Sábado Gigante

*While you're wasting time reading this, a group of Italians has been constructing a fortified compound near Oxkutzcab, Yucatán, where they plan to ride out the end of the world as (allegedly) predicted by the Mayan calendar on Dec 21, 2012 - though it seems to us that the heart of the Mayan Empire might be the worst possible place to be on that date. The compound is reportedly overlooked by a statue of the Greek goddess Athena, though perhaps the goddess Nike might have been a more appropriate choice.

* Department of Confident Predictions: "Calderon warns 'there will be more violence.'"

* Seventy-two immigrants found dead in Tamaulipas this week. Just 100 fewer than have been found in the Failed State of Arizona this year.

* "The high unemployment rate and proximity to the border is making for fertile recruiting ground, as investigators say drug and human-smuggling cartels are singling out individuals desperate for money and employment." God, what a corrupt, failure-soaked shithole.

* The so-called "anchor babies": another case of Mexicans doing the jobs Americans won't.

* Miss Universe lawyering up for a possible run at Miss USA 2012?

* Of course, there's always Querétaro in 2085.

* Speaking of cheesecake, the andador outside our offices has become the go-to location for low-rent glamor photo shoots - including using our corporate headquarters as a backdrop. Our attorneys will be in touch to work out a "payment plan."

* If you still haven't made plans for September 11th, watching women in tight pants fighting bulls to the death seems like a pretty good way to offend al Qaeda.

* A Momentary Lapse of Reason: We're embarrassed not to have known about the Pink Floyd - Carrera Panamericana connection. Video here.

* Because you never know when you might need it, the indigenous ladies who seel cheap crap around town will soon be offering classes in the Otomí language, Ñahañú, on Tuesdays in Plaza Fundadores.

* Everyone else seems to have posted this video this week, so we will, too:



More vintage Mexican videos here.

* Jose Cuervo wants you to grow a mustache in time for Independence Day - even though none of the major figures of the Independence movement were mustachioed. Well, okay, maybe one...

* Yes, we laughed when we read that Mexico was launching a Space Agency. But this a country that can achieve great things when it puts its collective mind to it. ¡Hasta Jupiter, cabrones!

Staying On-Message

"Miss Universe: Mexico isn't so bad."

Now that she represents the entire Universe, we suppose she can't really play favorites anymore. But here she is on Letterman delivering one of the Top Ten Most Adorable Top Ten Lists Ever:



Oh, how we pray her English never improves!

A Hello To Arms

We're a few days late with this, due to a horrific stomach ailment we'd rather not discuss in detail, but for the past few weeks we'd been seeing posters all over town announcing "San Juan Bosco Comes to Querétaro." It never occurred to us to take this literally, since Don Bosco the founder of the Salesian order of priests, has been dead for over 120 years. So it was surprising to see the entire, preserved corpse of Juan Bosco rolling off a truck in a specially constructed Saintmobile.

Turns out His Saintliness has been on tour throughout Mexico since pretty much all month, rolling from city to city in his hermetically sealed glass coffin to the joy of the faithful and gawkers alike. And if that's not weird enough, it turns out that the body is actually just a creepy plastic replica, but inside it is an urn that contains the remains of his actual, formerly-attached-to-his-body right arm.

We understand it's fashionable to hate on Islam these days, but, man, Catholicism is a seriously strange religion.

A Burro Hall Joint

Our audio/visual division did some work over the summer - mostly catering and set design - on a History Channel documentary that we've been told airs tonight. We weren't privy to the details of the script, but apparently it's the story of Thomas Jefferson as seen through the flashbacks of a guy who is at his bedside when he dies.



As part of the show's marketing campaign, they've been holding mock "Tea Party" rallies around the country this year, to raise awareness of the Founding Fathers among certain target demographic groups. It's been hugely successful, and the corporate sponsors are very pleased with the way the rubes have fallen for it.

Arizona is So Fucked

Because look who controls the Universe now, bitches!

Miss Mexico stunned the audience when she was crowned Miss Universe last night. Jimena Navarrete of Guadalajara, 22, beat the set of 83 hopefuls as they showed off swimsuits, evening gowns and interview skills in a bid to impress a panel of judges. The brunette, who has modeled for 15 years, wowed the crowd in a flowing red chiffon gown before revealing the importance of teaching children family values.

Specifically, when asked about unsupervised internet use, she said:

"I do believe that Internet is an indispensable, necessary tool for the present time."

Burro Hall is available exclusively on the internet. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Like any good escort service, you can use this online form to request an appearance by Miss Universe, and because we probably get up earlier than you, you can assume the evening of Dec 17 (the BH office Christmas Party) has been spoken for. But we're going to spend the rest of the morning prank-requesting appearances all over the Failed State of Arizona, and invite you all to do the same.

Sábado Gigante

* Posting has been light owing to a labor dispute with the interns and a shortage of what the Mexicans call "joie de vivre" among the editorial staff. Readers who feel short-changed are invited to start their own blogs, which we will link to until productivity increases here.



* Aliens, get it? We liked this movie when it was called District 9.

* Black-on-brown assaults in New York...

Recorded by a store's surveillance camera, the assault was the first of 11 suspected anti-Hispanic bias attacks in a Staten Island neighborhood, re-igniting years-old tensions between blacks and Hispanics in New York City's most remote borough.

...and in Querétaro:

One man died and at least three were hurt in an attack by a swarm of Africanized honey bees, often called “killer bees,” in the central city of Queretaro, Mexican newspapers said Tuesday...The municipality of Queretaro has now received 382 reports of bee attacks and swarms so far this year.

