The Laughing Station: Walruss Rhythms with Wuss

Special Projects for Ycombinator

2009-09-09T23:08:00Z

Hi, here you have the sci-fi novel titled Fruit Investments (Invierta en Fruta in Spanish) and the one we wrote for the Blizzard Entertainment contest titled "Qualia Prime" -Blizzard still didn't publish the winners, and they were suposed to be announced on May 22!

Here you have the two songs we composed for our videogame project long ago:

The intro
The first map

In Ohio even clouds are scary...

2009-04-05T18:57:00Z

Ever seen a cloud this intimidating? wow...come to Ohio!

Is that Independence Day descending or a tornado forming?

Breathtaking Scenarios

2009-03-25T02:35:00Z

I don't know how the crisis might be in Europe...but in Ohio is starting to look like a modern version of the Far West....entire neiboughs wiped out...houses abandoned -and ransacked by their owners... Take a loot at the pictures, I didn't see anything like this anywhere else in the world...
In this one, the facade was ripped off by the owners...trees cut and uprooted, etc...

Business is business...

This place looked like Amityville...

Would you go in that house to see if they forgot the salt? Scared the hell out of me...

Dustin is my friend :)

2009-03-21T18:50:00Z

Ever seen this guy? Is Starcraft 2 main developer...O sease, the guy that calls the shots, and the guy who will get shot if Starcraft 2 isn't an OVERWHELMINGLY ADDICTIVE DREAM

And Dustin, for all of you that don't know, turns to be my friend too! Look below

Drool drool haha

Pick a winner...

2009-03-15T18:38:00Z

The economy needs "stimulation" right? I'm kinda late, I know, I should have posted this 3 months ago...hehe

Pick a winner

Get and idea of what's Ohio

2009-03-12T18:54:00Z

Behold...we brought snowball to get a wash, ok? Look what we found at the local Petsmart shop...a complete white trasher with not just 2, 3,4...no, but 6 GREAT DANES!! He said they consume 40pounds of food a week! Ole there! Feed that addiction

Imagine what would happen to the owner's arm if all the danes pull at different directions

American kids had it!!!!

2009-03-09T18:33:00Z

Oh No! Were u a fan of GI-Joe???? Hoovercraft BALLENA...the Rolling thunder...wow! I though I had the best weaponry at my disposal...but look what I found on an ultra-geeks-only shop around Cleveland...The damn GI-JOE AIRCRAFT CARRIER!!! It's real! They had only 2 units left...They told me it took them a week to just assemble it!!

300 soldiers at least required to staff it, of course...

E. O. Wilson comes to Cleveland

2009-03-05T18:18:00Z

On Tuesday 3/3/9 Edward Osoborn Wilson came to give a talk at Case Western and I was there to listen to him. I was like going to see the Horacle of Delphos speaking. Concert hall packed. For the uninitiated, just mention Dr. Wilson is a myrmecologist (yehaa baby, go to wiki!!) and a twice-Pulitzer winner. His books include the Ants and the Super-organism (which I am presently reading). Also, you might wonder, ants? so what? well, looks like Real Time Strategy games like Starcraft were based on Wilson's finding about how ants replicate from a single unit to form an entire colony!... Command Center to...Battlecruiser operational..Sounds familiar??

At Severance Hall....and Free!!

The Madness of Verdaguer

2009-03-02T18:34:00Z

The other day a book in Barnes & Nobles picked up my curiosity. It’s called “Ghosts of Spain” by Giles Tremlett, and I skimmed to find out how the world sees the Catalans. I'm sorry for the general public, but only to a Catalan this book will produce a massive eye-opening experience. MMm, very very insightful book indded. Interesting points to behold is Mr. Tremlett assertion that Montserrat, the Holy mountain is dull and boring. He goes to compare it to a sort of Catholic Theme Park ala Disneyland Orlando. He also finds ‘la sardana’, the traditional Catalan dancing, un-inspiring and somewhat tiresome. Hhe begins by not finding it, but ends up asserting that only living in Barcelona long enough –and in Catalonia by extension- is possible to fathom that elusive “differential factor" that Catalans claim makes them different from Spaniards. So, he claims to find it but before finishing his chapter on Catalans –called The Madness of Verdager- he implies something more troubling, something that I didn’t fall into so far.

