America: Our Hot, Horny Girls Are Waiting to Talk to You LIVE!

We were striding through the streets of midtown Manhattan a few days ago, when we came across this bumper sticker on the back of a vintage Detroit gas-guzzler:

Our first thought, of course, was, gosh, what an arrogant, combative dickhead, driving around New York picking fights with imaginary adversaries for whom the mere sight of an American flag bumper sticker would be offensive -  a cohort of New Yorkers we'd number at approximately zero (or, if there happens to be an active al Qaeda cell in town, maybe as high as six). Either way, douchey in the extreme.

But we were nevertheless intrigued by the 800 number, since we did in fact LEAVE-THE-USA on at least one occasion, and wished at the time that there had been a toll-free number we could have called for advice. So we pulled out our cellphone and dialed 1-800-53283-84(etc), and were connected to a recording informing us that "the best live talk is at 1-800-353-3300!" "Best live talk" seems a weird way of phrasing "to speak to an operator," but we've spent enough time dealing with Bangalori call centers that it's not, frankly, the worst attempt at conversational English we've ever heard.

So we hung up and dialed 1-800-353-3300, and found ourselves in Menu Option Hell:

"Hey there, sexy guy, are you ready to talk one-on-one with hot, horny girls? Lie back, and starting talking to local students, housewives and working girls...Press 1 now for live, nasty girls who'll do anything you want for just $2.99!

"Now it's time to stick...it...in! Enter your credit or debit card number..."

As far as practical advice for relocating outside the US goes, this was pretty thin gruel, but we still hung up feeling better about our beautiful homeland. Think you can stick it in to a live, nasty Canadian girl for just $2.99 a minute? Or chat up a horny working girl in Iran? No, friends, as our gas-guzzling patriot with the twin bumper stickers pairing the fallen heroes of 9/11 with a sleazy offer of masturbatory phone sex reminds us, the USA is the greatest country on Earth, and you'd have to be crazy to even think about leaving it. Having to lay eyes on the Stars and Stripes from time to time is really a small price to pay, when you think about it.

Great Moments in Unintentional Prognostication

The headline on this El Universal article is Relatives of Beaten Illegal Immigrant Will Go to the US , but Google Translation renders it a little differently:

Given the savage beatdown meted out to the aforesaid illegal immigrant, we think Google may be on to something. See here for the backstory.

Memorial Day is a good time to remember those who died trying to provide a better life for the ones they left behind.

Update: And to that list of the dead we can now add the aforesaid illegal immigrant.

Sábado Gigante

* Hey, we're not saying Mexicans are lazy or anything, but re-titling "Diff'rent Strokes" as "White & Black" shows about as much effort as re-naming Laurel & Hardy "The Fat Guy and the Thin Guy."

* Learn Spanish with Frank Zappa!

* This is a stroke of genius, regardless of whether it was sincerely racist or just ironic.

* Tequila: Apparently not invented in Tequila.

* Corn: Invented from scratch by Mexican cavemen, who genetically engineered it over centuries. Nine thousand years later, we still can't get a guy we already paid to actually come and paint the house.

* Fuck you, I'm gonna do what you tell me.

* Mexican Red Cross finds an excellent way to remind people to give blood.

* We knew Obama's Cinco de Mayo shout-out to the Puerto Ricans in his administration would end badly.

* It's Memorial Day weekend, so remember to give thanks for those who died defending the nation from foreign aggressors.

¡Qué Barbary!

In case your list of Horrifying Mexican Threats to American Safety and Security is in need of updating:

Armed Mexican Pirates Terrorize Texas Lake: U.S. Boaters at Popular Falcon Lake Fear for Their Lives

Mexican drug cartel pirates have made their debut on Falcon Lake in Zapata County, Texas.

Texans have reported seeing armed boatmen on the lake, which hosts some of the largest bass fishing tournaments in the U.S. and shares a border with the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Not unlike the infamous Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, pirates on this lake have reportedly wielded high-powered rifles and automatic weapons.

After several incidents in the past month, including armed robbery and attempted armed robbery, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Zapata County Sheriff's Department are urging all boaters to stay out of Mexican waters. (The international border is in the middle of the lake.)

"It's piracy," said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez. "It may not be on the high seas, but they are taking advantage of people on this lake by threatening and robbing them."

The upside, of course, is that televised bass fishing just got way more exciting.

Bad Girls

We're starting to think that Latin American beauty pageants need to start offering significantly larger cash prizes if they want to avoid stories like this:

A Colombian beauty queen has been arrested in Argentina on charges of leading a drug trafficking ring.

Angie Sanclemente Valencia, 31, is accused of persuading young women to smuggle cocaine from Argentina to Europe via Mexico.

Ms Sanclemente won the popular title of Coffee Queen in 2000, but had to return it when it was discovered she was married, in breach of the beauty pageant's rules.

Prosecutors say she recruited other young models to travel, often as first class passengers, from Argentina to the Mexican city of Cancun and on to Europe carrying cocaine.

