Borges. I cant come up with a better title.

What to say about Borges? Where do i start? Chronological order sounds appropriate enough. Sometime else i did it alphabetically. "The Garden of Forking Paths," this is why James Bond is English; the only thing he needs to prove is that he can shag any woman he wants. Our protagonist is no James bond, nor an Englishman, he is a Chinese man out to prove yellow is in no way inferior to white. Aside from the spy novel aspect of the story, there is something much deeper, beautiful, and, to me, personally satisfying- a book. Labyrinthine in nature, winding down paths of time that all happen at once in a way that no mortal man may truly comprehend by the nature of his personal single timeline. The story puts forth a timeline that diverges into many events that fork off into other events, converge at certain points, and lead to infinite possibilities for even infinitesimal changes. The book was not that different from my personal view on time, this would be where those who do not value the musings of a madman should turn their head till the other realities have finished intaking my views, I've always thought of time as an infinite set of timelines where there is a timeline for literally every possibility and outcome of chance, only that they are all set, as trains in a track, and these choices appear as free will to those within the timeline only because of a lack of prior knowledge. In my view, in the future I have already written this blog posting, the outcome was already set and written, further in the future, the posting will have occurred in the past; because the posting is past tense in the future, it has already happened and so was already set in the first place- only i do not know the future result of my path, therefore i still have to think of all these words to type out with my cold fingers on my warm keyboard. In another reality, I am typing on a cold keyboard with warm fingers because i live in a South American city where summer is in full blast. In another one it is just because my apartment is warmer than it is here in this reality. Will I choose to go on and talk about "The Gospel According to Mark"? In this reality I think I will. But what will i say? I don't know yet what is to be written. Ignorance scares me. Ever been near someone that can’t use a large machine that they have gotten their mitts on? The most obvious example that i encounter almost daily is that of a crappy driver in a car. Faith can be like a car, put a well knowledged driver behind the wheel, everything's fine, take someone that doesn't care to learn how to properly control their vehicle and it becomes a deadly weapon. The Gutres hit Espinoza like a strung out party girl on a cell phone getting drunk. In another reality it's a pimp shooting up smack while driving. They end up using their faith as a deadly weapon, well, faith and a couple of old beams. Emma Zunz seems to be just as good at using her intellect as a deadly weapon as the Gutres do their faith. In "Emma Zunz" a nice sweet little girl morphs into a psychopathic murderer. One must almost admire her ability to do so. This one must put emphasis on the almost because it is too diabolical for him to endorse, even for a written persona. In another fork of reality, Borges wrote about how Emma killed the Gutres because Espinoza was her father. In this reality i believe i have reached a conclusion, and my poor freezing hands will thank me for finally doing so.

Marquez, Duke Nukem, and alien tri-tatas.

I feel as though i should start out on the story "The Handsomest Drown Man in the World" because i just saw the trailer for Duke Nukem Forever. This would be a  game about a super masculine male individual who goes around womanizing, drinking, smoking, and killing aliens... "one of these things is not like the others" as Sesame Street would say. Duke and Esteban show some similar characteristics, they both are idealized macho men. Both Duke and Esteban would make perfect Playgirl models. These two men also share another feature with one another, they both are fictitious. After Esteban's funeral, the villagers all leave for home; after playing an obscene video game the gamers will return to their everyday lives of not caring about naked alien tri-tatas and the destruction thereof.
On a mildly more serious note, one not involving alien breasts, i shall now move onto old Norwegians with wings- I mean angels. Remembering the two of Marquez's short stories, I must, for a moment, ponder sunflowers. Sunflowers are drawn to Esteban's village, they also pop out of a leper's sores after being blessed by an angel; maybe the angel wanted the leper to find that village and so covered him in a sort of compass. coincidence or not, such musings are not my main objective here. I have no odd connection to make to this story, no low brow reference, e.g. Space Balls, Duke Nukem, to draw from at this immediate moment on that angel, but I do have a connection to make on the ending. Anticlimactic endings, they disappoint me, even though I know they are supposed to. I recently finished watching an anime called Gilgamesh, in the end, EVERYBODY died, the world ended, the mad possessed genius got his way and the sky destroyed all life on earth. i felt similarly when the angel just flew off into nothing, "an imaginary dot on the horizon". now for some church bashing, i mean mild criticism. my father's family is Catholic, the bad kind. the wasted time and over emphasis on authority set out in their view or religion is just plain oppressive; They remind me of the priest. they could have a miracle on their hands and completely discount it as a trivial event, unless it happens as a direct effect of their influence, that is. On the other hand, maybe miraculous events have happened to me, maybe I've experienced the divine will unknowingly and just never put any thought into it. Maybe miracles happen all around us all the time and we just don't understand.

