Nothing, Ninjas, and No Sharks

The scores are the same as they were before. So no need to recap. Just scroll down if youre really that much of a fanatic about it.

At the moment Calen is passed out on the floor of the bus station. I think whatever we bought at the farmacia out of a dramamine box was actually GHB. It might be a translation error, but to know for sure, im going to have to find a colloquial spanish-english dictionary and see if Dramamine is what they call roofies. Regardless, Calen is dead to the world right now. Maybe its malaria. I dont know. Whatever the case, I sort of envy him right now. If he can keep up this act, he may very well sleep through the entire 12 hour bus ride were about to take.

Every 40 passenger bus weve taken in Mexico has had 6 people on it. Us, the driver, maybe a chicken or goat, and a couple other people. But tonight, when the option was an 11 hour trip on the early bus we wanted to take, or a 12 hour trip on the late bus we didnt, the early one was completely full and the late one had only two seats left on different hemispheres of the bus. In Mexico they divide buses using hemispheres. They´re a cartography loving people. I dont know if this is my american entitlement speaking, but i think they should either kick some people off so we can sit together or send an extra bus so we can sit together or send us in a taxi for a comparable price so we can sit together. And it should probably be a taxi with a bathroom because i plan on taking plenty of pressurized beverages on this trip as well.

The place we are leaving is mazunte, which, in a rare occurence given the tendency of human beings to embellish and romanticize, actually lived up to the hype of a beach paradise as it was described. Only its the low season so there was no one there except us, a guy who was probably a bus driver, a chicken or a goat, and a couple other people. At no point could one look out on the expansive beach and be unable to count the amount of people on their fingers.

We stayed in a place called La Atarraya which was a fine establishment run by the Mexican Jason Ross, only his name was Cesar and he didnt have any 18-year-old-impulsive-decisions tattooed on his arms. Since we were the only ones there, we opted for the camping package which meant we slept on hammocks on this huge 2nd story, open air terrace covered by palm leaves and literally (not figuratively) looking out on to the surf which was about 30 yards away. The lower floor of the place is actually just sand. Its sort of like a gateway to the beach. We arrived on the day of a full moon which meant a couple things. High tide. Huge waves. And a night on the beach which was lit up so bright by the moonlight that you could walk around with eyes squinted like my mom when she´s drunk and still safely arrive at the destination of your choosing. I woke up in the middle of the night and walked down to the beach and there is really only one way to explain the experience, dreamlike. Everything was coated in a soft blue light, which was a sharp contrast to the blinding light of a beach day.

We became well acquainted with the beach. The sand was fine and soft. The kind of fine, soft sand we discovered, experientially, that can remain in any nook and cranny of your nether regions that it chooses (it chose all of them) without detection for 2 days. This was ninja sand. It went where it wanted, when it wanted without so much as making a noise or setting off an alarm. We only learned this lesson because we employed the same approach to hygeine as we did when we were 12. Swimming counts as bathing. What we started to notice is that even though we spent copious amounts of time in the water (yes, calen swam in the ocean, repeatedly) we still developed a stench that rivalled the smell of the mexican street seafood with which we had become so familiar. So eventually we showered, and found the ninja sand. We killed them all with our peppermint samurai soap. Their tiger style was no match for our d'wa-gone style.

The waves in Mazunte made me realize something and added a bit more cohesion to my otherwise disjointed existence. There are some things in life that you never really understand why they seem so important to you until that fateful day when the answer is revealed. I had a strange obsession when I was but a lad of 17 with learning how to do a yoga asana which, by its anglicized name, is called the scorpion pose. Maybe it was the cool name, or maybe it was the acrobatics of the pose. Whatever the case, i practiced until i could do it, never seeing a practical reason for all the effort. And without any (Gob´s) segue (that counts as the Arrested Development reference for this post), as i mentioned before, high tide meant big waves. Huge, crashing, deafening waves. Waves that make you appreciate the power of nature. Waves that pucker your ninja sand hiding spots. Waves that appeal to the reckless stupidity of people like ourselves. We reasoned that since we grew up in California, and California touches the ocean, that we must be an ocean people. So we surfed with the only thing available to surf. Our bodies. And in one of those classic misjudgements of ocean people that grew up in a landlocked valley of the state of ocean people, i got caught (it feels even dumber to admit that it was intentional, so I´ll pretend like I was an innocent victim of the cruel Poisedon) in a wave that slammed down with a special kind of torque that made my heels touch my cervical vertebrae, even though i specifically asked it not to. I got out of the water wondering what a fractured vertebrae felt like. But after about an hour all i had was a slightly sore back which was 100% after another hour, and a profound sense of gratitude for community colleges everywhere that make yoga classes fulfill a degree requirement. Sierra College, you saved my life. And thats not even the first time. You wouldnt believe how often calculating instantaneous rates of change or identifying a gerund has saved me from an untimely death.

