Get Cynical

The site for people with broken legs. If you’re stuck at home with your leg on a pillow, surfing the net desperately looking for a distraction – here it is.

Since the beginning of 2001, I draw in small notebooks 11 cm X 15 cm (approximately), always with a ballpoint pen, always on same paper, always in black. I contrained myself never to tear a page off, what is done…is done. I put the date at the beginning and the end of each notebook. Each day I spend one hour or two drawing in these notebooks. At this day,I made approximately 450 pages distributed in 12 notebooks.

The Guanajuato mummies were discovered in a cemetery of A Guanajuato Mummya city named Guanajuato northwest of Mexico City (near Léon). They are accidental modern mummies and were literally “dug up” between the years 1896 and 1958 when a local law required relatives to pay a kind of grave tax. You could pay the tax once (170 pesos) and be done with it; this option may have appealed to wealthier individuals. But you were also allowed to pay a yearly fee (20 pesos); this would have appealed to less wealthy families. However, if the relatives could not pay this yearly tax for three years, the body (which had, by the way, become accidentally mummified) was dug up from the cemetery and (if the fee still wasn’t paid) placed on display in El museo de las momias. [Of course, what if the person's family had moved from town--or what if the person was the last person from their family? Well, it didn't matter; the law was the law!]

Fewer and fewer people these days read short stories. This is unfortunate–so few will ever experience the joy that reading such fine work can give. The goal of this site is to give a nice cross section of short stories in the hope that these short stories will excite these people into rediscovering this excellent source of entertainment.

The following plot shows how much I paid for each gallon of gas I bought over the past 26 years or so. The data has a somewhat varied pedigree. Most of the purchases from 1979-1982 were in the Rio Vista/Fort Worth, Texas area. From late 1982-1983 was from College Station/Rio Vista about equally. From 1984-1987 was a Rio Vista/College Station/Houston mix and from 1987 on has been mostly Houston with a little Fort Worth thrown in. Just about everything pre-1984 was full service and everything since has been self-serve. Every tank shown was “super” unleaded (92-93 octane).

I was awakened a couple of hours ago by a very disturbing phone call regarding the fate of some of the rugeees who followed the mayor’s advice to seek shelter at the dome as a last resort.

The media has laid it all out for us: no plumbing,no power, and recent reports of criminal activity. From a family menmber I was told that a young girl had been assaulted and the death of a man from apparent suicide.

My sister said they did not eat Tuesday because all their rations and food supply
had run out.

The one thing she seemed distraught about was the lack of political presence.
They want to know that the very people who were elected by them care enough to be among them during this horrific ordeal. I was also asked to call the radio station to get the word to the officials about the dire straits the evacuees are in. They fear for their well being and safety of themselves and the children in their care.

Let the media in for all the world to see the situation as it really is. If the officials are ashamed then maybe they should be among their people at the Superdome.

President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005.

Most Americans identify the National Guard with providing emergency services during natural disasters. But over the past three years, numerous Guard units have been sent to Iraq to fight alongside regular forces.

Asked how his troops felt being in Iraq while their state was in such difficulty, Jones replied: “Well, we all know our primary mission is the federal one.”

“The secondary mission is to serve at the pleasure of the governor in disaster-relief and other missions,” said Jones, 44, who works for a company managing the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Louisiana National Guard troops left back home have been busy rescuing people from the deluge and bringing them to safety in their trucks.

In other Gulf states, more than 1,600 Mississippi National Guardsmen were activated to help with the recovery, and the Alabama Guard was planning to send two battalions to Mississippi, the hardest-hit area.

One of the Mississippi National Guard units, the 155th Armored Brigade, is attached to the II Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq.