exquixotic's Blog

Title	Score
Fable II	8.5
NHL 07	7.0
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2	8.5
NHL 2K8	7.5
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess	10
Gauntlet Legends	8.0
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes	8.5
Velvet Assassin	7.5
Hitman: Blood Money	9.0
Prototype	8.5

28Oct 09

" ... a goodly one ... "

"Looking for the good in everything is equally as misguided as looking for the bad in everything." – Joseph Curiale

"No one knows how truly bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good" – C.S. Lewis

It has been a foggy year, give or take a few foggy days and, though many of you will dismiss my less than amazing tale as the mere fantasy of a mind completely overcome by cheap mota and mezcal, I beseech you to take my banalities with all seriousness. Boredom, the kind of vein drying, bald headed accountant boredom I have endured and returned from the brink to howl of, I assure you, is not the passive creature that rain-stymied children sulk about. There is a form of living blank, like the -isness of an arctic whiteout or the businessman's weekend, bland-storm beige, where the stark knowledge of so little is as much madness as the psychedelic chaos of knowing all. Life could never be so short as to inspire a reconstitution of this featureless, goal-less walkabout of insufferable waiting into a moment with yet something to seize. How it finally came to an end I cannot say. I expected no end to ever come nor that the end would be in any way a respite. Does one expect, if one passes into hell and abandons all hope, that yet there may be an exit?
The last thing I remember is someone screaming (children at obnoxious play some witnesses tried to persuade me . . . oh, how the mind reverses its view when you flip it on it's back) and the sounds of gunfire (could have been my sandals floppity slapping on the soles of my callused feet, but what kind of story would that make) as I ran for the bus and narrowly escaped the black mystic shadows of Oaxaca in favour of the cowboy booted, polka stepping, Felipe-Calderon-ass-kissing north. For the sake of sanity one should never assume that any move is for the better. As Sartre asserted, one does not decide this or that for the sake of good or evil, but simply because one must choose. Leaving one dissatisfying thing in the hope that the next will answer our existential lack is a silliness we all indulge in from time to time. The entirety of modern marriage and the subsequent divorce industry are built upon such delusions. But as Buckaroo Waldo Emerson knew, no matter where you go there you are. This is not to say that a change of atmosphere is not a fine breath of fresh air, but that a breath of fresh air cannot fix what's wrong with this old world.
A re-breath of re-fresh air. I once lived in Mayberry and re-plotted my return, my re-escape. It was built by an American go getter in the middle of poverty, sugarcane and Porfirio Diaz, peopled by one of each kind of professional, presented as employment and security and modernity and equality to the shoeless. It was meant to be a Utopia. It occurs to me that what crouches beast-like in any concept of a perfect -isness for humanity is the access to things. Food and shelter are never enough when one talks of perfect being. In the corporate socialism or the "Integral Cooperation" which informed my Mayberry, there were row houses, durable shoes, 8 hours of sleep, eight hours of work, and eight hours of culture, railways and shipping lines, irrigation ditches and straight, wide roads, built without a single thought as to how invading armies might become baffled while trying to find the corporate offices. After all, the invaders were the ones who started the city. Here, I thought, closer to the top of the pyramid of needs, were people with more and more on their minds.
What becomes of Utopia once it has been established and the taco stands are set up outside the baseball stadium? It becomes of course a shopping mall, a place where one can get what one wants and what one wants is, and always has been, more: the self glutted with its greedy desires. Utopia rips open a hole and teases the wound continuously agape with the promise of what it will stuff it with: more utopia, heroin, beautiful women, endless and affordable beer, superb food, cars, sunshine and good teeth. But does the fruit never rot on the vine in paradise? Death, Wallace Stevens reminds us, is the mother of beauty.
Mayberry is not a place on a map. It is a dream of contentment. People, even those in our ill perceived paradise, in truth live in the suffering world and take their respite where it is offered. For those of us who think we have arrived in Mayberry there is only the hell of our complacency to enjoy. Schopenhaur's suffering or boredom. Mazlow's hierarchy of needs does not peak in an enlightened and philosophical society, rather a self contented yawn and sprawl that would remind us of the insides of our eyelids if we actually felt or thought anything.
Where is it that one finally runs away to? Inside the mind, deluded and isolated from "negativity" or to the beach where the waves and whiskey wash away concern and let the world destroy itself without dissent? How do we maintain our discursive, connected equilibrium when everyone has receded into the passive, egocentric skull and painted all the windows black? "I just want to be happy" we all piss and moan, but could we really stand it? What we really want is to be left alone and not perturbed by such dismal thoughts. That, we think, we can translate it into a kind of happiness. TV is happiness. Sex is happiness. Drunk is happiness. Happiness is happiness. Hell is other people. But happiness, heaven, I suggest, is sheer boredom, irresponsibility, gluttony. Hell, other people, suggests responsibility. Utopia is a product of hell, the responsible answer to it's question, a need perceived, a factory built, a shopping mall stocked, a consumer duped, a dismally boring heaven created, a boredom suffered, a need re-created, a need perceived, a question made.
My error was not the desire to run away, it was not returning to a place I once lived and expected to be the same, rather it was to believe that I wanted to live in Utopia. It was everything I could have asked for. I asked for peace and I got it, boredom on a platter to stare at without rhyme or reason, only to have and poke and ponder and not even feel good about. It's as my mother says to the kids running around her house and picking up all the bric-a-brac, "It's only for looking."
I have stared into the wee hours of the day and imagined myself an observer. But I have not been observing and I have not been living. Boredom is not a place or a condition attached to paraphernalia. Discontent inspires dreams of paradise, but paradise inspires discontent. In the myopia of my boredom, in the malls of Utopia, I dream of discontent and continue to desire . . . Utopia.
It has been a foggy year but there may yet be an exit.

