Blago vs. Whoopi

Ken informs me via email that Governor Testicular Virility was on The View recently. I won't be able to check it out since the reputed-to-be-fast satellite is giving us 1996-ish webbing speeds in Colomba today, but if anyone who reads this happens to have seen it, please do tell. Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing back when Ghost was the Titanic of 1980-whatever?

Big thanks to Mike Sweitzer-Beckman for sending me the above picture, the best picture to ever grace the occasionally-esteemed pages of the Chicago Tribune.

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Turns out there are no saints.

I'm pretty much completely out of the loop for the next week and a half because I am at the school's mountain location just outside of a small town called Colomba. Being here is a sad reminder to me that back in my real life, I never actually relax. Jessica: when I get back we have to talk to Robyn about setting up hammocks.

Spent the last half of last week not actually attending school because there wasn't room for me in Xela and I gave my mountain spot away. This is why I went to the lake. Lago Atitlan is beautiful, but here's a secret: just as San Pedro is way more horrible than people tell you, Panajachel didn't seem nearly as bad as people say during the brief time that I waited for a bus there. Ended up getting to Xela via a transfer in Los Encuentros, which I got to via transfer in Solola. I've heard San Marcos is "creepy," but since I saw a bunch of hippies juggling at the boat launch, I didn't stop there to find out. Santa Cruz is very nice, and there is a very cool little women's co-op restaurant up in the actual town where the actual people live.

I think I mentioned that I kayaked out on the lake from San Pedro. Kayaking is a lot of work, and I don't think I ever realized that it's actually a lot slower than walking. It was sort of a bad weather day, so I was literally the only person on the lake, and the water was warmer than the air, and it was wonderful. I went swimming for the first time in forever when I was there. Two days ago after class I took the first nap I can remember in months. I'm never coming home.

I took a pickup truck from my bus to San Pedro last week. The state of California robbed me of my sovereign right to ride in the back of pickup trucks sometime in the 1980's, and now I am taking every opportunity to right this wrong. Riding in the back of a pickup truck is the finest method of transportation in this or probably any country. Our truck driver from the mountain school into Colomba is a drug dealer here. I think it is so bizarre that I left Los Angeles only to be trucked around the mountains in an F150 by a member of the 18th Street Gang.

Rick James is playing in the Internet cafe.

In other news, I'm reading a book called Bitter Fruit about the American-staged coup that plunged this country into a 40 year war and genocide and what have you. If you have interest you should check it out, not because the story is surprising but because it's interesting to find out just how horrid the Dulles brothers were. I was distressed to find out that the much-lauded, super awesome Senator Bob LaFollette was involved in convincing Eisenhower to give the ok to the coup. It's weird because as far as I know, the Progressive Party really was progressive. I don't know why I would be so bothered since he died before I was born, but I am bothered.

In other news, the mountain school has a huge, heavy "non violent bottle opener" in the shape of Gandhi's face. It's the best thing I've seen ever.

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Blago Reportedly Considering Hiring Hitler's Barber

Okay, so we already know Governor Blagtastrophe has retained R. Kelly's lawyers, raising questions as to whether Fitzgerald caught Blagojevich on tape while peeing on a 14 year old girl. Now he has hired Drew Peterson's PR firm.

For those of you who don't recall this story or never heard it, Drew Peterson is your average suburban Chicago cop. "Average" in a region where suburban cops randomly pull over teenagers in love and force them at gunpoint to strip naked in a ditch. Carrying on the proud tradition, Drew Peterson killed two of his wives during the last few years. Unable to quite explain his actions, Peterson got Publicity Agency to represent him to the media. (Then he promptly landed himself a new fiance, which is weird and creepy.)

And now Blagojevich has hired the same company, probably because he wants the opportunity to recite Walt Whitman to the nation on Larry King Live, thus launching his 2009 campaign for President of the United States.

Thanks to Persky for the heads up, and to everyone who emails me Blagonews or indulges my interest in this greatest of soap operas.

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I'm very sorry that I used the F word when I tried to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat to Jesse Jackson Jr.

Rishi sent along this summary of a recent interview with The Poet Laureate of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.

I really hope this guy stays in the news for awhile longer, or forever. You couldn't write this stuff.

Appears as well that Pat Quinn is actually a deft hand in the realpolitik game. According to Governor Coif, "This is about raising taxes. Pat Quinn has cut a deal with Democratic leaders....It's all about getting rid of me to raise taxes on people."

And to the end, you get the sense that Blagojevich believes this nonsense even though he most certainly needed some help in coming up with it.

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Suggested reading, checking out the lake right now

London Review of Books has published a series of short editorials on the brutality in Gaza. They are interesting and worth reading.

Tariq Ali seems to call for a one-state solution, which is something I don't have an informed opinion about. I think Edward Said is like the only other person in history to have held that position.

"The war on Gaza has killed the two-state solution by making it clear to Palestinians that the only acceptable Palestine would have fewer rights than the Bantustans created by apartheid South Africa."

David Bromwich hits the nail on the head with respect to our inability to grasp (and unwillingness to condemn) the disproportionality here.

Like the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada, the rockets from Gaza were a choice of tactics of a spectacular vengefulness. The spectacle was greater than the damage: no Israeli had been killed by a rocket before the IDF launched their assault. Yet the idea of rockets falling induces terror, whereas the idea of an army invading a neighbouring territory has an official sound. The numbers of the dead – as of 15 January, more than 1000 Palestinians and fewer than 20 Israelis – tell a different story. Many people remain unmoved by the tremendous disproportion because they cannot get the image of rockets out of their heads.

