Tons of water falling...

announcing the rainy season is in full swing. It's a diluge, windy, unseasonalby cold in short, what many people would describe as dank, deary and a downer. To an old boy brought up on the desert it's a paradise.

It is its own excuse for doing nothing. Or, at the most, piddling, which is what I did. Cleaned my workshop, hynotized by the drumming of the water on the corrugated roof. The time flew by amid memories of thunderstorms long since past. Muddy shoes, shirts sticky to my ribs, a wet dog shaking handing me a double soak. Automobile tires hissing on wet asphalt, flowers bowing to the weight of the water and looking out an open door in a bar at the pounding rain, almost loud enough to muffle the clicking of pool balls.

The shop is really clean. I must have relived fifty years of rainy days. All in all a pretty productive day.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should be changed regularly and for the same reason. -- Gerry Brooks (Toronto Globe & Mail)


MEXICO (as I see it):


The birth of babies seems to validate existing life in Mexico. Adults swarm to every baptism, birthday and quinceañera of children as if their lives depended on attendance. Sons, daughters, grandbabies, nieces and nephews are viewed as the future. Not the future of Mexico, or mankind, but the extension of the parents and inlaws.

It’s as if the birth of babies some how extends the life, or better yet, the personality of the parents, uncles and all the rest. The newborn are the soldiers who will continue the fight that its forbearers lost so many times in the past.

This baby will be our vote, our support, our voice for a millennium yet to come.

Years after all the geezers are dust they believe the children
they sired in fits of passion will carry on their philosophies, their politics, predjudices and their idiotic ideals.

What the adults could not agree on among their peers, face to face with their contempories, they visualize their progeny will champion these same tired viewpoints. And, they believe, the kids will vindicate them and win the senseless arguments the adults spent their lives trying to justify.

What these parents and uncles and grandparents should be doing is thanking whatever gods there are that their offspring forget, or at least disregard, most of what they learned from their family.

Party's over....

and I'm, happily, home where I belong.

I missed on my predictions (see previous blog). No rice or 'birria' but, there were beans. Instead strips of thinly sliced beef grilled outdoors, very tasty and surprisably chewable. Chewablility is always a consideration when buying Mexican meat, especially beef. Some of it cannot be perforated, unless you have tiger teeth.

Also, grilled chorizo, perfect rolled into hot tortillas dipped in a variety of homemade sauces. Then, of course, there was birthday cake and tequila mixed in with limeade and screaming children.

Children are given preference over all other life forms. If they wish run through the house screaming and kicking a soccer ball the adults simply talk louder to be heard. The shrillness of a child's shriek does not upset or interfere with anybody. Only old farts like me are affected but, that's why God made hip flasks, so that all goes well.

Turns out I was overly concerned about those fucking label readers. The two most dangerous of them were no problem today. One, the lesser evil, had to go back to work so he eliminated himself. The other, the real deal, had to with hold. Seems he recently committed a superbly stupid blunder while drunk and his wife has eliminated him from the game. For the time being.

So, I must go now. There's a good fight on TV and a couple drinks left in the flask and I still haven't weighed in.

Well, it's Saturday...

and there's another 'festival' in our family. It's a birthday I think. Same people ( a group of about twenty, if cousins don't show up). Same food (rice, beans and 'birria'( and probably some kind of salad for the rabbits among us).

Everyone is supposed to bring their own drinks but this can get tricky. They all say, 'we'll just bring a big bottle of 'Coke'', that's all we want. So, when a serious drinker shows up with what he thinks is his personel stash, he has to watch out for 'label readers'.

A label reader is the guy who claims to be a non-drinker but, suddenly, he is fascinated by what ever it is that you've brought to drink.

"What is that?" It starts.
"It's brandy."
"What brand?"
This answer is irrelevent because there is no brand name that will deter a label reader.
"Can I read the label, I'm not familiar with that brand?"
Reluctantly, you hear yourself say "sure".
"Hmmm, looks good. Nice fragrance too."
And here it comes.
"Mind if I take a drink?"
Nooo! Your mind screams but you hear your mouth mumble "okay".

Fucking label readers! Once you let them in you're stuck with them the rest of the day.

"Man, that's really good! Tell you what, since I've drunk so much of your bottle I'll bring a bottle of the same next time."

"Okay." you hear yourself supporting the lie.

I've got my stuff pretty well hidden but, the fucking label reader is a cunning animal. One is never safe.

I'll write more after the party.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Beer: Helping ugly people have sex since 3000 BC! W.C. Fields

At least some reporters still...

have a way with words. I saw an article about the President's faux pas with the following title:

"The 'shit' heard around the world"

Good stuff.

Have just returned from three days in Guadalajara. You all probably know that Guadalajara is the second or third largest city in Mexico. Second or third depends on which shakey statistics you are relying on. Monterrey fits in there too. Who knows?