"For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don't. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them."- Orson Welles (1915 - 1985)

"It is in vain that we search for an essential difference between good and evil, for their constituents are the same. The crucial distinction lies in their structure, i.e., the manner in which the pieces are assembled. Evil is disintegration, an angry juxtaposition of alienated opposites, with parts always striving to repress other parts. Good is the synthesis and reconciliation of these same pieces." – Charles Hampden-Turner / Maps of The Mind

Hamlet: What have you, my good friends, deserv'd at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?
Guildenstern: Prison, my lord?
Hamlet: Denmark's a prison.
Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.
Hamlet: A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o' th' worst.
Rosencrantz: We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet: Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

Posted Oct 28, 2009 8:29 am PT
Category: N/A
3 Comments

26Oct 09

dia de los muertos

which in english means day of the thousand chers

Posted Oct 26, 2009 2:54 pm PT
Category: N/A
1 Comment

23Oct 09

insert lazy unimaginitive dogmatic magical explanation here

2nd law of thermodynamics and evolution

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html

Christian Right Lobbies to Overturn the Second Law of Thermodynamics (joke)

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/thermodynamics.htm

Posted Oct 23, 2009 8:05 am PT
Category: Fashion
4 Comments

24Jun 09

100% of all people die

Gracias por fumar

Posted Jun 24, 2009 2:11 pm PT
Category: Rant
8 Comments

18Jun 08

time time time

In personal game news, it seems a power surge has fried my old faithful xbox black. I was in the middle of a particularly challenging boss battle in Stranger's Wrath when clouds of black smoke suddenly huffed from the poor old creature's vents. Strangely enough it was at almost this point in the game two or three months ago that the police interupted my diversion to steal a few of my things ... including Stranger's Wrath. I replaced the game through a roundabout process which took a good month and a half only to play the game up to more or less the same point and be shut down by manic electricity. Giving this a positive slant which is really not my way, I guess I have an additional reason to buy a 360 when I get to Canada. But what then to do with the stack of original games i just bought and had shipped to me here in la jungla? Whatever ... strange priorities really.

Posted Jun 18, 2008 11:12 am PT
Category: Rant
11 Comments

18Jun 08

post - nod ernism in the dreams of the dead

(thanks to j. chadwick for the title)

"In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind."

The Lotos-Eaters, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

As archetypal human dilemmas go, none captures the insistent insouciance of the crumbling western consumer dream quite like the lotus eaters in The Odyssey. At once aware of the world's cruelty but determined to fulfill mythological promises of paradise, Odysseus' men gathered in their war weary, fatuous circles to reaffirm their delusions, stoned to the rafters on the plant of bliss. There amongst the oblivious, they tried to assuage the cognitive dissonance grumbling from the memories of victories gained at the cost of so many dead. They whole heartedly embraced the lie by opening themselves unequivocally to whatever mental contagion would bring them peace. What harm is there, I hear myself repeating with them, to take a brief respite from work, weariness and the knowledge of inevitable death? I, too, have been raised to believe I deserve some happiness.

Hence I have run not walked from the culture of which I knew too much. The growing brown shirt movement and racial intolerance of Canada, the pro-war, anti-socialist, blame the poor, shoot the hippo, jingoism of recent memory has walked me quietly and quickly to the nearest exit. Yet, nowhere is lotus bliss more apparent than in the escapism of an ex-patriot community. On the one hand we are proud and self congratulatory for having perceived and rejected the evil doing of our homelands, only to demand a contradictory anti-intellectualism towards anything that would disrupt our pleasant dream. It isn't uncommon for people to misinterpret local law, that foreigners are not permitted political involvements, as justification for not discussing politics at all. As such, social, political, economical or ethical acumen can be read as deplorable and deportable dissention. Far beyond murder it is to point out the palm fronds crashing down amongst our idyll.

In the house across the way there is no activity. This is sufficient to confirm something is wrong. I have come to the street of big houses to tend the Voltaire-ian gardens of some fellow escapees and have become accustomed to the rhythm of this little pseudo suburban road. My neighbor moves and shakes, comes and goes, like the steady wash of waves on our seemingly happy beaches. But not this week.

The facts are non-existent. There is no newspaper and no form of communication but gossip. All that seems true is that he was taken from his restaurant by men with guns.

When the police assaulted the zocalo in Oaxaca during the last teacher's strike they apparently captured some 500 people who they then deported to the state of Nayarit in a recapitulation of Guantanamo Bay. Some of those people were just unlucky enough to have chosen that particular moment to go shopping for eggs. They were tortured of course. I only know this because one of the locals is a psychologist who was involved in post traumatic stress treatment for the detainees. Most refused the treatment because they had already seen psychologists in their Nayarit prison and had been made aware of the intricacies of "treatment" by their captors. They were encouraged, in the midst of what must have been one of the most horrific moments of their lives, to see their discontent as a skewed perspective, to see their grief as the product of their improprieties.

For the new president, Felipe Calderon, the biggest problem Mexico faces at this moment is the transportation of drugs up the coast. Of course, only drug users would also be dissenters in the beautiful dream that is green and pleasant Mexico. That the teachers of Oaxaca and the APPO are dissenters, trouble makers, surrenders them to the inquisition of Calderon's anti-drug army. That Calderon's anti-drug army may be involved in the drug trade is an irony that has certainly fried the sensibilities of the Mexican public.

Contrarily, for too many of the gringos the protests in Oaxaca are about better wages and an inexplicable, culturally endemic unrest. One can practically hear John Wayne's voice pronouncing with no hint of wavering self-doubt that the natives are restless, while completely ignoring just why that might be. The facts are non-existent. There is no newspaper and no form of communication but gossip. All that seems true is that mangos fall from the trees like manna from heaven.

We all, surely, have anxieties about how the world could be and have all had our anxieties lured into dreary congeniality by our fear. Uncertainty and the reluctance to speak about what is not sure, what disrupts, has quieted our cynicism, defensiveness and critical judgment. But such "positive" thinking, trying to pass off our muzzles for some kind of zen, doesn't change the world. It just shuts out what is inconvenient about it. And in the confusion criminals of every kind make off with whomsoever they wish as we nod our heads in passive accord.

Despite the fragmentary appearance of the community's reaction to the kidnapping, there is an unsettling theme running through our conversations. I noticed a distinct relief of tension in myself when I was told the victim was involved in questionable business practices. The event was removed from the paranoic dread of random violence and delivered into the realm of justice, cause and effect, good and evil, god. Such specific comings and goings surely have nothing to do with us general rabble. I have rejected the event's suggestion of wholesale human malevolence for the comfort provided by non-involvement.

Yet, I keep thinking of the detainees in Nayarit being told that their dis-ease, their sins against the state, had incarcerated them. I think of a boss who tried to have the only aware person in the department fired for having too much initiative, I think of a co-worker who, after the fact, spoke shockingly well of a job she had hated and with bubbly enthusiasm reminded me that life was all about enjoyment. I think of Odysseus' men rejecting stark life completely for peaceful somnambulism. And I surely agree that life cannot be unwaveringly about fear and pain. And yet it is, in as much as it is about coming to terms with perennial suffering. We have no patience for the process. We hope that there is somehow a quick resolution to our strife and we consume the answers like cigarettes. We consume. We congratulate ourselves on our enlightenment and cluck and strut with our chests puffed out at those who "resist." We go on vacation. We leave.

