Sordid Exuberance

[ted]

This weekend really underscored how unhappy I am in my current life. I spent all weekend with friends, played lots of footbag, spent time outside, dined out, saw MattKain. Now back to the drudgery in the sunlit mortuary where I rarely enjoy myself, never play footbag, and spend all my time by myself. Boo. Must. Leave.

Argue about evolution with me and you'll get pwned.

[Senor Grommet]

Life is about sacrifice. You are sacrificing now for a better life in the future. And if you're unhappy socially, well . . . then you know what you have to do. Met up with Chris Pinkus and drive up to monterrey for tri-weekly sessions with the Santa Cruz crew. We might even let you spend the night again because you didnt dirty up our house too badly

[ted]

Well, I've quit graduate school, broken my ankle, and I don't have health insurance. This kind of sucks.

[Sporatical_Distractions]

I've made the decision for you that you're moving to missoula. Just so you know

[Sporatical_Distractions]

Episode 2:
We spend 2 hours meditating on my favorite rock by the swimming hole, in the nude. I reveal to Kevin Crowley that I often have difficulty knowing who I am and he agrees that personal identity can be a nebulous concept. He expresses his fear of being lonely and I tell him I am often troubled that what I perceive to be happiness is so temporary and ill-defined. ]

shhhh...that was meant for your ears only

[Senor Grommet]

Where is my friend Ted? He is welcome at my house anytime. I miss him. I hope he contacts me soon.

[ted]

Oye all. Thanks for the inquiries. I have been traveling in MExico with my buddy Jake for three weeks. I´ll mash together some emails to make a reader´s digest of my trip for anyone interested. I flew into Cancun from San FRancisco and headed southwest from there.

I´ll be living in the Santa Cruz area when I come back and will likely still make it back to Missoula at some point (Missoula rocks and I still haven´t had as good a cappucino as the Raven Cafe serves.

Begin:

Three day update:
Natives hostile. TOuch of cholera and the dengue. Ran aground. Hull repair will take at least 2 weeks.

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Everything went fine and I´m in Tulum with Jake and Esther camping on the beach. Severly sunburned my neck and I feel like I´m walking around in a half-baked stupor all the time. I guess my ocean swimming is relegated to the evening for a while. Only took 2 hours on the beach under cloudy skies to mess me up real bad. Our plans were to go camp on a nature resrve for free but some gringo got hacked apart with a machete last weekend and the people we talked to "thought it was a beautiful place but couldn´t honestly recommend it to us".

We´ve been saving a lot of money hitchiking which has been nice. Lunch today was fresh corn tortillas with avocados, jalapenos, limes, beans and salt.

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We´re in Ocosingo now after a shitty nite bus from Escárcega. We managed to hitch a ride out of the Calakmul ruins with a big mexican family by cramming into their pickup flatbed for 3.5 hours with all their gear. We spent 4 hours in Escarcega (definately the worst aggregation of human life I have ever been to) waiting for the bus, ate shitty food, forgot the time change, missed the bus, waiuted 2 more hours, got a 2nd class bus (dirtier and hotter and stinkier) and rode here. I spent most of the night choking down vomit in the back of the violently shaking bus since the bathroom smelled unbearably hot and septic..

Just spent a few nights camped at the Calakmul ruins biosphere reserve. We saw (besides an ancient Mayan city with over 7,000 buildings) Black monkeys, howler monkeys, alligator shit, tapirs, and puercos javellinas(?). They were Cow-sized pigs.

The sunburn is gone and I´m still not sick although I am sick of eating meat but this area seems to be a little better for food- big markets and lots of fruits and breads.

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Jake and I are staying in an absolute shithouse here, the equivalent of $6 US a night. We bought a bag full of sweet breads with cheese and strawberries for $1 US. Our laundry cost us $7.20 US. But we finally have a (cold) shower again. With Esther gone we are having a difficult time communicating. Eh. There is very little tourism here, very little spanish influence, and lots of indigenous people in neat clothes and carrying baskets of fruits on their heads. Jake is certainly the tallest person (2 meters) in the city, if not the state, and he elicits laughter everywhere he goes. Kids stop and point and say Mama.