Mr. Tremlett goes to imply that Catalans, through having a clear potential to become a nation, are a bunch of nation-handicapped people. This is, they have been unable to form a stable nation in the past and will fail to do so in the future. It’s not that they are not entitled to have a nation, is that they are handicapped to do so. Ground-breaking stuff, uh? What do you think?

Scary book...

Obama got elected president!

2009-01-19T23:53:00Z

Yep, history in the making eh? hehe

and I was there

Peperones 1 year later

2008-12-24T18:47:00Z

Again, nobody brought a decent camera...

left to right: Meinhardt, delo, chalo otto, siol. Place? Mercat de la Boqueria

Spectacular Proposition on Tuesday night

2008-10-15T15:35:00Z

Watching the movie "The Last King of Scotland" yesterday, I point out to my roommate Mike from Mongolia how futile the witch doctors in Africa are to fight things like HIV or malaria. Suddenly, Mike stated "they work". Do they?
I told him I didn't believe in them and neither in their ability to cure serious diseases, yeah, maybe a headache or a throat paint with some herbs and soups is OK, but what about a bout of Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis?
Then came the spectacular proposition. Mike, with a cold stare at me from his thin eyes and a serious face, tells me: " I can make you become a goat right now". The propostion felt on me like, hard to describe... A ton of fresh bullcrap or I don't know, a crude joke? "Come on, it's ok" I said but he insisted: "Bring your camera, I'll take a picture of you converted to a goat". " Are you serious?" I asked him "You are joking right?" "No" he said with a serious look, no trace of laugh, smirk or smile: "Bring the camera" he continued. At this point, I just turned to keep watching the movie. Then I added "I won't go to take my camera and waste my time to proof that something I know beforehand is bullshit big time is bullshit. I just wanted to let you know". Then he said something like "but you don't know" and I replied "that's like I go and tell you to bring your type recorder because in five second the planet Jupiter is going to knock at our door". "What?" he asked, then he went mute.
In the end, of course I didn't bring my camera to proof that shit is shit and smells accordingly. Anyway, the stunning proposition and the subsquent lack of any type of acknowledgment as some kind of obvious joke or lie or trick that followed is something that I keep experiencing time to time since the days of Pamplona.

Brimstone fire won’t deter us anymore

2008-08-18T00:36:00Z

“Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.” That’s what the Genesis 19:24-25 tells us that happened when human beings deviated too much from saintliness in the ancient times. As a result, since then, Sodom and Gomorrah have been associated with sexual debauchery and by extension to all sinful activities that the human denizens of this planet can come up with.

But on 2008 AD God has to be already pretty upset with us. Actually, by ancient standards I think HE has to be pretty pissed off. Let’s be honest, we have way surpassed Sodom and Gomorrah excesses in all conceivable ways. And not just in two cities. No, this time we extended the pinnacle of sinfulness into a global scale. Think of anything that’s explicitly forbidden by the heavens…and I can tell you for sure it’s on somewhere today on a daily basis. The last spill from that cup? Katy Perry and her song “I kissed a girl”. Homofobic anyone? Femalehood assertiveness maybe? Besides the song’s melody which I find pretty awesome, we have here a clear example of our modern times. Is it decadence, which I am sure all the puritanical bible- totters will rush to label or just that human race is finally becoming a grown up baby?

Not only homosexuality is no longer repressed in our society, but we reached the point where it is actually becoming the latest craze to be sampled. After kissing a girl, “the taste of her cherry chop-stick” Perry tells us, made her feel good, not only good but in power and of course this doesn’t mean a hoot to her per se “Don’t mean I am in love tonight” she continues singing after openly confessing “It felt so wrong, it felt so right”. Did you had a chance to watch the video on YouTube? It’s awesome.

Maybe I’ve been living in my puritanical shell for too much time, but I sense another pre and post milestone in public deviance here. Here we have a successful commercial song that encourages us to go gay. Mmmm, grande, like the Italians would say. “But a lesbian kiss doesn’t mean to be gay necessarily” lots of people might be inclined to claim. Well, according to a social study done a couple of years ago, it’s not what you say but what you do. Incidentally, that study found that men performing occasional homosexual acts considered themselves ‘straight’.

But wait, there is more. Woody Allen, l’enfant terrible of the U.S., just got in the bandwagon of the homosexually bonanza. Did you had a chance to watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona? With their three-some thematic I am sure French will love it –which probably is the required catalyst for foreign movies to get successful in Europe. But the transgression won’t stop there. Penelope, check. Scarlett, check. Developing photography both alone at night, check. Go, go, go watch it!

