Return visitors to my site should visit http://www.catch22.com/~vudu/mandalas.html, a collection of my artwork which I added last night.

Here are some quotes sent to me by my friend Arthur Koch:

"They're multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take them off." -Pratt & Whitney spokesperson explaining why the company charged the Air Force nearly $1000 for an ordinary pair of pliers.

"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep." -Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." -Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaeddocuments.

"When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results."- -Former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" -Former French President Charles DeGaulle.

"The loss of life will be irreplaceable."-Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle on the San Francisco earthquake

"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked todeath by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it." -A congressional candidate in Texas

"It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody." - Richard M. Nixon

"The government is not doing enough about cleaning up the environment. This is a good planet." -Mr. New Jersey contestant when asked what he would do with a million dollars.

"When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing inL.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame." -Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle onthe complex social issues behind the Los Angeles Riots

"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before." -Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money." -Everett Dirksen

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child. "-Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle on Republican family values

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." -John Wayne

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." -Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle

"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." -General William Westmoreland

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."-Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle at a fundraising event for the United Negro College Fund. He was attempting to quote the line "a mind is a terrible thing to waste"

"If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet." -Former British foreign minister Ernest Bevin

"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix." -Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made." Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle

Wed, Jul 31, 1996 An interesting article in the Slingshot, an underground Berkeley rag, deals with Wild Oats, a chain grocery which specializes in "organic" products. Peapod writes: "One of their tactics is to buy out small, locally-woned health food stores...remodel and stock the shelves with overpackaged and overpriced goods.....Stores like Wild Oats have helped to create a larger market for organic produce.... These monstrous "green" capitalist chains demand a larger scale of production than can be supplied by local farmers. This means that the "organic " produce they sell is fraught with most of the same ecological, social, and economic problems as conventional produce.

"This massive-scale production, even without using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, continues to produce the same types of crops in monoculture, and most often using commercially-produced, energy-intensive inputs like &organic fertilizer and "biological" pesticides. ... going organic has not changed many farmers' harmful tilling or irrigation practices. Making those changes generally requires more labor for the yield than even "organic" agribusiness....

"Also, maintaining the centralized production that keeps corporate profits high depends upon a system which ships food long distances even when it could be grown locally. This reinforces our gasoline culture and economics (and foreign policy). Growing food so far away from the people who eat it also perpetuates alienation from our food and our land.

"....This type of marketing soothes consumers into believing that as they spend money on consumer items they are doing their part"to save the earth." Meanwhile, they continue to ravenously devour projects that they believe might make them like themselves better or forestall death."

"Mrs. Dole grew up in a small Southern world of white gloves and petit fours, a princess of the landed gentry in Salisbury, VA....

After protests from the monster hotel chain's corporate lawyers, my publisher has removed the following review from my new edition:

Playa Tambor Hotel: The nation's most controversial hotel project is here at Playa Tambor. On July 24, 1991, the Grupo Barcelo, a Spanish international consortium, signed a contract with the government for the construction of this $28.5 million hotel and promised to respect Costa Rican Law. After construction began in Sept. 1992, a swamp that was home to hundreds of waterfowl was completely drained, a hillside was destroyed in order to quarry the stone underneath, and over 240 truckloads of white sand were moved from Playa Punta Piedra Amarilla, and other sand was dredged from the Rio Panica. This sand was used to cover the original black sand beach. In addition the hotel was built atop the aforementioned marsh, using fill from the destroyed hillside, and within 50 m of the beach, which is clearly prohibited by law. The hotel opened in Nov. 1992, and the hotel's sewage and garbage is now deposited in the RĠo Panica which is also illegal.

Grupo Barcelo operates 32 hotels worldwide. Since the 1970s, the hotel chain is also accused of having repeatedly violated the law in the Dominican Republic, where it owns the Bavaro Beach hotels. This is by no means the end of the Playa Tambor project. The master plan for the peninsula envisions eight hotels, luxury villas and apartments, a 500-slip marina, and golf courses. The Grupo Barcelo have also been attacked by the Coordinator of Organizations for Environmental Defense, a Spanish environmental group. Its leader, Juan Gallego, has charged the company with "19th Century labor practices" which led to the death of two workers. The chain is being taken to the nation's highest court by ASCONA, the Association for the Protection of Nature. For more information on the hotel, see the July, 1993 issue of Conde Nast Traveler. note: In 1993, the hotel announced that it would not expand from its current 100 rooms to 2,000 rooms as planned. For information regarding the current situation contact the Asociacion Abientalista y Naturalista Cuaremarpro de Montezuma, Apdo. 1126, Pavas.

