Someone pissed me off today. If you are a CancunCare message board regular then you know what’s coming. I posted some criticism of Mexico’s restrictive immigration policies, and another poster basically said “if you don’t like Mexico then you are free to leave”.

My retort was that if Mexico is so great (and I think it IS great) then it’s worth fixing. And it’s worth having an open debate about how to fix it. I believe that this guy was just taking the easy way out, instead of getting into a debate about what might need to change in Mexico he just tells critics to get lost.

My father was paid to be critical. He made his career kvetching and bitching and deconstructing. He was a widely published critic of music (and of everything else). Can I help it if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? I’m going to cop out myself and tell you that it’s in my genes and I can’t help it.

Mexico is a beautiful country with enormous natural beauty, deep cultural roots, huge diversity and a strong sense of identity. It’s also a place where government officials rob the public coffers to the point where they can’t even keep the roads free of potholes. And every time someone tries to protect a place of natural beauty it seems to be sold off to the developer with the deepest pockets. Mexico is a place where people expect little from their public officials and are rewarded with less than they expect. It’s a corrupt country where I’ve learned more than I ever wished to know about organized crime. And where I’ve learned to ignore executions because they are so common! Now that’s a sickening thing to say.

But Mexico is also a place with tremendous potential. And it won’t meet that potential if there is not discussion and debate, if there is not argument and insightful, creative thought about it’s future path.

Scattered thoughts are all you will get from me right now. So sorry. Better luck next time.

+ I read with absolute trepidation Canuck in Cancun’s 5 things post. And sure enough she tagged me, so now I need to come up with no less than 20 bits of wisdom to impart to my kid (poor kid). That will take a few days, so be patient. I swear she owes me a double latte for this.

+ I spent much of last week in the presence of a pathological liar with schizophrenic tendencies and signs of an ongoing psychotic break. Something about that experience destroyed my ability to put up with other people’s bullshit. I’ve been on serious bullshit-avoidance since Saturday afternoon, so watch out if you are a bullshitter.

+ I’m having waking dreams about moving back to Colorado. I find myself walking the dog past piles of basura (garbage) and baches (potholes) and daydreaming of the miles and miles of dog-friendly open space trails in Boulder County. When dog-face and I run in the morning we always run through one small park with grass, and while we are crossing that 20 meters of grass it I have life-long daydreams about romping in hectare-wide meadows with my dog. I’m so sick of the lack of parks and green space here in Cancun.

+ My kid, apparently, according to the ex (but on the hush, so don’t squeal), has an almost maybe boyfriend. She told me about him already, but she described him as “a buddy” and “moodier” than she is. Can you say “parental turmoil”? Can you say “sex education”? Can you say get that damn HPV vaccine? Christ, to be 13 again. Maybe one of my points of wisdom to her will be “don’t date people who are moodier than you are”.

+ Life is emptier without that dead cat. You’d think with 10 cats that we wouldn’t miss one. But I’ve been living and breathing the cat-ness in this house since he left us. His mama misses him, his brother does too. His sister is unreadable. The other cats are irritable. And Ariel (one of my two 17 year old sister cats) is telling me that she’s next. Mortality is not for sissies! God damn.

+ My husband is on vacation again, the second two-week vacation in 6 weeks. Don’t ya love governement jobs, they have such sensible policies. It’s great for him, all that time off, but for me it’s hard to get anything done with Mr. Boredom in the house.

+ Yesterday I got some shit from someone who thinks it’s wrong that the people from the U.S.A. call themselves AMERICAN. His problem, obviously, is that the Americas run from northern Canada to the southern tip of Chile. But he’s young and moody (like some other people we know). And I told him that he couldn’t hold Americans to blame for the fact that our country has a really STUPID name! I mean Mexico is actually the United States of Mexico, and so everyone calls it Mexico (in English at least). What the fuck are you supposed to call people from the U.S.A.? United Statesians? I get the argument, but get over it. If you want to criticize the U.S. for it’s foreign policy or it’s war on “terrorism” or it’s poorly educated rednecks then be my guest. But it ain’t our fault that the country is named after the whole continent! The people to blame for that are dead, like my cat!

One of my readers sent me a link to a lovely video. It’s titled “A Day in Santa Teresa, Mexico”. I especially love the music in this video. And I’m struck by how the video seems to depict a typical day in Mexico, and yet my own typical day in Mexico looks nothing like this.

View A Day in Santa Teresa, Mexico. I hope you enjoy it.

We are down to 9 cats now. We had one die last night. The poor guy had a tumor on his sternum which was inoperable.

We’d noticed that he’d recently gained a little weight, but we thought it was because about 4 months ago we stopped ever letting him out. So he wasn’t getting as much exercise as he had previously. But it turned out that he had a tumor which was growing pretty fast. And, in the end the tumor prevented him from being able to eat or breathe easily. Poor guy. I think he suffered during the last week or so of his life.

He was about 4 years old when he died. We took him (and his mama and 2 of his brethren) off the street when he was about 5 months old. I’m grateful that he did not die from something avoidable, like being flattened by a car or from a preventable disease.