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Chiapas is sort of the southernmost state in Mexico. Quintana Roo is eastern, Campeche is west of there and Chiapas is Southwest from there (next to GUatemala). It´s the home of the famous Zapatista revolution where highly-organized militant peasants revolted in the early 1990s in response to land rights violations and the institution of NAFTA. The state of Chiapas has been mostly under Zapatista rule since then, the Federal police having very little power or jurisdiction. It´s probably the best instance of local revolt being so sucessful. The only reason the Zapatista revolt wasn´t quashed by some brutal military strategy was the international press it received, kind of putting the Mexican government under the looking glass. I believe they have bigger plans yet, Jake told me they have a huge banner outside of some of the government buildings in MExico city reading ´we are here because of your ineptitude´.

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Just had the first *truly* delicious meal so far...chicken cooked with cilantro, homemade salsa, grilled veggies, lime, salt. Jake and I both ate for less than $4 US. We jsut realized that it would be cheaper to rent a house for a month ($70 US) than to pay for a decent hotel room for a few days (about $15/night). Huh. Thank god it´s a little cooler up here, the night is almost seeming brisk. We really are the only white people here in Ococingo. I´m also taller than most and Jake towers over people who are often half his height. I´ve been telling people that he is the tallest man in the world. People stop and gawk at him, laugh, whistle...kids cry.

Aside from the folks we ate with tonite (who seemed a little offended at our general ignorance of the language, but warmed up over the course of dinner and ended up asking us to marry people in their family) it´s so difficult to be mostly unable to communicate with others. Its very alienating.

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Jake and I are headed to the MOnte Alban biosphere reserve of Lake Miramar right now, a 5 hour ride in the back of a truck. It´s deep in the heart of Zapatista territory and apparently we have to hire a guide ($10/day - way too expensive) to accompany us for the few days we want to be out there. Ococingo has been really nice, this is our fourth day here and we have gotten to know the good restaurants and the good panaderias (bakeries which make this tasty mexican sweet bread sometimes with fruit or really stinky cheese inside). We´re in a coffee growing region but cafe has been hard to find, everyone just seems to drink Nescafe crystals and it turns out that those really suck. San Cristobal should be better in terms of cafes and vegetarian food.

Being down here has given me such a good perspective on a lot of what confused me about southern california. FIrst of all, Ococingo is a really small town but the narrow streets are packed with cars, taxis, pickups full of people packed in like livestock, trucks, and cars with loudspeakers advertising water, gas, events, etc. It makes for a generally very big-city feel in a small town. Also, it seems you are just expected to throw your garbage anywhere you want. There are garbage cans in the city center but nowhere else. However, the city remains pretty clean because every morning a cadre of women with brooms and bags appear and sweep up the mess from the previous day. Within hours, there is garbage everywhere again.

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We spent a few days at Laguna miramar, the cleanest lake in Mexico, part of the monte azules biosphere reserve. It took a 5.5 hour ride in the back of a pickup full of supplies, gasoline tanks (which spilled over floor at times) and people packed in like livestock. Families, ranchers, old women with bags of textiles all endured the extremely potholed road by clinging onto the metal frame enclosing the back. We got dehydrated, sunburned and bruised. The dust from the road coated everything and I was dizzy for most of the trip from inhaling diesel fumes. I thought I was tough. These people have to do this every time they want groceries or need to sell goods in town.

Anyways, the lake is guarded by a small ejido (community which works shared farmland). No settlement on the lake (it´s a 5 mile hike in) and no motor boats. We had to pay a guide, pay for camping, and pay for entrance, but the lake was pretty unspoiled. There was a Mayan fortress on an island in the middle and lots of paintings and carvings around. Warm water, 5 meter crocodiles (which apparently are harmless so we swam and didn´t lose anything) howler monkeys, thousands of birds. Pretty nice but only marginally worth the immense effort to get there.