"What you resist persists" goes the popular Jungian quote that has been used to substantiate the bland inertia of our era. To think is to sin against our safe, shell-like personal truths. Because truth, our truth, is a selfish little, self serving, self created reality, that any real thought would pop like a blister. We dread knowing. We can not go back to the same old strife, the same old pain, the same old same old.

Jung was not offering a solution to our dilemma in his clever aphorism. It is only to our generation of sound byte addled head nodders that "don't think about it" could somehow resolve the confusion of so many years of baffling human cognizance. We want ... no ... we demand the answer now and it is narcissistically easy to embrace the lotus. But Jung also said, "There is no coming to consciousness without pain." Yes, we must be Buddhist and strive for acceptance, but no, we can not be insincere about it. We should not just embrace this or that because it serves our purposes and we just don't want to suffer anymore ... should we?

We have theories about our disappeared neighbor. We dabble in explanation, justification, discrimination to give our disregard the appearance of awareness. Meanwhile, we dream in paradise and offer money, subservience, condemnation. We allocate blame to individual negativity when people are visited by strife, anything to stay in the hidden port, to hold fast to our vacuous, guiltless peace. Yet, should those who stoke the all consuming machine have need of more fodder, they will know exactly where we can be found.

Posted Jun 18, 2008 9:33 am PT
Category: Rant
5 Comments

6Jun 08

portrait of a man with too much time in his glands

I've been passing my days of unemployment trying to get some of my old music up on the internet. Why? Yes good question ... portrait of a man with too much time on his hands. Anyway, let's move on. As it turns out myspace is the usual option for such endeavours so I have wandered into the land of absolute vanity and posted a ms music page. It's a staggeringly slow process as the pages flip over and crash and constant advisements of a 24 hour wait until the tiny edit you have made comes up. As we say in Mexico, or at least the Mexicans say in Mexico and I steal from them because I love the expression, que hueva. So, here then, without further ado, is the twelve year old disc that is still sitting in untold, unopened boxes under someone's bed in Canada.

http://www.myspace.com/morethantosurvive

Deary me I am a sentimental old sot. And now back to the gardening ...

Posted Jun 6, 2008 12:15 pm PT
Category: N/A
5 Comments

15May 08

caesar hath wept

It is customary here in Puerto Escondido, when the need to extend one's visit arises and the infinite bureaucratic bludgeoning of immigration becomes impossible, to venture forth to the mysterious border of wild and wily Guatemala. Here, it is said, one may renew one's vows with green and pleasant Mexico and return to her bosom with a minimum of border guard abuse. Seeing as how the crucible set before me by immigration was unquestioningly beyond my grasp, on Monday at 5:30 I set out for the southern reaches of Chiapas to try my luck at the quick frontera exchange.

As Murphy pointed out, nothing ever comes off without a hitch, and this seems to be especially so for me in southern Mexico. Many might point out that according to nouveau esoterica my bad attitude makes such things happen, to which I blow my nose in their general direction. I try my best, like every good monkey, to take the ill tidings of life at their own sway. I simply don't try to lie to myself about how romantic it all is, or that the stupidity of people who suffer under poverty is somehow an enobling simplicity. As Nietszche says, " ... aware of life's terrors, (a person) affirms life without resentment." It is only when we expect the disappointments of life to somehow edify us that their inability to lend more than pain leaves us feeling poisoned.

The truth is that the border of Mexico / Guatemala is a nasty several mile wide example of everything that is wrong with humanity. Poverty, greed and its accompanying lack of imagination and hope when it comes to the problems of existence combine here with the vapors of brimstone. OK, they're just people doing their best and if that means trying to get as much as they can from stupid tourists like myself, then that's the way it is and I shouldn't be resentful.

I can only plead that stupidity is something insidious and contagious. If poverty makes low IQs, and the spread of poverty and low IQs and rampant population growth among the poor makes the world stupider and stupider, the reactions of those who should know better are becoming more and more in concert. I was raised to not categorize, to give each individual an even break, to give each person the opportunity to be uniquely stupid. But as I am judged by those with what I believe is a myopic point of view, I lash out with my own vindictive stupidity. As I am gawked at like a three headed dog dressed in golfer's attire I find my tiny mind taxed to the limit of its patience. It's that look WE get from THE OTHER, that look that says WE really don't know anything about what's going on anywhere at anytime otherwise why would WE eat anything but tortillas, why would anyone eat their meat other than thin and well done, why would anyone believe in anything but the catholic god, why would WE believe in anything, why would anyone laugh and do nothing, why would WE go to war, that gets my back up. One believes the other is stupid and the stupid are incredulous.

Amidst the stumbling rabble of which I too often must count myself I met a man named Nehemias, named after the biblical character assigned to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. While the cambistas crowded round me to try to steal my passport and dole out bad exchanges on pesos and quetzales, Nehemias, in no extraordinary way, offered polite conversation. And returning from Malacatan I was offered a fair price for a taxi, and after braving the cambistas one last time, was given a six month tourist visa when all I asked for was three by a joking and laughing immigration officer. As a matter of fact, almost all the immigration officers were decent, helpful people. But despite such small kindnesses, it's the belief in getting the better of that other's ignorance as a sign of cleverness, and seeing apparent cultural unawareness as a sign of stupidity that leaves enduring bone chips in one's joints. It may be that in the absence of truth the rules that we invent and have the strength to uphold will be the laws of existence. We might be persuaded to believe that the thoughtless money grubbing of the cambistas is something more in the nature of necessary evil, the cruelty of survival. But I cannot help but be petulantly and, yes, stupidly resentful because I want individual strength to uphold the chimeric niceties of a respectful social contract. As the saying goes, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." Stupidity, not cruelty, is survival's paradigmatic quality; to survive at all costs without a thought as to why is the nihilistic footnote to the world's folly.

And I, sir, have a full belly and the pretensions of a garden to guard my vanity.

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value." - Arthur C. Clarke

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Posted May 15, 2008 3:05 pm PT
Category: Rant
9 Comments

10Apr 08

post script

The preceeding blog is a rant. I am in a fever pitch of paranoia and, quite frankly, fear due to incidents leading up to my termination of employment. I have given notice because of the level of discomfort I have been experiencing. However, the discomfort is the blame of only a few of my coworkers and students and a faulty pedogogical and administrative philosophy on the part of the University. I just want to footnote that I have stayed in this city for two and half years because I have met some of the most fantastic and memorable people I have ever had the privilege to dig ditches with, especially here on the campus. I certainly don't want to give the impression that my current and sometime work environment is the overall environment. Tension is high, but while there are people here who are trying to make me uncomfortable, there are many people here who are doing their best to make me feel that they are sympathetic. It's work ... political and crappy and almost over.

