mixtures using household materials.

But Lenin also listened and learned from his parents. This gave him big ideas that he tried to explain would improve society. For example, the school grades idea:

Lenin came up with the suggestion that the whole class’ grades should be averaged and everyone would end up with the  group average. This, according to him, would give the best a strong incentive to help the worst students in the class.

I had good grades.  I was  either  1st or 2nd  in the class, always  competing with a girl named Alina, a blonde I really disliked  when we were in first grade but had become my imaginary girlfriend by the time  I was in sixth grade. So when Lenin presented the idea it didn’t go over very well with me. I got very worried and  thought that, if Lenin could convince the teacher to go along with this plan, I would have to move and change schools.  Being forced to  ​​change schools and not having Alina to compete with really bugged me. But I wanted to be an engineer and I thought the  class average wasn’t going to get me into a good undergraduate nuclear engineering program. Thank goodness the teacher was not revolutionary.  She laughed when Lenin suggested it, and that was it.  

Lenin and I continued hanging out together for a long time. And as I grew up I saw him develop into a devoted communist. When we were in high school he spent all the time talking about the destruction of society, which he said was necessary to build the socialist world.   This apparently included having a  revolution to put his father in charge of the police, so he could lead a firing squad and shoot the rich.

Eventually we graduated from high school. Lenin was an expert at throwing stones, making pamphlets and organizing fun student demonstrations demanding an end to war and imperialism. Lenin was also an expert in the number of Soviet space launches, and enjoyed counting the medals obtained by the Soviet Union in the Olympics, because he believed that if they had more medals this meant Soviets lived well and were really tough.

I happen to think the achievements of athletes from other countries are important only if they lose against our guys, or if they do something amazing.  Like the time a woman ran the marathon, and entered the stadium so dehydrated she was tottering, but kept making step after step while the people cheered and wept with emotion.

 

Meanwhile I kept dreaming of ​​building nuclear reactors, thinking I would build a car with an atomic engine that would go at super speed and could take off and fly up when traffic was heavy (this idea came from reading Popular Mechanics).

So when we graduated from High School  he went to study political science at the junior  college on the outskirts of town, and I went head to study engineering, which wouldn't  let us hang around together much.

But occasionally we did  go out together, and he kept talking about his ideas, which he explained with passion. One night we were standing outside a bar, completely broke and watching people go in and come out.  Lenin told me that if you walked into a bar you should have the right to drive back home without having to worry about the cops, so it was better to install a blue light on car roofs. This blue light would be turned on when the driver was drunk so people could be warned and get out of the way. This didn't  seem like a good idea to me, but Lenin stubbornly insisted that I had rejected it because I had a capitalist mind, and I couldn’t accept revolutionary changes.

I kept apart  Lenin’s personality as my friend, and his ridiculous communist ideas. But eventually I began to get tired of the whole thing.   This reached a peak when he mentioned he was going to start distributing pamphlets asking for gasoline price controls.  At that time gasoline prices were very high on account of Iran. Their government had fallen in the hands of an Ayatollah Khomeini, and somehow he had managed to cut oil production.  On top of that  he caused a huge mess when he ordered an invasion of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran.  ​​This was shown in Ben Afleck’s movie “Argo” (I have to mention that Affleck bugs me as an actor ever since he made the movie with Matt Damon about God being an old man with amnesia, but he is a darned good director).

To me, gasoline price controls sounded like a really dumb idea. It was evident that gasoline price controls would eventually cause  a  gasoline shortage.  But to my surprise many people agreed with Lenin, and began to demonstrate in front of the gas station asking the government to intervene and keep prices low “for the people"

The fools didn’t realize those who spend more on fuel are the rich because they drive Cadillacs and Mercedes Benz and jumbos with rocket tails. I had to read a lot  when I was in college,   but the public bus was so full all the time  I had to stand  and read as  best I could, and people complained when I  stuck a book  in their faces. From my point of view it was better to raise the price so people would drive less, and then use the tax to give us better public transport with more frequent service.

So this was how Lenin and I started to come apart. Eventually he got into a group of people who called themselves internationalists and left the country. The last I heard,  he is in southeastern Venezuela preaching communism to the Pemon Indians. I don’t think he will do well, because the Pemon Indians have their own ideas about communism.  What they seem to want most is to have a gold mine, to earn some money and send their children to school to be doctors, or engineers, so they can leave the jungle and build a house with real furniture and everything.

The Pemon, you  see, have  been communists for a long time,  and now  they want to move  forward a bit, to  study hard,  and become good  capitalists. They are like the Chinese, and other peoples who have been communist. They tend to dream of being capitalists and getting rich.