Author: David Diego Rodríguez, Ph.D.

I teach Spanish and I am a standup comedian.

WordPress.com


WordPress: The iPhone App!

So, I’m using an updated version of WordPress.com. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. I used to post my blog on my website at http://davidrodriguez.us using WordPress blogging software that I kept on my website. It worked fine for the first two years or so. Then one day, my comments section was filled with spam. Beaucoup spam! One spam message left in a comment was so long that my blog never finished loading. And I couldn’t log into my own account and update my blog. Or remove all the spam. This happened to me again. Two more times, in fact. Whenever I contacted my ISP, I was told to contact WordPress. The last incident caused me to stop blogging for months! At first, I thought, “I broke the Internets!” 

Another problem I had was upgrading the WordPress software to my website. My ISP didn’t automatically upgrade the software even though they provided me with the original version. I only attempted one upgrade and my blog was down for about a month. Somehow, mysteriously, I accidentally deleted my entire website! After hours of reading WordPress documentation and multiple attempts to install the new software, I finally had my blog up and running again. That was my one and only WordPress upgrade. I swore to never upgrade again. Now that I’m using this new version of WordPress software, I realize I was lacking many features and widgets that I now take for granted. I love the way new features, themes, and widgets mysteriously appear without me having to upgrade.  

If you look at my archives list, there is a huge gap between June 2009 and January 2010. That was the period when I didn’t know what to do about my blog that had been hijacked. And I was really in the mood to blog! I tried other blogs, but I liked the WordPress features the best. I did open an account at WordPress in 2008 when I was previously locked out of my own blog, but I never actually used it. Finally, I told myself, I want to start blogging again. I really missed blogging! And now I’m blogging, as you can well see.  

So, here I am back blogging with WordPress. I like all the features available. My current blog already strongly resembles my old blog. Okay, so I’m a little resistant to change. I mean, I’m not very pliable. Except for all those new widgets that I’ve added to the right column of the blog. I also like the way my blog appears on my iPhone. When I open my blog on the iPhone, it’s so much easier to read than in the regular browser. It’s so much more manageable. I also like the WordPress App that’s available for my iPhone.  I plan to use it very soon.  

But I promise that my current blog will be of the exact same high quality as ever. And, of course, you remember how low high I set the bar before, right? Well, I can’t vouch for the quality, but I can guarantee you quantity. Much more than you ever asked for. My goal is to write a blog entry every day for a month. Okay, I picked February because it’s the shortest month of the year, much to the consternation of African Americans who were awarded February for Black History Month. And since this isn’t a leap year, I should easily be able to write twenty-eight blog posts. Right? I sure hope so!  

Vote, vote, vote


My receipt for voting.

Lucky us! We get to vote on Ground Hog’s Day! So, if a candidate sees his shadow … Oh, never mind. Ground Hog’s Day is such a silly holiday, anyway!

I got a phone call to vote for Jim Ryan for judge. When I said I would vote for him, the caller asked if I would like to put Ja im Ryan sign on my lawn. Then, last week, I got two unusual calls from politicians soliciting my vote for David Hoffman. One was from Paul Vallas who doesn’t even reside in the state of Illinois anymore. And the other was from Miguel del Valle who also solicited my vote for David Hoffman in Spanish. I must admit he spoke Spanish very nicely. I’m not sure if Paul Vallas really wanted me to vote for David Hoffman. Or if, as I suspiciously tend to believe, he wanted to remind me that he still existed so that I would vote for him upon his imminent return to Illinois politics. But that’s just me.

I also received voting instructions for early voting in English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. Okay, I’m not actually sure if it’s Mandarin Chinese, but I wanted to sound knowledgeable. Everyone wants to sound knowledgeable around election time, no? In Chicago, all the polling places are multilingual. If you’re an American citizen, you’re entitled to vote even if you don’t speak English! But this is typical of every election in Chicago.

The Chicago election is always very confusing. For whom do I vote? There are always a few obvious candidates for me. But others, I never even heard of them! I know we’re supposed to vote for candidates intelligently. However, I only seem to be aware of candidates who raised enough money to pay for radio and TV ads. So how do I vote for everyone else? Including the completely unknown candidates? I vote for the Chicago Way! I voted for all the candidates I knew from before election day would get my vote.

What happens to my votes for the rest of the candidates? In a general election, if I’m not sure for whom to vote, I vote the straight Democratic ticket. It’s the Chicago Way! In a primary election when I must declare myself a Democrat, I vote for all the Irish candidates. It’s the Chicago Way! Of course, I once met a Judge Cunningham who was elected as judge because of his Irish name. Judge Cunningham was African American! So, I guess voting for an Irish or Irish-sounding candidate is very egalitarian. It’s the Chicago Way! Next in the pecking order are female names. If it’s a female candidate with an Irish name, so much the better. That was in the old days. Now that we have more Hispanic candidates, I automatically vote for a Spanish name. The election slate is so long for some elections that very few people would know every candidate very well. However, I want to exercise my Constitutional right to vote! Even if it’s the Chicago Way!

DDR

Burritos


El Famous Burrito¡ near UIC.