Posted Apr 10, 2008 6:27 am PT
Category: Rant
3 Comments

8Apr 08

coming off cool and self obsessed

This is the way the job ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.

Never do anything for money that you can do for any other reason.

Long ago, in a restaurant far, far away, two ladder climbing bumpkins who shared the misfortune of stumbling onto burger flipping's secret entrance, sat discussing the joint natures of youthful self gratification, meaningful, gainful employment and what is owed. The two weeks since the one's first day on the job had squirmed by and he had happily just given his notice, just pushed up the restaurant turnover rate a notch, while the other watched after his departure with curiosity and a disquieting longing for freedom. Having just won himself a new job after being asked in the interview if he was ready to come in from the wasteland and get started, the marginally more successful of the two offered the one who would stay behind this gem of wisdom, formerly passed on to him from a distant relative, and I now in turn offer it to you: "If you want to know how important you are to a place, what kind of difference you have made, what you have contributed and what you will take away when you leave, stick your hand in and out of a bucket of water." Such sad words to the vanity of youth. Such sad words to anyone with an iota of pride left after experiencing the humiliating "boot to the prunes" that is WORK.

"In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy (potential) transferred by a force (force is what causes a mass to accelerate and is experienced as a push or a pull)." Work, in and of itself, is certainly not an evil. We transfer energy and things happen. Work creates, changes, maintains, destroys. There is no moral judgment I can connect unqualitatively to work. Yet a pleasureable past time is so easily metamorphosed into drudgery by the designation. It seems an opposing force stands in the way of work, altering the carefree pursuit of moving through existence into the consternation of conquest and war. Work is not such a simple expenditure of energy when viewed in its social, interpersonal contexts. It can not simply be done in isolation from agenda, meaning and profundity. Work is performed in conflict and is not employed by the innocent. Definitions are always provided, especially for those who do not provide their own, and they are rarely polite. The force, the boss, the bourgeois, the whip, the lord, the capitalist, the goal, the result, the reason, the purpose, pushes the energy, the wage slave, the proletariat, the plebe, the serf, the capital, the oil, the mere man, the dumb animal. Despite all the rhetoric of progress, peace, prosperity, better living through technology, the reality of work is the transformation of energy to maintain the oligarchical kingdoms of the human. It may not be necessarily so, but it is arbitrarily so, and everyone and everything, aware or not is drawn in.

Opposition enlightens, all else is stasis, but we are all also the victims of our experience. We have become neurotic and unsure, not because life always plays out in the way we imagine, but because it never does. The positive thinking enthusiasts seem impossibly naïve in this respect. Anyone who has moved beyond the ignorant egotism of a baby whose shrieking gets him exactly what he or she wants, understands this is not the project of being, that getting what you want is an infantile conceptualization of -isness. Thinking positively to make the world how you want it is a philosophical recapitulation of consumerism, where the universe becomes a shopping mall and your good vibe is the work you will exchange for well being. And well being is having it all your way. However, as both the Christ and the Dalai Lama point out, it's how we deal with disappointments, the closed shopping mall and the bad purchase, that is at the heart of our spiritual dilemma. It seems impossible that epiphany is grasping firmly to the wants of "me" through all these endless disillusionments and letdowns. Rather it is how we come to terms with that mix of loss and enlightenment, the crushing of the self in the face of reality, the egress of selfishness and the whiny needs of childhood. The dis-illusion is that there is nothing but flux and not that we create reality but that the flux and flow of reality does not exist just for you, it is not all about you.

We have come to believe that work is about our car. And when we start to feel that we are not getting what we deserve for the work we are doing, we take the blame like good sinners, like the guilty betrayers of paradise we are ... it is our sin, our negativity, our non belief in the system and what we can get that has betrayed our desire for a better life. We just need to work a little harder, to believe a little stronger, to be a little more positive. There is a reason to all of this. It is hidden in the glorious mind of god. Or ... is it the mad and mindless agenda of the despot.

Work has no goal. It is the mind of man that has cursed our movements with meaning, that has obligated our actions, bound our promise, saddled our initiative, abstracted us from our empathy. And the work we do as a result has destroyed paradise and ruined us.

I have been working in hell for the governor of Oaxaca and his evil empire. I have pulled my hand out of the water. I have made no difference. This world is not about me. I am a convenience onto which propaganda regarding the evils of a liberal, thoughtful society can be plastered, an ugly American despite the maple leafs on my backpack, slothful and arrogant and war mongering and aggressive. I am an alcoholic and a drug addict and I am here to steal the babies of the campesinos for medical experiments. There is no need to ask me what I think, because it is obvious by my skin. I am the oligarch and the despot. I am leaving.

"A hundred years of words and war

Have bred the studied sycophantic bore

And the brutal babies of the violent poor

All now crawling off the dirt farm floor."

Posted Apr 8, 2008 3:23 pm PT
Category: Rant
5 Comments

14Mar 08

feliz semana santa todos

ya me voy en vacaciones ... espero que tienes un buena semana y te hablo pronto ... hasta pronto

Posted Mar 14, 2008 6:20 pm PT
Category: Other
6 Comments

12Mar 08

whine spitzer

I'm so sorry to do this as there are already 2 threads that I know of regarding this topic ... It's just that I went to the bother of writing this and I want to put it somewhere and the other threads won't accept it. Soooo frustrating. Here it is ... ignore it ... nuf said ... just want to add my stink to the otherwise polluted ambience.

A few things just aren't sitting right with me in all of this. A few bloggers here have been pointing out Spitzer's high moral horse as a point of irony in his crucifixion. I, being a curious fellow, have chased around for the last while trying to find press references to said hyper sanctimonious morality in order to jump on the band wagon and yell for his testicles. What I found first was this article from Harper's Magazine.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002589

Then I read the Wickipedia entry which paints this fellow as an anti Wall Street corruption crusader. Oh oh I says, something ain't right here. When an enemy of big business goes down shouldn't all our warning lights start blinking?

I finally found his Safe Game Act proposal on his website. It is chock full of the usual misrepresentations and fear mongering we have come to expect from point garnering politicians looking for a villain in a world of complexity, looking for Hitler's big but comprehensible propaganda lie to construct a political career from. Full on crap in the middle of a proposal to help inner city kids gain some level of equality, but really just one really stupid point in an otherwise earnest and much larger Children's Agenda.