Note: Visit the Playa Tambor "Ecotourism" Page

for more information about this issue.

The owner of a bed and breakfast in Costa Rica wrote to told me "I think it is one of the best on the market. In fact, yours is one of two guidebooks that we use as hotel copies."

Thu, Apr 4, 1996 I'm back in San Francisco where it's another beautiful day. Went to see the Charlie Hunter Quartet last night. Charlie is a local electic guitarist who plays an instrument which is combination bass and guitar. They sounded really great.

Unfortunately, the stupid ballpark initiative passed in my absence.

Tue, Mar 26, 1996 I'm still in Puerto Rico, visiting Marty at the Grateful Bed and Breakfast near the town of Luquillo in the NE. Last weekend I stayed in Ponce, Puerto Rico's second largest city. There was an artisan's festival with live music and dance (and, of course, crafts). Ponce is much the same; Gov. Rosselló, that yuppie fascist, is blocking funds to further Ponce en marche, the restoration program which has rehabilitated the main square. I was talking to a local and asked who was bringing drugs into the island; his response was " the government. " From the horse's mouth, there you have it. Prices here are still relatively low compared to Stateside or the Virgin Islands. A small cup of coffee costs 25 cents; a large one is 35 or 40 cents; a tuna sandwich is $3-4. Gourmet food prices are the same as in the US, and supermarket prices are astronomical (with poor quality produce to boot), but the state of the local economy (i.e. impoverished) keeps prices down.. The food is generally horrible, as it is throughout Latin America. Way too much salt, sugar, meat, lard, and oil. Obesity is rampant as is chain smoking. Coors is one of the most popular beers, ironic given Joseph Coor's notorious racism.

Sun, Mar 10, 1996 I'm on the balcony of a hotel on the eastern end of St. Thomas. It's been raining lately, and it appears that it will do so today. Here are some primo Pat Buchanan quotes from The Economist:

"You want to execute somebody in the case of rape--execute the rapist and let the unborn child live."

"(Hitler was) an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader...who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him."

"This so-called Holocast Survivor syndrome involves group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics."

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Mon, Feb 19, 1996 Have you been enjoying watching the Repugnican presidential candidates tear into each other? Buchanan's popularity exposes how racist the US still is. His anti-corporate stand is ironic. His agenda, of course, is to veer Dole even more sharply to the right, a task in which he is succeeding. Dole, as your bootstraps type of guy, sharply resents Forbes, the little rich boy.

Business Week reports that Eli Lilly's sales of Prozac sales surged 24% in 1995 to just over $2 billion. In-force prescriptions have soared 65.4%--from 10.9 million in late 1992 to over 18 million by the end of 1995. Disturbing!

Has anyone noticed that the Pillsbury Doughboy and Pat Buchanan have never been seen in the same room together at the same time? This is no coincidence, but I believe that they are one and the same. The Doughboy, in retailiation for years of unpaid ridicule and abouse, has determined that he will wreak his revenge on corporate America

What's the difference between a sperm and a lawyer? At least a sperm has a million-in-one chance of becoming a human being!

What do you get when you cross a corrupt politician with a crooked laywer? Chelsea.

Here's a quote I found in Ronald Takaki's Strangers From a Distant Shore: A History of Asian Americans.

"Why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have an opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White?"--Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind

The next afternoon I was at the dock and boarded the USS Mitcher. Tourists from the cruise ship across the dock were coming on board to buy souvenirs. The sad thing is that they just don't get it; many people seem taken in by the romance of war and destruction, the glossy sheen that hides the agony...We were taken around, given the whiz-diatribe treatment (more facts than you would ever care to digest in too short of a time period). The hulk cost $1.4 billion, a staggering sum of money. It has amazing rader and telecom capabilities and can even fight on its own if the humans are overwhelmed! What a colossal waste of money and resources--but what a boon to the 200 + corporations that helped produce it. After our tour (and the video showing during which Commander Roy J. Balaconis pointed to the rocket launching), we were taken off on a brief spin. The men unfurled their large flag--sporting a pirate skull-and-crossbones--and then packed it away. Boys will be boys, and being in the military gives you one hell of a penis graft.