Further, he makes this statement about Obama.

The unhappy message of his recent utterances has been reconciliation without truth; and reconciliation, above all, for Americans. This preference for bringing-together over bringing-to-light is a trait of Obama’s political character we are only now coming to see the extent of. It is an element – until lately an unperceived element – of a certain native moderation of temper that is likely to mark his presidency. Yet his silence on Gaza has been startling, even immoderate.

Conor Gearty (never heard of him) says something more hopeful about Obama, and then goes on to trot out a list of possible U.S. actions that would only happen in a Utopian dreamland.

"It is just possible the killings in Gaza may mark the end of Israel’s disastrous plunge into militant Zionism. The key is Obama: will he collapse under pressure like most of his predecessors, or is there more to him? Let us assume he knows how senseless it is for the US to collude in a crime of the kind going on in Gaza."

R.W. Johnson's (also never heard of him) contribution is maybe the best - pessimistic about Obama, brings in some explanation of why it happened which I think is useful.

The present crisis was probably unavoidable given (a) Iran’s position, (b) the coming Israeli election and (c) the failure of Israel to achieve full-scale victory over Hizbullah last year. That last factor has weighed on all minds, showing Iran how much leverage it had, threatening to turn all Arab-occupied land into rocket-launching grounds and increasing Israeli determination to show that this is a prohibitively expensive option for anyone who opts to host such an exercise. The stalemate seems complete.

I doubt whether Obama will make much difference. His chief of staff is an ex-Israeli soldier and his administration will be heavily in hock to the Israel lobby from day one. Israel may be unhappy that he will talk to Hamas but this unhappiness is quite unnecessary. He is not going to soft-talk them into accepting Israel’s existence and laying down their rockets, so what will such talks really change?

The real key remains US-Iran relations.

With respect to that last one . . . does anyone know what Rahm Emanuel did for Israel? People say he was in the IDF, several sources online say he "volunteered for the IDF in the Gulf War," which means something like nothing, and I've also heard that he basically made bricks or something f0r the IDF on a volunteer basis. His Wikipedia page says nothing at all about it.

Related - what about that missing digit? I've heard he lost it in a bar brawl, that he lost it making bricks or something for the IDF on a volunteer basis, and from his Wikipedia page that he lost it working at Arby's. It seems Rahm is a mystery man of the highest order. However, it is quite clear that he is a vile person who helped turn the Democratic Party into the center wing of the GOP in the '90's. I hope he goes away sooner rather than later.

Anyway, check out the London Review of Books link.

I'm at Lago Atitlan right now, and it is quite beautiful. A bit of advice if you ever come here: don't go to San Pedro. It is over run with Ras-Trent and company, as well as their German co-dreads, Ras-Hans and Ras-Gretel. It's really not even worth stopping there, except to rent a kayak. I think Santa Cruz seems a little bit nicer.

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"Ultimo dia del monstruoso"

The folks that run the school (and the folks that drive the taxis, and work in the restaurants, and walk through the park) have all been counting down the final Bush days for the last two weeks.

Went last night with fellow student Emily for a celebratory dinner, along with her teacher, her host family, and their son's friend. Wonderful people. The father, Saul, (who is also a teacher) gave a nice toast about how the rest of the world is also happy "to see Obama realize the dream of Martin Luther King."

Later on I asked if Guatemalans really felt any sort of hope about Obama, and they all assured me that people are really hopeful and excited. I asked if they had reservations, because I am a skeptic and I never trust the things people tell me. Saul said, of course. We are hopeful about Obama but we know this economic system is a problem.

Anyway, related, something promising about trade policy by Laura Carlsen of Mexico City's Americas Program. I know nothing about her or her organization, but it was an interesting read about the likelihood of a NAFTA renegotiation under Obama. Carlsen recognizes that we're all guessing at this point, but notes right away that Obama recently told President Calderon that we need to revise labor and environmental standards in the agreement. I thought this part was super interesting:

The industrial policy that Obama outlined clashes ideologically and legally with NAFTA and other free trade agreements. It hasn't been lost on the rest of the world that the U.S. government is adopting measures such as massive subsidies and bailouts that it has sought to deny developing countries under free-trade rules. Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect refers to this as "the sin of committing industrial policy" and warns that it's only a matter of time before a trade partner registers a suit against Obama's anti-crisis measures. This would be an excellent opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of our trade policies and chart a new course.

Anyway, a Canadian student here tells me that Canadian companies have been suing the US for years over timber duties illegal under NAFTA, so maybe that snippet is not that interesting after all. But it's worth a read if you've got a few minutes.

I think we can all agree . . .

. . . that each of the last eight years was even shittier than the one before it. Whoever Obama ends up being, I'm looking forward to watching the entire world ridicule the outgoing creep for at least a good twenty years.

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Copavic Glass Factory

One thing I've learned on this trip is that I have a knack for taking fuzzy and generally bad photos. I think the main reason is that I'm always rushing i, since I find the act of taking a photo sort of embarrassing and shameful for some reason. I don't get it, it just is. Regardless, this trip to the glass factory was really interesting.

At a block party beggin' for drama.

Jomil and Corin at a goodbye party for two people who by all appearances never actually said goodbye. These two spent forty-five minutes dancing with these small iPod speakers in hand, improvising new lyrics (mostly about Tequila) into Nelly and Missy Elliot songs.