The Harper's Magazine article suggests that such moralistic inquisitions that managed to snag Spitzer may be being perpetrated by the republicans to unseat prominent democratic candidates. Well, that's obvious ... that's the game. You knock out your opposition by any means available and going after their closed doors behaviors has always been an unscrupulous but successful strategy to eliminate contestants. Why, the question arises, were they spying on Spitzer in the first place. As jwallace points out, wasn't there some more important work sitting ignored on desks while these negligent workers tried to stick their noses as far as possible up each other's dirt chutes. Is this what politics has become? YES. Always has been.

Interestingly enough, and you can read up on this in the Harper's article, Spitzer is being prosecuted under the White-Slave Act of 1910, the same act under which such famous trouble makers as black heavy weight boxing champion Jack Johnson who was unforgivably seeing a white woman and famous dissident comedian Charlie Chaplin for being unforgivably satirical, were persecuted. Lends a whole different tone to the witch hunt, don't you think?

Of course it's always easy to get "the people" to jump up and point out someone else's sin. We are all pure and clean in comparison to our neighbors, always ready to take a cheap holiday in other people's misery, always ready to find an enemy on the wrong side that will place us on the right side ... blacks, jews, muslims, commies, gays, people who like sex, users of prostitutes, abortionists, gamers, hawaiian shirt wearers. It is an episode of doubt with few clear answers that has us all reaching without thought for our dogma ... bad, good, politicians, people ...

Meanwhile, and I reiterate it because it is important and it is meant to be lost in the shuffle and the reordering of thoughts that accompanies moments of confusion, more prominent politicians and power brokers lie, cheat, steal and kill and finish their terms with snide, arrogant grins forever pasted on their snotty faces. The real crime, cheating on an entire country's population, is once again disappeared in something more philosophically manageable: cheating on the wife.

"You know the one thing that is wrong in this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." President Bill Clinton

POST SCRIPT:

"Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has." William S. Burroughs

Posted Mar 12, 2008 3:45 pm PT
Category: Rant
9 Comments

10Mar 08

misplaced energy

Recently, one of my ****s lured me into a conversation about video games. Since they admitted that at least 90% of them were at least a few hour a week gamers and that they were interested in video game violence in general, I decided to create a little conversation activity around the subject. Below are the points put to them. Just in case anyone doesn't believe that anti-game propoganda and the cliche image of the child gamer put forward by TV and the movies is achieving a high degree of mental contagion, you should know that a ****of 16 students unanimously agreed with all the points except number 4.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. Video games have made an epidemic of youth violence.

2. Scientific evidence links violent video games to youth violence.

3. Video games are made for children.

4. Girls don't play computer games.

5. Games are used to train children to kill because games are used to train soldiers to kill.

6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.

7. Video games are for loners.

8. Video games desensitize children to violence.

http://www.lockergnome.com/game/2005/12/12/eight-myths-about-video-games-debunked/

Posted Mar 10, 2008 9:57 am PT
Category: Rant
15 Comments

25Feb 08

good fences make good neighbors

http://www.narconews.com/en.html

I would like to clarify something about my blurb on negativity entitled "pain and pity." I was not writing about my ex-girlfriend, though it may have sounded like I was complaining of a broken heart and a subsequent disquietude. What I was really saying, and I can understand that there might be some confusion about this, is that I am grumpy about the state of things in my immediate life. I took a break from scribbling blogs here because I felt I was losing my mind and any clear perspective, that I was blinded by anger. And this anger is not generated by bad love relationships but by my challenging life here in Mexico. I live in the seventh circle of hell, the circle reserved for the bombastic, the violent, and why I continue to live here was my meditation over the xmas holidays. I had calmed down after a series of rather troubling incidences and had decided to try to embrace my grumpiness here as a kind of motivation. My coworkers agree that between the Oaxacans and gringos there is not a lot of peace to be found in our beach town, but the challenge of finding the Buddhist center in such a tumultuous place is somehow alluring. In some ways, it's what a person who leaves their culture is in search of and the ability to adapt to the strange and problematic circumstances is a point of pride amongst ex-pats.

For anyone unfamiliar with what is going on in Oaxaca right now I point you to the website above. And in case you feel the goings on in Oaxaca are peripheral in comparison to other, more pertinent news stories, I would remind you that there are currently more journalists covering events in Southern Mexico than Iraq. This place is a bloody, brooding mess peopled by some of the nastiest pieces of work I've ever encountered. At the moment there are squads of armed, masked federal police entering people's homes without warrants to search for whatever they might find. It is also common for neighbors to "turn in" the people next door out of vindictiveness, jealousy, religiosity or, in the case of gringos, patriotism. After all, all white people are drug addicts and baby thieves.

Unfortunately, On Friday night I discovered first hand just how it feels to be on the list of the suspicious, how it feels to be spied on and turned over to the "Gestapo Law" by one's neighbours. At roughly 9:00PM my apartment was overrun by a group of about ten armed and masked federal police, without search warrant, who turned my apartment inside out, pinned me against the wall and punched me in the kidneys, handcuffed me and then stole all my gringo type goods: sunglasses, swiss army knives, an antique watch and some video games. It is obvious that the building's locked front door, the extra security of the apartment building, had been opened by someone living there. It is unlikely that this squad picked the lock and they plainly did not break the door down. I believe, as does everyone I have reported the incident to, that I was turned in, that the raid was a set up. As troubling as having an apartment full of violent nationalists is, far more perturbing is contemplating the reason for the invasion, contemplating who might have done such a thing. It is not out of the realm of possibility to imagine the university's finger prints on the occurrence. As a VISA holder in Mexico I am afforded no protection from my embassy. And of course, I can not ask the university for any assistance in this matter as they would in all probability, whether they are involved or not, fire me as a trouble maker. Although I am making the incident known to all those I should make it known to, there is no recourse apart from letting them know who to question should I go missing.

For anyone who has read the novel "Under the Volcano," this is the situation the author describes. When they come for you in the night who can you turn to for help? Even in the US where citizens have been detained without justification, who is there to help you against govt. sanctioned persecution?

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." C. S. Lewis

"You're not going to learn anything from being with these lollipops." -- Torres to Doc.