I don´t know what else to say. I have had 2 of the shittiest days of my life in the last 20 days and many very pleasant and fantastic experiences. I´m still tougher than Montezuma´s revenge too. I started taking anti malarial medicine yesterday but I got a lot of bites at the lake. It´s the end of the dry season and water is reallly low everywhere so I don´t think there is a tremendous risk. I told jake I didn´t want to get the Dengue fever and he said "well, i don´t want to watch reruns of roseanne but it´s something we both have to deal with"

I saw guys wearing shirts that said:
Goddess
Santa, U da Man
Project tshirt
Basketball hope project excess


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JAke and I rolled into San Cristobal yesterday. It´s much higher in altitude and the nights are pretty cool here which is great. There are some vegetarian restaurants and coffee shpos and other tourist kind of shit. The town is really pretty but also seems to be a mecca for european tourists so there is a very euro feel around here. I almost miss the bizarre anonimity of being in a very traditional small town with women cooking outside of every house.

We got a shitty hostel room for $6 US last night, shared a terrible bed and woke up with flea bites. Then I went to a coffee shop and had the worst cappucino ever (really. we both agreed on this). Then we went to a breakfast place and had the weakest coffee ever (again, this was a consensus). It seems Sunday mornings are not the liveliest time to be around a Mexican city, most people go out in the evening and stay out really late and things didn´t get moving here until at least 10 am this morning.

We are hoping to meet some people and rent out a room in a shared house for a few weeks perhaps. NOt that hostel rates really break the bank but it could be a lot cheaper and interesting to live with a bunch of folks.

There are apparently no toilets with toilet seats in mexico. Ok except for when you want to have a seat. I have also not encountered any clean toilets which may be why no one bothers to have seats anyways. Lovely. My experiences in Mt. Baldy have fortunately prepared me for cold showers and shared toilets.


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Jake and I have been walking around trying to find places to rent for a little while but it´s so hard. Getting phone numbers and calling people is hard because I sound like a jackass (even though my spanish is as good as it has ever been) and I never know where the houses are. People give very very vague directions here but phrase them as they are accurate. It´s weird. Ask someone where a store is, they tell you three blocks that way, left, four more blocks. YOu get there, see nothing, ask someone and they tell you it´s two more blocks that way and around the corner. Additionally, it´s almost fucking impossible to find out info about places to hike and camp. Either the people you ask know nothing about it and think you´re crazy for even wanting to go there, or they tell you "yeah you can camp there. Yeah there are lots of hiking trails. HAve i ever been there? No, but heres a mouse pad with a picture of a waterfall I think is there". I have been inquiring at the tour places around here about the places they run tours to. They try to sell me some tour package and then can´t provide me with a map or any information about the park except that it is beautiful and to come back at 7 am for the daily tour with a bunch of fucking europeans. Some cultural things are really hard to get used to.

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I woke up this morning to a horrible raucous of traffic after a terrible nights sleep. I scratched my head, pulled out a bloated tick and listened to the ridiculous din of the city. The LPG gas (which everyone uses for their stoves) delivery trucks, instead of making deliveries when you call and ask, just drive around all day. They drag big chains around behind their trucks and when you hear that fucking noise you run out into the street and wave them down. The water trucks do the same thing excpet they have loudspeakers and play shitty carnival music. Both start up at about 7 am. This is not a regional thing either, they do it in every decent sized town. Oh, and the churches set off fireworks on an irregular basis at any hour of the day or night. Except, instead of being normal fireworks, they are just loud bombs that flash in the sky. Apparently each one is to celebrate a specific saint. I bet those saints all really appreciate that shit. I do.

I can hardly tolerate any more of the music here. It´s all been fucking carnival bullshit and mariachi sucks. I want to get a clown suit. It´s everywhere and everyone loves it and it all sounds the same. Fucking horns and tubas and "ai ai ais".

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We spent at least an hour and a hlaf in the market here in San Cristobal today. We bought another big bag of the creamiest, sweetest mangos, avocados, fresh corn tortillas, tomatos, limes, and banannas. All of which make most produce in the states seem shameful. The whole center of the market is populated by exceedingly vile butcher stands, none of which have refrigeration and blood spills everywhere. It seems salted dried pig heads are a local favorite, along with intestines packed full of I don´t want to know what. I had rescinded my vegetarianism and been eating a little meat but I might be back on the no-meat train.