When no one was paying attention I grabbed the iPod and with a few quick desperate scrolls of the wheel, tried to find something I’d wanted to hear for the previous two weeks. The selection was the typical sort of mix of music that you find in the iPod Age. No complete albums, but you know, a mix. Three Patsy Cline songs here, a half dozen bluegrass tunes there, selections from two of the wankier Taj Mahal albums, 30-ish rap singles from the early 2000’s, a bunch of NPR podcasts. I like this because there’s always a good chance you’ll find something you like. I found “Me and My Girlfriend” by Tupac, but I found no one to share my enthusiasm, so I listened to it on the couch alone. People: that is a really good song.

I spent a few days agonizing over whether to bring my iPod with me to Guatemala, and I ultimately decided not to for a variety of reasons. This means that for the first time since maybe 11 or 12 years old I’m going two months without having any real decision in the music I hear every day – it’s a noticeable change but I think I made the right decision. I’ll go days without hearing any songs all the way through, unless I’m on a longer bus trip when I hear the reggaeton jams with AutoTune. I don’t usually miss music, but in my downtime, when I’m not studying, I’m surprised to find the songs that my brain coughs up – sometimes songs I haven’t thought of since I was 14 years old. It’s really weird. Also weird is the mix of songs that I get stuck in my head: Born Against, the Beatles, that “Hey there Little Red Riding Hood” song from the ‘60’s, topped off by George Jones and Joanna Newsom, all in about 45 minutes.

Yesterday I went to a restaurant for dinner for the first time in over a week, and sat through innumerable songs that sounded familiar and American and generically “heavy” with that rap-rock “rapping” over them, and then suddenly “Yesterday” by the Beatles. It seemed really special and weird. I was having a little moment with myself in spite of myself, as I pretty much hate Paul McCartney. You know you’re in trouble when you’re ecstatic to hear “Yesterday.”

Depressing Spanish Lesson

Last week I finished up with the review of all the various things I studied but never learned in high school and college: present tense, preterite, imperfect, and future.

We moved into the conditional tense and my teacher said, "This is the most important tense in Guatemala because everything in Guatemala is conditional."

As in, "The new president would improve security and social services in Guatemala, but he remembers how the military shot his uncle 36 times back in '79." Or, "Guatemala would have potable water, but that isn't the sort of project the IMF will fund here." (I don't know that for a fact, I'm just guessing.)

So anyway, in a nutshell, the conditional tense.

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This Totally Blew My Mind

Found out last week that this here lady was on Wild 'n' Crazy Kids, Pensacola. Think about that. Then think about all the Saturday afternoons you wasted in 1994 watching Wild 'n' Crazy Kids.

In coincidences of interest only to people who once lived in Uptown in Chicago: This guy right here knows Frankie J. Frankie J of "This is the FBI - we're here to close down your comedy club because you're using it as a front to traffic cocaine" fame.

Will we ever enjoy celery again?

So apparently the FDA is advising people to not eat peanut butter, lest they die? Didn't the Bush Administration do away with the FDA and send all of the bureaucrats to Gitmo back around '0 3?

Anyway, I wouldn't take it too seriously, as we all know that the shell that remains of the FDA is heavily tied to the multinational Nutella Corporation, and the apple butter industry.

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Breaking News: Illinois Still Hilarious.

Kudos to Mike Sweitzer-Beckman for sending this little bit of news along to me.

Governor Milorad Blagojevich has lost his lawyers for the Senate impeachment trial.

"We cannot and will not degrade our client, ourselves, our oaths and our profession, as well as the office of the governor, by participating in a Potemkin-like lynching proceeding, thus making it appear that the governor is represented by competent counsel when in fact he is not," the statement said."

Potemkin-like lynching proceedings!!!

I'm hoping for more awesome poetry quotes from the Gov. I think someone should step in and tell Rod that he and his cronies are not helping themselves by using the word "lynching" whenever the public opportunity presents itself.

Presumably Genson at least stays on for the eventual legal trial. Or maybe he could actually just get R. Kelly to defend him, and cut out the middle man. Because this stuff is even better than the "Trapped In the Closet" series, which is actually saying quite a lot.

Sk8 or Die

It seems lame to sit in front of a computer while in another country, to the point where you're writing many blog posts in one morning. My excuse is that I'm waiting for a phone so that I can make a phone call about Important Business.

I got some photo access. This cat hates me.


Caught this shot of a rad carnival ride on a trip to check out the (Bootleg) Black Jesus of Esquipula, not actually in Esuipula, but rather in Chiquilaja. The (Original) Black Jesus of Esquipula, in Esquipula, was sculpted by a Portuguese traveler hundreds of years ago. Syncretism in full effect: it was built on the spot where a Mayan deity was then still worshipped.

They built another one in Chiquilaja, so people wouldn't have to travel so far for the veneration. Went to Mass, tried to shoot a little metal star with a bb gun, failed, lost Q5 in the deal.



I love these skate-rat catchphrases graffitied all over the city of Xela.


These are wonderful people.

In America most urban twenty-somethings will refuse to eat Domino's pizza on some feigned moral grounds, but here the stuff is like gold. People even say that it's "better here," which is not true. It's almost identical here. Absolutely serviceable pizza if you are in a bind.

Staples Center/LA Live Article from LA Times

I don't really have super strong opinions about the Staples Center, having only ventured into that general area once to check out Steely Dan. I don't feel like much of a real Angeleno, and the complex falls outside of the six block radius where I spend most of my time. But I ran across this LA Times opinion piece from last month, and thought this was the best quote I've maybe ever heard about it:

When you get right down to it, their architecture is fundamentally not really architecture at all but an extensive series of armatures on which the developer and its tenants can hang logos, video screens and a sophisticated range of lighting effects.

It's an interesting read for the Angelenos out there.