The Argentine press, who have dubbed her "Narco Queen", say she moved to Mexico in 2005 where she became romantically involved with a well-known drug trafficker known as The Monster.

An arrest warrant was issued for her after a 21-year-old model was found carrying 55kg of cocaine boarding a flight to Cancun, Mexico.

For those not fluent in the metric system, 55kg is about 120 pounds of cocaine. In carry-on luggage. Carried by a 21-year-old woman who, by definition, attracts attention with her looks. And yet, having passed through a number of Mexican airports, we can see why that probably seemed like a pretty good plan at the time.

If The Coffee Queen winds up sharing a cell with the 2008 Miss Mexico First Runner-up, we'll have ourselves a blockbuster reality show.

His-Panic!

The leftist, illegal-immigrant-loving hippies at the Federal Bureau of Investigations have released some numbers, picked up and reported by their allies at that bastion of liberal propaganda, The Wall Street Journal, showing that the Failed State of Arizona has been successful at at least one thing: reducing crime.

In Phoenix, police spokesman Trent Crump said, "Despite all the hype, in every single reportable crime category, we're significantly down." Mr. Crump said Phoenix's most recent data for 2010 indicated still lower crime. For the first quarter of 2010, violent crime was down 17% overall in the city, while homicides were down 38% and robberies 27%, compared with the same period in 2009.

Arizona's major cities all registered declines. A perceived rise in crime is one reason often cited by proponents of a new law intended to crack down on illegal immigration. The number of kidnappings reported in Phoenix, which hit 368 in 2008, was also down, though police officials didn't have exact figures.

The reason is obvious: SB 1070 is showing results before it even goes into effect!!!!! (Oh, wait...never mind.)

(We'd love to take full credit for the clever title, but it belongs to another quasi-socialist outlet, The American Conservative, from an article most definitely worth reading in full - mostly because it's a bit too long and dense to summarize easily. But basically, hispanics do commit crimes at a higher rate than whites, but when you consider that young people commit more crimes than old people, and hispanics are on average, younger than whites, race suddenly seems less significant. Add to that the fact that simply being an illegal immigrant is itself a crime, and the "hispanic crime wave" starts to look like a figment of Lou Dobbs's imagination. Which it is.)

Lost

A quick follow up to something we mentioned a few weeks back:

A Mexican lawmaker is demanding that government authorities pay more attention to a case of 31 missing migrants. Juan Fernando Rocha Mier, a state legislator for the National Action Party (PAN) in the central state of Queretaro, said the same “emphasis” should be placed on locating the disappeared migrants as on safely returning former presidential candidate and millionaire lawyer Diego Fernandez de Cevallos.

Presumably kidnapped near his Queretaro ranch earlier this month, the disappearance of Fernandez de Cevallos, a historic leader of the center-right PAN, touched off the latest political crisis in Mexico.

Receiving far less attention, a crisis has enveloped families in the indigenous Sierra Gorda region of Queretaro since last March, when 17 local men joined 14 fellow migrants from the states of San Luis Potosi and Hidalgo on an apparently ill-fated journey to the United States. None of the men has been heard of since they left in a bus connected to immigrant smugglers known as coyotes.

31 Mexican citizens, many of them literally Jefe Diego's neighbors, vanish off the face of the Earth, and no one appears to be bothering to look for them.  Seriously.  

Thirty-one.

FSoAZ Sheriff to Media: "Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!! Boooo hoo hoo hoo..."

An anonymous commenter (and we should here note that, as of July 30, all anonymous commenters suspected of being illegal immigrants will have their IP addresses turned over to the Arizona Dept. of Public Safety) linked us to this comedic goldmine from the Failed State of Arizona:

A new advertising campaign for the Mexican state of Sonora, home to popular vacation spot Rocky Point, has become the latest flashpoint in the debate over Arizona's new immigration law.

The half-page ads by the Sonora Tourism Commission, which debuted on Friday in The Arizona Republic, feature a close-up of a military-looking man peering through binoculars. The headline: "In Sonora we are looking for people from Arizona."

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio raised concerns about the ad immediately, urging his followers on Twitter to call the tourism commission's toll-free number to "demand to know" the meaning of the ad. The request was picked up by blogs and other media outlets.

Read the rest of the article for the fuller explanation, but basically, part II of this menacing and threatening ad reads, "...who want to have a great time!" Seems harmless enough to us, but Sheriff Joe, who longs to be played by Strother Martin on the big screen, is calling for a boycott anyway.

"Any ad threatening or frightening Arizonans who are considering vacationing in Sonora is in very poor taste," Arpaio says. "Until that country's government apologizes, I sincerely hope Arizonans look elsewhere for a quick vacation spot."

Yes, imagine how horrible it must be to feel under threat by an official government agency. Incidentally, this is the same Sheriff Arpaio who showed up on Univision wearing a firearm-shaped tie clip.

(That's also him on the left. Most FSoAZ voters are unaware that Sheriff Joe is a pre-op transsexual.)

