Sr. Letterman

This ol' pickle couln't sleep last night. Instead, I watched late night boob-tube. D. Letterman made me laugh with his "Olympic Question":

Question: What's the difference between the four man bobsled and the two man bobsled?

Answer: Two men

His show is always enlightening and fact-filled. PBS featured Paul McCartney at Abby Road. There was an info-mercial, as well. Who needs sleep?

Desvelado,

Pepino S.

Ralph Tenia Hambre

The fifth graders at Uncle Pepino's Home for the Wayward Guerken illustrated a wonderful story told in Spanish. Here are a couple examples of their craft:














El Cuento:
Habia un muchacho que se llamaba Ralph. Ralph tenia un problema. El tenia hambre. El queria comer papas fritas. Ralph fue en un bus rojo a McDonalds. No habian papas fritas en McDonalds. Ralph lloro', y lloro', y lloro'.

Atentamente,
Profr. Pepino Suave

Highes and Lows

The public relations department of the Pepino Suave Institute of Yippee-Skippee Games, Songs, and Stories has been inundated with requests from around the globe for a more "personal perspective" of the heart of the institute, the clan Pepino. After a lengthy second or two of modest, "aw, shucks", and "who'd want to read about us?" We decided to share with you one of our titilating household routines, the daily "Highs and Lows" ("oooooohs," and "aaaaahs" in the background), which are normally discussed over dinner in the Casa De Pepino. Today's Altibajos:

Pepinita: My high was, um, was school. My low was, aaaah, having to do this (Pepinita has tired of this daily "high-low" routine. It has lost all meaning).

Pepina: My high was catching up with everybody (Pepino came home and the phone was still warm to the touch). My low was: I can't really say I had a low (Pepina's always this positivo).

Pepino, El Mas Suave: My high was the cheese that Pepina puts on our lunch sandwiches. Pepper Jack. Puts a zing in the ol' lunch bag. Something to look forward to all morning. My low was that our nieghbor, Rooftop Ralph, slipped on the ice while walking his dog around midnight, and spent a good hour on the cold cement shouting for help. Broke his shoulder. Glad he wasn't on the roof...

Para servirles,

Pepino Suave y familia

El Cazador

Queridos Lectores,
My much-older brother Rocky, of butternut squash fame, has forwarded this pickled clan a hilarious video game . We'd like to share it with you, our thousands of beloved readers from around the globe. Double click on "El Cazador" above and snicker with abandon.

Cuidado con donde disparas,

P.Suave

Calor Humano

A Pepino Pause

The purpose of life is to increase the warm heart. Think of other people. Serve other people sincerely. No cheating.

-The Dalai Lama

Aumentando mi corazon,

Pepino Para Servirle

Gorditas

On Friday, staff and students at P.Suave's Home for Wayward Guerkins prepared and consumed mexican gorditas. Everyone enjoyed the Durango treat. Pictured are several helping hands preparing the gorditas, and Profesor Suave himself posing for history.

Buen provecho,

Pepino Cocinero

-2F

It is cold. Had I run this morning, I'd be a pepinosickle. Cars crunch throught the streets, it's so cold. It's so cold, we can hear Grandma and Bompa Pepino say, "Eat your frozen hearts out," all the way from Hurricane Alley. Osama Bin Laden, upon perusing the Cuke County weather report, is quiet happy with his surroundings, it's so cold. My, there is such a chill the paperboy won't make it 'till sundown; we'll be reading the backs of the cereal boxes 'till noon. It's not just the cold, it's the lack of humidity. It is so cold, had I left my remaining bottle of genuine Mexican taquila out on the stoop, it mighta' got slushy. Maybe not. Still, it's plenty cold. It's so cold, coffee tastes better. I gotta think Cheney called off the hunt today, it is so cold. Hey, did you hear "Allah" Gore blamed the cold on the U.SA., it's so cold? The chill forced Brittney to sit her baby under the dash closer to the heat vent. It's is so cold the Greenpeace spokesperson on global warming had no comment today. It is so cold Ted Kennedy is calling for the impeachment of the President, stating, "It's so cold. The President's people knew days before that it was going to be cold!" It is so cold, Pepinita doesn't want to climb her tree today. It is too cold to garden today. It's so cold Pepina's indoor plants got frostnipped. The Pepino Suave Express, an inanimate minivan to some, is leaning toward the Casa de Pepino for warmth, it's so cold (while Pepina's Asian Express is housed nice and cozy in the Casa de Pepino's 1/2 car garage). It is so icy, the Pepinoville librarian seems to have a warm demeanor (still no waivers on late fees. Period).
It is cold.