Posted Feb 25, 2008 9:30 am PT
Category: N/A
9 Comments

19Feb 08

soap and education

"Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be." Eric Hoffer

"...a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself." Medium is the Message, Wickipedia

The conceit: Weathermen scare the crap out of me. I don't mean what weathermen say scares me; that nightly wind whipping of sunami, tornado, hurricane, when the levi breaks, depletion of the ozone layer, scare-mongering twaddle that attempts to lend hyper-significance to reports of sloppy weather in Moosejaw. Oh no. What the weather actually is has rarely concerned, much less interested, me. This morning as I struggled to keep my attention on the message gurgling forth from the well lipsticked mouth of CNN's most recent climate attendant, I suddenly realized I was being swept up in a Mcluhanesque dalliance; I was finding the medium, the manner, the jaunty professionalism, the rehearsed imperfection, the dichotomous insouciance swirled among overly earnest perturbation, impossible to listen through. I could see and hear only the performance and nothing of the message. She wrung her hands as though suffering from a great personal anxiety, promising to keep us all abreast of developments regarding that hurricane off the coast of Madagascar, despite the cost to her marriage and the well being of her children, then gave a very human smile to finally ease our tension, said "uh" a couple more times, let us know that although we should remain vigilant, keep one eye on the gales blowing round the Cape, we could relax a little, that professionals were on the job, that she would take the burden. It was an oral presentation intended to say, "I'm human, but I'm a pro. I'm the kind of person who seems a little distracted, who says "uh" a lot, but that's just because my mind is always where it should be ... on YOUR weather, on the job. Yes, I smile, but that's because I can handle the pressure, handle it with a little inoffensive quip and a gentle calming demeanor. I am first and foremost a professional, baby. I'm a freakin' pro."

So why should someone being so into their job give me the willies? Why should shmoozy friendliness and a humanized presentation full of rehearsed inconsistencies, inconsistencies that change the disembodied babbling head and dry cackle of electronic media into a pretense of a deeper, more imperfectly organic humanity, strike fear into the soul? The first reason I can think of is that so much time must have been spent to discover and orchestrate this professional demonstration of being human, only to tell us about precipitation.

Medium is the message point one: we are profoundly preoccupied with the banal and constantly trying to pass it off as something important, something worth televising, something worth becoming a robot for. This is the first topic in the job description of our era: make your job look like it's worth doing. The task at hand, making widgets or what have you, is no longer on the agenda in the postmodern miasma, nor is doing anything well. It is the deliberation with which one attacks the mindless, meaningless project that makes a success of vacuity. This is from where the shiny spoon wrests opportunity, exhorts the untapped excitement hidden in the hollow. As we say in the music business, it isn't talent that makes success, it's gall. Thus we have mediocre talents like Madonna and Britney Spears defining feminine strength and skill; overweight porn star Ron Jeremy as a TV sex pundit commenting on the world wide significance of Mr. Bobbit's reattached member popping up in triple X films; the late Timothy Leary taking drugs and being enthusiastic as a professional pre-occupation. And when the audacious egomaniacs finish convincing themselves, coworkers, wives, children, friends and most importantly bosses that the drone of obsequious tasks is somehow of monumental importance, the work is still not done. Medium is the message point two: We are deeply confused and are not permitted to admit it or seek answers. Work is not a soporific, soul sucking, repetitive grovel. Work is a fun and fulfilling giggle and god help us if that's not what we make it look like. We must appear to be having fun, to not be straining. We are trapped in a postmodern feedback loop, trying in vain to show we care but that we are casual, that we are earnest but cynical, that our ethics and our think-outside-the-box, rebel-with-a lot-of-fresh-ideas attitude doesn't care about the job, that doing something well is more important than the paycheck, that we are very much aware that money is the most important thing to the shareholders and its foremost on our minds too, that it's only our paycheck that substantiates our worth, that the job is the most important thing in the world, that the money is the most important thing in the world, that the job is where excellence will shine, that being recognized for our work isn't the most important thing in the world but why do we get so little praise from our leaders, that we need to be arrogantly confident, we need to be humble, we need to be human oh so human but oh so good at it. When we appear flawed that is all it should be: appearance and never the real, baffled and distraught little creature with not a single clue as to what is really going on, struggling to hold on to -isness while the bedlam of cirrostratus, altocumulus and the arbitrary dialectic of whimsical, whirling historical events once again betrays our certainty.

Where is the weather person to say it's not in our control? We have tried to use chaos theory to interpret the stock market and when exactly Christ will show up again but to no avail. We have tried to perfect being alive but we simply can not get the hang of it. Being real is not something you can actually practice. They are dichotomous. Instead we end up acting like a lying lover, all show of heartfelt affection, but making winks to the younger sister when the oblivious and trusting valentine turns her back. We are reality's whores and we take it where we can get it. We believe we have learned something when we watch a weather report because why else would it be there and why else would we have watched it. But its all subtext. It's like watching Hamlet to see what Claudius will do. The reality is the desperation with which we cling to the weather. Caring about weather is sophistication, the end of the ignorant hunter-gatherer, the commencement of prehistorical agriculture, the beginning of science and religion and philosophy and caring about more than having a full belly and a flacid penis.

Medium is the message point three: I prefer the projection. When it comes right down to it, the truly terrifying thing is that the construct that we try to pass off as being human is by all means preferable to the foul, backstabbing, delusional creature that is man. We don't want to be free to think what we will. As Freud notes, and as Neitszche notes, freedom involves responsibility. Illusions, Freud continues, commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure. It is paradoxical, I know, that we have created a construct of reality where we allow ourselves to be hedonistic and shallow and free of responsibility and wherein we may hide from our hedonistic and shallow and irresponsible humanity. The weather lady may very well be the best that we can muster or, at the very least, the next best thing to some kind of unbelievable god. That is what not only scares, but horrifies me. These ideas that we have filled the gaping emptiness of our existence with do not fool us as much as they provide us the means to fool ourselves. And that tells me just how awful the truth must be.

Denouement: "The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism." Primo Levi

Posted Feb 19, 2008 2:49 pm PT
Category: Rant
11 Comments

29Jan 08

pain and pity

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=t5wqrs9hpxt70zjz3bv348pqg1hcxz0r

Greetings.

I would like to welcome myself back from the dim lands of self banishment and belly button perusal where at every turn spinning blade stumps and mediocre but irritatingly niggling life sucker enemies harass one's progress to next level enlightenment. And here I emerge out the other side of a crappy, jerking camera angled, shock-death, designed-to-make-you-fail-in-order-to-make-it-last-longer game, agitated beyond belief and wondering why in god's name I have put myself through that sandy jointed pain.