One thing to keep in mind about the boycott of the Failed State of Arizona is that these things tend to have economic benefits for the neighbors of the state being boycotted - which, in FSoAZ's case would be New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California and...Sonora, Mexico. It's probably a total coincidence, but since the Show Us Your Papers law was passed, retails sales in the Sonoran city of Hermosillo are up 30 percent. Of course there are still some bargains that can only be had in AZ, but maybe that's part of the reason Sheriff Joe is so afraid to go to Sonora.

This Singing Frog is Brought to You By The Letters W-T-F, and the Number SB-1070

This video is actually produced and paid for by FSoAZ governess Jan Brewer. In other words, it's not a parody.



Since it means so much to her, you can read the law here [pdf]. We're planning to have the governess co-sign our re-financed mortgage agreement, since she'll obviously sign any old piece of paper you put in front of her.

Law & Order

Go read this and this, and then ask yourself why Mexico even bothers with law enforcement.

(They're better than Haiti, of course, but that's not saying much...)

It's All Connected

Our audio/visual division was having a meeting recently to discuss the script for their upcoming documentary on Thomas Jefferson, and the idea came up to start with the great man's final words - "Is it the Fourth...?" - a reference to the 4th of July, 1826. "It's kind of his 'Rosebud,'" one of the interns said, prompting everyone in the meeting to throw things at him.

Jefferson's final words were whispered to his granddaughter's husband, Nicholas Trist, who found himself in Querétaro 22 years later as the chief American negotiator at the end of the Mexican-American War. US troops had taken Mexico City, forcing the government to relocate to Querétaro. Faced with Mexico's reluctance to sign a treaty giving half their territory to Uncle Sam, Trist inspected his fingernails and muttered something about Querétaro being a real nice city, and what a shame it would be if anything were to happen to it - and then asked how long they thought would take for the US Army to march north from Mexico City. The rest, as they say, is history. This took place in the building across Plaza Constitución from Harry's, which is the site of our regular Sunday evening editorial meeting.

Speaking of Rosebud, it's worth noting that our executive editor began his television career at the same age as Orson Welles when he made Citizen Kane, which means he is now the same age as Welles when he made Touch of Evil, a movie about a gringo who uses sleazy and coercive tactics against a Mexican.

Admit it - we just blew your mind.

Sábado Gigante

* Hñähñu, spoken by 51% of the Otomi, or about a quarter million people, is the fifth-largest indigenous language in Mexico, and therefore...in danger of extinction? (Fun fact: "Burro Hall" is Nöndo Njuxu.)

* Oh, that's gonna leave a mark. (Really, don't click this one.) At least we now know what it takes to get bullfighting on the front page of American newspapers.

* "One supporter wrote, 'I think it is about time we take our state and country back from the Mexicans.'" Man, Arizonans are dumb.

* Speaking of which, why can't the states we stole from Mexico all just get along?

* If you're looking for a right-wing politician having a worse week than Rand Paul, may we suggest Jefe Diego? We of course are praying for his safe and speedy return, etc, but for the record, he really seems to be something of a douche.

* Interesting food history blog.

* La Corregidora has her own Facebook page, despite having been dead for 181 years.

* We were unaware that Spain was still holding war trophies from 200 years ago.

* Pun of the Week, right here.

No Fighting in the W.A.R. Room

This is probably deeper into the weeds of anti-immigrant lunacy than most readers will care to go, but there's a fascinating pissing match going on between some of the key lunatics over a pair of competing pro-police-state rallies being held in the Failed State of Arizona on June 5th and 12th. We can't even really follow it ourselves, but apparently everyone was holding hands and singing Kumbayah as they prepared for the rally in Phoenix on June 5, but then one of the organizers (with the very non-immigrant-sounding name of Dan Smeriglio) turned out to be a neo-Nazi, or at least neo-Nazi-curious, which caused the anti-immigrant group ALIPAC - who, it should be noted, are so anti-immigrant, they renounced Lou Dobbs for being a softie - to announce they were pulling out and throwing their support behind the June 12, Nazi-free rally, which prompted Tom Tancredo (R-Columbine Massacre) to urge everyone involved in the June 12 rally to come to the June 5 rally instead, which then set ALIPAC on the warpath against Tancredo, which then...

Aw, who gives a shit. Just enjoy the show.

If a Mexican Lectures Congress and There's Nobody There to Hear It, Does He Make a Good Point?

In yesterday's speech to the US Congress, Presidente Calderon kinda sorta hinted that the Failed State of Arizona's "Show Us Your Papers" law was a terrible idea that would lead to using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement. It's "a terrible idea," he said, "using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement." The Party of Crazy was not amused:

Conservatives are not happy, as he was seen as "lecturing" and "pandering," it was "inappropriate," "a lot of nerve and whining," his argument is "a lie," Mexico "holds American sovereignty in contempt" and those who applauded him in Congress are communists. Being lectured, and by a Mexican no less, does not go down well in all quarters.

