I’ve always loved the movie "Joe Vs. The Volcano." It’s always
touched me in ways that only a handful of other stories or pieces of
art do. I always thought I was the only one. Then I found out through
an idle web search that there are a lot of people out there who have
dedicated a lot of time and thought into enjoying and studying this
movie. Imagine my surprise and delight. Some great stuff.

A great essay

This guy sums up just how I feel about the movie and indeed it’s a
pretty good life philosophy for me. Then I read this other one that
started me off on my own little wandering path of thought.

Another great essay

As our business has gotten funded and we are moving out our fog of
discontent, things are starting to make sense again. Once again, I’ve
learned some valuable lessons from Puerto Rican culture. I’ve been
noticing that people generally put up with a lot from one another and
are slow to break ties over disputes, ill words or broken promises.
Perhaps it’s the island culture that no one is very far from one
another and getting along is sort of a survival instinct.

Part of the reason most people behave better with strangers than
loved ones, is that strangers, others, co-workers, and friends are
quicker to throw you away if you screw up. You put yourself on your
best behavior directly proportionately to your imperiled value to the
other person. In Puerto Rico, office cultures are sometimes what we
Americans would call unprofessional… lots of noise, people maybe
talking loud. People are quicker to bring their home problems to the
office, bring their kids, bring their personal lives into the forefront
of their professional lives. I suspect that since Puerto Ricans are
slower to throw each other way, in a way it’s like family. You deal
with it and try to make it better instead of cutting the guy a pink
slip, check and sending him on packing on his merry way.

Viserally, Puerto Ricans are connected to life in a far deeper way
than most Americans… work, life… these two aren’t seperate.

Increasingly I’ve seen technology make culture take on a more
drastic meaningless existence. Movies are all show and no imagination.
Two hours is a very short story if it’s all visual. And breathless
wanting kisses of the forties have been replaced by a carefully crafted
sculpted silicon breast shot. Shakespeare in Love? Shouldn’t it have
been Shakespeare in lust?

The fast pace of the Internet makes ALL the rules able to be
rewritten in a matter of months. The WAY of doing things seems to go
extinct overnight, with the next new thing growing ever closer and
closer. To what are we beholden? Increasingly we grow dissatisfied with
religion. We shift from thing to thing looking for some sort of self
satisfaction, peace, or wellness. We flit and click and jump from one
thing to next hoping that it will fill us. We don’t want to hold too
tightly to any one thing for fear it will evaporate in a heartbeat. So
we tie down emotionally and fill our lives with eye candy… the
illusion of life.

At work we can be replaced without a second thought. Shareholders
you know… Downsizing, cutting middle management, move to new
facilities, restructuring, not making the cut are all reasons people
are tossed aside.

Quoting Joe in the movie Joe vs. the Volcano, "Zombi lights… sucking the juice out of my eyeballs."

It’s difficult now, with all external indications that the US is
doing very well. We have lots of jobs, money, and we are busy busy
busy. Gotta move, gotta do, gotta be.

I sometimes criticize Puerto Ricans for not caring about doing a
good job, being lazy or not being efficient. But Laura shamed me the
other day as I was bitching about something she broke or damaged,
saying to her, "At least I care about how I treat things."

"Too bad you don’t feel the same way about people," she shot back.

And damn it if she wasn’t right. We Americans are so pointy clicky,
efficient, and bottom line oriented that we seem to forget that people
are more important than things. It’s easy to answer correctly on a
test, but hard in practice. That’s one thing at which Puerto Ricans
excel. Things are inconsequential. Sure they love gadgets, cars, and
all manner of cool toys, but 99% of them are damaged in some way…
including all these new Jaguar’s I’m seeing recently. You work it out,
it’ll work out. Está bien… tranquilo.

And so there I will leave this for now. I’m still learning, still
growing, still failing, but every once in a while these things just
come out of the blue and hit you over the head plain as day. I hope the
Latin influences of family, culture, fun, and society can have some
great positive influences on the American way of life.

The Day of the flat tire. I don’t know how many of you have had flat
tires, but today I have been initiated. This is no small thing. I am
sure that aside from excuses for arriving at meetings-work-dentists
appointments late it is a rare occurrence. Let me tell you about how it
works down here. Half the cars drive around with those ridiculous
little donut wheels (small spare tire). It’s almost an epidemic. The
other day I say a BMW (a nice one too) driving around with that silly
little wheel. If he had been in a car locker room the towel whipping
would have been fierce.

It’s all fun and games, however, until it happens to you which if
you live in Puerto Rico, it will. Maybe it has something to do with the
heat (perhaps the rubber is half melted anyway allowing anything from a
toothpick to a hard jolly rancher to penetrate your side wall), or the
fact that the streets seem to have an extraordinary quantity of pot
holes and debris. I don’t know. But today I came out to the parking lot
to find out that I had a flat. Aw man. I breathed a sigh of relief,
however, because thank God that it didn’t happen in rush hour traffic.

I whipped out the tiny silly diminutive God-awfully goofy little
spare tire and cranked up those silly little toy jacks that take a
million turns to go up half an inch, put the silly spare on and drove
gingerly (avoiding pot holes and debris) to Santurce, a working class
neighborhood (some would call it a tough neighborhood) and found a guy
who repaired tires… for, get this… $5. Yes, you heard right. $5.
Tire repair around here is such a booming business that they charge $5
a tire and work around the clock. Hell, maybe I should get out of the
computer racket and cash in on the booming flat business. So the guys
found the hole repaired the tire and slapped it back on in about 5
minutes..

…which is good, great wonderful, brilliant, but remember that $5 I
was talking about? I didn’t have it. I had $4.50. Now I couldn’t
exactly try to scam this guy out of fifty cents on an already
impossibly low fee. Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t accept credit or
ATM. To further compound matters, I was in an area where there were no
ATMs. Oh, did I mention it was now 5 o’clock. Aw geez, now I have to
navigate down streets that when they were designed were intended to be
two way streets. Today, however, Puerto Rican’s have taken parking to
new levels as cars are stacked on either side in impossible
configurations making this already small two way street an even smaller
two way street. So it became the Samurai on the bridge all over again.
You gonna back up to the nearest cross street or am I? I think not
knave. I have to find an ATM. You will suffer should you wish to
challenge me. It worked, he backed off and up he went to the nearest
cross street. I gave a little wave of thanks and made my way into the
heart of a six pack a day smoker, potato chip snarffing, egg guzzling,
red meat devouring, whole milk drinking, 500 hundred pound overweight
50 year old. CLOGGED is the word that kept rearing it’s ugly head as I
banged on my steering wheel and cursed the accursed traffic and the pot
hole ridden tiny streets. After about an hour, I spied it, an oasis of
money. A-ha, doh!, I’m on the wrong side of the street. Quick stop in a
gas station-run across the street on a pedestrian cross walk that only
half remained-narrowly missed by cars honking at this brazen fool who
stepped out of his car for even a millisecond-lunging for the security
of electronic cash, information age technology that would save my ass,
give me my cash and allow me to get on with my life.

So the deed it done, now I have to get back to the tire shop. To
relive the feeling, reread the above paragraph. Now I arrive back to
the shop and it’s closed. Ah, there he is. I breathe a sigh of relief,
and notice the humble tire change guy hanging out at the bar next door.
Here’s your money, I say, and thanks for your patience. Whew. The day
is done, the tire is repaired, I can go home complete, satisfied, whole
again.

I’ll worry about putting that jigsaw puzzle called the jack, lug
wrench, wing nut, spare tire assembly sometime next month. For now
it’ll just kick around in the trunk. Hey, maybe I’ll need it again
really soon.