* Until the flooding put it in the news every day, we never noticed how much Pakistan and Querétaro look alike.

* Queretano high society makes it into the pages of Quien Magazine.

* Meanwhile, the hometown paper cruises the Ruta Independencia 2010, and deems Querétaro worthy of a passing reference to its bus terminal.

* Local beer!

* Jesus, you blink around here and suddenly gays are considered real human beings in Mexico. Marriage, adoption...we predict that by year's end they'll be able to serve (openly) as priests.

* This city has the best, most-expensively illuminated aqueduct in the country. And the worst public hospitals. But don't let us tell you how to spend your money.

* Speaking of big spenders, it's nice to see Carlos Slim taking the money he overcharges us for shitty internet service and buying a little pied a terre in New York with it.

* Mexico City's bullring will hold an enormous boxing match in honor of the Bicentennial...just like America did.

* Querétaro is assembling a time capsule to be opened in 50 years. Let us know which picture of the perro you think we should give them.

* Miss Mexico makes the semifinals at Miss Universe. Miss Burro Hall disqualified for political reasons.

Feline Succession

Recently, after the spare (formerly main) cat went missing for more than a week, she was demoted to spare cat status, while the spare (now main) cat was promoted. But as of this afternoon, the main (formerly spare) cat has been unheard-from for six days, putting the spare cat within 24 hours of reclaiming her throne. Needless to say, if you happen to see him out and about, doing whatever it is that cats do, please bring him by the offices, where our receptionist will give you your reward.

The perro doesn't seem to give a shit how this turns out, of course.

Light in August

It's been just three weeks since the city of Querétaro decided to light up the aqueduct like a French whorehouse at a cost of nearly a million and a half dollars, but that's all the time it took for INAH - the National Institute of Anthropology and History, official guardian of all things Mexican - to realize, hey...the aqueduct seems to be lit up like a French whorehouse! Apparently, this sort of thing is not allowed (specifically, lights are fine - multicolored lights are not), so INAH wants the city to either pull the plug or change all 42,000 light bulbs.

Last year, when the city decided to sink all the telephone and electric cables underground, it meant that our power meter would need to be re-wired. But because the Burro Hall offices are a historically landmarked building (because it's old, not because our offices are there, though we totally understand how you might think that), we received several visits from INAH explaining that our historically landmarked facade could not be tampered with, so the cables would have to come in under the house, where they would tear up the non-historically landmarked wooden floors in our reception area, and run them up through the inside of the non-historically landmarked walls to the meter, which would be located indoors, above the sofa, rather than on the historically landmarked outside of the building. We countered that they must be historically fucking high. After several weeks of this, the electricians simply said fuck it, cut a channel into the facade, ran the wires, plastered it over and painted it as good as new. A year later, whenever there's a knock on the door we assume it's the army coming to take us away in leg irons.

But the city government managed to spend a million and a half bucks altering the 300 year-old, 3/4 mile-long trademark monument running through the center of town, without getting INAH's okay. Maybe we should put that giant neon burro up on our rooftop after all.

For Those About To Rock We Tentatively Endorse Your Decision To Do So

"The Rock and Roll Couple," Angelica Maria and Enrique Guzmán, rockin' the QRO on Friday the 13th.

Scream if you love Satan, bitches!

The Pride of Querétaro

Well, we've made it nearly 66 hours in Mexico without being beheaded (seriously, we're as surprised as anyone), but there's always tomorrow. Or after lunch today. Querétaro hasn't changed much since we've been away, though we imagine correspondents have been writing that exact same line since about 1532. The perro was ecstatic for a good 90 seconds after we walked through the door, before settling into a state of studied indifference, which he shakes himself out of whenever it occurs to him that there's now another pair of opposable thumbs capable of opening the refrigerator door.

We're still waiting for our replacement (i.e., "scab") interns to complete their training course, so we're a little behind in compiling goofball local items. Our favorite of the moment is the recent suggestion by PRI official Enrique Fausto that Querétaro's bar and restaurant owners should establish separate "gay-only" seating areas for homosexual customers in order to spare hetero customers a "spectacle." Predictably, Dr. Fausto is getting a lot of flack from the Political Correctness Police, but we say let 'em whine. We just got back from four months working in the Chelsea district of New York, so we can tell you that the surest way to avoid a spectacle is to herd the city's gay population into one place and give them alcohol.



Enrique Fausto, visionary...we salute you.

Can't Stand the Heat

Another running gun battle up the street - a dead body in the road, police officers wounded, etc. Time to relocate.

The Spy Who Went Back Out Into The Cold

For the second time in as many weeks, there has been an orderly transfer of power at the upper echelons of queretano royalty, as the recently-crowned Miss Querétaro 2010, Natasha Kaufmann, has abdicated her throne after a brief but unforgettable reign of just 18 days. Though she is, by day, just a 21-year-old college student studying gastronomy, Natasha has decided to concentrate full-time on her "professional career" - which we assume has been recently discovered to include nude modeling.

This is where we would traditionally promise to post bikini pictures of Miss Querétaro 2.0, María Perusquía, but instead we'll just urge whoever is sitting on the Natasha Kaufmann sex tape to get in touch with us as soon as possible. Anonymity guaranteed.

Hiatus

Sorry about the news blackout here. Real life gets in the way sometimes. Also, the day after the Arizona ruling, all the interns decamped to Phoenix to sign up for welfare and have a lot of anchor babies, and they took our mainframe with them, presumably to trade for cocaine.

Here's a video of a kitten getting injured, just to keep everyone laughing.