Unreasonable can disagree, we suppose. But thanks to this excellent catch by the Mexfiles, it seems many of these representatives are whining about a speech they couldn't be bothered to listen to:

Of the 89 people sitting on the Republican members’ side of the aisle, pretending to listen attentively to President Calderón’s speech to the United States House of Representatives, only 29 were actually House Members. The other 60 were mostly teen-aged pages, along with a few staffers rounded up to make it look as if the party of business is actually interested in the United States’ relations with its third largest trading partner and foreign oil supplier, and second largest export market.

Playing Got

This can only end badly:

Scientists in Spain said Wednesday that they had cloned a fighting bull for the first time. Vicente Torrent, a specialist in veterinary genetics, said the newborn calf, named Got, is an exact replica of a muscular, horned specimen of the type that matadors face in bullrings. The animal, which was born on Tuesday, already weighs 53 pounds. Mr. Torrent says his team hoped that Got would exhibit the same fierce traits that made his genetic predecessor, a bull named Vasito, a valuable specimen.

For the sake of mankind,we hope they're also trying to clone José Tomás. Fortunately, he's given them a lot of blood samples to work with.

For Those About to Rock, Les Saludamos

One of the things we like about our occasional sojourns out of Mexico is that it allows us a break from All Things Mexican. Felipe Calderon apparently does not feel the same way, so last night's White House state dinner in his honor featured Mexican food, Mexican music, and another chance to rub shoulders with his Mexican patron, Carlos Slim, and his Mexican-American mistress, Eva Longoria Parker (awk-ward!). But we were kinda thrilled to see that entertainment for the evening was none other than Mexico's Rodrigo y Gabriela (along with someone called Beyoncé, who turns out not to be Mexican). RyG, you may recall, had to cancel a US tour just three years ago after the Justice Department discovered they shared a common heritage with a number of incarcerated individuals. And last night, they played for two presidents at the White House.



Let the Reconquista begin!

Will Promote a Dignified Life and Orderly Way For Food

Coming soon to a day-labor pickup spot outside the Home Depot in Scottsdale, Arizona...Felipe Calderón's soon-to-be-former translator.

A halting and grammatically incoherent English translation marred Mexican President Felipe Calderon's arrival ceremony at the White House Wednesday, rendering his remarks difficult to understand at times. The Mexican delegation blamed its own translator.

For example, here's how Calderon's comments on the tough new immigration law in Arizona were rendered by his translator during the opening ceremony:

"We can do so with a community that will promote a dignified life and an orderly way for both our countries, who are, some of them, still living here in the shadows with such laws as the Arizona law that is placing our people to face discrimination."

An official with the Mexican delegation said the translator came with the Mexican delegation but apparently was not someone who regularly translates for Calderon.

Ironically, Calderón's own English is excellent. Anyway, we're just thrilled whenever anyone does a worse job translating than we do, so we thought we'd take this chance to rub it in.

Queen of All Asses

A couple of weeks ago we promised you a follow-up report on the Feria Nacional del Burro's "Burro Queen 2010," but for reasons we assume to be related to national security, her actual identity is a closely guarded secret. But our photo editor has managed to track down this image of Queen What's-her-name, flanked by her personal bodyguards, taken by Flickr user "fotoaure":

This dress is so awesome, it makes us regret not having daughters. But obviously, the most exciting part of this picture is the lower right corner, where we find the unmistakable visage of a certain gringo in Mexico who goes by the nombre de pluma "Gringo In Mexico."

Something tells us there's a badly-enunciated report on el feria del burro coming soon. Kay Emoshy-o-nanty!

Listen Up

The New York Times reviews three books about noise today. We realize these will probably never go on sale in Mexico, because Mexicans do not, as far as we can tell, even have a word for "noise," but we wanted to bring them to your attention anyway:

We equate loud noise with violence. Without loudspeakers, Hitler observed, the Nazis never would have conquered Germany...

There’s no doubt how harmful this clatter is. Repeated studies show it leads not just to hearing loss but also to heart disease, high blood pressure, low birth weight and reduced life span. We crossed the line, many miles back, that divides having a blast from simply being blasted.

One thing that turns sound into its dark twin, noise, is a sense of imposed helplessness. “A sound that interrupts our sleep,” Mr. Keizer observes, “can feel like an attack on our status as adults”...

Mr. Keizer thinks it is condescending cant to assume that the poor are fundamentally noisier than the rich. And among his most interesting ideas is his linking of noise with later antisocial behavior.

“I’d love to see an auditory profile for the childhoods of our most ‘hardened’ criminals, along with complementary data for the attorneys, psychiatrists and judges who prosecuted, diagnosed and sentenced them,” he writes. And he adds, “What does ‘hardened’ mean, after all, but a calcifying of some human faculty, and what hardens sooner than a child’s ears?”

The books under review can be purchased here here and here, and any interested Mexican who is unable to read English is welcome to bring their books to our offices during normal business hours and we will be happy to translate the salient parts for you. (Offer does not apply to the audiobook version, of course.)

Near-Triumph of the Will

In North-of-the-Border beauty pageant news, Miss Oklahoma, Morgan Elizabeth Woolard, showed the world that she doesn't just look Aryan, by offering a big thumbs up to both "states rights" and the Failed State of Arizona's new racial profiling law during the Miss USA question-and-answer segment.



Charmingly, she went on to become First Runner-Up, which means that if, for whatever reason, the current Miss USA, a 24-year-old Lebanese immigrant named Rima - are we pronouncing that correctly? Ryma? Reema? - Fakih, is unable to fulfill her responsibilities, Morgan Elizabeth Woolard will be crowned the new Miss USA. Did we mention that she strongly supports the right of states to stop foreign-looking people with funny names and incarcerate them if they cannot produce their papers? Funny, that.

(Incidentally, Miss Failed State of Arizona, Brittany Bell, seems like a bit of a crybaby. Eighty percent of the contestants don't make the final ten, Brit. It ain't all about politics.)

But If You Go Parodying Pictures of Chairman Mao, You Ain't Gonna Make It With Anyone Anyhow

We've just been informed by our Shanghai correspondent that Burro Hall is banned by the Communist dictatorship and cannot be accessed from the Red Chinese mainland. We assume that this doctored photograph is the reason...

...but realize it could also be this or this, or even just the repeated references to sex with donkeys. Whatever the reason, we would like it to be known that, from this day forwards, Burro Hall officially recognizes Taiwan, and will be appointing an ambassador before the start of the Year of the Rabbit.

While America Slept

The annoying but hyper-talented celebrity chef Rick Bayless is preparing Wednesday's White House state dinner in honor of Presidente Calderon. So right now, in the basement of the White House - the White House, where President James K. Polk rested his weary head at night! Where Woodrow Wilson demanded Pancho Villa dead or alive! - there's... there's... shit, we can't even bring ourselves to say it. Read on, and then tell us the North American Union is just a crazy conspiracy theory:

To compound the complexity, the guest chef cannot order ingredients himself. It must be done by the White House executive chef from sources that are kept secret for security reasons. (When any president eats away from the White House, a tester is in the kitchen to guard against poisoning.) Officials said no to Mr. Bayless’s request that he be allowed to make two or three long-simmering, complex sauces ahead of time and ship them frozen to the White House where they could be tested. So Mr. Bayless and crew will be coming to Washington two days earlier than planned to begin preparing a 28-ingredient Oaxacan black mole.

A 28-ingredient Oaxacan black mole. How's that hopey-changey thing workin' for ya?

Sábado Gigante

* We're going to to try to look on the bright side here and say that the kidnapping and likely murder of a former presidential candidate here will halt, at least temporarily, the steady stream of politicians declaring Querétaro to be perfectly safe and free of organized crime. It will be interesting to watch them strike a balance between mourning his death and pretending it never happened.

* Given Mexicans' equal love of both history and alcohol, someone needs to do a Mexican version of these videos. "Historias Borrachas"?

* One narco's wife captured and released by a rival cartel, another's captured and released by Felipe Calderon. One more, and it's officially a trend.

* Here's a get rich quick scheme, America: let in more illegals...

Study after study has shown that immigrants grow the economy, expanding demand for goods and services that the foreign-born workers and their families consume, and thereby creating jobs. There is even broad agreement among economists that while immigrants may push down wages for some, the overall effect is to increase average wages for American-born workers.

* Arizona elimates "ethnic studies." This sort of thing has been tried before. Of course, it's not about race. It's never about race.

* Hey, what's more American than Coca-Cola? (More here.)

* Boycotting Arizona became a lot harder when we learned that both Fender and Taser are headquartered there.

* Enough about Mexican immigrants...let's talk about Canadians.

* We suppose it's certainly possible that professional Mexican drivers are less insane on the road the the rest of their countrymen. Not so sure about the bridge-builders, however. We hope they're not hiring the same people who were digging up Queretaro's streets all last year.

The Empire Strikes Back

Today marks the 143rd anniversary of the end of the Siege of Querétaro and, not coincidentally, the end of the Second Mexican Empire. (Here's the New York Times coverage [pdf].) The famous Battle of Puebla five years earlier was just one rare victory on the road to Querétaro, but for some reason Cinco de Mayo is celebrated around the world, while the Siege of Querétaro isn't even a big deal in Querétaro. 2010 is officially "Everything About Mexican History is Fucking Awesome" year, and yet here's the monument marking the spot where Emperor Maximilian surrendered to General Mariano Escobedo on May 15, 1867:

Of course, there's still 67 years until the bicentennial, so there's plenty of time to gussy it up.

And the Horse She Rode In On

Guess who's not coming to dinner:

The city government of Querétaro declared Failed State of Arizona governor Jan Brewer and the state legislators persona non grata, prohibiting them from entering national territory.

The municipal government demonstrated its rejection of the anti-immigrant law SB 1070, which in their opinion "promotes racism and discrimination."

We don't pretend to fully understand the inner workings of government here, but we assume this does not actually have the force of law behind it. We're also slightly confused by the use of the phrase territorio nacional, which we take to mean all of Mexico. Clearly, a city government can't exclude a person from entering the country, but it does seem possible that they could actually ban Brewer & Co. from entering the city of Querétaro, and maybe that's the next step. If the Ayuntamiento needs a gringo co-sponsor to help provide political cover, you know where to find us.

Great Moments In Architectural Subversion

We were putting together some items for our annual "design" issue, and wound up over at Intersections, where we found Mexican architect Fernando Romero's design for a proposed bridge over the US-Mexican border.

At first we were kinda of saddened at the thought of a talented Mexican architect offering up a beautiful bridge to a country more interested in building fences to keep his people out. But then we noticed the striking resemblance to another bridge over troubled waters, one that commemorates a brutal defeat inflicted on the United States by an invading foreign force, culminating in the sinking of the U.S.S....wait for it.... Arizona.

Our property management division will be in touch with Sr. Romero about designing our new corporate headquarters sometime next week.

Tilting at Slurpees

The latest in our occasional series of photos of Don Quixote enjoying Querétaro's rich convenience-store bounty.

M-m-m-m-m....Mavericky!

Few things make the Failed State of Arizona more worthy of its name than the fact that its legal occupants have voted four times to send the deeply, deeply stupid John McCain to the United States Senate. But now those voters are on the verge of replacing him with a far stupider Arizonan (there are many to choose from), so the senator has decided to go all flip-floppy on the "danged" border fence, and hope that nobody notices.



The Burro Hall Editorial Board has never wavered in our support for constructing a solid, impermeable barrier between us and the Failed State of Arizona. With that in mind, we hereby endorse the latest iteration of Maverick 2.0 for United Senate.

Update: Apparently the real maverick in this video is creepy looking bald guy, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. Pinal County is 115 miles from the border, but since the sheriff of the actual county where the ad was shot has been harshly critical of SB 1070, Babeu stepped up and agreed to play cop in a county where he is not, in fact, a cop, in support of a candidate who does not, in fact, believe any of the things he says in his own ad. Cynicism being a key ingredient in any failed state.

Boycott Lindsay Lohan, That Piece of Dirt!

Some readers have questioned our rather tepid embrace of the film "Machete," a position that we feel can be justified by the phrase "directed by Robert Rodríguez," and the fact that we've been burned by fantastic trailers before. (That Machete began its life as a trailer only increases our skepticism.)

But so we're now going to do an about-face and offer a full-throated endorsement purely on the basis of the freakout it's causing among the "America for White Americans" crowd. The backlash has led 20th Century Fox to pull the Machete trailer from YouTube (though our interns have cached a copy here). But that only made the crazies act crazier, insisting that Fox does "NOT WANT AMERICANS to see this video!!!"

Our favorite comment so far:

Please get the word out to not only boycott this film, but everyone in it: Robt DeNiro, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, that piece of dirt, Don Johnson and everyone else associated with it.

I support a TOTAL BOYCOTT OF HOLLYWOOD. They tend to be leftist, liberal scum who support illegals and I bet they have them caring for their childern, doing their landscaping, and cleaning their house(s). IT'S THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO MADE THEM WHO/WHAT THEY ARE TODAY AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN UNMAKE THEM. HIT THEM WHERE IT HURTS - THEIR WALLETS. Let them know that WE are not going to take it anymore. Gov. Brewer for President in 2012

Q: But if we boycott movie stars, how will movies ever get made?
A: Like this...

Grease

Among the many things that have been polluted by the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has been our Google News Alert for "Mexico," which is now devoted pretty much exclusively to the Louisiana shrimping industry. This sort of thing has happened before - as much as we liked him, no one was happier than us when New Mexico governor Bill Richardson dropped out of the 2008 presidential race. Anyway, this really neat web application helps us carry the metaphor all the way by showing what the slick would look like if had somehow bubbled up in the middle of Querétaro.

Anyone who thinks an oil spill like this couldn't happen here has obviously never seen enchiladas queretanas being prepared.

Day Without a Mexican

The local paper really couldn't have been any clearer:

CINCO DE MAYO PARADE Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., on Central Park West, from 106th to 96th Streets.

Knowing from experience that nothing involving Mexico starts or finishes even remotely on time, we confidently boarded the subway at 2:30 and headed uptown. This photo was taken at CPW and 97th St at 2:53pm.

Either this parade is starting really late, or people are a lot more worked up about this Arizona thing than even we understood.

Wandering over to Amsterdam Ave, we discovered a street fair in progress, where we could purchase authentic Mexican pashminas, Mexican Italian sausages, Mexican gyros, Mexican funnel cakes, Mexican I [Heart] NY t-shirts, and wandered around feeling authentic Mexican melancholy over the whole thing. Though our hearts did brighten a little when we saw this booth, since it takes just heroic levels of - ¿como se dice? - insouciance to set this baby up at a Cinco de Mayo event.

Fucketh Not With the Machete

The timing of this release is so perfect, we tend to think it's a trap by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to lure Mexicans into a locked auditorium - like one of those "You just won a free TV" stings the cops pull from time to time. Residents of the Failed State of Arizona may want to watch this one on pirata DVD. Presumably it's already available at the Mercado de la Cruz.

[Update: Fox has pulled the trailer from YouTube. Click here instead.]



We're not convinced this will actually be a good movie, but we're certain that "They Just Fucked with the Wrong Mexican" is t-shirt-worthy tag line. [Note to the interns: Bring your sewing machines to work tomorrow. And don't make any dinner plans.]

Speaking of Mexicans... in an effort to shatter the "lazy" stereotype, New York's Mexican community has finally gotten around to celebrating Cinco de Mayo just four days late. Coincidentally (or, not!) the parade ends right outside Burro Hall's Temporary New York Headquarters, which we suppose makes us sort of the Tepeyac of El Norte.

Update/Correction:NYC's 5dM Parade route has apparently been downsized from 110th-72nd to 106th-96th. That's right, the entire Cinco de Mayo Parade route is 800 meters. Lazy Mexicans....

Sábado Gigante

* Another example of Mexicans hatin' on Koreans. Not for nothing, but the airport code for Charlottesville, where we spent some time being abused by The Man recently, is "Cho." Coincidence? Perhaps.

* These beheadings are getting out of hand.

* Learn to swear in Mexican.

* Gringo de Mayo y Seis de Mayo.

* Querétaro's finest theater director, Leonard Foglia, has another triumph on his hands! "Fishtar" jokes will cease immediately. For those who can't make it to Dallas, there's a preview snippet here.

* The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) cancels its exchange program with the University of the Failed State of Arizona (UFSA). Arizona: it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

* No, really, Arizona can't do anything right.

* Obama extends Cinco de Mayo greetings to every Puerto Rican he can think of, including Janet Napolitano.

* America's most popular soccer team speaks Spanish. Meanwhile, contestants for Miss Queretaro will once again be expected to speak English.

Gangsta's Paradise

El Universal takes a look at the bloody and chaotic drug war and pretty much concludes what everybody already knows: that we have a failed state on our border - and that the violence and lawlessness there are spilling over into our sovereign homeland.

Or maybe we should say "their" instead of "our," since we're not actually Mexican.

Gun Shows: The Narcos' Paradise

The majority of weapons trafficked into Mexico come through the borders of Arizona and Texas; states such as Governor Jan Brewer's facilitate the smuggling trade by having the most permissive firearms laws in the United States

...Of the four states that share border with Mexican territory, Arizona has the most permissive laws on possession and carrying of weapons.

According to the analysis of state laws conducted by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Violence through the Use of Weapons, Arizona (581 km border) is the border state that best facilitates the smuggling of weapons into Mexico, because it allows sales without background checks of buyers and has no restrictions on the number of weapons that are available.

The Brady center publishes an annual report on state laws. In 2009, it gave Arizona a score of 2 out of 100 points.

The two points were awarded for preventing weapons from being carried in classrooms, but the state failed on criteria relating to the control of arms trafficking, verification and criminal background of buyers and sellers, lack of safety measures to prevent weapons from reaching minors, and for not having restrictions on the sale of military-style assault rifles and the carrying of weapons in public places.

The only state worse than Arizona, in the regulation of firearms, is Utah, which earned a score of zero.

Arizona, along with Nevada and Utah, makes up the "UZI Triangle," so-called because they have the largest number of manufacturers of assault weapons in the US, according to the Violence Policy Center.

We were pretty sure they were making up that "Uzi Triangle" thing, but it turns out to be true.

Anyway, as soon the God-fearing white people of the Failed State of Arizona finish neutralizing the menace posed by Latino lettuce-pickers and busboys, we're sure they'll turn their attention to the gun shows.

Jesús Saves

Hmmm...

Human hair and pet fur are turned into mats that help clean up Gulf oil spill

Matter of Trust has been collecting human hair and pet fur to help combat oil spills for about two years now. Thousands of salons across the country donate hair clippings that are swept up off their floors, according to the Matter of Trust Web site.

The perro to the rescue!

Good boy.

Your One-Click Fiesta Headquarters

Most Mexicans don't actually celebrate Cinco de Mayo. We're not sure why, since drinking Mexican beer, eating Mexican food and wearing sombreros are things Mexicans are generally pretty adept at. As a service to our amigos mexicanos, we present this instructional video - the appeal of which derives, ironically, from its near-total lack of irony.

Here Comes Los Suns

Happy Speedbump Day - or, as the few Mexicans who actually pay attention to it call it, Cinco de Mayo. Or, as it's known in the Failed State of Arizona: Cinco de Ammo!

5 April 2010 - Arizona declares that firearms manufactured within the state are no longer subject to federal control. No more forms to fill out, no more background checks, welcome to Firearms Freedom.

We call on Arizona Patriots to help us celebrate this historical event on 5 May 2010, by going out and purchasing five boxes of ammunition. We refer to this day of celebration as “Cinco de Ammo”.

Of course, we endorse this 100%, because we endorse any attempt to stimulate the Failed State of Arizona's moribund economy and make them less dependent on Federal tax dollars siphoned from the liberal, successful states in the northeast.