Sorry for that detour, guys, I have to regain focus. Ok, so in the end, what Katy Perry song is actually telling us is that we reached that point where sexuality is actually blind, like Mrs. Justice, and is out there for you to go try it.

But this time, in a twist with ancient times, God won’t punish us for it. There is not going to be a rain of brimstone or anything celestial going on. But how we know that? Well, we know it… first, because it didn’t happen inspire of what’s going on. And second, we know it because if in any case sulfur rains or whatever catastrophe happens –which, by the way it is happening constantly around the world- it will have a known cause. The supposed “punishment” won’t be out-of-nowhere and therefore won’t be closely associated with heaven’s chastisement. No, the times were sodomy and sinfulness triggered sulfur rainbows are gone forever. We have our brightest century awaiting ahead. Enjoy it.

Take a look at what I am talking about:

Delicious, uh?

Last chapter in "marraneria total"

2008-08-06T01:30:00Z

You know, the interesting thing about having roommates and being the senior one in charge is that time to time, you open a door and what you find? Behold by yourselves my dear visitors...it's something truly difficult to fathom...Barns anyone? I heard "Pigsties" in the last row? No, no, nobody burglarized our house, this is just a simple fulfillment of the second law of thermodynamics: that chaos increases spontaneously.
The panorama keeps repeating every end of August -see my one-year-ago entry.

Yep, a human being sleeps in there every-night. I know, don't ask.

No hagan Olas

2008-07-30T23:52:00Z

A Sea in Ohio? Na...its a lake, the Westbranch Lake. Just leaving the harbor a US Lake guard patrol boat trashed us with a ton of paperaisse and regulations: No swimming in the lake, no skiing 300 feet from the shore, lifevests are mandatory -like he said "yes, you all are babies who can't swim"- and a long blablabla always ending with the remark "I don't want to fine you". For the un-initiated this means they will throw you a $160 fine, handcuff you, mugshot and you will spent a night in a rotting jail. Yep, 100% U.S.A. Anyway, we managed to stay afloat, avoid drownings, more patrol boats and we took some pictures of the nice countryside, like these swimmers enjoying 10% less gravity:

Compare this beach with Costa Brava, no wonder Americans love the Mediterranean...But the boat was fun afterall:

Veepak, Siole, ??, Bobba (no kidding, like the Bounty Hunter), Sarah

Learning Magic Tricks in Ohio

2008-06-24T03:21:00Z

Hi, look wha't I learned to do spontaneously. Don't dare to try this stuff it alone, it's only for professional magicians...

Get a finger:

Get an open corn pot (2 for $1.09 from Marc's)

Put the rim and the finger in contact and... voila!!:

You get a cut that will bleed profusely over 20 minutes.

Remember, don't try this trick alone. Well, actually, the funny part of this trick is that it just "happens" and you can't go back. Yes, it happened to me serendipitiously while I was preparing my dinner salad. What are you laughing at? It hurtttssss

The Gun Show

2008-06-22T17:41:00Z

The expectation was moderate. The place was remote, and this time Mapquest didn’t help in giving us the correct directions to get there. Instead of using 70% highway and 30% farm roads, the internet address finder gave us 70% farm roads and 30% highways. This lead us soon astray –do we turn here or in the next barn?- and got lost in the middle of the already nowhereness of Ohio. Finally, Pim's mental GPS kicked in and we managed to find the town of Medina, where the spectacle was taking place. The event was in the County Fairgrounds and once we parked the Dodge Avenger at the convention center lot –basically, a cowland covered with sand- we approached the warehouse where the gun show was housed.

No pics allowed

Pim thought of a gun show as a museum-like experience: “They are going to show us Civil War guns, give lectures, give us flyers, rigth?”. Well, not exactly. This made apparent that the intensity of what was awaiting us wasn’t still obvious. As we approached the main entrance, the first signs of what a gun show is all about in yankeeland started dripping like oil from a leaky carburator. How to describe it? It’s a mixture of an eerie feeling with one spoon reality and three of absurdity. Nowhere else in the world I think you can see people leaving the premises of a shopping place joyfully with a sense of accomplishment in their faces and carrying a shopping cart with two semi-automatic rifles, three handguns and thirty boxes of ammo. If you dare to stare at them, their face expressions tells it all: “You see my guns, right? I made a killing of a shop!”. But the grip with reality left Pim uneasy: “David, was that real?”. “Of course, what you think, people come here to buy chocolate tortes?”.

