February 22, 2005

at least I don´t faint at the sight of meat...

Had a really horrible panic attack yesterday, just as Mary and I got to the postgrad history program office. Are they panic attacks? maybe anxiety attacks? I don´t know. I´ve never wanted to know, because it seems like if you lable something like that its sort of like claiming it as a nuerosis...and once you have a nuerosis its easier to just sort of accept the nuerosis....and then the nuerosis becomes an excuse. God knows I need one, but still....Anyway, I just sort of stood there blankly, feeling like a complete idiot, while Mary did the talking. All traces of Spanish seemed to have vanished from my mind...Though amusingly enough, it was probably the one time when 'Donde esta la biblioteca?´wouldn´t have been that far off the mark....Anyway, after beating a hasty retreat, I decided that the sure cure to my feeling of extreme naseau was to chug about a quart and half of something remarkably like strawberry flavored nestle quick and spend about 45 minutes on a crowded subway. Perhaps not suprisingly, this didn´t help much.

But as usual when we returned to the gracious avenues of La Condesa, greasy food and gossip had a restorative effect, and (once again with the help of Mary, who is a fucking Saint-albiet one with an appreciation of whitesnake, hot or not, and queso fundido ) I was able to formulate an intelligent list of questions I needed to ask for today´s return attack.

I would like to say that I very much enjoyed my second to the last night in Mexico because I was out at the balet folkorico or basking in the edifying glow of colonail art or something, but really I very much enjoyed it because I was sitting on a couch watching telenovelas and getting the entire backstory from Mary´s roommate Claudia. The backstory of the telenovela (soap opera)  is much more interesting that the backstory of my struggle to simultaneosuly overcome a mexican academic beaurocracy and my own Tony Sopranoesque problems....See there´s this rich ranchera girl named Julia...but then her dad loses part of his hacienda to Gabriel...who falls in love with Julia...but then the dad and gabriel start fighting...but then (at the behest of a witch doctor) Gabriel cheats on Julia with this other girl...and Julia finds him lying naked in the stable with a hangover...so Julia goes...But I digress....

October 05, 2004

Santa Anna's Leg (awesome band name!!!)

The book I am reading about Merriwether Lewis, 'Undaunted Courage' (the smarmy title should have clued me in) continues to exacerbate my irritation with Thomas Jefferson by calling him things like 'the greatest American that ever lived', and 'a noble mind', while shamelessly slandering my hero Aaron Burr. Okay so maybe Burr isn't exactly my hero, but to my mind he is the Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna of the US, and therefore deserves respect. If not for nobility then for acuumen, creativity, and character. Santa Anna was president of Mexico 11 times, constantly switched loyalties, and once declared himself emporer-a leap in status he attempted to cement by having giant costume jewels pasted onto his livery. Aaron Burr attempted to annex the southwest into his own private empire, married a former concubine for her money, and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Thomas Jefferson invented a plow. Oh yeah, and what was that thing called? the constitution? whatever...boring. I read history for the blood and the brimstone and the wonder...I read history to imagine a pack of lepers siezing Santa Anna's leg (which had recently been lost in battle) and dragging it through the streets of Mexico city, gathering an angry mob. (Santa Anna later reposessed the leg and had a shrine built for it in a cathedral). I'm starting to like Burr, by Gore Vidal, much more, as he paints pleasantly catty portraits of most of our founding fathers, with the exception of Burr, whom you can tell he rather liked. His portrait of Thomas Jefferson is particularly virulent. Though I would like to go on the record saying that my feelings on Jefferson and Burr were established long before picking up the book. I wouldn't want you to think I was just Gore Vidal's puppet or something.

September 23, 2004

this would be a violent dinner party

Top Twenty Political Figures I Find Most Interesting (in no particular order)

1. Leona Vicaria
2. Aaron Burr
3. Pancho Villa
4. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
5. Valentin Rasputin
6. Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra
7. Josef Stalin
8. Emiliano Zapata
9. Cleopatra
10. Akhenaten
11. Hitler
12. General Lee
13. Livia
14. Marcus Auralius
15. Francisco Madero
16. Malinche
17. Cabesa de Vaca (okay, maybe its just the name)
18. Trotsky
19. Alexander Hamilton
20. Fidel Castro