Duke Nukem, some disambiguation- NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART i do not take responsibility if anyone decides to watch this, the wasted brain cells are your decision and i did not make this offensive material myself, i just am providing the option to view it if one wishes.
http://bcove.me/isv9muoe

cortazar

It feels as if a good word to describe how Cortazar writes would, quite simple, be warped. To broaden this definition of warped for this instance, warped in time and space as well as mentally so; mental patients would most likely be a good living analogy. Where the wall stands between these points of disfigured perspective is just about as fuzzy as the perspective its self, and relies heavily on how much the reader willingly suspends disbelief. "The Continuity of Parks" is warped in time, the path twisting in upon its self, giving new meaning to the term "killer book". On the note of warped time, last night i discovered that netflix finally has Blazing Saddles streaming online and i was finally able to see it in its entirety, there is a scene where the antagonist goes into the movie theater to watch the movie he was in. This also occurs in the Mel Brooks film Space Balls where Dark Helmet uses a VHS copy of the film to discover where the heroes are at that moment in the film. But, if you decide to look at the boring vanilla perspective of it, this is a mentally ill, warped, individual reading himself into a story. Finally, the worthless perspective of it all being a REALLY big coincidence. Personally I like the furthest-out possibility of the whole of time and space being out of whack, stories in that realm give me this, well this odd, what i can only call, sensation. this strange feeling comes without description other than i feel extracted from time and space and then repositioned slightly to the left and right.
  The other story of his, that I've read, that gives me the same feeling is "Axolotl". It gave me the sensation to the most extreme degree that i am able to remember. I felt as if the Axolotl had a penetrating doorway into my very inner being, poking and prodding it as one would a mailable ball of hot wax. It felt similar to what the axolotl in the story did to the narrator, molding his soul like wax, forming a self contained nib and then pulling it free, a perfectly self contained miniaturized version of his soul only trapped within those infinite gold disks of eyes.
Earlier i mentioned that Cortazar could also be mentally warped, this is where "Our Demeanor at Wakes" comes into play. Some men come and plant a seed of real mourning at a wake where people are only faking grief. These are some perfectly despicable individuals, but what they do seems oddly like justice for the dead. These men remind me of those crazy Southern Baptist ministers who could make a body that doesn't believe in Christ in the slightest, become a born again Christian ready to go out into his world with a thump ready Bible to bang on like a war drum from morning until night. Even with that view of these men, I still didn't get the sensation like i did from the other two stories. The only thing it stirred up in me was the uncomfortable feeling of being at a catholic wake, everyone wanting to leave but their guilt at words unsaid keeping them there like iron to a magnet. The last wake I attended was my father's. It was five years and one month minus about two days ago from today. I don't think i could ever forget that day and its mood, it was really cold outside, and dark, that night. It would be fair to call me a little warped, but compared to Cortazar, I seem to be on the level pretty well.

pupul vu response there to.

hmm. the first blog of my creating. and it's subject- a reader response to the Mayan creation myth, the name of which i cannot remember how to spell without looking up, the Pupul Vu. in the spirit of the medium, i have very little intention of making this anything but my raw feelings. as such, i cannot promise that it will be too polished. also, i cant remember if there is a rubric to base this off of. well, onto the main course right? the Pupul Vu, i rather liked it. don't worry, i'm not done there. the number and ways of mistakes does seem slightly reminiscent of the Greek and roman pantheons but different at the same time. the Greek gods are, for the most part, tied up with themselves, one god creates man, and he doesn't really rule over anything, but he is tied to a rock to eternally have his liver eaten. the Mayan gods, they all doesn't seem to cast their lot into the pile when it comes to man. they still display some squabbles amongst themselves though, in the same vein as the Greeks. many times when the Greek gods fought it demonstrated the morals for the society that believed in them, the same goes for the Mayan deities .