Sixty something if she's a day and brain damaged, Adela has many things out of whack. Her gait, her speech, her ability to comprehend why she needed to go back to work are all significantly compromised. Adela seems to be close at times to regular functioning but still far enough away to make her life confused and troubled.

Now she's on a personal vendetta to get that rich girl out of her poor son's life. It's not a plot Adela says. Just a concern about her adult son Raul and the rich girl living in the strange and unknown life of squalor.

Shuttling around the city like some weapons inspector, Adela's latest stop was at the shack her son and Brittany Hodges share on the seedy side of town. Her message was clear; Rich girl go home.

God love her, Brittany has changed. She's no longer one of those oily rich people. She's sworn off the good life and so Mrs. Guittierez should abandon that dense, crushing sense that she's making Raul's life all very, very wrong and dark. Shucks, even if she and Raul were homeless they'd still be together.

Such flippant remarks about the homeless are commonplace in Genoa City. Being downtrodden without a home is something to be proud of. A noble cause those homeless so let's cook a turkey for them at Thanksgiving and Christmas and never dare speak of the reasons the homeless don't have homes. The truth that many had their homes foreclosed on would be too icky. Remember the homeless once each year and then forget about them until the next time it serves to promote a wealthy cause.

Wanting Brittany to believe that she's living in a giant dank cave of ignorance, Adela broke out a crying towel. The Guittierez and Hodges families come from two different worlds. There's a world for the rich, a parallel world for the poor and worlds in between where Victor Newman and Hope Adams come from along with the offshoot worlds where others who have adopted the We Come from Different Worlds slang abound.

In Brittany's world riches are handed out on silver platters, but in Raul's world a person must work hard and sacrifice short term goals for long term rewards and only maybe become successful. And this, of course, explains why Raul doesn't work and Adela has so much time to go around town preaching her sorrow.

Not to be outdone by Adela, Fred Hodges was stalking Raul and practicing how to be the next Victor Newman. He found the poor boy slurping on a $3 cup of coffee and should have given him a lesson in banking. Three dollars per day times 30 days equals $90 which could go a long way toward the deposit on a decent place to live.

Unfortunately, Fred's goal was to threaten Raul with just how insanely dramatic and life-threatening life's little struggles are. He won't accept Raul's relationship with his daughter and never will and the alien looking green card carrying Raul better "comprende" or else Fred will unleash a barrage of terror on him that will pale Osama by comparison.

And this, sadly, is the social bitterness that eats away at the unsexed and gonad-free populace which lives in fear and just wants maybe a nice bottle of Bactine for Christmas.

December 6, 2002

The Righteous Parents
by Molly Media

What is it about smarmy parents who think they know best for their adult children?

Before answering that question a word about Genoa City's Center 4 Disease or rather its counterpart in Chicago known as ER. Just a few weeks ago there was a to-do over security precautions and Carter rallied the troops to go on strike unless electronic gates were installed to keep out those pestering parents and family members who always barge into the ER demanding to know what is being done to the patient, being told to leave but not really leaving.

The gates were installed. But two weeks later those annoying people were back!

This matter of annoying people is of concern because the C4D apparently has no control over who comes and goes and allows people to congregate in the halls of its fine hospital and make outbursts and generally a nuisance of themselves.

Vicente and Adela Guittierez are prime examples. Shouldn't these peasants be at work? It wasn't so long ago that Adela was complaining she had to go back to working for a dentist because times are hard and that her husband had taken the day off to go to a movie on their anniversary although their budget didn't allow for such extravagance.

Pop Guittierez said himself that times are hard. There was the tanking economy, the soaring deficit, corporate corruption, an energy plan crafted by the oil industry, the undermining of virtually every regulatory agency and the insanity of proposed tax cuts. But still, he wanted it to be a happy day.

Yet here the Guittierez parents were. Having dinner with the Hodges, tripping around at the C4D and anything else not remotely connected with employment. How do they do it?

Where did they find the time away from their economic struggle to lecture their adult son about the birds and the bees? If times are so hard why isn't that lazy fratboy working? Raul could live at home and help his poor parents out.

No respect.

Alas, one can hardly respect parents who treat their grown children like kids.

"We didn’t raise you to lie," Vicente droned at his son for not telling that he's living with a skank. How often do you have sex with her and are you still masturbating? Let us secretly examine your e-mail and tap your phone and scan your shoes Vicente may as well have asked for all the sense what amounted to a scolding turned out to be.

And then there was the usual father/son warning that the skank is using him and Raul shouldn't waste his time with a girl who tried to kill him. Love? What's love got to do with it? This is the 21 Century. Love isn't the same as it was when grandma and grandpa Guittierez were necking in the back seat.