Another boost to the local economy would be an NBA championship. We can't believe we're saying this while the Celtics are still alive, but for our money, the Suns are showing themselves to be the classiest team in the league, despite being from Phoenix.

The Phoenix Suns will wear "Los Suns" on their jerseys in Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals on Wednesday night, owner Robert Sarver said, "to honor our Latino community and the diversity of our league, the state of Arizona, and our nation."

The decision to wear the jerseys on the Cinco de Mayo holiday stems from a law passed by the Arizona Legislature and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer that has drawn widespread criticism from Latino organizations and civil rights groups that say it could lead to racial profiling of Hispanics....

"It's going to be great to wear Los Suns," Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire said, "to let the Latin community know that we're behind them 100 percent."

Not for nothing, but if you're wagering, you'll be interested to know that Phoenix wore Los Suns twice during the regular season, and won both times.

Remember the Alamo, San Antonio.

Update: San Antonio might want to break out the Los Spurs jerseys for Game 3.

Racial Sensitvity Watch: Burro Parade Edition

Despite the attempts by National Burro Festival's board of governors to censor our coverage, we have obtained under the Freedom of Embarrassing Information Act this image, smuggled out in an unspecified body cavity at the end of the festival's Burro Parade. The theme of this "float," as it were, is "World Cup 2010." (For our gringo readers: the World Cup is some kind of quadrennial soccer game, which is being held this year in South Africa, a nation populated exclusively by zebras and animal-skin-clad Negro savages.)

We will of course concede that if it goes all the way down to the ankles, it's not technically blackface.

Previous examples of Mexican political incorrectness here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

For the greatest Zulu-centric scene in the history of cinema, click here.

Statehouse Rock

We were listening to the Failed State of Arizona's official state anthem today - titled, with all the creativity you'd expect from a state whose principal industry is erosion, "Arizona." We think this thing is in desperate need of a rewrite. Though we can probably salvage Where the golden sun is flaming/ Into warm, white shining day, lines like O, come and live beside us/ However far ye roam/ Come and help us build up temples/ And name those temples 'home,' are bound to be scratched out as soon as some wingnut legislator gets wind of them. (Not that those unassimilated wetbacks would ever learn enough English to figure out the lyrics, but you still don't want to run the risk of some civil libertarian do-gooder translating them and taking the state to court.)

We'd like to be the first to propose an alternative.



[Complete list of Arizona water parks here.]

Burro Haul

Visit Midwesterner in Mexico for all the National Burro Festival coverage you'll ever need!

Blood Brother

José Tomás has discovered an interesting way to become Mexican:

After seven days, the Spanish bullfighter, gored very badly a week ago, has been released from the hospital.

Jose Tomas thanked everyone for the care given to him, especially the medical team of Alfredo Ruiz Romero, Enrique Gonzalez Careaga, Juan Carlos Chavez, and also his family, and his manager Salvador Boix.

"I am aware that I am here due to the hand that applied pressure to the wound. Yesterday, Mexico, mixed my blood. There is Mexican blood running through my veins, I feel Mexican by adoption. One cannot feel more Mexican and more thankful. Thanks to the hundreds of townspeople who donated blood. From my experience and gratitude I am going to call out to everyone to donate blood. It is real important to save the life of a person.

"Thank you Mexico, Thank You Aguascalientes!"

Personally, we think we'll just continue to navigate the bureaucratic hell of our FM3 Non-Immigrant Resident Visa renewal, and to do so uncomplainingly.

Sábado Gigante

It's a gorgeous Spring day in Manhattan, so of course we're spending the bulk of it indoors listening to ourselves pretending to be interested in listening to people talk about Thomas Jefferson for 35 hours (long story, never mind). So if it's all the same to you, we're gonna let some of our far-lung correspondents handle the heavy lifting today.

* We couldn't make it to the National Burro Festival this year, but we've sent a representative.  (We are, however, planning a follow up report on the crowning of the Burro Queen 2010, as soon as the photo rights are negotiated.)

* If our names were Gutierrez, Lopez, Mercedes, Norberto, Rosales, Septimo, Valdez, Vazquez, Montero, Ojeda or Parra, we'd be very careful driving around the Failed State of Arizona this summer. Even if - no, especially if -  we were driving a late-model Porsche.

* You have to wonder how this could go unreported for so long.

* Excelsior suggests that if the Mexican government were able to get its shit together, it wouldn't really matter what the Failed State of Arizona did because there would be literally no reason for Mexicans to go there.

* Mexfiles does the math, and discovers that if legal immigration to Mexico cost Americans proportionally what legal immigration to the US costs Mexicans, we'd be out of pocket about ten grand a year.  (Actual cost, about $150.)

* Malcolm Beith does the math on the drug war dead, and discovers math is hard.

* What are people saying about us?  Why, just ask some of our brilliant commenters!

Utterly boring analysis of turgid issues. What a supercilious, self-righteous ass. ...I suppose the semi-comatose American retirees in Queretaro may find this stuff vaguely more engaging than USA Today

* Our kind of drinking establishment.

* Best. Happy Meal. Ever.