The problem . . . is that it actively discourages any of the activities we traditionally associate with the use of collective space in a city: talking, reading, sitting under a tree, even pausing with a friend for a cup of coffee.

"The first Borking season of the new century."

Check out this short post about John Ashcroft/Robert Bork, if you are so inclined. It's by Sam McPheeters, who is like a musician/artist/concert reviewer in Orange County. I just started using Google Reader and put this blog in my subscriptions, only to find that he's on hiatus and reposting old articles. I used to love reading his articles in Punk Planet, and for some reason this is one of my favorites from that era. (It was actually not published in PP.) This was written on the eve of Bush's inauguration in '01, and it's a weird kind of trip back into a time when none of us could guess just how bad it would get over the coming eight years:

But Borking has deeper, cultural overtones, and on this front much ground has been lost by conservatives. The country is a far ruder place than the one the Bushes last controlled. In 1990, 2 Live Crew was the most controversial band on a major label. Barbara Bush's complaints about the incivility of "The Simpsons" only ten years ago stands out as the baroque prattle of a former century. Last week the highbrow New York Times forum on "Borking Ashcroft" received postings about "Borking" Brittney Spears. The publisher of the New York Times recently attended a Halloween party in a "penis nose" disguise. America has become a giant Spencer's Gifts. Who could have imagined, at the start of the 90's, that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole would end the decade as a boner pill salesman?

The scariest thing about this article is the brief discussion of Ashcroft - "Ashcroft's from the old school of leathery, hardbitten sons of bitches and is himself expected to tack Borkward." Who would have imagined then that the leathery son of a bitch would emerge as a sort of marginalized victim of the Bush Administration? Remember those dramatic stories of soon-to-be Creepo General Alberto Gonzalez visiting Ashcroft at his hospital bed and forcing him to reauthorize domestic wiretapping? Oh dear.

Joseph Stiglitz: You're a vegetable and they hate you.

The other day I was talking with my instructor Milton, and I think we were talking about CAFTA and the trade and agricultural land situation in Guatemala. We love repeating our statistics about the concentration of wealth in the U.S., and of course these statistics are interesting and important to know, but I feel like the Guatemalan people would laugh at us. Something like 80% of arable land here is on 8% of the fincas (plantations). The Guatemalan people are forced to migrate on two fronts: the first is actually internal - to get by, it's necessary for many people to move place-to-place chasing crops in season. The second is more well-known to us: emigration to the U.S. A speaker here yesterday said that 2/10 Guatemalan people live in the U.S., and that Los Angeles is the only city in the world with more Guatemalans than Guatemala City.

This being the backdrop of the conversation, Milton was saying that he thinks socialism is a much preferable economic system. When you look around Guatemala there is no argument against this. There is a saying here that 12 families own Guatemala (or 7 depending on who you talk to), and people mean this quite literally. Among average folks, even those who are doing okay are doing, um, not so well. Honestly an economic system that handed out money based solely on winning games of blackjack would probably put more actual money in the hands of people here.

But in the middle of the conversation, Milton kept mentioning how he has heard a lot of criticisms of free trade agreements from an American economist, "an American economist from the left." He searched for the name for a few seconds . . . Joseph Stiglitz! All of a sudden we're talking about Joseph Stiglitz, and how he got the boot from the World Bank, and Milton was saying that "leftist capitalism" like that espoused by Joseph Stiglitz would be acceptable to him.

Anyway, I was really excited about this conversation, but for some reason I just steered it right off the tracks and crashed. "Joseph Stiglitz! He's from Gary, Indiana. He was born in the same city as Michael Jackson! They're both from Gary! Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Jackson!" And . . . back to the imperfect form.

I really like the roof.

The USB cable I bought doesn't seem to work, so I'm dredging back through a photo CD I made at an Internet cafe, rather than posting more antisocial ranting about tinctures. (Lauren pointed out that tinctures do have benefits, so I would just like to state that I'm open to that idea, for the record. She also pointed out that tinctures don't really kill bacteria very well, and this is why she and I are friends.)

More pictures taken by Milagro:

These are Mili's Barbies. Mili makes me play Barbies with her. Usually the game consists of pretending the Barbies are models, and then putting gel in their hair. Gel made for human hair, not Barbie hair. We're talking 1/4 of a tube of gel per sitting.

Several days ago Mili took five or six Barbies out on the town in her backpack, and they promptly fell victim to the old snatch and grab. Later on her Barbie hair dryer fell and broke. Tears were shed, but more out of duty than actual trauma. Still, all in all a rough day for Mili.

There is no drain on natural resources or unwanted side effects.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of inane shit the Americans here are into, this link about "radionics" was saved in a tab when I opened Firefox at the school today.

Met a college-age person yesterday who's been sick for three weeks after drinking tap water somewhere along her travels. I asked her if she'd maybe gone to see a doctor, and her response was, "No, I'm thinking maybe I should but I've been using a tincture for my intestines." For those of you who don't know much about tinctures, like me, I'd suggest checking out the wikipedia page, where you can read how a tincture is fermenting rotten organic mass made from bark and other detritus - yes, she's basically taking angostura bitters.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the amoeba that's been camping out in her intestines for a month fears no tincture.

There are actually people at this school who look to tarot readers for advice about their day.

There are also, of course, wonderful rational people here. They are from Guatemala, Denmark, Germany, and other places where middle class people don't pretend that we all have invisible force fields keeping us healthy, and that to manipulate this force field is a "developing science."

I really do believe that the left in the US may do more damage to science than the right has in the long run.

Really, you gotta read that link on radionics. I just browsed a little further - check it out, it's a seance!