Six dollars turned out to be the mandatory fee for the entrance, and when I asked pretty thrilled “Can we take pictures?”-hoping for a Chuck Norris-style pose- those two middle-aged women inside the reception booth threw me a cold shower: “It’s not possible to take pictures from the Devil” they answered. Well, they really didn’t answered that, but you get the point. Photos were not going to be permitted inside the show.

Which makes you think exactly why not? After all, all these gun lovers and N.R.A.s like to con us that guns, in the U.S. of A., are alike potatoes or corn, basicaly a slight variation of the same farm products that this nation dispatches. But then, one is left wondering, what makes guns and sniper rifles so special, not allowing pictures to spread their beauty? Would a grocery market forbit to take pictures of their tomatoes and cabbages? Of course not! But of course, we know guns will never attain grocery status anytime soon.

So, as we entered the show, we got into business pretty fast: tables and tables packed with all types of handguns on display gave us the first welcome. Of course this was followed rapidly by shotguns and more shotguns, and by rifles and more rifles, but those were still some meters away.

Moreover, this hierarchy mattered little at first, because after a few steps I just went blind. Sort of. The first sensation this massive amount of weaponry produced on me –where is Pim? Ah, she still behind me- was disorientation. Plain disorientation. “Where to look? Is this real? No, no, is this reeeeeally real? Should I run?” are some of the questions my brain scrambled.

I felt lost point blank and I would say I acquired a sort of gun-blindness, as if my eyes, lost swimming around so many agents of distilled dead couldn’t integrate what they properly saw. As if my brain, shocked by so many unusual and un-daily items felt disturbed “I am going to survive after this?”.

But a couple of minutes later everything returned to normalcy: “Ok, how much is this one?” I asked “Oh, excellent choice, Browning high powered…practical, $736”. “And this other?” “Oh, even better, caliber 50”. Ok, translation for the profane: that “caliber 50”, basically a Smith & Wesson model 500, is a gun capable of piercing First World War tanks. Yeah, ready for the trenches guys, we are in business here! But before any transaction could proceed, I had to place the million dollar question. That scary question that you can’t find on google right away. That question that even Cha Cha deflects to answer and even cops aren’t sure about or they will answer a “No” by default.

The tank shredder S&W 500

The critical question is “Can foreingers buy guns in the U.S.?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”. The gun seller answered my question as if Billy the Kid drawing his gun, and he even put the tank-piercing driller right away in my hand as if saying “Buy it, damn it!”

“Are you sure?” I was still doubtful. “Absolutely, look” And he popped out a form. “Here and here, do you have legal status?” “Of course!” I answered “Ok, then... then I just need three months of yout utility bills, sign here, and this gun is yours…Take it, it’s yours!”. Wow, so easy uh? It felt like rejecting a candy bar. But that’s how it happened. Looks like one can buy guns in the U.S. even if not a citizen. By this standards, guns are like potatoes. Great discovery, great deal. But wait, there’s more: “Look at this Pim, AK-47s!” “No, not exactly” one of the bystanders corrected me as if I just stated New York is a river in Africa. “Oh, excuse me, I’m a noobie in these issues. What is it then?” “Oh, the arm…the arm is shorter, it’s a handgun version” he pinpointed. At this point, closeness had settled in between us and the guy felt entitled to kept going “This AK-47 handgun version also makes better muzzling, better grip, better recoil…you know, when you shoot to the ground Groa Groa Groa Groaaaaa!!” Holly shit, this fella is nuts, let’s get the hell out of here! I thought immediately. Wearing glasses, middle aged and chubby, the guy just represented in the air the effect of unloading a cartridge on the ground. The explosions he represented looked like an experimental new way to plant seeds without a plow!

We manage to lose him by sneaking in between some other ammunition tables and bulletproof vests and I refound my little friend S&W 500 standing next to a Desert Eagle, that gun that you use in Counter Strike when low on money. Well in reality, the Desert Eagle looks like it can send any part of your body to the grilling barbeque with a single shot. And it weights a helluva heck. Looking so similar to the S&W 500’s piercing capabilities, I couldn’t kept it but ask the seller: “Which one has bigger caliber?”. Somehow I missed the point. Of course, not all the sellers around here are going to be as friendly as the previously “Buy-it-damn-it”, so this one bluntly replied me: “What is it written here?” Making me feel stupid for having dared to ask something that should be obvious. Clearly, this guy was not in a Billy-the-Kid mood for selling, so I just excused myself: “Oh, I am sorry, I am just a little twit that never practices on Sundays” and I left.