So the beach was absolutely amazing. It was like living in Lost without all thje creepy people who, for no reason, are always lying to each other. But it turns out that doing nothing isnt really something im good at. I enjoyed myself immensely, but after two days and a combined total of about 8 hours in the sun and saltwater, and the vast majority of the other 24 or so in a hammock, it was time to move on. I do believe that it would be the perfect place for a large group of friends and family during the low season though. Or maybe if I could stay and paint for a month. Something other than nothing. Houses with kitchens and relatively modern ammenities can be rented on the beach for $300 per month and the cost of travel is negligible assuming you dont mind gambling your life on the bus ride. The food on the beach is amazing and cheap and fresh. There aren´t sharks, jellyfish, carpet fish or anything else that can kill you aside from the waves. They have fishermen that are more than happy to take people out to fish, sea turtles (get it?), dolphins, monsters of the deep, etc. There are internet cafes for checking email and porn. Somebody set that up. Aunt Karen, Im looking at you. You like email and porn in a secluded beach setting more than anyone.

So here we are now in the bus terminal with peeling faces, a few mosquito bites, serious fatigue, and against all odds, uninjured, waiting to take the later, longer bus ride to San Cristobal where our goal is to hook up with the Zapatistas. This is a task that is proving to be more difficult and less likely to occur the closer we get to the actual place. But its the meat of the trip, and so it merits a bit of struggle. Besides, what kind of goal would it be if there was a brochure or something? The things in this life worth doing usually involve a nonexistent, uncharted, or overgrown path. Things like meeting up with a group of well organized, indigenous rebels with a world view that inspires to the ends of the earth. Things like getting a street named after a scientist's balls.

How about Stephen J. Gould's Sesamoid Groin Processes Road? Speaking of sesamoid processes, the zoo in Mexico City had a giant panda in an enclosure that seemed to intentionally obscure our view. I think it was animatronic and theyre trying to pull the wool... no wait... panda fur over our eyes. But i digress. Dont be surprised if i suggest more streets with Gould. I like him. He deserves this. Read Ontogeny, Ontogeny and Phylogeny and there will be no end to the amount of letters you'll be motivated to write to Obama to make this happen for Mr. Gould, God rest his soul.

The Royal We

We had a new contestant enter the game and so the time to remember the fallen is over... after one day. So here are the new scores:

Drug cartels and food poisoning: 2
Calen and Colten: 17

Even though food poisoning and cartels technically constitutes the formation of a new team, we will allow them the points won by swine flu due to the fact that they are at a heavy disadvantage in the overall standings. Were not about to give up our hard earned points, so its only fair to make a concession for them.

All those scoring politics aside, it isnt often that one gets to truly enjoy the unparalleled bliss of simply being alive. It is something that often goes unnoticed. However, its much easier to be aware of it when contrasted against the very real and (for 9 hours at least) omnipresent specter of meeting one's doom just after careening off of a go-kart-track-curvy, vertically banked mountain road while sitting inside a bus that has no business going that speed or taking turns that a rabbit would have a hard time managing. The funniest thing was that on the back of the bus was a little decal that read "velocidad controlado." Im not sure what they set their speed control thingy at, but - think it was the same setting as whatever they use for NASCAR. In the end, we arrived at our destination safely. So thanks to whoever was driving and thanks to whatever god to which someone sacrificed a pot bellied pig on behalf of our safety during this trip.

There was one other little hiccup on the voyage that, in hindsight seemed foreshadowed. But i didnt heed the warning as my intuition, nay, common sense had been debilitated by what westerners know as "churro drunk." We needed water for the long bus ride as i think bus toilet water falls under the category of water you arent supposed to drink in mexico. So we went to the store and i just grabbed the two biggest bottles of water i could find. 2 liters each, if youre dying to know the total. Thats 4 liters total if you went to american public school. Booyah, take that you failing American social infrastructure. When we got to the bus station Calen popped one open, accompanied by an unfamiliar hissing noise in the context of bottled water. He then discovered, much to his consternation that the water i had selected, strictly for the sake of gluttony, was carbonated. He then went on and on and on about how gross it was and how he was going to beat my ass (a common occurrence on this trip that has yet to come to fruition) and told me to try it. I did. I took a long, long drink and even pretended to be refreshed, even though it was just for pretend. He looked at me like i was crazy and questioned my sincerity. I stuck with my story. He insisted we throw it out, but i insisted to the contrary. In the end, we all boarded the bus, the carbonated water being included in that particular use of the pronoun, and sat in the very back seats in front of the bathroom.