It is not necessary for a patient to be present for the practitioner to 'tune in' to him/her. Something unique to the patient such as a signature or hair sample may be used as a proxy, or ‘witness’. This can happen, we believe, because part of the mind of each of us is linked via a universal mind. The universal mind seems to function outside the familiar space-time framework of our day-to-day lives and that is why it does not matter where the patient and practitioner are geographically located. They can be together or many miles apart.

This sounds like KRS-ONE on a particularly crazy day.

Another post about Israel, but less self-righteous: basically just a link

An interesting little piece in the Christian Science Monitor about U.S. policy after the election of Hamas. I found this to be a small but important piece of context about our botched plans to get our almost-friends elected in Palestine.

Also, Guatemala is really cool and my Spanish is coming along, well, slowly.

Hamas never called for the elections that put them in power. That was the brainstorm of Secretary Rice and her staff, who had apparently decided they could steer Palestinians into supporting the more-compliant Mahmoud Abbas (the current president of the Palestinian authority) and his Fatah Party through a marketing campaign that was to counter Hamas's growing popularity – all while ignoring continued Israeli settlement construction, land confiscation, and cantonization of the West Bank.

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Why Am I Even Posting This?

Not sure what it says about me that I get most of my editorial content from the New York Times these days . . . where did I get it before Web 2.0? Punk bands? Znet? (Yes.) However, I do think that Paul Krugman's blog is consistently interesting if what you are looking for is up-to-the-minute-nerding- out over Obama's economic plans.

Here's an interesting and easy to understand overview from him about why Obama's plan is offering way too little, mostly as a result of being larded up with (Republican-vote-snatching) tax breaks.

Also, another cabinet appointment to criticize.

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If you grew up with holes in your zapatos, you'd celebrate the minute you was havin' dough.

Via Jessica.

Actual Guatemala-related content sometimes soon.

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You Never Give Me Your Money, You Only GIVE ME BACK THE ENTIRE BEATLES CATALOG WHEN YOU DIE!

Amid rumors of a rare auto-immune/respiratory disease, Jacko is perhaps making plans to give the Beatles catalog back to Sir Paul upon his death. If I was to place bets, I'd give the once-finest Beatle at least ten more years on this planet than MJ, so this could actually be a big deal.

See here and here. If anyone has seen the original story, supposedly in the British Daily Mirror, please send it along.

I personally think the Beatles catalog should be given over to some sort of NATO or UN peacekeeping force, as neither Paul nor Michael can be trusted to respect the songs at this point. This is what I'm picturing: MJ dies, and a month later none of us can escape Escalade commercials featuring the new Neptunes remix of "Drive My Car" featuring a geriatric Sheryl Crow and a still-crazy Britney Spears.

And possibly the Elephant Man's bones.

In other Jackson-related news, was Tito actually the inspiration for "Billie Jean"?

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Don Henley Wants Me Dead

After writing the last post I went home, where someone was working on putting a new door on a friend of the family's car. He was listening to the radio and I was dismayed to hear "Hotel California" in Spanish. I could not escape it anywhere I went in the house or, it seems, in the entire city of Xela. If I knew such a travesty had been recorded in Spanish I may have thought twice about learning the language.

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Don Henley Will Chase You Everywhere You Go For Your Entire Life

I heard a little bit of the ol' AutoTune on a song yesterday, it was like a weird reggaeton song with the singer doing T-Pain style AutoTune. I realized at this moment that for the first time in over a year, I have not heard T-Pain or Lil Wayne's voice for at least a week. I don't even hate Lil Wayne, but it's a welcome respite.

However, just as I was wrapping up here, "Hotel California" came on. I don't know what it is but there's something about the Eagles that just gets my will to live way way down.

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Acronyms for Political Parties: Guatemala>USA

Many Guatemalans are upset about the nastiness in Gaza. Big protest of Arab Guatemalans on Friday, in Guatemala City. I took this picture near the language school in Xela.

Went last week to Almilonga, which is a farming town in just outside of Xela, but still in the same department (a department is like a state in the U.S.). There I saw the largest produce I have seen in my life. Because the larger produce is worth more money as an export, most of it heads to other nations in Central America, and southern Mexico, I think for use in restaurants.

Massive carrots for use either as blackjacks, or for restaurants in Oaxaca.

Smaller carrots for use in Guatemalan households.

Here is one of the most intimidating radishes I have seen in my life.

Here are some political signs leftover from the last election. There are many parties here, and no one seems to like any of them, and many of the center-right parties include in their membership former leftist-guerrillas. I don't get it and neither does anyone else I've spoken with. They come up with great acronyms and really neat looking logos, probably because it's a necessary way to distinguish your party from the others. No donkeys and elephants here. Parties with names like CASA, GANA, and PAN. These names actually mean something in this language, and in this way they probably try to hide the bad intentions of the parties.

Here's CASA. Their logo is a house.

The guy who drives us around to futbol games and farms and factories and such is named Oscar. He is really nice, and when I asked him about all the CASA stuff around Almilonga, he said that CASA has a major base of support there because it is a party that represents the indigenous, and Almilonga is mostly indigenous.

Whatever party this is, it scares me.

Okay, I just looked it up and their leader is a former army general and a graduate of the School of the Americas. Ouch.

There is also a party called FRG, who seems to have some base of support just about everywhere. This initialism means nothing, but in the propganda it looks less like "FRG" and more like an unpleasant American slur that I won't type here. FRG is the party of Efrain Rios Montt, who initiated a "scorched earth" campaign of ethnic cleansing during the early 1980's. During a really short period, I think something like a year, he had pretty much every living soul in 400 to 600 towns killed.

