JUST SAYING

One of these days I have to stop apologizing for the things I´ve never done, for the things I never will and even, for the things they think I did wrong in the past.  In doing so, maybe I would find peace after all. Nowadays this political correctness imported from the US is killing the freedom of speech and, more importantly, the pillars of Western civilization.

 Everything is sexist. Everything is racist. Everything is misogynist. Everything is islamophobic. As a result of that, I can´t make a joke on the Canadian Prime Minister because it´s unacceptable in modern standards. The thing is that whatever I say is considered offensive and, in some cases, I can end up in a court of justice because of a poem or because I speak up about the resemblance between Batman and a woman wearing a Hiyab at night. Speaking of women; more that ever getting involved with a woman, in any western society, is like playing deadly Russian roulette. With your health, wealth, sanity and freedom for little or no benefit. As a result of that many women end up living alone with the only company of cats.

For some people, Milennials are defined by their over-sensitivity, their insistence that they are right despite the overwhelming proof that suggest they are not, their lack of placing things within context, the overreacting and, of course, all of this exacerbated by their parents. But what about women over forty who are banning some songs and movies because they find them offensive? Who are they to tell us the music we can or we can´t listen.  To be honest, we need this type of women like a fish need a bike. So it´s about time that somebody, somewhere, face this old way of thinking called fascism. I insist; the political correctness is killing our world.

Like college students are creating safe spaces on their campuses, I am determined to create mines and my own rules;

1-      I won´t tolerate more bullshit from these people.

2-      I won´t do anything they say.

3-      I will show my masculinity all the time.

4-      I won´t restrain myself from using the words I want.

5-      I will continue with my radical libertarian way of life.

Good luck and good night.

Sergio Calle Llorens

GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING

The best achievement of my life is to have reached September without having killed my neighbors. If you knew how noisy they are, you would understand my feelings towards them. They are so mean and terrible that sometimes I have found myself planning the perfect murder.  A thought that makes me feel better for a while. The good thing is that they are not longer here in October so I got plenty of time till next year when they come here on vacations. Hopefully, I can find a way to sort this problem before then. But don´t worry because I will never take the life of another human being.

Anyway, I have been thinking so much about crime that I ended up studying geographical profiling this summer; the story of this discipline dates back to the late 1960´s. The grandfather was Stuart Kind, the man who helped to catch the Yorkshire ripper. At that time, the police did not know who the murderer was and, more importantly, they did not know where the offender was based. According to MR kind, if a victim was killed around 8:00 pm, the murderer was living far away but if the victim was killed in the very small hours of the night 12.00 and 1:00 Am, then the killer was not far away because the Ripper should be at home at a reasonable time. So he studied the sequence of the murders and he was very accurate about pointing out where the Yorkshire Ripper was located. He did a groundbreaking work, and without computer modeling, and managed to unravel the real identity of the offender; Peter Sutcliffe; a serial killer who killed thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others. Apparently, his outbreak of violence, if we are inclined to believe his own version of events, towards prostitutes seems to have occurred because he was swindled out of money by a hooker.  Sutcliffe carried out his revenge on women over five years- some of them were not even prostitutes- and he claimed that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes.

Anyway geographic profiling is not an exact science but it is much more sciencetifical that it used to be in the past. We have to understand the relationship between people and geography. It´s an emerging field and we are starting to understand how people navigate. In fact, every single study that has been published collect more information to the general knowledge we posses now. Apparently most of the environmental criminologists suggest that crime sites and opportunities are not random. There is an emphasis in the interaction between the offender´s mental map of spatial surroundings and the allotment of victims.

Another principal in geographic profiling is that the offenders know about geographical profiling. So if the serial killer is based in the centre of a city, he will strike in different locations but he will never strike close to his base. There are other theories like the spatial behaviour where offenders are more likely to act on the first opportunity. It exhibits a constant tension between the offender desire to divert attention from his home base and the desire to travel no further. For other investigators, crime is less likely to occur the further away an offender is from their home base. It is concerned with the distance of crime and that offenders will in general travel limited distances to commit their crimes.

Crime, as you can imagine, is as revealing as the screams of my neighbours.

Sergio Calle Llorens

AMERICAN GRAFFITI II

In a way cinema is about looking up at the screen and seeing your friends, seeing yourself. We watch movies to know we are not alone, and that’s the sensation I have every single time I watch this film.  That’s why I can´t recommend American Graffiti enough. It penetrates what we are. It transcends our existence. American Graffiti is about capturing teenhood, how our youth was supposed to feel and how coming into adulthood is supposed to be. The film has also a timeless mythical quality about it.

 George Luca´s masterpiece is not a letter to teenagers but a letter from teenagers who, I am not alone on this, talk like kids- shame on the last teen films made by the industry- who behave like youngsters. That is the authenticity of this piece of work. Capturing characters at any age is challenging, but its more hard if the characters are teenagers. By the way, here you can read some of the greatest lines in American Graffiti:

 Bob Falfa: Hey, hey babe, what do you say?

Laurie: Don´t say anything and we`ll get along just fine.

Perhaps my individual perception is wrong but, I guess that American Graffiti is about having fun, the supreme feeling of going out with your mates in searching for adventure. I know sometimes we only remember the things that never happened but even so, the movie is also about the dream of a summer night when you can find romance. It´s important to notice that although is full of material of fashionable nostalgia, never exploits nostalgia. In another words; Lucas managed to find the balance between realism and fiction.

The movie is full of hope because is not based on antagonism like other movies. The argument, however, is low- key and the music- George Lucas has songs trough the movie- is treated as a sound effect to create the drama, and what a music with all those Rock and Roll and Doo wop songs.  And trough the songs they are listening in their cars we can know the kind of people the characters are who, by the way, travels into their own journey. Music doesn´t come from particular places, it pervades the space to glorify teenhood.

American Graffiti captures the heart of America`s last age of innocence. American Graffiti looks like no other movie, an achievement which, like a great critic said, is always the best measure of a truly gifted director.

Masterpiece.

Sergio Calle Llorens