I don't think there has ever been an accurate census taken in Mexico. It is a task beyond the imagination. Some say that nobody knows how many people live in Mexico City. I have read estimates between 12 and 25 millions! Pretty wide margin for error wouldn't you agree? At one point, in the early nineties, Mexico City was being touted as the largest city in the world.

Suffice it to say that Guadalajara is a sizable city with somewhere in the area of 3 to 7 million inhabitants, give or take a few thousand.

The stat I can attest to that you won't hear anywhere else is that all 3 to 7 million people have three cars each. Not only that, but all 21 million autos are on the streets 24/7. How is that possible you ask? I don't know but, that's the way it is.

In only three days there I plowed my way through at least 21 million vehicles, narrowly missing a few thousand and being narrowly missed by a few thousand others. I don't know which is the worst city on the planet to drive in; I've not been to Cairo, Rome or New Deli. I have, however, been scared to death in Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City and Atlanta, Georgia. Guadalajara must be in the runnig for the world's worst.

Perhaps it's just the years weighing me down. I drove for eight years in Mexico during the eighties and nineties, 7 of those years in Guadalajara. Back then I was plenty bally and drove with Mexican tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is when you fix your gaze on the spot you want to go to and head straight for it. You leave it up to the rest of them to figure out how to miss you. Now, though, as soon as I leave where ever I'm parked I wish I hadn't.

High speed, close quarters, vicious attitudes and the complete absence of anything resembling common courtesy. To hell with courtesy I'd settle for turn signals and brake lights.

One dare not slow down to look for a street name. Horns will blare and you will be passed so close that you're sure some paint has been lost. Buses, trucks and taxis may turn left or right in front of you but, if you find it necessary to change lanes cars will speed up to prevent it. If you are successful you can be sure a horn will announce its displeasure, then, another pass and more paint gone.

Guadalajara has great food (if one can find a parking space within walking distance of the place) and a great zoo (if you can get there through all of the construction sites). There are lots of interesting things to visit in Guadalajara but I couldn't slow down enough to see what they were.

My advice to visitors is to leave your car at home and use taxis. If you live here, leave your car at home and use taxis. Just remember, asked the price for the ride (make sure the price is for everybody and not per person) and let the taxi lose the paint.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones!


MEXICO (as I see it):

Summertime is a great time to try all the refreshing drinks Mexico has to offer.

First, there are the 'aqua frescas'. To Americans, these would be close to want are called 'ades'. The favors are numerous and different to what tourists are used to. The waters, limon (lime), tammerind, jamaica and coconut, to name a few, poured into tall glasses over crushed ice. Really hits the spot when you're soaked in sweat after an hour of city driving.

Then, there are the 'licuados'. This drink is mainly a morning starter and serves for many as an inexpensive breakfast. They are made using fruits, usually mango, banana or papaya, blenderized with milk, ice and sugar. A raw egg may be added for a little extra. Honey in place of sugar if one prefers.

I can tell you from experience a 'licuado' along with a warm 'bollio'( a crusted roll similar to a bagette but with a lot more bottom) makes a fine breakfast, sitting down or standing on the corner.

There are other drinks too and I'm going to pour one of them right now.

George W. Bush has got to be ...

one of the most socially imperceptive presidents this country has ever elected. The man looks at reality and filters it through some kind of Texan bullshit machine and everything comes out smelling like roses. If it weren't for the dying involved it would be humorous.

He has the temerity to tell President Putin that: ". ( that Russia could be) ..like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same," Bush said.

To which, Putin replied: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly."

By the "Mission Accomplished" Bush and "Deficits don't matter" Cheney logic we have become familiar with, today's Iraqi events are merely a bump in the road. To wit:

" Gunmen kidnapped the head of Iraq's Olympic committee and more than a dozen employees Saturday after storming a sports conference in Baghdad, police said.... Ahmed al-Hijiya, president of the committee, was taken in the assault, which came a day after the coach of Iraq's national wrestling team was killed by kidnappers, said police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud.
... In other violence, Iraqi soldiers and gunmen clashed in Baghdad, leaving at least three people dead and 11 wounded, police said. Seven people were injured in a mortar attack near Haifa Street in downtown Baghdad, blocks from the Green Zone, which houses U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government. Similar clashes broke out blocks away, injuring four and killing two civilians. U.S. troops sealed off the area after the attacks, said Iraqi Army Maj. Salman Abdul-Wahid.
... Iraq's parliament voted Saturday to extend a nearly two-year state of emergency in Baghdad for another 30 days."

Who wouldn't want to model their democracy after this success story? Can the leader of the United States of America really be that blind to a crucial situation? Is it his intention to make a man like Putin appear smart? Can anyone really say that they are comfortable with the fact that this guy is in charge of most powerful nuclear war machine known to man?