Pain and pity ... these are the only actual emotions or feelings I can come up with that might describe what my experience of being in love has been. This is what has passed for the content of relationships over the last 48 years of my life. Not that I mind so much ... I dig the drama. Many things when looked at that little bit more closely, are exposed as something other than believed. It's an interesting dilemma really. Are we seeing what we believe, believing what we see, or is it possible that we can get a good but absolutely disconcerting look at the thing itself? Is it how it seems to be because we are looking at it? Heisenberg uncertainty and all that ...

I would be hard pressed to defend myself against accusations of negativity, cynicism, of being critically minded. I confess that this is a very black view of what is considered by some to be the pinnacle of human experience, love lift me up where I belong and all that rot. Negativity it seems is the new sin, the thing we should never ever be allowed to indulge ourselves in. For, after all, is the world not beautiful and, in the worst truncation of humanity's pursuit of a philosophy I have yet heard, negativity attracts negativity. When you are negative you make the world BAD. Overlooking the obvious distortion of the Newtonian proposition that opposites are actually what attracts (more a "birds of a feather flock together" kind of misquote if you ask me) a more glaring problem with anti-anti is its negation of the dialectic process, debate and argumentation, the foundations of parliamentary process, the core of philosophy, the impetus of the scientific method, the dissolution of delusion, the pursuit of the truth. I mean even to take any of these avenues of thought to task is to engage in some kind of propose, prove and protect process.

Why do I keep running into people who use the expression "It's all good," with the desperation of the condemned, all the while knowing that it is only when things are very not " ... all good" that such an expression need be invoked. Gone seemingly forever is Ghandi's entreaty that we "... be the change we wish to see in the world." This would be to think of a better planet, to be hopeful, to be argumentative, to be critical. We are now awash in bad Buddhism and the mantra's of the vapid, keep it light, keep it bright. In a recent movie espousing what is purported to be eastern philosophy, one of these fake sages offered the outrageous idea that the anti-war movement had been responsible for the generation of more war because of all that focused bad vibe ... anti-war is negative thinking. Is anyone besides myself concerned that the trotting out of such idiotic accepting passivity while the current government agenda seems to be middle east imperialism is a manufacturing of consent in the worst way?

I understand there is a point in all of this, that it's based on ideas that I have found appealing and wise. I have meditated, focused my mind on some bland activity or point in order to displace my preoccupations. But I don't want to live this way. I have hope, I have desire and so I don't have peace. And I'm really not convinced that peace or happiness is the true goal of life. It is not the goal of an ant, it is not the goal of a dog, it is not the goal of the poor. I believe my discontent is the root of process, of social evolution and more appropriate albeit arbitrary possibilities. I don't want to say love exists and it is good if I have never had that experience. I don't want to say Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is a good game while the camera jerks me around so I'm facing the wrong direction and I have to perform a nearly miraculous half minute of leaps and bounds and sword swinging in order to make it to the save point that never seems to be coming. I don't want to say I'm happy unless or until I am.

So why do we continue? Why haven't I left my controller in the drawer and vanquished the Prince to the recycle bin? Perhaps it's as Camus says about Sisyphus: it's the pushing of the rock up the hill, the act of living with all its difficulties and pains that keeps our attention from what is wrong. When we reflect at the end of the day we realize that life sucks and tomorrow we must push the rock back up the awful hill. But while we live it we don't reflect, we are neither happy or sad about it..

"This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs." - Woody Allen

PS Wow I was getting responses from people before I even posted. Thanks for the hellos.

Posted Jan 29, 2008 8:53 am PT
Category: Editorial
20 Comments

16Nov 07

paradise3

And so, the final chapter in the story of Oaxacan Pride unfolds. Below is the reprimand I received from the U. I have no idea what, if any, action was takenagainst the student. A large percentage of the student body and teachers have turned extremely cold towards me. I imagine this is because I have complained about their town. You can say whatever you want as an "extranjero," as long as it's nice. Despite the fact that I live and work here, I do not enjoy the privilege of griping about local s**t.

Meanwhile, due to personal matters I have had to leave all my musical ventures behind. The involvment with local piracy was not going well with my head. I must say, after 2 years of enduring one of the most gossipy, mean spirited and selfish places I have ever encountered, I am as confused about humanity and my interpretations of reality as I can possibly be. I have come to believe that we might all benefit from being held to a lower standard, but although that makes some room for the behaviour of my neighbours and a particular ex, how I get others to be more accepting of me becomes the question. I find it odd that most of my life advice at the moment comes from a British Salsa Dancer and KOTORII. It certainly keeps the humour in things. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Vice Rector Academica ...

This is to inform you that, on Oct. 22, 2007 a written communication was received from Informatic student D__________________ stating that on the 19th of Oct. you interviewed her to make a verbal complaint related to an incident on the public transportation. This letter indicates that the complaints were made in a discourteous and offensive tone, such attitude violating the discipline and respect that one should have toward members of the university community based on Article 50 of the Rules of Conduct for Academic Personel. The Vice Rector has also received your letter clarifying the events with the student and, analyzing both documents, makes of his knowledge of the incident this "Extrañamiento" / ("Alienation") from who was at fault, urging you to change your behavior or, for his part, he will proceed to implement whatever sanctions the law and academic standards provide.

Posted Nov 16, 2007 3:25 pm PT
Category: N/A
5 Comments

29Oct 07

paradise2

The post below is an expression of frustration and is completely not game related. I am curious about people's view of Mexico and about racism in general. I think it's a good thing for people like me to be exposed to a homogenous culture and to feel what it's like to be the outsider. Nonetheless, it's harsh as a day in and day out experience. I posted the letter I wrote to defend myself against this very rude student as a form of revenge, to present an individual experience of a place often thought of as a full on party and to see what, if anything, people had to say about my behaviour as a teacher or as a guest in this country, the girl in question as a citizen or a student, the cultural clash, ethics, generosity and poverty, transportation, work, your own experiences with prejudice or teachers, etc. Of course, reading the preceding long, painful and personal letter is optional. Let the games begin ...

Posted Oct 29, 2007 11:27 am PT
Category: Travel
11 Comments

29Oct 07

paradise

Below is a copy of a letter I had to write to answer a student's complaint about me. The university responded that there is no racism in Mexico and that the actions of the student were off campus and therefore of no concern to the institution. I received a reprimand.

Also GS has edited the word "class" ... yes "class" is quite a nasty one.

I am disappointed to find myself in the position of having to write this letter, but owing to circumstances I must go on record with this defense. I don't wish for there to be any action taken against the student named in this situation and I am not writing for any other reason than to defend myself against a similar report made by the student.