I’m sad to see him go. But I’m especially sad for his mama, because she adored him. The two of them would each wrap his or her tail around the other’s so their tails were twisted up together. And then they would rub their faces together while their tails were entwined. It was pretty damn sweet. I’ll really miss seeing them do that.

When I came to Cancun I couldn’t believe how little there was to do here. There’s partying. But I was a wild teenager and once tried to live on LSD for a whole month. I have lots of great stories from those days (though I can’t remember any of them). I don’t need to party anymore. Well, not too often.

And there are boating and water sports here. But I don’t swim well, I don’t want skin cancer, I don’t own a boat and so that’s that. As far as I’m concerned the beach is for when guests are in town.

Then we’ve got Maya ruins, but I’ve been to Chichen Itza 6 times, Coba 3 times, Ek Balam 3 times and Tulum 5 times. And besides none of those ruins is IN Cancun, all require travel.

Cancun is really boring. So I work, and I meet friends at Starbucks, and I see the crappy movies that they show in the theaters here (the best ones never seem to come here). And sometimes we go out to eat and then complain about how bad most of the restaurants are here.

Two years ago, to stave off total boredom and to bring a bit of culture to our lives, a friend and I started an English book club here. In our first month we were forced to read a truly abominable book just because it was the only one we could get multiple copies of here at the time. It was a book that had been an Oprah’s Book Club pick, but not even Oprah could save it, it was terrible and everyone hated it.

Since then we’ve progressed. We’ve developed a system so that we choose books far enough in advance that we can find someone to bring them from the U.S. for us. And we’ve learned a little about picking books. Sometimes we blow it and end up reading something mediocre, but usually we pick a book that has real merit. The group seems to unconsciously gravitate towards historical fiction, and we don’t read too many classics or too many non-fiction books.

We hold meetings once a month. And the meetings usually involve too many bottles of red wine and lovely hors d’oeuvre. But we always enjoy our book discussions, they lift us out of our own lives an into the world the author created. For a little while the group transcends Cancun and it’s lack of culture. And we are reminded that we have brains.

Of course I would have more brains if I hadn’t tried to cook them when I was a teenager.

I think it’s a bad thing that I finally learned to touch type. I’m so much more likely than I used to be to pick on people on message boards or to write long email tirades to people who give me the impression that they are idiots. I may well be an idiot myself. But if you give me the impression that you are an idiot, well, I may just let my fingers tell you what I really think of you.

I wish that drivers in Cancun were forced to post valid email addresses on the back of their cars. You know, like those “How’s My Driving” bumper-stickers with phone numbers on them? How’s My Driving – Bitch me out at imacrappydriver@idiocy.com.

People here can’t park, nor can they get out of a parking spot once they’ve gotten into it. I especially hate those ninnies who timidly back their monstrous SUVs out of a spot but have not a clue how long their car is. So they back up until there’s only 8 feet between their car and the one behind them, and then pull forward, and then repeat until I’m completely falling asleep waiting for them to get out of the damn spot. If you are going to drive something that big you’ve gotta learn how long it is. Christ.

Actually it’s good that those morons don’t provide me with their email addresses, if they did I would spend hours each evening typing furious emails informing them that no matter how big a moron I am they are certainly more worthy of the title.

It’s been a very social week for me, and there’s no sign of it slowing. I’ve had the good fortune to see or talk on the phone with nearly all of my favorite people this week. So I’m happy. And I have an impending in-law invasion, so there will be more socializing coming up. I just hope someone else feels like doing the cooking.

I’ve also gotten a lot of work done this week, for once. I’m almost done with the new version of the Henry Steele Commager web site. He was a famous historian and the husband of one of those favorite people I spent time with this week. I will be very proud when that site is released.

My super secret project is going well. I’m getting interest from the right kind of people. So something may come of that eventually.

Oh and my husband and I had the honor of being label/bottle judges for a tequila competition this week. The judges had to choose Best Bottle, Best Label, Most Artistic, etc. If you’ve ever bothered to look for tequila in a liquor store you know that there are many interesting labels and bottles out there.

It was fascinating for me because, as a trained graphic designer, I actually studied packaging design at one point in my education. So I took my role as judge very seriously. My husband, on the other hand, decided he needed to try the tequilas first, before judging the labels, I think he had an easier time making his decisions than I did.

My husband, who wishes he were Bart Simpson, says I should be forced to write over and over that:

Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes.

But someone should tell the dog this! Every time I eat grapes he follows me around until I give him one. Then he chews on the grape and ends up leaving mushy chewed up grape pulp on the floor somewhere.

At least it’s more pleasant to clean up than cat vomit.

One of the blogs I read belongs to a fellow alumnus of Simon’s Rock Early College. On his Profile page Ben lists his occupation as Superhero but in addition to that he’s a mathematician who works mainly in the field of artificial intelligence.

Ben’s most recent post discusses something that I’ve always felt to be intuitively true which is that there may be something to all this paranormal stuff. The post is here: The Scientific Evidence for Psi (is most likely stronger than you think).

If you want to know more about Ben you can Google for “ben goertzel”, and you can find vids of his talks if you go for “ben goertzel youtube”. He’s a very well-indexed man.