There are lots of hand woven blankets and shirts here, tiny Mayan women set up shops every day all around the zócalo (city center) and sell their labor for ridulously cheap. Problem is, I´m not cold and my backpack is full already. We´ll see, a lot of it is really beatiful stuff. I sat and drank a beer with Jake last night and watched the entire economically-crippled lower class of indigenous people disassemble their stands and pack up their goods in the shadow the Santa Guadalupe church. I couldn´t help but think about the irony of their struggle to sell devalued handcrafts in a saturated market all around a huge church that was constructed about 1517, just (edit: 2) short years before Cortéz and his cohorts killed MOntezuma and forever condemned his descendents to a threadbare existence. While much of what they sell is interesting, a lot of their cheap bracelets and anklets amount to nothing more than thinly disguised begging.

Did anyone get through that?

I am still warm light shining on all of you.
Best, Theodore

[ted]

April 15th 2006

With my companion laid up with cramps, diarrhea, and fever for the day, I took it upon myself to sit in the zócalo drinking espresso and reading all day, which proved very rewarding. I spent a lot of time wondering about the ubiquitous grime, filth, and garbage piles which plague the outskirts of large cities and isolated ejidos alike. My thinking was no doubt spurred by several recent experiences I have had.

The first, a frustrating dialogue with one of the keepers at our hostel occurred when I asked if I could recycle our wine bottles. He initially responded by taking one and filling it with water. I told him I didn´t want it full of water, I wanted to recycle it rather than throwing it away at which point he told me that I might be able to get it refilled with wine at the store, but he doubted it. I realized that recycling is synonymous with reuse, and certainly not concerned with the raw materials involved.

The second moment was when Jake and I were carrying some empty cans of beans and jalapeños back to town with us after having a lunch at a park. Several women were laughing and pointing at us. I asked what was so funny and they told me that our cans were empty, and why wouldn´t we just throw them on the side of the road?

Finally, I spent an hour walking around yesterday to every pharmacy in town trying to find some more of the anti-malarial drug, chloroquinone (a derivative of the gloriously bitter quinine of tonic water. This is certainly one of the best contributions to world culture by the British, second only to their heavily-hopped India Pale Ale which was the only way to preserve a quaffable brew ´round the horn with no refrigeration. This was a very important development since heavy-handed imperialism is hardly enjoyable without a beer in hand. I should also take a moment to mention my craving for some bittered, acidified Sapphire). Having been myself exposed to quite a bit of mala aire recently I went through a dialogue at each pharmacy where I said I wanted cloroquina tabletas, medicine for malaria, the sickness from mosquitos. The first response was always "Ah, you want some cream for your mosquito bites". No, when you go out into the country, get bit by mosquitos, get a fever and sleep all day. A semi-comprehending nod and the pharmacist produced a bottle of OFF!. No. Eventually I was successful but only after realizing that the people I was asking for anti-malarials probably rarely left urban areas (where the Anopheles mosquito is absent) and likely never really had any concern about bad air vapours.

This all got me to thinking: what has happened to my romantic view of rural farmers and indigenous people being environmentally sensitive stewards of the land? No concept of recycling in a fairly large, progressive city visited by mobs of Europeans? Peasants encouraging me to throw my trash along the road? People seemingly unaware of (the apparently) omnipresent threat of a nasty illness lingering just outside the boundaries of paved city limits?

I am beginning to think that the notion that persons not subsumed in the first-world "evils" of capitalism and free-markets are somehow automatically responsible and environmentally sensitive is a pinnacle of naivete. In fact, looking back at our own history, the term Ecology was not invented until the late 1800´s and not embraced as a school of thought for some time after. I think the notion of ecological responsibility might only take hold in a post-industrial society, one that has had the chance to make the transition from dragging a living out of the soil (agricultural, mineral, or otherwise) to one that can isolate their labors in factories and buy food from someone else. Perhaps only when your livelihood no longer depends on the land around you can you transform your perspective of land from an object to provide you sustenance to an object of beauty.

