The not-ripping-it-up streak is raging on, which is really a contradiction. Black Panties dropped today, which I know because R. Kelly s/texted me. Just bought it off iTunes. Don't have high hopes but we'll see.
I went to maker's mart at bows on Sunday. I think there's something similar at Delta Workshop on Saturday. These fairs really are a good place to pick up gifts. I am going on Saturday to get more bottled kombucha, since Zeal Kombucha ran out of their bottles at maker's mart. This shit is good! I was so impressed. I wish I had more people to gift it to but I have at least one person in mind. Nutty flavors that work: maybe some astringent green tea, maybe some woodruff, maybe some Persian dried lemons, all kinda stuff.
The maker's mart was a cute contrast to the hell that is Christmas shopping in our retail-worshipping country. I looked all over the mall and natomas (I was out there to see a movie any way, see below) for a simple item that I thought would be everywhere, a quality version of this basic classic item (can't spoil the surprise) instead I was confronted by acre upon acre of ugly stupid garbage. In some of the stores if someone blindfolded you and walked you in there you would be hard pressed to distinguish it from a Goodwill. It was really depressing. And I went home empty handed. The shopping megaliths (is that a thing) in Natomas are so insane that I kept getting lost driving around looking for a specific store.
I was out there watching Narcocultura, thanks to DB's endorsement. It's a top-ten documentary on my list, but not for the faint of heart. The two things are the Mexican drug carnage, told through the eyes of a forensic cop in Juarez, and the rise of the Narcocorridos , which ya know, really, if you haven't heard of this stuff it's pretty involved to explain. Wow the new York times harshed on it with a dismissive "this stuff has been covered elsewhere". I think this exemplifies the callous attitude towards the distressing carnage going on with the country that is most intertwined with ours. I feel like it's not getting through to anyone here in power so so what if it's being repeated and anyway I don't know what they're talking about.
I could go on and on. I'm really distressed and I wish there was something I can do. A couple of years ago Juarez had about 3500 murders in a city of 1.5 million and right across the river El Paso had 6. That is fucked. Looks like things are improving a bit. As far as I know Pena Nieto has tried to step back from waging war, and the return to the PRI party was supposed to get things back to corruption as usual rather than the all-out war between cartels. I know I've talked about this on here in the past. Maybe someone reading has more up to date info than me. My mom seems to never want to tell me if anything bad is going on in Mazatlan, except for the one time maybe four years ago when she told me not to visit for a while. One of the big three cartels is from Culiacan, which is 70 miles from Mazatlan, and for a while I think the violence moved south and then left again.
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3 comments:
I read El Narco this last summer. Pretty brutal. Also being ignored for awhile now - Syria. Now that the west's obsession over chemical warfare has passed/been punted, it's like the actual civil war isn't even happening.
Jed
I've been wanting to see that documentary, even if it's going to be pretty hard to sit through.
RE: Juarez, have you heard the story on This American Life by the woman who's living there and commuting to work because her husband was deported? She did a segment for them and her website is The Real Housewife of Ciudad Juarez, which in part talks about living there (besides deportation and immigration law). Other sources I tend to follow: Radio Ambulante (which is run by Daniel Alarcón), InSight Crime, and Global Exchange.
As for Syria, the depressing through has occured to me that we're not going to hear anything more about the carnage unless there's something like what happened in Benghazi happens there.
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