We all, still including the water, fell asleep to the sweet sound of a spanish cartoon retelling the story of Noah's Ark. This film was selected by the bus company, presumably so that all the children on the bus could learn what a wrathful and destructive deity the catholic god is. At a certain point in the night, i awoke to discover three things. Calen had moved to a different row of seats. I looked out the window and saw that the bus was about three inches from the side of a cliff with no guardrail while pulling a 7 G turn (this only concerned me because in an effort to travel light, we had selected not to pack our G suits). And, possibly worst of all, my socks were very wet.

At first i thought i had cut my leg while somnamburesheathing a samurai sword (the sword of destiny) that Ive been carrying around mexico ever since our trip to the chinese holistic medicine store and as a result, i was bleeding into my sock. But even in my sleepy haze my deductive reasoning kicked in and i knew that was impossible because both my socks were wet and i had traded the sword just hours before to a kid in oaxaca for his last 16 churros. This left only one other option. The bus toilet had broken and water and whatever else there is in bus toilets was leaking out of the bathroom. I panicked and leaned forward to begin my analysis of the situation where i was promptly squirted in the face with water and whatever is in bus toilets. The squirt in the face sobered me out of my sleep and my churro intoxication and i discovered the source of the water was not a bus toilet but one of the carbonated 2 liter bottles of water. Im not sure whose to blame, but i knew i had to act fast. So i found the hole, covered it, took it to the bathroom and put it in the sink. I went back to my seat, pleased with my handling of the situation. Moments later i realized it would be a much more efficient solution to go and just empty the bottle completely rather than letting pressurized mineral water spray all over the bathroom as we all (still including the water) rode the tilt-a-whirl down the mexican federal highway. So i went and did that and then returned to my seat even more pleased with myself.

Then my socks continued to get wet. If you private school kids remember, there were 2 bottles. Whatever had attacked and punctured the first one, proceeded to attack and puncture the second. Knowing exactly how to resolve the situation, i remained calm... and proceeded to resolve the situation. There was a lot of proceeding going on including when the bus driver proceeded to take the bus onto an olympic slalom course, with moguls. I guess it was a shortcut or a gas saver or something. But his proceeding proceeded to cause me to proceed to be thrown out of the bathroom slamming the door into the knees of the guy sleeping next to it. He didnt kick my ass. In fact he was very understanding. And when morning came i learned something new. Just before i got off the bus, I learned that i knew how to say, "Sorry about slamming the door into your knees last night." in Spanish. I did not know that about myself.

Also, Mexican teenagers have taken to the habit of mistaking Calen for a rockstar of some kind. They dont ever know what band hes from, they just know there is a band and hes part of it. We (no longer including the bottled waters) decided that since they all seemed so sure, theres no reason to dash their hopes and dreams of having their photo taken with an american rockstar. So when they ask, we answer, "hes in a band called tacomatadietas." Thats the name of a taco shop we saw in mexico city and it means diet killer taco.

Oh yeah. And Calen threw up.

I checked and the Einstein's Quantum Energy Balls is failing to make headway in the ligislative processes necessary to get a street named. So here's a new suggestion. Lets try Anton von Leeuwenhoek's Microscopic Coccidia Boulevard. Come on people. If a small group of mexican anarchists can vandalize an entire major city, we can get a street named after a scientist's balls.

Mexico city is spelled r-e-d-e-m-p-t-i-o-n

Current standings:

Swine flu and drug cartels: 1
Calen and Colten: 14

If you take a look at the scores, it is alarming to see that the opposing team has scored a point. A couple days ago, Calen began to have a sore throat, a clear indication of an H1N1 attack, which required urgent treatment with the Mexican equivalent of Airborne. It worked. This means that we have effectively cured swine flu. The implications for the world at large are profound. No longer do we have to cower in the deepest corner of our homes in fear of fever and other flu-like symptoms. Never again will children have to don their self contained personal quarantine iso-health disease resistante bio-suits just to go out to the cul-de-sac for a game of freeze tag. Everyone can start eating bacon again. Pot bellied pigs can go back to being the lovable and cherished family pets that they once were, rather than being offerings for the daily ritual sacrifices weve been making to the gods of maladies that resemble the flu exactly, but kill way, way, way less people worldwide. You're welcome earth. We'll be here all week. I will continue to include swine flu on the scoreboard in all future posts in order to honor the fallen. Even if the fallen was a highly inconvenient peehole.