I just learned that many of the indigenous Mayans who sell cheap handcrafts on every corner are converts to some breed of Protestantism which has apparently somehow rendered them ineligible for land holdings outside the city. This, coupled with the underhanded government land deals which sold out peasant´s land from beneath their feet in the 1980´s and 90´s, and the brutal Spanish outright theft of the whole of Central America in the 1500´s has likely led to a populace totally alienated from the land around them. The garbage and indifference then are simply "moral residues of colonialism" as Oliver Sacks put it.

What is this? Some kind of fucking essay?

Please knock back a few tasty IPAs for me, Ted

[HG]

Wow you hit fury>plasma>blurriest? sick!!!

[Samurai]

That was a very enjoyable and informative read. Your writing style is going through the roof!

[Senor Grommet]

that experience sounds intense and crazy, something that AJ (a local Santa Cruzan footbagger) would die for. Glad to hear that you're enjoying yourself down there and that you're learning a lot about life and culture. Excited to see you sometime soon.

Jeremy

[ted]

April 20th 2006

Jake and I rolled on into Comitán, leaving behind our big-city faces and the Zapatistas in San Cristobal. We had begun to stagnate and I felt inertia building. But we broke free in a glorious rush of high-fives and
trust-falls and drunken-dials, leapt onto the bus, shed our clothing,
and found ourselves and hour and a half closer to Guatemala.

We played some barefoot sipa kicky-sack in the zócalo and were approached by some Mormons from North Carolina, excited to see some other Gringos and exercise their English. I felt bad for them, probably 450lbs of fervent belief between the two of them, dressed up real nice and sweating through their uniforms, selling religion in an already jesus-saturated environment. Anyways, old boy was giving us a little sell on salvation and afterlife and we were giving him a little sell on smashing down beers and espresso (very contrary to the Mormon belief that drugs, including caffeine, must be avoided), which he took well, along with our insistence that Joseph Smith (the seminal Mormon prophet) was often known by the moniker "Smoky Joe", which he denied.

After a bit of miserable posing as though he liked kicky-sack (he obviously saw it as a conversational "in") he was throwing his considerable girth around and launched backwards into the air after the bag, colliding with a short, brittle, old woman with crutches. She collapsed, him on top of her. The city police did not like the maneuver (which Jake has come to call "The Mission") and he obviously felt terrible as I watched the enthusiasm of God drain from his face. We distanced ourselves from him, Jake in hysterics over the yutz and I couldn´t help but think he must definitely be going to hell now.

We are staying in a hostel, as usual, but this one is called "Posada Panamerica", presumably referring to the convivial atmosphere of being (unbeknownst to us) a bizarre sort of Mexican brothel. I first noticed the frequency with which other guests were appearing and disappearing. Then I heard some Latin love-making and now I don´t feel comfortable sleeping in our bed. It is a very weird sort of arrangement; people come and go all day, quietly spending 30 minutes to 4 hours locked in the tiny windowless rooms. Immediately after departure, the innkeeper empties the trash, changes the sheets and leaves the door open. Well dressed people, grimy folks, professionals, gabby women all participate. It´s interesting because it began this morning at 10 am and is still going at 5 pm. It is almost certainly a place to meet someone other than your spouse during the work day and appears to be quite acceptable. There´s a hidden courtyard car-park, private bathrooms, and no one seems furtive as I would expect. Good to see that extramarital copulations transcend cultural and social boundaries.

Love, Theodore

[sampotter]

This has by far been the most worthwhile read on modified in all my time here. Very much looking forward to more.

[HG]

I love these stories. You are the man Teddy.

[ted]

Thanks for the interest y'all. I continue...

Although our time in Comitán was cut short, we managed to make some acquaintances and sample the local liquor. A short, stout man in a cowboy hat, boots, handlebar moustache and a red neckerchief befriended us. We told him we were from Australia (our typical strategy to avoid anti-Americanism which is not entirely untrue as Jake holds citizenship there and I grew up there) and he insisted that he would come with us. El hombre seemed to think that his corn would grow better in Australia despite our appeals that it is mostly a dry and uninhabitable place. His enthusiasm was probably bolstered by the 1/2 litre of cane liquor he was working on, a cheap and vile substance made from distilled sugar cane resulting in a 60 proof beverage that sells for about $1.80 US per litre. I imagine this so-called "Flor de Cana real" is virtually solely responsible for the prevalence of alcoholism and AA clinics in every town.