On Friday, the 19th of October at around 3: 30 I went from my home to the corner of Avenida Oaxaca and Segundo Norte to find transportation back to the university for the afternoon period. It is my habit to walk to the corner at this time and try to fit in a colectivo or gather a group of students and teachers and share a taxi. On the afternoon of the 19th , seeing that there were four students at the corner which would make up a full cab, I decided to hail a taxi rather than wait for a colectivo. I called to the students and two of them came over to the car. I called to the other two who refused my offer to share the cab, saying they had no money. I was confused as the price of sharing a taxi is only one peso more than the price of the colectivo. I called back that they could pay me 3 pesos and I would make up the difference. I often make such offers to the students to both insure that they will share cabs with me and because I feel many of them might actually need the extra peso for other things. They turned their backs on me and paid me no more attention. I was very confused and slightly offended as I could find no comprehensible reason for them to refuse the ride. While I was attempting to get the other students to join us,_____ _____ _____ _____entered the taxi while yelling to the taxista that I would pay. I was already unsettled by the rejection of the other two students and her yelling was more unnerving. I told her I would not pay the whole fare. She then repeated her demand that I pay, as well as saying some other things that I could not understand. The general idea of what I imagined was a joke on her part was that because I was a "gringo," it would be acceptable for them to take advantage of me for the ride, especially as I had represented myself in the past as easy to take advantage of. I told her once again that I would not pay. At this moment two more students arrived at the corner and joined us in the cab. I looked at the cab driver with an expression of confusion regarding the difficulty in filling the cab. He looked back at me with an expression I can only imagine was hate. This was the most uncomfortable cab ride I have ever taken in PE. I felt that_____ had placed me in a compromising situation, I was baffled as to why the other students would not join us and now was sitting beside a man who thought I was a rich, cheap "gringo."

When we arrived at the university I handed the cab driver 4 pesos, my share of the fare, and tried to exit. The cab driver continued to hold his hand out to me with an expression of contempt on his face, while_____ once again began yelling that I would pay for the taxi. I waved my hand to say no and_____ yelled once more that I would pay. When it became clear that I was not going to cover the fare,_____remarked that she did not like me. I exited the cab and walked away, angry, frustrated, embarrassed and confused.

On my walk from the front gate to the time clock I began a brief conversation with another teacher to whom I tried to explain what had just happened. As I explained I became angrier and began to feel that I had to confront _____about her actions. The other teacher agreed. The more I contemplated the bad joke, the more I came to realize it to be entirely disrespectful and inappropriate behavior for a student to show to their teacher, for a citizen to show a foreigner and for a youth to show an older person. After checking in at the clock I angrily began searching for_____ in order to speak my mind. I found her on the sidewalk in front of the salas and called to her to come to me. She waved her hand at me and turned her back to show that she would not give me respect or an opportunity to speak to her. I called to her again and then finally caught up with her as she entered her **** She once again turned her back on me as if to ignore me. I angrily insisted that she join me once again and was finally able to get her to follow me to the larger sidewalk away from the other students. As I began trying to speak to her and confront her with what I felt she had just done, she began speaking over me. She would not let me express my problem and treated me the whole while, in body language, the expression of her face and the tone of her voice with the utmost disrespect and contempt. Finally, in a frustrated rage, I expressed myself with a raised voice, at which point she began to threaten that she would report me to Servicios Escolares. At this I invited her very rudely to join me at that precise moment to go to Servicios Escolares and that we would make our reports together. She declined and we turned our backs and left the argument with a few more bad words from both of us.

I asked the advice of my co-workers who all advised me to file a report immediately against the student. After some consideration I decided not to for several reasons. First, I was not sure what the repercussions would be for the student to have a report on their record. I have no desire to make problems, especially financial problems, for a student. _____was my student at one point and despite an imprudent and aggressive attitude, I have had a certain amount of respect for her strength. I have always suspected that she did not feel a similar respect for me and that it may have been based on her distrust and lack of knowledge of my culture, but I felt that we had at least a working relationship. Secondly, I was not comfortable with my use ofstrong languageand that I had basically lost control. I try to be as patient as possible with the students and, although I feel I was pushed to an extreme and even to some extent justified, I still am not happy with my anger. I have since heard that _____ is making a complaint against me and so I offer this as my defense and a record of my version of the dispute.

I would also like to take advantage of this opportunity to place the dispute in a larger context which is at the heart of this matter. It is felt that there is a more general disrespect of The Centro de Idiomas that comes not only from the students and their lack of direct contact with English culture, but filters down from the other departments and even some administration. For the most part the people of PE, the students and our campañeros de trabajo at the university, though guarded at first, are friendly and kind. Yet, there remains a feeling of ridicule and condescension towards the foreigners on the campus that is expressed by the students as lethargy and disregard toward us and our ****s. I raise this point because it is pertinent to the incident between_____ and myself. I believe she felt it acceptable and within the university's norms to express ridicule for an English professor.

This incident can also be understood as part of a transportation problem to and from the university and the tension such a stressful trip has on everyone. I was shocked when I first arrived in PE to see that the students would step in front of each other or move further down the carretera to be the first to catch a colectivo. I have also seen this happen in the cafeteria. The disrespect and rudeness I have encountered is not limited to the incident with _____, nor is she the first student with whom I have spoken. In conversations I have had with my students they all agree that such behavior results from the lack of a better example and faulting such example the only thing to do is fight for your place in line.

As an extranjero such behavior is difficult to participate in, both due to my enculturation and a fear of being seen as an arrogant gringo. In fact, I have taken to hiring my own cab in the morning and picking up students along the way, rather than go to the corner to practically fight for a ride. But even so, the last two weeks or so I had noticed the students had stopped offering to pay the few pesos for the shared ride. I can only the imagine that I represent a free ride to the students and I feel that my generosity is being taken advantage of.

Part of what I feel my job is at theuniversity is to represent and introduce my culture to the students, not with the intention of importing it to Mexico, but so that the students will have the background upon which to build relationships with northerners. The agenda of the universities in Oaxaca, based upon the meeting I attended in H___, is to present attractive employees to foreign companies in the hope that they will establish themselves here. I have to say that some of the behavior I have met from the students is not in the best interest of that agenda. I feel it would beto everyone's advantage if the discomfort of the people involved in this culture clash was addressed and we tried to find better ways of doing the things which are simply not working, rather than leaving the bad old ways intact.

Thank you for your attention in this matter. Should you require any more information regarding this situation I am at your service.

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