Anyway, we're on a bus to Oaxaca right now en route to some beach paradise as described by our gracious hosts, and we can safely sum up our experience of Mexico City without the fear of having to eat our words later when we are attacked by a band of robbers disguised as mariachis or something. The official statement:

Mexico City was a safe and beautiful place with a full gamut of activities for all types of travelers.

I got that off a travel brochure I saw on the sidewalk outside Chapultepec park. But the statement stands up to the grueling, rigorous, gauntlet of truth to which i subject everything i read. So I decided to appropriate it. The empirical evidence just keeps stacking up that Mexico City is a pretty awesome place. I mean even the tourism industry has figured it out. And they are usually pretty reluctant to make broad sweeping statements about places and things and stuff.

We did, finally (maybe) almost get robbed. But in hindsight, im pretty sure the guy that was paying a little too much attention to us, looking at us weird, and acting generally shifty, was only doing so because we were doing the same to him and he probably thought we were going to rob him. Classic misunderstanding. We had gotten off the metro in a part of town usually not reserved for lobster faced gringos (we forgot to wear sunscreen for 1 f***ing day) after being directed to take a certain set of stairs by an all too eager to help subway passanger, from whom we had requested no help. So naturally, my paranoiadar went off and we took a different exit. But there was a man who seemed to be following us. We tried to lose him by slowing down... a lot. He kept pace with us stopping to look at ridiculous items being sold on the street. I knew it was suspicious because i have never seen a local stop to look at a stuffed monkey holding a taco in one hand and praying the rosary with the other. We slowed a lot. And he suddenly became a much more involved shopper. So we did what we learned from video games and movies and ducked into a shoe store. When he walked past, we stepped out right behind him. Now he tried to slow down and get us out from behind him. We didnt bother with the show of shopping and chose instead to slow down blatantly. He crossed to the other alley in the market but still seemed to keeping pace because everytime there was an opening between the tents in the market he would be looking over at us. In the end he turned around. He didnt rob us and we didnt rob him, which is exactly what ive been trying to say the whole time. No one gets robbed. In fact everyone with whom we spoke about the subject of personal crime in Mexico City knew someone who had been a vitim, but not one of them have been a victim themselves. Im beginning to suspect that crime in Mexico City is an urban legend like the loch ness monster in Scotland or the stripper who is just doing it to pay her way through medical school.

In other unconnected news, if you do ever come down here there are a few things worth knowing. The first and most important is that red lights are just a suggestion, and since the police dont generally enforce any traffic controls, suggestion might be too strong of a word. And if you're squeamish, and you ride the subway, and you see a man wearing a shirt with no sleeves get on who doesnt seem to be selling anything like all the other people who get on the subway with sacks of something, and he does, in fact, have a sack of something, and he sets that sack of something on the ground and opens it flat to reveal that the sack of something is actually a sack of broken glass and if the train is coming to a stop for passengers to get on and off... if all these things come to pass, especially the part about being squeamish, look away, because he is about to jump in the air and slam into that pile of broken gass shoulder first, with full commitment. If youre not squeamish, keep looking. It might be the only time you get to see something like that outside of a circus sideshow.

Also, i have successfully acheived the only goal i had regarding my study of the Spanish language. I have mentioned to several people that if i could acheive a moment of genuine humor, not one where people are laughing at me because what im saying is nonsensical madness, but actual cleverness, then i would feel as though i arrived. Yesterday, i made a pun. I belive my exact words as i held up a large handful of Mexican coins were "Mucho peso." Get it? No? Then learn Spanish. You live right next to Mexico. Anyway, it was linguistic premature ejaculation. Sure, i can make jokes now. But i cant get a gatorade from the 7 eleven (that's here, tambien) without needing the clerk to repeat basic phrases for me to fully comprehend what is being said to me. Its way too early for me to have acheived "success." So like with the trying to get robbed thing, I need to reevaluate and come up with a new measure of success.

How about Einstein's Quantum Energy Balls Avenue? Call your congressman. Together, we can acheive anything.