Invernal,

Pepino Cobijado

Change In The Weather

A winter storm has hit Cuke County like Vice-presidential buckshot. Pepina's school is on a two-hour delay, and Pepinita and I are watching CUKE T.V. for the fate of our school days.
Stoke the fire, it may be a long cold one this weekend.

Hace mucho frio,

Pepino Helado

Bondad

A Pepino Pause

Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, kindness in feeling creates love.
-Lao Tzu

Hagamos algito bonito hoy,

Pepino Positivo

Juguetes

I have always been amazed at children's creativity. I've seen kids create games using discarded bike tires, plastic containers, and other 'trash'. During my time in the Dominican Republic I watched in amazement as children played baseball with balled-up duct tape, and folded cardboard squares for mitts. In a vacuum empty of internet, video games, and fabricated playscapes, kids tend to create. In the Dominican Republic, and many other parts of the world, the children's own imagination is their Toys 'Er Us.
The Dominican photagrapher Jaime Jimenez has published a collection of photographs that document the toys that Dominican children have made with their own hands and minds from whatever they find in their midst. Click on Juguetes above, or on the sidebar to view Mr. Jimenez' beautiful gallery of children's ingenuity.

Con todo respeto,

Pepino S.

La Cucarracha

Pepinoville saw the snow fly this week. After days of gloomy slop, this place is finally looking like winter, for crying out loud. Snow, and freezing temperatures have overcome the effects of global warming this week. We love it. Folks don't realize, but the cold keeps the cockroaches small. Snowbirds figure that out right quick. There are bugs down south that'd make an Orkin man squeal.
Pepino Suave recalls a cockroach as big as a saucer. It was back in the early nineties, when our pickled pal lived in the Carribean. He was visiting the house of an American friend (the house, from a U.S. point of view, was more the size of a tool shed). The friend, new to the Carribean, wanted to get rid of the omnipresent pests in the abode (he was oblivious to the omnipresent characteristic of the roach). Having brought bug bombs from the states, he placed them around the shack, ignited them, and we headed into town for refreshments. Upon returning, we opened the door to find dozens of huge cockroaches, belly-up, covering his residence. They adorned the bed, table top, and everywhere on the cement floor. We swept them, rattling like bottle caps, out the door. A gaggle of neighborhood chickens congregated outside the door like a mob of offended Muslims, pecking at the carcasses, and carrying them off in their beaks to snack on outside the perimeter of the poultry, only to hop back into the fray for seconds, thirds, and so on (there were a lot of cockroaches, their shells shining in the sun). In the middle of the frenzy were three chickens skirmishing over the remains of a cockroach the size of said saucer. Each had a piece of the pest, and were pulling on him with all their might. It was a sight for the Animal Kingdom show that used to be on t.v. when Pepino S. was a mere geurkin.
So brave the mad winters, midwesterners. It tames the yucky side of nature.

Sin creaturas grandes,

Pepino del Invierno

Bromas de Vaquera

Question: Where should an 800 pound gorilla go?
Answer: On a diet.

Submitted by Vaquera, a very funny fifth grader.

Siempre bromando,

P.S.