Bob Marley just came on the radio in this Internet cafe. And everyone is singing along under their breath.

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Jesus Hearts Burris

"We are hoping and praying that they will not be able to deny what the Lord has ordained," Burris said. "I am not hesitating. I am now the junior Senator from the state of Illinois. Some people may want to question that and that is their prerogative."

"a long-distance run"

So Blagojevich is basically over with, having been impeached today in the Illinois House. Now he moves to the Senate. So the shenanigans continue - his initial comments are even better than his decision to quote Rudyard Kipling during the Blago-Burris-Rush press conference a couple weeks ago.

But he said: "Let me simply say I feel like the old Alan Sillitoe short story 'The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.' ... And that's what this is by the way, a long-distance run." He then promised to say more at an afternoon news conference.

Milorad is the maybe the best-read Governor-felon-Elvis-fanatic-delusional-sociopath in American history.

The Sun-Times notes that this would be Nixon's 95th birthday, but in their "Blagojevich through the years" photo-montage, they neglected to include this really great photo of Blago and Nixon, taken in 1980. Note, as one commenter does in this link, that his hair basically remains the same.

I don't know the guy in the hat either.

Best sugar-thing ever, at Patricia's Bed and Breakfast in Guatemala city. What do you call these things? Is it a "sugary-caddy?" There's got to be a better name.


The backyard of the hotel.


View from the bus up to Xela. We waited at some sort of blockade with these folks in the microbus, for like an hour. No idea why. We just sort of sat there while our driver talked to some random guys controlling some sort of thing that ruins your tires if you drive over it.


Graffiti in Zona 1, Guatemala City, near the Plaza Nacional. "VIVA CHAVEZ. Muerte a las Yankees." "ABORTO LEGAL."

I've read that LA's 18th Street Gang has made it to Guatemala (and the rest of Central America) as a result of US deportations. Saw some 18th Street graffiti here in Xela Wednesday - it was really weird.




Mili has taken a liking to my camera. I don't know the lady in the second shot, but I really like the photo.





Hey, so Oakland almost went up in riots yesterday? It's sort of sad to say that when I saw the headlines about it, I didn't read the articles since it didn't sound particularly surprising. But today I heard about the "near-riots" and decided to look into it more. It sounds like an almost execution-style killing:

At least four cell phone cameras held by passengers on the train idling next to the platform captured images of Mr. Grant lying face down when Transit Officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, pulls his gun and fires a single shot. Mr. Mehserle looks up at another officer, and then handcuffs Mr. Grant.

?????

Headline today in the Times of London: Israel Accused of Killing 30 After Shelling Safe House:

"The United Nations has accused Israel of evacuating scores of Palestinians into a house in the suburbs of Gaza City, only to shell the property 24 hours later, killing some 30 people."

"I didn´t even know baseball existed that far back."

My hometown made Yahoo! News today. Turns out the woman who owns Collectique in the Tower District found the oldest baseball card ever. This is my favorite Fresno-related news since that guy was caught gambling with weed at Club One.

I went to Collectique several months ago with my brother-in-law. We looked through old 78's and I bought a copy of Boston's first record on my roommate's suggestion, and one for her per her request. (It took some convincing.) I also bought a bunch of past-their-prime west coast gangsta rap singles. South Central Cartel, 1997? I'll take it. Conscious Daughters, 1996? That too. Bootsy Collins with Dru Down? Why not?

Spent like $50, but what struck me the most was that this woman's husband was so particular about pricing. One of the Boston LP's had a price, and the other did not. Instead of just charging me the same for both, he took me back to the stacks and we sifted through the bottom for the dusty old price tag - $7.00, just like the other, identical copy.

So see, it's ironic that this Ms. Gallego wanted to auction off one of the most valuable baseball cards in history for $10.00 yesterday.

". . . including an entire family of seven young children."

Woke up yesterday and picked up the paper here, Prensa Libre. I was amused to see Burris being rejected from the Senate in the International section. Next page was coverage of the Israeli attack on the UN schools in Gaza. In the U.S., did they print the photo of the little dead girl? In the photo Gazans are digging her out of the rubble of the school, using pickaxes. Anyway, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that she was probably not a militant, she was probably actually just a little girl who attended a UN school in Gaza.

From the UK Guardian: "Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood."

From the same article: The UN was particularly incensed over targeting of the schools, because Israeli forces knew they were packed with families as they had ordered them to get out of their homes with leaflet drops and loudspeakers. It said it had identified the schools as refugee centres to the Israeli military and provided GPS coordinates.

And Obama? "Deeply concerned," but not enough to say anything at all of substance. I'm willing to believe that he's got some sort of reason for thinking his silence is useful. But as my friend Mike Norbeck pointed out to me recently, he's been holding weekly addresses for over a month now, covering all sorts of topics.

In the LA Times today, coverage of fresh attacks on Lebanon are the tenth most viewed article, falling after three articles about the Lakers and the Dodgers. Coverage does not even make the top ten most emailed.

Two Favors from the Internet

1. Does anybody out there know how to upload photos from a Canon Powershot to a Windows computer, sans software? Shouldn't Windows automatically detect these things, or does Microsoft cherish its lameness? Any ideas are appreciated.

2. Any Fresno people who might be reading (my parents, basically): please email Charles Nutter and tell him that I never received his email that he claims to have sent, and that I don't have a valid email address for him, and that both of these things are unacceptable.

Boo Feinstein.

Feinstein has called for the Democrats to seat Burris. What a goon.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and bucking the state rule on the Senate appointment would be a bad precedent to set, and or illegal? What does anyone think/know? I know nothing, except that from afar this is really still very funny.