Isaac Newton's Testicles

Disclaimer: this entry was written in pieces, sporadically, on a cellphone, and then converted into a format usable by the computer, and then loosely edited during a heated game of Spongebob Monopoly. And photos... forget about it right now. But I'll add them in later. Mostly I'm just posting these things as proof of life. So don't get on my ass about the grammar, spelling, or general lack of continuity. You try doing this shit while keeping a vigilant eye on your monopoly money while struggling to understand the rapid fire Spanish being spoken by three people who are all very capable of speaking English to make sure they aren't conspiring to distract you and steal the title deed to Tentacle Acres. End Disclaimer

Here are the scores as they stand now.

Swine flu and drug cartels: 0

Calen and Colten: 3

We have been in Mexico city for well over 24 hours now and the most dangerous thing we've encountered has to be the uneven sidewalks that so diligently try to reintroduce us to our often forgotten friends, Gravity and Twisted Ankles.  Every hora (hour) que pasa (that passes) sin (without) any of the excitement we were promised by the media, friends, family, friends of friends, homeland security, and random people on the street with strong opinions, we slip deeper into a state of boredom and despondency.  It's not so much that we want to be the victims of a random act of violencia.  It's the anticipation.  So like any bored tourists, we decided to take matters into our hands.  We spent most of today trying actively to entice the criminal elements of this fine city to take notice of us.  The plan was to spend the day walking around looking very conspicuously like lost tourists.  We did so by putting on our matching t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase "USA A-OK!!!," donning neon flavored fanny packs (yes, flavored), and reading all of our maps upside down while maintaining dumbfounded blank faces (it wasn't hard) and just generally trying to appear unfocused and vulnerable.  Fool proof, right?  Wrong.  We didn't even get so much as a sideways look.  The policia wouldn't even rob us.  And if you cant get taken advantage of by the police in Mexico City, then it's time to reevaluate your tactics.

We knew we had no choice but to crank it up to 11.  We went to the place where during the day, there are bootleg markets.  But we went at night when all that is left on the streets are the people who run the bootleg markets.   At night, the markets are closed and we figured without a clearly defined sense of purpose, the "fell off a truck" sales team would be happy to make our acquaintance.  So we removed our shirts and pants and tied them around our eyes, effectively rendering us blind and unable to serve as reliable witnesses against any would be criminals.  We then took all the money out of our pockets and stuffed it in the waistband of our underwear, being careful to ensure that the money was still visible from a distance and easily recognizable as large denomination pesos.  We then proceeded to perform the chicken dance, which we later found out was a much more inflammatory gesture than we had previously known.  Still, nothing.  I'm not sure if we overdid it or what.  The weirdest thing is that I think we ended up with more money in our underwear than when we started.  I guess it all worked out for the best though, because a cursory glance at a Mexican legal guide listed stuffing ones underwear with money and performing a dance in a venue not zoned for such actividad (activity) as an actionable offense punishable by several consecutive life sentences in prison or a fine of 120 pesos (currently about 10 dollars American).

Aside from behemoth failure at becoming just another statistic and perhaps a cautionary tale for future visitors to Mexico City, there were some highlights of the day.  We visited the Museo Nacional de Antropologia where we saw, among other things, this giant dong.

Don’t try and use your imagination.  It is exactly what it looks like.  It said so on the information card, and I’m pretty sure they proofread those things.  The museum, apart from its phallic wonders, or perhaps because of them, is quite impressive both in scale, and the detail of the exhibits.  There were burial exhibits everywhere.  We never knew there were so many different ways to stuff a recently deceased body into a hole and then leave it there forever. But leave it to the Prehispanic Mesoamerican indigenous cultures to find about a trillion different ways.

 

We rode the metro to the Zócalo which was the town center of old timey Mexico City if I'm not mistaken, which I probably am.  This was on the way to the bootleg market in Tepito and merited a look around.  I don’t think I've ever been in a cathedral that big before.  Oh yeah, there was a cathedral, and we went to it, and it was big, just to clarify the lack of transition.   It was, how do you say, very Catholic, with all kinds of beautiful and dramatic imagery, insanely detailed architecture, and you guessed it, high, arching, cathedral ceilings. 

After awhile it became exhausting seeing all the paintings and statues of people who were clearly better than us, morally, and just in general.  If any of them were alive today they would probably be better than us at video games, too.  We Brothers Smith like to maintain this deep seated delusion that we're ok people in the moral sense.  And depictions of pure, suffering, holy saints don’t do much but create feelings of inadequacy deep within our souls.  So we left the church to see if we could find some stolen computers or chihuahua fights or something.

