Wednesday

If I may be permitted another complaint about the bus that held us in captive misery between Morelia and Monterrey recently: only one of five things played on the little bus TV (four movies and an X-Files episode), all US releases--and, in one case, an Oscar-winner--were dubbed into Spanish. I'm used to watching extravagantly bad American movies on Mexican busses but usually they are artfully subtitled. The fact that many of these movies were built around flamboyant traffic accidents would've been charming if I'd been able to follow along. The one movie in English was turned down too low to hear, even though the television was so close I hit it with my head whenever I adjusted my seat. Monoglot whining aside, I'd really prefer the superior Mexican flare of what we watched tonight at Big Slice: it was composed exclusively of these scenes: a) a woman runs down a street, right or left; b) man holds a gun on another, hog-tied, man; d) a woman holds a gun on another, bullet-brassiered, woman; e) a black jaguar menaces someone in a warehouse; and f) a worms-eye view of various people firing off-screen with pump shotguns. There was volume but almost no dialog, amounting to a rather hypnotic effect. New paragraph: I wouldn't normally bother you with US news, but wow, guys, what a very pointed election.* I would like to take this opportunity to extend a personal farewell to Rumsfeld,* which the rest of you need not read: please let the door smack your warmongering ass, guay. In Mexican news, god seems to be weighing-in on the old Oaxacan situation: a five-point-three magnitude earthquake rattled downtown today,* felt as far away as the nation's capital. I believe, currently, it's the federal government who occupies those territories. [Cavin]