"Burris, too, was without a home this morning."

Looks like "the junior Senator from Illinois" just got embarrassed in front of a lot of cameras.

Checks and Balances

My friend Gracie said via comment that she wonders whether conversation outside the U.S. is more political because interested Americans seek out political discussion, or because politics are more important to people in other countries, on the whole. It's an interesting question, and I think it's probably a little bit of both. Regardless, here's something I've learned from literally everyone I've spoken with here:

Like in the U.S., Guatemala has three branches of government. In Guatemala, these are the three:

1. Elected officials and judges
2. The military
3. Narcotraffickers

And the wealthy elite just sort of float between branches, and the police are paid nothing and so they subsist off of what they can get from extortion and drug-traffic. Or this is what they tell me.

Bailiwick

Turns out that Guatemalan folks are better at foosball than they are at soccer.

"Obama es muy amable."

Well, I am planning to get a cable for my camera soon, at which point I will post photos, most of which are not actually that interesting. In the meantime, here is a photo my friend Rajni sent me of us playing croquet with her family this Thanksgiving. You can tell by the looks on our faces that we were pretty much destroying the competition.
Actually you can´t really see our faces.

Met up with my host family yesterday: Consuelo (matriarch), Eduardo (brother), Ivan (son), and Milagro (granddaughter). Was quickly conscripted into helping Eduardo change the light bulb in the room where I´m staying. I held up the ladder while he leaned on me and climbed up. Almost lost my footing against the bed and dropped him. Mili (Milagro) made me listen to the ocean inside of a seashell for twenty minutes. She´s really into feeling my hair and my beard and describing the difference. Then she makes her grandmother do the same. She´s six.

I´ve had several conversations about Obama - everywhere I go people want to talk about el moreno. Consuelo is really happy about him and talks about how hopeful Central Americans are about Obama. It´s hard for me to see what Obama has ever said that bodes well for Latin America, partly because he kept his cards so close to himself during the election. Mostly really vague platitudes about changes in trade policy, but most people seemed to think those changes would require unraveling just about every trade agreement out there, which seems unlikely. But I have a hard time communicating that even in English though, so for the time being I just agreed with her. Once I brush up on my Spanish I´m going to try to explain how Obama is more like a cancer, or an autoimmune disease like AIDS or lupus. (See yesterday´s post.)

Without fail, the following comments are a part of every conversation I´ve had so far.

1. "Guatemala is a very poor country."
2. "The U.S. takes all of Guatemala´s oil."
3. "Guatemala is run by narcotraffickers."


Also, it took 540 dead Palestinians and several Israelis, but looks like the U.S. has finally joined in calls for an end to the attack on Gaza. My friend Rishi sent me this today, and I thought it made some interesting points about the need for moderates on both sides to find common ground, even as they disagree about the situation during the last several days. Personally I´m more critical of Israel since they have the planes, but I think this is appropriately conciliatory, and the underlying logic here seems hard to dispute:

¨And all the well-meaning organizations following the Status Quo Rules, thinking they are serving their side, are really only prolonging the crisis.¨

Off to lunch.

Maybe McCain would be skin cancer?

So I´m sitting in the Internet room at the language school, having just lost a game of foosball by one point.

Stayed last night at Las Casas de las Amigas, and would recommend to anyone. The Americans that stay there tend to be sort of annoying from what I could tell, but the people who run the place are great, and it´s laid back and guests have access to a stove. Spent much of the evening yesterday dining and talking with the Joshua Tree-burnout set, which was taxing. You know, the people who wear bells around their ankles, and talk all the time about how terrible American politics are but refuse to actually follow politics or even read a newspaper, and criticize everyone for their livelihoods, and think that Guatemalans need to stop drinking Coke right now because it´s just not sustainable? Those people. Fortunately no trust-afarians. (Shout out to Eric.)

At one point this guy said that voting in 2008 was like choosing between cancer and AIDS, which seemed like a really bizarre metaphor. If you read a newspaper you would see that it was choosing between a guy who wants to occasionally talk to Iran and someone who sings songs about bombing Iran. I´m not sure which of those viewpoints counts as cancer and which counts as AIDS? Or maybe abortion: pro-life is cancer and pro-choice is AIDS? Stem cell research? Evolution? Maybe some things don´t need to be metaphors, and can actually just be Obama versus McCain? Anyway, I can see why you would want to look at the world in simple terms if you secretly feel guilty that you live off your rich ex-pat parents´money and pretend to be ¨helping the Guatemalan people¨all the time, when you´re actually just drinking for free at your girlfriend´s uncle´s bar. Different strokes, I guess.

Had a really interesting conversation this morning about the political situation in Guatemala, with a woman named Ingrid who runs La Casa de las Amigas. She was explaining how there is no viable leftist political party in Guatemala, and that after the peace accord in 1996, the guerillas were not allowed to become a legit party, as the FMLN did in El Salvador (or sort of like Sinn Fein/IRA in Ireland, or maybe like what Hamas is trying to do in Palestine). She said four groups did unite under the banner of leftist URNG, but that this party has no money. She also said that there all of the newspapers in Guatemala slant to the right.

Ingrid was incredibly tolerant of my abysmal Spanish. I asked about her German name and she said that her grandfather was from Germany. I guess lots of Germans came here after independence from Spain, in the late 19th and early 20th century. She said she didn´t know why. I don´t know why either, but I´ve read about it before - I guess they left their mark architecturally. I asked a couple Germans that I met here about it, and they said they don´t know but they intend to find out. Anyone know about the mystery Germans in Guatemala?