Obras Estudiantiles

How's this for student work? Two of my students at Uncle Pepino's Home for the Wayward Guerkins submitted these stories for publication (pardon the lack of appropriate Spanish punctuation. Librace sent me keyboard help for this weeks ago, but I still haven't read the volumn of information yet.):

El Lobo Esta Triste

por Panal Sucio

El Lobo esta triste. El Lobo no tiene agua o leche o frutas. El lobo va a D&W. El lobo compra comida. El lobo agarra hamburguesas, frutas, y pan. El lobo va a su casa. El lobo cierra la puerta y se sienta en el sofa. El lobo come hamburguesa, fruta y pan. Ahora, el loba esta bien.

El lobo Esta Furioso

por Cerda Rara

El lobo no come por tres dias. El Lobo tiene hambre. El lobo va a la refrigeradora y abre la puerta. El lobo grita, "Oh no, oh no, no hay comida." El lobo esta furioso. El lobo va a D&W. El lobo compra hamburguesa y papas fritas. El lobo come hamburguesa y papas fritas. El lobo va a su casa y duerme.

Eternamente orgulloso,

Profesor Suave

El Tecno Numero 1

Pepino Suave is featured on the website of the Escuela Tecnica Numero 1 (Durango, Mexico)the school at which he taught English and trained as an Extreme Mariachi artist during the fall 2005 semester. He is pictured prominently on the home page (upper-right with the Mariachi sombrero), as well as several other pictures including the Desayuno 2006, and various action shots taken on campus. Double click on El Tecno No. 1 at the side bar to your right. Share it with friends.

El super famoso,

Pepino Bailerin

Tecnologia

Here
I give you, dear reader and taxpayer, a look at the technology that ol' Pepino Suave intergrates into his Yippy Skippy Foriegn Language Program. Your tax money at work, I like to say. Pictured here is an Overhead Projector model 620, manufactured by our friends at 3M and considered the Buick of overheads. It is not only used as a stage for our friends and other assorted props, why it also projects illustrations of our stories of love and loss, as well as text of the same (in Spanish, claro). Located on a cart with wheels, it is mobile and features shelves and collapsible tops onto which we put our matamoscas, rubber chickens, plastic food replicas, and other essentials to instruction. When we begin our Spanish Arobics, it is easily rolled into a corner, away from peligro.

The staff here at Pepino Sauve Yippy Skippy Language Programs is exhaustive in its efforts to keep you potential school board milage propents informed of where your tax dollars are spent. Vote yes. Bob the Gorilla always does, you should, too.

Vota si',

Prof. Pepino Suave

Pepinoville Elementary School

Pepinita had another action-packed week at one of the finest educational establishments in Cuke County, the Pepinoville Elementary School for the Garden Variety. Today, she recounts a spellbinding event that unfolded in her homeroom this week:

Yesterday at school I put my back pack into my locker, I went into my classroom and I sat down at my desk until everbody else came, but who was sitting at her desk? Why Berenjena! And then the bell rang and everyone came into our classroom and this girl in my classroom, her name was Tulipan, saw something that Berenjena was doing. She kept looking and looking at Berenjena and I did, too. Sooner our later we found out what she was doing. She was ripping up her pants and drawing all around her pants, too. And so Tulipan telled on her. And then, after she got telled on Berenjena putted permanent marker on her lips! And kept putting permanent marker on her lips! And this time I wondered what she was doing and I looked longer and longer and longer and I saw she was drawing on her lips and I telled on her and she had to flip a card and so she had to have a note sent home to her mom and dad. I didn't feel that good about telling on her. And by the way, she is only four or five years old and she doesn't know how to count by ones to one hundred and she's in first grade. That's all I can tell you folks. Bye.

The Pepino Suave Editorial Board adds:
Permanent markers should not be in our children's schools. No child should be left behind with stained lips. This is an outrage, and it is no doubt funded by the Bic, Crayola, and Expo corporate lobby. Get these conglomerates, and the taint of their tools out of our children's desks and Must Do centers. Act now, and write your congressman or congresswoman. Or send us money, and we'll do it when we get a chance. Maybe after the harvest...

Desafuriado,

Pepino Suave
Un humilde padre