I’ve mentioned this before, but burritos are not a traditional Mexican food. My abuelita never made even one burrito in her entire ninety years on the face of this earth. Not even my mother made burritos. My father didn’t make burritos either and he used to cook up some weird combinations of ingredients that no one in our family ever ate even though he said it was delicious. Only my father would eat his concoctions, which were only made palatable by adding profuse amounts of salsa and/or jalapeño peppers. And sometimes, even he didn’t finish the entire serving. Despite his creativity, he never neared anything resembling a burrito. I guess because no one had invented giant tortillas back then.

Flash forward to the present. Somehow, mysteriously, burritos became American fast food. Yes, I’ve been known to eat a burrito or two on the go. Unlike traditional Mexican food that must be eaten sitting a table, for example, eating tostadas with all the trimmings on top requires expert balancing skills so the toppings don’t fall off. Imagine eating tostadas while driving! That’s why the burrito is the perfect driving food! It is self-contained and easy to manage while driving!

The burrito is one of the staple foods of American youth today. Including my oldest son. I think my son loves burritos almost as much as me. I think I once saved his life by throwing away a three-week-old burrito he had in the refrigerator. So, last week, he says we should go out to eat together. You know, so we can catch up on things, which usually means we hurry up and eat and then pull out our smart phones and ignore each other. However, we really do enjoy our time together.

Anyway, we ate a place called El Famous Burrito¡ with the exclamation point upside down at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning!  We were in a hurry and there was parking out in front, at Madison and Peoria. The most eye-opening revelation of our whole fine dining experience was learning that burritos could come in different sizes! They were offered in large, medium, and mini. But the mini burrito looked more like an egg roll! When I used to eat burritos before my son was born, they only came in one size. Large! I would usually eat one burrito along with three tostadas. Now, I don’t always finish a burrito. So, I ordered a medium. Well, the medium was exactly right for me. Although back in my younger days, I’m sure I would have ordered something else with it. But these burritos passed the most important taste test of all. They tasted Mexican!

DDR

UIC SOS


The international symbol of distress.

Teaching is very rewarding in many ways, but just not financially. My alma mater and present employer, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is suffering from budget problems. Well, the whole country is suffering from these hard economic times. UIC is suffering because the state of Illinois isn’t paying UIC what it is owed and therefore hirings of new faculty and staff have ceased. Faculty and staff must take unpaid furlough days to meet the budget shortfall–in addition to the budget recissions already implemented over the past few years. Illinois has one of the worst budget crises in the country, second only to California.

Of course, my job security is also on the line. My contract as a Spanish lecturer with UIC expires on May 15, 2010. Will I be rehired next year? No one knows with any certainty. We’ll see. The good news for me is that I don’t have to take any unpaid furlough days. The bad news is that I don’t earn enough to take furlough days. I feel the budget cuts in so many ways. I can’t call anyone on my office telephone outside of the Chicago area codes. Every year I’m allowed to make fewer and fewer copies of student handouts. Luckily for me, Spanish is the foreign language most in demand at UIC. Unfortunately, gone is the golden age when everyone who earned a Ph.D. would more than likely get a job in academia!

DDR

You suck!


Chicago Tribune, January 24, 2010

I saw this advertisement in the real estate section of the Chicago Tribune last Sunday. I remember when the word “suck” was a swear word! Perhaps I’m just on the verge of becoming a grumpy old man, but maybe that’s the reason I still remember when “suck” was offensive. So, imagine my surprise when I saw this ad.

When I was growing up back in the 1960s, an age before political correctness had swept the land, people would purposefully insult each other. No holds barred. If someone had a physical deformity or a mental defect, that was exactly what the insulting party focused on. Racial slurs were not only permitted, but wholeheartedly encouraged.

But getting back to the word “suck,” most people who use the word today don’t even realize why they’re using it. Once, one of my students said, “Exams suck!” and many of the other students in the class agreed. She had a quizzical look on her face after she said it. Then, she said, “What does that even mean?” No one knows what “suck” even means nowadays. No wonder I hear it on the radio and TV all the time. That’s because no one knows the history of the word “suck.”

But getting back to the 1960s, if someone wanted to insult you, they would–in so many words–say that you performed fellatio, back in an era when oral sex was frowned upon. The main offense was to insult someone’s manhood by implying he was homosexual. If someone did something stupid–and about everything qualified as being “something stupid”–the person who didn’t like what you did would say, “You blow!” Sometimes people would hurl the insult to pedestrians as they drove by. Sometimes it was incorporated into everyday conversation: “Why aren’t you inviting Alloycius to your party?” “Because Alloyicius blows!”

Somewhere along the line, “blow” received fierce competition from “suck.” Both words referred to the same sexual act of fellatio. The only point of contention seemed to hinge on the direction of air flow. But both terms were equally insulting in a homophobic manner. No one argued that! If you did, people would not only say, “You blow!”, but also, “You suck!” It was the great philosophical debate of my generation. Is it better to blow or to suck?

Well, flash forward to the present, and the people using the word “suck” are unaware of the history of the word “suck” whenever they use it. Just think about it. Can exams really suck? Who wouldn’t like oral sex to relax during a grueling exam. If exams literally sucked, students would love taking exams. And, then afterwards, the students would smile and say, “Yeah, that exam really sucked!”

DDR