I think the beer here is basically German as well. One in particular, El Gallo, is also owned by one of the seven families that is said to own most of Guatemala. Or so I heard from an American. I´m guessing it´s true.

Pepsi is bigger than Coke here.

More appalling news from Gaza: Israel sent in ground troops. Call, fax, or email your representatives, people. It takes ten minutes. Not going to make a difference in the short run, but in the long run people need to be way more engaged about this issue.

¨The UN has warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis, and believes 25% of more than 400 Palestinians killed by Israel so far were civilians. Israel says about 80% of those killed were Hamas militants. Four Israelis have been killed by rocket fire from Gaza.¨

Several were killed while at prayer yesterday, FYI. This is particularly terrible, though the whole thing is insane.

Anyway.

I fell into conversation yesterday with two people who worked at a restaurant where I ate. Found out that Zona 13, where I spent the first day, is home to many former Central American presidents, one Nicaraguan president in particular. Not sure who it was but I looked up all the post-Samoza folks, and it seems likely that his person is way shadier than any of the Zona 1 people that everyone warned me about.

Spent some time at the National Palace and the Cathedral. Bought a candle in a plastic container outside the Cathedral. Went back to my hotel, lit it, started reading Anna Karenina, promptly fell asleep. Woke up this morning with black phlegm and black soot under (and in) my nostrils. I guess the container melted and the candle burned down to the desk it was on. And so, in this way, I have already left my mark on Guatemala.

Spent much of today on a bus to Quetzaltenango (Xela), where I will be studying. My taxi driver from Zona 3 to Zona 1 asked me how to pronounce our new president´s name, and I told him, and we agreed that he is better than Bush. Then we both had a hearty laugh, probably not about the same thing.

Xela is really sunny. That´s all I can say so far. When I knocked on the door of my hotel for tonight, I was greeted by a twenty-something American with weird-beard who appears to have been cultivating his personal odor for the better part of his adulthood. He just sort of opened the door and walked away in his too-good-for-shoes bare feet, leaving me in the doorway sort of peaking inside for a front desk. He´s one of those guys who is so laid back that you start to worry; clearly he had not heard the news about the ground invasion into Gaza! I have never understood why these people come to countries where procuring drugs is so much dodgier than it is in the suburban U.S. I´m sort of worried that the hippy and crust-punx contingent from America will be in full effect, but if the good people of Xela can handle it, then I suppose I can as well.

This Internet cafe is really awesome, because the lady who works the desk is also in all the adverisements on the front door. Remember those heady days of the late-90´s when an Internet cafe would serve coffee? I remember when that stopped in Chicago, but apparently the no-coffee-at-the-cafe rule is worldwide. Or at least hemisphere-wide.

One final note: can anyone explain to me why people paint the bottoms of their trees white? It´s huge here in Guatemala, but it´s something I´ve noticed in the States my whole life, but I have never been able to figure it out.

FUERA YANKEE

Happy New Year from Guatemala.

If I do not find a little cord for my camera, and hence cannot upload photos, then I will probably abandon this blog for the time being until I find another use for it, or until I take another trip somewhere (which I do about once every five years, so make sure to add this to your RSS feeds ASAP). Otherwise, it may just devolve into links about the ongoing massacre in Gaza, which should end now, and the continually unfolding soap opera in Illinois, which will hopefully never ever end, ever.

Speaking of Illinois - so much reggaeton being played here that I feel like I am back in Chicago. This is Daddy Yankee world headquarters.

Quick plug for Patricia´s Bed and Breakfast in Zona 13. If you ever find yourself in Guatemala City, stay at Patricia's. It´s walking distance from the airport and the family that runs it is incredibly helpful if you happen to steal the luggage of a Danish woman named Sara, and inadvertently leave your own luggage riding around on the carrousel for a day and a half. They also have a dog and a beautiful little backyard to hang out in. You get a nice room, a bunch of fruit in the morning, transit arranged to your next stop, and Danish Sara gets her luggage back all for 22USD. Patricia and family are just about the nicest people I´ve ever met.

I walked back to the airport twice today, once to get my luggage and another time to exchange money. On the way back from one trip, I stopped into a little place to photocopy my passport. A young woman with hummingbird tattoos under each collarbone greeted me, and I mangled some Spanish words together in a way that said, "You know, what your business does here, do that to my passport." She of the battling hummingbird tattoos looked at my passport and in perfect English made fun of my terrible Spanish and the fact that I am an American. Incidentally, many hummingbird species are really in danger throughout Central America.

Quick Internet vote - should I stick around Guatemala City another couple days to check out Deicide and Malevolent Creation in Zona 7? Should I just head on to Quetzaltenango in hopes that I can get my Extreme Death Metal fix there?

It took about a day and a half, but I have finally found some reminder of the war here, which I guess ended a while ago now. There is a graffiti artist who writes ¨¿Donde Estan?¨ in silver and gold, often accompanied by wheat pasted flyers with portraits of those disappeared during the war. Most - but not all - of the other graffiti is also politically minded:

"BIENVENIDOS HUGO CHAVEZ. MUERTE A LOS YANKEES.¨ (Presumably not Daddy Yankee, though.)

"ABORTO LEGAL"

"FUERA BUSH"

That last one provided sort of an odd experience . . . my initial agreement gave way to the realization that wait, he's actually pretty much gone at this point. And of course there are the posters everywhere of Obama, stylized portraits in blue and red that read HOPE and PROGRESS and CHANGE and OBAMARAMA and so on and so forth.

(I made that up.)