Tomorrow We Eat SanGwiches

There are traditions in cultures that go back to the beginning of recorded time. Ancient Greece and pedophilia, Spain and "The Running of the Bulls, (why someone would risk getting gored by a bull horn for the reason of "well that's what has always been done" is beyond me. In Portugal we have the killing of the pig. Going back to as long as I can remember, which is basically whatever my mother has told me, the people of my parents island of Madeira for the most part grew up in poverty. Meaning you only had meat once a year, that meat was wonderful pork. Tradition is that you had to kill the pork two weeks before Christmas so that the pig will be ready to eat Christmas Day.

Even though we now have things like supermarkets and fresh, delicious, wonderful pork available to us 365 days a year, my parents and relatives still find it necessary to "Kill the Christmas Pig"  Don't get me wrong, I like this tradition, there is something primitive and satisfying about killing and butchering your own meal.  It is like hunting except you don't have to cover yourself in deer piss and sit in a blind freezing your nuts off trying to convince yourself that its fun.

I have taken part in this tradition and I kinda enjoyed it. I mean you have a whole different respect for your meal if you took part in the killing and butchering of the animal.

For those of you who say that pigs are smart animals and they can be just like dogs. Well if a dog was able to give us bacon, pernil, smoke pork shoulder...lets just leave it at that.  Oh yeah here's are some pictures for you my sexy carnivorous readers:

                                       AND DEAD!!!

                                         He's Huge!!!!  

               There is my Christmas Pork Shoulder

                         Not really edible 

Posted by nelson57 at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This past Sunday the people of Venezuela voted and their voice was heard loud and proud. They voted against President Hugo Chavez' bid for constitutional reform that would have basically given him unchecked power over Venezuela.  Here is what he wanted: To be president for life, change the laws as he saw fit and in times of emergency he could control the airwaves.

The reforms were voted down by a margin of 51-49 percent.  Polls have indicated that there was a 20% no show of people from the poorer sections of Venezuela.  Chavez has garnered most of his support from the poor of Venezuela (where they outnumber the middle and wealthy class by 3 to 1).  They have also benefited the most from Chavist reforms, He has turned some of his petro-dollars to give them housing and education. 

I don't have enough space in my blog to debate numbers and why 20% of the people didn't turn out to vote; maybe they were up too late the night before at a pro-chavez rally and couldn't be bothered to show up.  Maybe the education that Chavez has given to them has taught them that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" Many thanks go out to my parents for spending a god-awful amount of money on my college education so that I can finally use that quote.

Quick aside, my cousin was working the voting tables in Caracas where the votes from the entire country were tallied and the vote was a bit larger than 51-49, but the Chavistas "told" them as soon as they knew the referendum to be lost to "keep it close".  So there you go another rigged election, this time it was so that someone didn't lose that bad. Go figure.

BTW unless someone gets this man out of power soon, he will get this referendum passed by hook or by crook, mostly crook though. 

Posted by nelson57 at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)