According to the military, the craft is " almost as long as two footbal fields " (note the metaphor, has "diverse combat capabilities ... orchestrated by the AEGIS Combat System... AEGIS enables her to detect, evaluate, and engage her targets with greater firepower and accuracy than any combat system in recorded history. USS MITSCHER's SPY-1D Phased Array Radar can detect objects smaller than a bumble bee travelling at many times the speed of sound, pinpointing these high-speed targets and destroying them at altitudes many times higher than those of commercial airliners. When necessary, her PHALANX Close-in Weapons System, firing 4,500 ropunds per minute, can engage and destroy incoming antiship missiles.... MITSCHER can launch a TOMAHAWK from a distance of more than 1,000 miles to hit preciesely on a traget the size of a stop sign."

A few words of explanation:

"In 1993, a distressing new chapter was added to Puerto Rican history when National Guard troops began occupying public housing projects in Bayamón, Ró Piedras, Hato Rey, Arecibo, Cayey, Humacao, Ponce, Mayagüez, and other municipalities where drugs were actively sold at puntos (drug distribution points). After taking over the project, the guardsmen handed out pens, pencils, erasers, and other school equipment bearing the Guard's logo as well as the slogan "Say No To Drugs. " Around 20 projects had been occupied by the end of Aug., and the government planned to occupy 10% of the island's 332 housing projects by the end of the year. Fences and access controls with bulletproof guardhouses have been constructed. As the guards withdraw a permanent police presence will be maintained. Critics decry the militarization of the island as an unfortunate precedent and point out that the island-wide homicide rate has not decreased while the dealers have been dispersed rather than stopped. One final criticism is that the people at the top of the drug pyramid, who apparently pose as respectable members of the Commonwealth's business community, are never apprehended; in a sense, the invasion of the housing projects is a war against the poor. Another disturbing tendency emerging that same year in the island was the institution of controlled access to private urbanizations in which only those who lived in or had a valid reason for visiting were permitted entry. Residents paid collectively for the guards although the Commonwealth Supreme Court ruled that residents opposing controlled access did not need to pay the monthly fees for the system. "

So I had an inkling of what was happening. There were stateside couple on the bus in their mid-20s, and I showed the section quoted above to her. I made some comment in relation to this about right wing Cuban Americans bringing in cocaine to the US. She said "not my relatives " which prompted me to ask what she thought of the blockade and sanctions. She was completely uninformed and hadn't heard about the aircraft shootdown. She doesn't read the newspaper and is more concerned about the "micro picture". She avoids newspapers because "there's so much bad news. " I asked her who her senators were, and she thought that Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) might be one of them, but she wasn't sure! Then she went on to tell me that she is in favor of the death penalty. I told her that she had better get informed because this is exactly how fascism starts. She told me "I'm not too worried. "

Sure 'nough the headlines in today's San Juan Star read:

"Police, Guard take over Lloréns Torres, sieze guns, drugs "

According to the paper, the United Forces of Rapid Action (FURA) have moved to bicycles as a way of cultivating "community relations " (!!!) with youngsters in the projects. The raid was conducted by 800 police officers and National Guard personnel. The housing project was occupied in less than 15 minutes. The forces siezed the remainder of the 140 buildings; only 25 had been held previously. Around 10,652 unfortunates are housed in the complex. One resident was quoted as saying that "What this will bring is a civil war. It's just a show of force by (Police Superintendent) Toledo and Gov. Rosselló.

I wrote a letter to the San Juan Star and another letter (in Spanish) to the other major newspaper, El Nuevo Dia. Both were unpublished.

In other news, two women (self avowed "animal rights activists ") have been fighting the eviction of two men in the R&icacuteo Piedras area because they are housing a herd of cats. These men have lived in anonymous squalor for years and are now facing eviction. Had they adopted no felines, no one would be saying a word. But yes, that;s right, the human rights of these two men are being protected because they are housing cats.

This morning I took a stroll and found a collection of small paper plates set out with stinking cat food and dozens of feral cats ravenously taking repast. Walking around, I noticed hundreds more. Old San Juan is overrun with strays! Unloved and unwanted, these pathetic creatures look on strangers with trepidation, the Puerto Rican equivalent of Rio's street children. Now if this was China...

Arriving in Old San Juan, I purchased a drinking coconut (coco frio) from a streetside vendor. Unlike other places, the man had a van rather than a cart, and the coconuts had actually been chilled which seemed a bit strange as it altered the taste. A rather bookish looking man with a white shirt took a look at the back cover of my book ("The Most Exciting Caribbean Island " it reads) and vociferated "Hah! " I asked him which island was the most exciting, and he replied: "I don't know but not this one. It's a fucking mess! "

An18-year-old, the son of a police sergeant, was arrested after his accomplice bragged about a carjacking and brutal rape in St. Thomas. He and his 16-year-old friend are also "prime suspects "in the March 9th murder of two construction workers as well as the Jan. 24 shooting of two tourists. A gun was found under a seat during a police raid at Charlotte Amalie High School.

Vandals trashed some 30 of the 40 classrooms the Evelyn Williams Elementary School in St.Croix last weekend. It is the fourth time this month the school has been vandalized, and the school has been vandalized around a dozen times so far this year.

Michael Jackson has teamed up with a Saudi Prince (a fellow pederast?) to form a venture known as "Kingdom Entertainment " which will develop theme parks and the like. Just what we need more of...

Here's some more quotes from Ronald Takaki's Strangers From a Distant Shore: A History of Asian Americans.

"Were the Chinese to amalgamate all at once with our people, it would be the lowest, most vile and degraded of our race, and the result of that amalgamation would be a hybrid of the most despicable, a mongrel of the most detestable that has ever afficted the earth."--John F. Miller, speaking at California's constitutional convention in 1878. (Legislation enacted in 1890 prohibited the issuance of a marriage license in California to a white person with a "negro, mulatto, or Mongolian."

Although the Puerto Rican reality is quite a heady change of scene from the world of Repugnican yachties on vacation with their chartered yachts in the BVI, one can't quite escape the surreality of cruise ship passengers. Many of the women, amazingly, stroll the streets of Old San Juan in evening dress. In San Francisco, one rarely sees women in anything other than trousers unless they are transvestites! I overheard the following long-distance phone conversation--set forth by a pint-sized painted-toenailed horse-voiced twentysomething right here at Plaza de Armas:

"I am so traumatized. It was worse than watching a porno flick... She was on deck in the Jacuzzi sucking on the other girl's tit....Then she went down on her! The security guard had to tear them apart! She had to be a stripper. Really...if you had only seen what I saw... The water here is like Connecticut. I hope it's better elsewhere because we're going on a $30 booze cruise tomorrow... The boat is so weird... We pay everything by credit card, and you don't know how much anything is . I must have spent $100 yesterday. No I didn't add it up... I don't balance my checkbook, and I don't check my credit card statement so... The whole reason for the credit card is to prevent those under 21 from drinking. It's not 18 here. Michelle has been on benders all week. I miss you too. "

Ralph Nader is on the Green Party slate as the presidential candidate. Unfortunately, you must register Green to vote for him, so I am writing him in on the Demo slate! (The other choices are Waffle man and--gulp--Lyndon La Rouche: the Demo's Pat Buchanan).

These days, I'm finishing off the new edition of Costa Rica.It will run nearly 550 pages and will defnitely be the best and most up-to-date guide available. Look for it in April or May.

AT&T has announced that they will be providing free Internet service (for five hours a month). Well it's likely a) that most people will use the service for more than that so they'll make out b) they are going to find connection problems with a lot of people c) they'll charge more for web pages and make out d) the rates will rise after a year and e) AOL and other providers could be in trouble, as may be MCI, Sprint, and other long distance carriers who are not making a similar offer. (Look for these to follow).

This page last updated: Thu, Nov 14, 1996