Dispatches from The Mayan Empire

"There is a curse upon my every waking breath, and I cannot escape the darkness. It feels like every step is gonna be my last, and I cannot escape the darkness. Some have tried to lift me up, but I only dragged them down with me, for I cannot escape the darkness." - Those Poor Bastards, I Cannot Escape the Darkness + + + Caution: Pretentious melancholy writing ahead, but fuck, you should have expected that at some point. I'm a poor writer living in a country where you can get cheap booze and drugs more easily than you can get a permit to drive a car from another country. + + +  "Have you ever heard of exorcism? It's a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit. It's pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment. It has worked, in fact, although not for the reason they think, of course. It was purely the force of sugge

 "Great minds think alike. So do drunken carnies with corn dog sticks and the chance to shank you." - Frankerson Peterson + + + It truly amazes me the bizarre circles life moves in. Well, it is not really a circle, despite what the first season of 'True Detective' keeps telling me. Its more of a realistic orbital pathway, elliptical. You move away from things in a sort of arc, for better or worse, and then just as you realize life is changing you find yourself on the other side of whatever you are orbiting and heading round the long way again. So more of an eccentric orbit. [[Ah, home sweet home. Here there is only one way to do things, Carlito's Way.]] Hey, fuck you, I'm sick and even at my best I'm not Sir Isaac Newton. Orbital/gravitational mechanics were never my strong suit, I have always been much, much better at getting into the pants of girls who are excellent at orbital mechanics. There is nothing better in this world than a s

"Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!" - Seth Gecko, From Dusk till Dawn + + + Today I had a hastily scheduled audition at a vampire-themed strip club in Mexico. It is not, so far as I can tell, the upper level of an ancient Aztec temple. Nor is it teeming with bloodthisty undead. So far it seems to be teeming with money-thirsty strippers, which is exactly what one would expect, nay, hope for in a place such as that.   [[Even vampire strippers get into the holiday spirit! The ladies are very festive.]]  The audition consisted of the owner, a takes-exactly-zero-shit-and-gives-just-as-many-fucks woman who could easily pass as Santanico Pandemonium (though she is currently pregnant with her fourth child, you simply can not tell it isn't her first) telling me to go set up in the DJ booth once she arrived. Her husband,

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid." - Q, Star Trek: TNG (Ep: Q Who)  + + + After a little more than a week of living south of the border I can honestly say that this was indeed the right thing for me to do. While my financial situation has gone downhill much, much faster than anticipated due largely to getting fucked out of an apartment I had lined up in Quintana Roo and the seemingly endless frustrations of the bureaucracy of the Mexican immigration system. The language barrier has honestly been the least of my troubles. Its not that this is my first experience being on the razors edge of success and profound failure. [[If only I were an entire mariachi band, I'd be living like, well, a mariachi band.]] That being said I would not trade this particu

"…The shocking thing about any stripper gathering, I discovered, was that you have never heard women talk so fast and so explicitly about money in all your life. They make the guys on the trading floor on Wall Street look like a bunch of pansies." - Susie Bright, Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir + + + It took me approximately four days to end up in a Mexican strip club. Keep in mind this was not at all my intention, I mean it, stop laughing. I had gone out to a local restaurant/bakery called Renee's for some of their divine pastries in anticipation of an evening figuring out how to get my car, laden with tons of shit as it is, from here to Rio Bravo and a proper bank branch. [[I confess that any poor choices made may... may have had something to do with this. The tequila, not the cat food.]] [[Seems legit.]] After leaving the bakery, with my nice leather satchel full of pastries, a gentleman accosted me offering me a free beer and a free lap da

 “Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.” - Salmon Rushdie, The Satanic Verses     + + + For the last three nights, and potentially four more, I remain in Nuevo Progresso on the interesting side of the US/Mexican border. Not that I dislike the US, but when your options are insanely cheap motel rooms, potent-yet-cheap tequila, strange chemicals of all descriptions, street vendors serving better food than 90% of the Mexican restaurants I've tried, and... Texas. The choice is not a difficult one to make.  [[Walkways only a few short hours ago teeming with vendors and tourists, now empty like the bottle of Cazadores in my hotel room.]] As for the hotel San Jose, I recommend it highly. Friendly staff, very clean, pet friendly, cheap as fuck, close to the border, and excellent wifi speeds when it's working (which is most of the time). They asked me if I wanted to stay long term, a tempting offer to be sure,

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - William Gibson, Neuromancer  + + + I've been here for two days and despite the close proximity to the border it is not what one would expect. Mexico is a marvelous place, but make no mistake, it is another country. Another culture, another planet.  Though the border zone is a bit more approachable, a lot more tourist friendly, by design. Duty-free shops selling liquor, perfume, knock-off Versace handbags from China, expensive jewelry which would be sold by street vendors in Saudi Arabia as garbage, and all manner of shitty cigars which the merchants will swear to you in hushed tones are still-embargoed Cubans (hint, they are not). If you desire to cross the bridge on foot carrying pottery, wearing a cheap sombrero, reeking like someone who was thrown out of Paris Hilton's birthday party all the while confidently sucking on a smoldering chair leg then the foot bridge between t

While you, my faithful readers, await some actual content please feel free to enjoy this list of my favorite quotations. Some from the famous, the infamous, the intellectual, some from ancient history, some from my favorite films. The only real commonalities between them are that in one way or another they have meant something to me. Enjoy! + + +  "I am in the prime of my senility." - Brother Theodore . . . "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean THEY aren't paranoid, too." - Faculty X slogan, Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery (Grant Morrison & Frank Quietly) . . . "One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real." - Klaus Kinski, Actor . . . "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." - Napoleon Bonaparte . . . "To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come?"