Our friend was so persistent that Jake and I eventually made a plan, in English, to ditch him. Jake "forgot" his wallet and went back to the hostel, I continued on with our buddy, let him get ahead of me until he turned a corner and I ran. Mucho Sorry, big guy.

On the other end of the spectrum from the Cane liquor was Comiteco, the local specialty drink. Like tequila, it is made by removing all the leaves from the beautiful Blue Agave, cutting the stem at ground level, cooking the pulpy heart into a sugary mash, fermenting and distilling the result. It had a beautiful golden-brown color and a rich taste while being much smoother that even good tequila.

The next morning we headed over the Sierra Madre de Chiapas on a nauseating 5 hour bus ride down to the steamy Chiapas coast. We got off in Tapachula, walked past some open sewage in the streets (Jake got splashed) and caught a combi (collective van that operates like a taxi but only leaves when full of passengers. They are typically medium-size VW buses designed for 12-15 people but I have seen up to 25 people crammed in. The combi ride took us up the flank of the Volcano Tacaná to a small town, Union Juaréz, where coffee, bananas, and cacao dominate the roadsides.

We spent the next three days climbing to the summit of the 4,165 meter (about 13,600 feet) volcano which marks the boundary between Mexico and Guatemala. The ascent was incredible. The hot and humid air on the coast wells up the mountains and mixes with the cold air above to create perpetual clouds, drizzle, and nightly thunderstorms. We walked blindly through the fog up the trail starting from 1,300 meters. Periodically, children would appear from out of the mist like apparitions and ask for algo dulce "something sweet". Every time I thought we had passed the last settlement, we would come across another roughly terraced field of maize and a few ramshackle houses full of chickens and children who would greet us and offer us a rest inside. The people were beautiful, very exotic looking, especially the kids. They told us they had been living there for generations, farming what they could and carrying the rest up the 7,000 feet to their homes. The children danced and sang without a hint of the hardened edge and serious faces most kids seem to get in the cities, often pushing helados (ice cream) carts 40 hours a week by age eight.

More musings on immigration and poverty to come.

New tshirt sightings:
-Refrigiwear
-Old lady with a shirt that said "Bootylicious"
-Young cleancut fellow dining with his mom in a shirt that said "PornLover"

I look forward to seeing all my friends, past, present, and future.

Love, Theodore

[ted]

4.26.06

The summit was bizarre, well above the clouds yet still forested with Pines and Lupines. A rusty, twisted piece of metal at the peak apparently symbolizes the friendship between Mexico and Guatemala. We sat, ate, burned in the thin atmosphere, and enjoyed views of the equally large peaks in Guatemala. As usual, signs demand No tires basura "Don't litter" but cans, bottles, and wrappers were particularly concentrated around the caldera.

With all of our gallivanting around the Guatemalan border, we encountered at least a half dozen inspection ports where immigration agents or military personnel would stop our bus or combi, board it, leisurely look through the luggage and "check our papers". We had been warned in advance about dealing with police or military if the subject of fines should happen to come up. We were advised that we may be told our papers are not in order and a small fine (or mordita, literally "little bite") would fix this. In fact, we found quite the contrary, everyone gave us a cursory glare, asked for our papers, stared blankly, and moved on. I suppose we look neither hungry nor desperate enough to be seeking refuge in Mexico. Even when Jake accidentally gave his New Zealand passport and his US immigration card and I couldn't find any of my papers, they stared us down and left us alone. Had we been travelling by 2nd class bus instead, our story would certainly be different. At each checkpoint all the kids our age are taken off the buses, hands-on-wall, and searched. Based on what Jake had in his pockets, he would surely still be negotiating over some morditas.