I'm not comfortable for damn sure. I hope there are enough uneasy souls, like me, in the White House who will hide the 'red' button so Bozo can't find it.


QUOTE OF THE DAY:

You go to war and you could lose your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs - but you cannot win. The soldiers don't win. -- Anonymous Soldier


MEXICO (as I see it):


Mexico is a place where one recognizes the value of such things as electricity, sewage and good drainage.

AND

Most Mexicans will cheat at the slightest opportunity. Why? Because they are natural born cheaters? No, because they have passed their whole lives in a system that rewards cheating.

Mexico holds its breath...

as we await the outcome of today's amassing of disappointed voters at the Zocolo in Mexico City. The narrowly defeated left leaning candidate Obrador appears to want to make a fight out of it.

If he incites his followers to an extreme it could turn out ugly. We really don't need anymore ugliness, there's plenty already.

As I've mentioned before, it seems to me that, the Mexican public doesn't have a firm grip on the concept of democracy. Specifically, the idea that the majority rules. As one campaign worker for Obrador was quoted: " We all worked so hard, we had so many people how could we have lost?".

The probability that thousands of others also worked hard to have their candidates elected never occurs to her. To be out voted is not considered an option. It must be fraud!

It's been 488 years since Cortés started this whole show and Mexico is still trying to adjust to the Western World.


QUOTE OF THE DAY:

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. - Edward Gibbon


MEXICO (as I see it):


In the tropical climates it is easy to forget proper maintenance of one's property. The weather, for the most part,is so agreeable that a missing window pane or a door that has a half inch gap at the bottom tend to go unnoticed because their effect is negligible.

For this reason, when the tides turn, which they always do eventually, and torrents of water pour from the sky all hell breaks loose. Water shoots through the open window pane and rivers its way under those doors spreading great swamps through kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms and baths.

It would be bad enough if the only water holes were those you
had known about and neglected, that way you could only blame
yourself for indolence, but water, that is, tons of water, cascading ever downward seeks out new places to enter or creates
its own.

It is to this watery wonderland that you mutter oaths while barefooted, trousers rolled to the knees, up to your ankles in rain water mucking out the master bedroom. You can picture how easy it would have been to replace the pane one nice, sunny, summer day as jagged spears of lightening stab at the earth and the wind drives dime-sized rain drops into your face with the force of a pellet gun.

While outside on the patios trying to open clogged drains, as neon bright bolts of electricity snap and sizzle all around and the accompanying thunder vibrates the whole house causing you to cringe and duck, you wonder why you didn't seal those gaps under the doors. The Mexican tiled floors become so treacherously slippery that it would be safer to cross a hockey rink on four inch high heels than to mop up water on one of these glassy surfaces.

But, as the rain abates and the violent wind calms itself into a soft breeze and the clouds begin to go there separate ways you relaxe a little. An hour or two after the storm the dripping noises are silenced by the hot sun and things look much better.
As the flowers and ferns right themselves after the battering you
promise to remember to make a mental note of what all went wrong.

What were some of those things that needed to be done? House
maintenance seems so silly when the majority of the year is bright, balmy and bone dry.

Perhaps this will be the last storm of this intensity, after all the rainy season is almost over. Sometime, you must try to do those few things to protect the house. Next spring would be good since everything will be nice and dry after a rainless winter. Yes, that's it, first thing next spring you'll make a list of everything that needs to be done to waterproof the house.

Right now though let's just enjoy the beautiful greenery the rains have brought and take some sun out on the patio. OK?

Who gives a fig!

Have any of you heard that expression? I suppose it's regional. I heard it as a kid, somewhere. Don't know where as I was a kid in a lot of different places.

I'm guessing it's a euphemism for 'who gives a fuck'. But, to bring me to my point I must get on with it.

Figs. Perhaps many of you have never eaten a fresh fig. I don't think it's a particularly popular fruit it the U.S.. Here, in Mexico, however, they are thought to be exquisite. During their season they are eaten in a variety of ways, fresh, made into a marmalade or cooked and doused in milk.

Leti has three fig trees in her garden/orchard. One has all but given up and she had me cut it back to a nubbin. Of the other two, one produces a pale green fig and the other a purple. In my opinion the purples are sweeter and juicier. Others, though, prefer the pale green.

We are eating them daily, because there are so many. Along with mangoes and papaya, which are also in season, we eat a lot of fruit during the summer.

When I'm alone I don't eat fruit, too much paring, too many seeds and stuff. But, when prepared and set in front of me I enjoy a dish of fruit. Leti insists that I eat fruit. She believes it counterbalances my too long cocktail hours.

I don't think there's any proof of that. Anyway, who gives a fig?.