Besides the killing machines on display, this gun show also featured its bona-fide mini-zoo. It’s easy to spot all kind of people on it, mainly confined to low standards of life. This includes white and trailer trash, which are abundant in every meter, every stand. Maybe they can’t buy new pants or a decent shirt, but their gun allocation money is always unfazed. One also can find disabled people willing to potentially disable other people by means of guns: well chairs and mobile oxygen tanks are commonplace. Of course missing a leg or an arm puts you in a disadvantage facing a reckless criminal, maybe that’s why so many amputated people also showed off their willingness to compensate their loss of flesh with a gain in deadly lead.

But another interesting trait of this show sipped through the gun holsters and army caps. Very few blacks, very few asians and very few woman. And besides Pim, no asian women. Ok, maybe that’s because this place is a God forgotten corner of Ohio, or maybe it’s because something else. Something that we suspect: Mr. Racism and Mr. White Supremacy? After an hour straddling across the place, Pim started feeling unconfortable. She noticed the staring and the checking. Yeah, maybe this is the first time all this weirdos have seen a asian woman in 3D. Or maybe it’s because Pim noticed there is only a cop “protecting” this place. Well, I don’t see the need for more, it’s like walking among plutonium, who would dare to use it without melting himself?

Finally, if you ever go to a gun show, don’t ever understimate the rapacious feeling that’s going to build on you. So many guns, so easy to acquire them, it’s not difficult to not feel compelled to buy one in the end. The “What if” thought is the main culprit behind. “What if I surprise a robber in my house?” “What if somebody assaults the bank while I’m on it?”.”What if, what if?” Lots of “What ifs” which are the covert motor behind this business. But this “What if” has to be preceded by the “I have to”, which is what the sellers wants you to ignore. To stop a bank robber “I have to know how to shoot”. To stop a grocery mugger “I have to carry the gun first”, etc. “Oh, look at this small one” –a double barreledl Derringer- Pim tells me “It looks so cute and it would fit so well in my purse…and it’s just $246”. Even myself I am susceptible to the 1911 models. Come on, every man has his model, and people in this business know this. So, after a little of restraining myself, the mind starts giving in “Should I buy one? Mmm…looks so cute, perfect to show my friends: look, look my new baby!”. Yeah, the feeling starts to become so irrisistible, but luckily my videogamer mind comes to the rescue: “Ok David, what you prefer, a $750-computer or a $750 handgun?”. Clearly, with Starcraft 2 around the corner I have no choice but to give in. “Pim, let’s go, we have seen enough”.

Obama total Snafu

2008-06-13T01:04:00Z

I just found this video with Obama going on the doldrums "Ok, where going to...wait...I can't hear myself" hahahaha
I'm still unsure if this kind of pitfalls make him gain or lose votes...Is it a portent of what's to come?

Notice his cracker-style talking cloak falls at the "I can' hear masefff"

What is it like combing a Monkey?

2008-06-10T16:20:00Z

This is a reference to the University of Navarra Biophysics class. After realizing people preferred to sleep in class over understanding the mechanisms behind molecular motors, our professor Dr. Perez once said out loud : "Well, and to whomever doesn't like biophysics...then I recommend him to get a monkey and to comb it!" The remark was so so so over the top...I think it got carved in my mind forever. Though not a monkey, I got the chance of combing Pim's dog Snowball -a Siberian Husky- and it was a unique and exhilarating experience...One of those next to Trainspotting or counting the stars in the skies at night. I wanted to remove all his hair shedding, but the trick with this kind of activity is that his hairs never seem to run out...Yeah, maybe because I might be facing something like 2 o 3 trillions of them

Ready for cotton business

Lollipop scorpions

2008-06-08T15:46:00Z

You won't believe it, but instead of the surprise bubble-gum inside the traditional Chuppa Chups, Chinese like to find a real Scorpion instead!!!

Mmmm, there's nothing like hitting its sting with your tongue...real stimulating. After this, gums are for sissies!!