We could tell that Tepito would have been awesome, had we arrived 4 hours earlier.  I guess the Mexican bootleg market keeps bank hours. Since one of our major concerns is maintaining a light load for travel, we resisted the temptation to impulse buy some authentic Kasio watches or bedazzled and officially licensed Ed Hearty shirts.  The bootleg leather motorcycle jackets seemed nice though, and I want to say that if your’e ever in Mexico City and you are in the market for a leather jacket that might, but probably won’t, prevent your skin from being ripped from your body in a 30 mph fall from a motorcycle, and you want to look good doing it, without the hefty price tag of tried and tested jackets, Tepito is the place to go.

On a more serious note, we learned from our new friends here about a march happening on Friday to commemorate a rather gruesome event in Mexico's history.  In 1968, the year Mexico City hosted the olympic games, there was a massacre of 40,000 (a four with 4 zeroes, this according to the account we received, although disputed) students and other unfortunate souls who happened to be in the area.  This was done in an effort to create a peaceful ambiance for the upcoming games because the government and students were at odds over certain oppression that most governments attempt to impose at some point during their existence.   The massacre was successfully covered up, somehow, someway.  And the profound pain of an entire nation was swept under the rug for the sake of what amounts to marketability.  This is only a very precursory description of the events, based on my very inadequate understanding.  But it merits further examination.  And even though it may seem like something that could “never happen to me” it’s a good illustration of why a government should be afraid of its people and not the other way around.   A government is an institution, inherently heartless ruling over millions of people each of whom possess both hearts and minds capable of profound feeling.  The relationship doesn’t add up.  Governments also tend to arise by way of violence and maintain power in the same fashion.  There doesn’t have to be a massacre or bloodshed for violence to occur either.

Tune in next time where I will discuss the very imperative issue of getting a street named after the balls of famous scientists like they do here in Ciudad de Mexico.

Hemos Llegado

We arrived in Mexico City tonight and contrary to what everyone told us would happen, we have not yet been murdered. Suck on that gringos. Turns out Mexico City is not unlike most other cities on this big watery ball of earth we call, well, Earth. There´s a California Pizza Kitchen, a Tony Roma´s, and a 7 eleven. The only adjustment to be made really, is that the 7 eleven does not have an ATM machine. So bring cash.

It´s been 4 hours since we got here and no one has tried to kidnap us, mug us, or sell us on the amazing benefits and lucrative long term retirement plan that they´re offering to coke mules these days. Frankly, I´m a bit disappointed. We haven´t even been shot at. I expected there to be a lot more action. From the descriptions I´ve received from very reliable sources (sources is a French word which means "people who have never been there") Mexico City was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland with utter lawlessness, urban pirates running around pillaging, mountains of illicit powders just strewn about surrounded by stacks of dead bodies, monkeys wearing pants, and food cart tacos that melt your intestines the second you think about them.

But it turns out Mexico City is just a pretty nice place with a lot of interesting stuff to do and nice people, who, in more than a few cases, speak a bit of Spanish. Sort of anticlimactic when you have mentally prepared yourself to have to fight your way through an airport terminal full of rapists just to get to your checked luggage. Oh well, maybe Guatemala will live up to the hype.

Tomorrow we´re going to the bootleg market to see if we can find a chinchilla bulletproof vest. We were told you can get anything there. I have my doubts. And in case you´re wondering, I mean a bulletproof vest with a chinchilla fur covering. Although, now that I think about it, I´d be more impressed if we found a bulletproof vest manufactured to the specifications and needs of a chinchilla.

New Paintings

Here are a few new ones. Lately I've been working with a limited palette (it appeals to my limited brain capacity) and focusing a bit more on developing interesting substrate. These paintings were finished relatively quickly, which was a nice departure from the 100-years-to-finish Flemish projects that I've been working on. Some of those are actually coming to a close as well. Hopefully I'll be able to put the finishing touches on a couple before the end of September. But if you're making odds, they should be astronomically high against me finishing. In other news, my dogs need their nails (beast talons) clipped. Any volunteers?

Debating How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/23water.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig

Is it really necessary to have a debate about this? The answer, unless I'm missing something, should be a resounding "none." If it wasn't in the water when we stepped out of the primordial ooze and onto land, it probably doesn't belong in there now. Unless of course they find that it prevents hair loss or has some auspicious effect on a penile erection... then I want to go on record as saying they should supplement our Doritos with atrazine.