The subject of what the grandparents did or didn't do came as the result of Raul asking his father if he hadn't pursued Adela at all costs. "She never did anything to break the law and raised her family to be that way," Vicente said as Raul's eyes rolled in bewilderment.

Manipulate the sad synapse like a hammer on a nail Vicente did when he asked if Raul isn't confusing having sex for the first time with love. This led the still conscious onlooker to ask; how does Pop know his kid has only had sex once?

The subject grew too hot for Adela. She twisted the conversation back to its rightful bigoted form. A lowly green card carrying alien looking boy from the wrong side of the border can't give that rich girl the kind of life she's used to so why not quit fooling himself? And don't forget we know you harbored a runaway and the police knocked on your door and you could have been tossed into the slammer.

"That was only for one night," Raul remarked causing onlookers to shudder. Would that be anything like only robbing one bank?

In disgust, the Righteous Parents left their son with a final thought.

Don't be surprised when that rich skank packs up and moves out. Take it from someone with an overly pious glare extolling how Jesus hates the wealthy too. And let us pray but not for those other icky people we don't understand because they are wrong for you son. And they dress funny too.

December 5, 2002

Impotent men, sad women and the children who love them
by Brent Kellogg

After the bizarre and adorable little dinner party Anita and Fred Hodges threw Thursday, for the parents of local diabetic boy and someday I'm really going to college Raul Guittierez, there can be no doubt that the world is still run by pale sniveling overweight rich white impotent men and sad Valium-addicted women.

Told by his sad, sexless wife that he should summon Adela and Vicente Guittierez to the local restaurant/brothel so that they can bond and get to know each other better, Fred Hodges was aghast. Migrant farm workers aren't exactly their type. Socializing with the rift raft is so - yuck! And who can remotely tolerate their incessant broken English?

Anita Hodges was insistent. Fred would have to make an exception. Their daughter is, after all, living with that soon to be fratboy jackass and they can't ignore it any longer. What will the country club members think?

Fred ordered the nearest bank employee slave to make the arrangements and Mr. and Mrs. Guittierez dropped whatever they weren't doing and zipped to the Lodge brothel eager to rub elbows with those rich white folk. And they did it all in about an hour.

Proving for the roughly 11 billionth time just how wickedly wrapped up you can become in your own little powermad world, Brittany Hodges was hanging out at the Newman coffee shop by day club for all ages by night hoping somebody would answer her prayer. That rodent-looking runaway was taking up valuable space at the shack she shares with the Guittierez boy and she didn't know how much longer she could stand it. Brittany was apparently lost in a time warp when the cops hauled the kid away and didn't get the message that it is illegal to harbor runaways.

Waiting for the Hodges to keep their dinner date, the Guittierezs chattered in Spanish mindful of any busybody waitresses who might report them to the FBI. Adela was rigid. Where were those damn rich people and what did they want this time?

The moment she laid eyes on Anita, Adela lit into her like a cockfighting bitty. The Hodges' selfish uncaring daughter had almost killed her son and damn if paying all the medical bills wasn't good enough she wanted a guarantee that any and all future medical bills would be paid as well.

Fred said sure, whatever to get Adela to shut her trap. Besides, the kids would be going off to college in about two weeks unless they decide to wait until the next semester or never go at all because once in college it's a real bitch having to travel back and forth to Genoa City when old pals ask for the ID cards of other old pals and such nonsense. And what do you mean you don't know that our daughter and your son are shacking up together?

It's wasn't so much the shack up in the hills that bothered Fred but rather that deplorable dump they call an apartment isn't fit for his lily white and filthy rich daughter. Vicente and Adela will talk to their son about it and that runaway he's harboring too. And yes, Fred too was lost in a time warp when the cops took Colleen out of the dungeon before his very eyes but gosh, bettcha she snuck back there when nobody was looking.

Adela took Fred and Anita's tongue lashing to mean that they should be universally embarrassed and at the next opportunity should have their little son's testicles stapled to a large log and shoved down a raging river before impaling them on sharp rocks of painful retribution.

"So our son is not good enough for your princess?" Adela snarled and in her best broken English added, "he has never done anything that broke the law."

Insanely dramatic, Adela and Vicente got so lost in their little rage-filled void, their tummies all knotted and the blood pressure off the dial, they tossed in their sperm stained napkins and left in a huff.

And hence this story can serve as a little mental note of the day. When you find yourself getting sucked into an egocentric little bile-filled void just lighten the hell up. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. When money gets tight you can whack your son in the back and put the squeeze on the wealthy for some big bucks.