Having not seen the Guatemalan 3rd world proper, I can only imagine what the conditions there are like to precipitate an exodus to Mexico. I know that U.S. arms dealing and CIA "interventions" throughout Central America during the 80's and 90's made for some pretty lousy places to live but I don't get the impression that the job market or hopes for upward mobility are too great in Mexico either.

I have had 3 encounters with young Mexican students who were enthused to speak to a U.S. citizen and quite honestly wanted to know how to get into the states and how to get a job there. They insist that there are no good papas (jobs), even if they earn a college degree. They would prefer to try and earn better wages in the states and send money home to their families.

I never know what to say. Learn English well. Get a good topo map. Practice hiking in the Sonoran desert. Cross the border where others don't. Even then, I warn them, They'll likely find themselves living in an equally-shitty barrio in Tucson or Los Angeles, earning less than minimum wage in a hot kitchen or agricultural wasteland. In fact, I told a group of young guys who live in the Chiapas highlands by a clean river and have steady janitorial work at a local technical college that they were probably better off than the average illegal in the states.

So that's my advice. Either that, or echo Ed Abbey in suggesting that the U.S. close it's borders tightly and wait until Mexicans get more arms, more miserable, more rebellious and get themselves anew government.

That said, I can't help but question immigration policies and the capitalistic model of economy. Free flow of manufactured goods and money in an "unfettered" market while not permitting the simultaneous movement of labor force. A spatial separation of workforce and consumer demand. Goods stay cheap and buyers keep spending. The poor stay poor and the moneyed can afford what they want.

Aggressive immigration policies seem, to me, a way to manage large economies while minimizing wealth transfer to developing countries involved in industrialization or manufacturing. Let's all thank Adam Smith for cheap imported goods.

Theodore.

[Senor Grommet]

Ted (Taggert), you use your hands purtier than a 20 dollar whore. Reading your stories makes me smile.

-Jeremy



(Blazing Saddles)

[Samurai]

I felt the urge to print and show to my old college english professor who lives thousands of miles away.

-A Fan

[ted]

Thanks y'alls

4.28.06

I have spent the last four days languishing on the beach near Puerto Arista, Chiapas. My buddy has somewhat abandoned me in that classic way that boys sometimes forget about friends when a girl comes around. That´s fine, I´m in equilibrium with my salty, sandy, sunny environment. Not to say old blue eyes here hasn´t been popular with the ladies; I´ve had 2 marriage proposals, one attempt made to be part of an arranged marriage, and a few solicitations for sex. Problem is, it seems that throughout much of Mexico, by the time a young woman reaches my age, she´s cultivating a family, often from several sources. I have gathered that contraceptive use is not too popular here (although with brand names like "OK" condoms, it may not be the application but the efficacy of the product to blame).

We camped the first night on the Canadian José´s land, among mango, orange, coconut, and cashew trees. We made ourselves sick on all four and moved down the beach to escape the Santa Semana (Spring break) crowds. Boy meets girl, they go off for the night, and I camp on the beach. I awake at midnight to heavy winds beating the tent against my back and rain starting to fall. I drag the tent through a spectacular lightening storm up the beach and into an abandoned cinder block structure with a corrugated steel roof. I sleep. In the morning I discover that aside from bedding down on the ever-present basura, there are soiled diapers and poopy-paper spooled about the single room. I wish I had a camera so you all could enjoy it with me and I wish I was up to date on my Hepatitis vaccinations.

The next two days I spent living with a family on the beach, eating eggs, beans, and tortillas twice a day. For dinner, it was a stew of calabasa squash, platinos (a starchy Mexican banana), chayote (a tasty root vegetable), and real maize. Over dinner, the parents scoff at American corn. It is too sweet and has no flavor they say. Indeed, their maize is off-white, small-kerneled, chewy, more dry, and very rich in a grain flavor. I like them both.

Tomorrow we leave for Oaxaca.

[brian relly]

Ted (Taggert), you use your hands purtier than a 20 dollar whore. Reading your stories makes me smile.

-Jeremy



(Blazing Saddles)

Taggart says that to Heddy - tongue(!). Gosh darnit, Mr. Lamar, you use your tongue purtier than a 20 dollar whore