QUOTE OF THE DAY:


When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. - Goerge Gordon Noel Byron


MEXICO (as I see it):

If anyone is interested in learning about Mexico, and I don't mean what hotel to stay in, the two best books I have ever read on the subject are: People's Guide to Mexico by Carl Franz, out dated but timeless, and Distant Neighbors by Alan Riding.

My first year in Mexico (1987) I referred to these two volumes constantly. I would return home each afternoon, confused, stunned and stupefied and tear through pages of these books trying find something, anything, that made sense of what I had just been through. And, inevitably, between the two of them, they managed to right my ship.

They are like two old friends. I have underlined so many passages in them that underlining no longer draws one's attention. Without Franz and Riding my first couple of years here would have been infinitly more mystifying.

Some years later, after I felt I had Mexico and its ways pretty much in hand, Leti came along. Nothing in my books could have prepared me for that. I'm seeing Mexico through her eyes and I still return every afternoon confused, stunned and stupefied.

Two days after...

Mexico's National election we are exactly where we are after every election for the past eighty years. Screaming: Fraude!

For seven decades the people, the candidates and the defeated parties blamed PRI, the incumbant party, for every defeat they suffered. PRI became the symbol in Mexico for corruption, intimidation, vote tampering and outright political assasinations.

Mexico had come to rely on the nefarious PRI as an all purpose excuse for everything wrong in the country. It became systemic, no work, no money, no justice, fucking PRI. No roads, no education, no law, fucking PRI. No fair census, no fair tax collection, no fair zoning laws, fucking PRI.

In short Mexico had it made. Mexicans themselves were able to take no responsibility for anything. Nothing they could do or say. No effort, no organization would help. The population were victims of that fucking PRI.

Now, with PRI running a dismal third and completely out of the picture, Mexico's people need a new excuse. The condition remains the same but the players are different. Who's to blame now? What evil force can we be victims of now? What to do?

What else? Scream: Fraude! That fucking PAN!


Mexicans talk a lot about democracy and its majority rules concept but they really don't trust its outcome. They really don't think the majority knows best.


QUOTE OF THE DAY:

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop (620 - 560 BC)


MEXICO (as I see it):

6:30 AM: I passed a whole family of Indians camped on a residential sidewalk. The younger ones, perhaps five or six in number, were still rolled in blankets, lying side by side, like boxed cigars. An old woman was building a miniature cooking fire in the gutter and her old man was sitting on an inverted plastic bucket, massaging his knee joints.

Today is the ...

Mexican National election. Sunday as always, feels strange to we Tuesday types. Lots of scurrying about.

Leti and I were out early for a walk to the central market. We drank a papaya 'licuado' and bought some plastic flower pots.

Afterward we walked around the neighborhood to see where she is to cast her ballot. Found it easily, a mechanic's garage about a hundred meters from the house.

Paper ballots are used and dropped into cardboard boxes that have clear plastic windows in them so one can see the accumulation of ballots as they are entered. The boxes are then stacked around the room and new ones, folded and formed on the spot, put in their place.

It doesn't look all that secure. And when thinking of all the tiny pueblos around the country where security would be even more of a concern it's easy to see how things might go awry.

But, after witnessing the last two elections held in the U.S., with all their fancy electronic crap, I suppose the Mexican system is no more vulnerable than our own.

Leti has her own voting method not so common in U.S elections. I came into the apartment to find a huge candle burning zestfully near Leti's homemade alter.

"What's the candle for?" Figuring I had missed another Saint's day.

"It's for the success of PAN in the election." She answered like I should have known.

PAN is the political party of the incumbants. It replaced PRI the party that ruled over Mexico for the previous 71 years. PRi is the party responible for practically all of the outside world's opinions of Mexico. Graft, cronyism, corruption, oligarchy and outright pilfering of the National Treasury. PRI is the reason that the majority of Mexicans, to this day, are of the opinion that voting is useless.

The governmental excesses we Americans have begun to see over these past six years are embryonic compared to the abuses the Mexican people have endured for the past 8 decades.

So, if Leti's candle sparks a little hope in what otherwise is a pretty hopeless situation I guess it's worthwhile .


QUOTE OF THE DAY:

A politician who is poor is a poor politician. - the late Mexico City Mayor Carlos Hank Gonzalez


MEXICO (as I see it):

At the pre-dawn tolling of cathedral bells a million old women creep toward the sound; the bells stirring anew the longing
for another spiritual scrubbing. Bent and in black they are
drawn to the towers like ants to bread crumbs.

AND

Mexico's city parks, which are at night, secret places where lovers can find a quiet corner, where the boys can have a beer or
Dixie cups of tequila, transform come morning.

Suddenly, they become busy gymnasiums where, young and old, men and women, jog, jump and walk purposefully among the beer cans and Dixie cups, in their semi-serious drive to travel the never ending road to physical fitness.