Staring at Strangers

Is Everyone Famous All of the Time?

My co-blogger Jennifer just got me sucked into the Twitter thing.  She signed up for a Twitter account and then just had to invite me on to it.  I've successfully avoided it up until now, recognizing what a time sink it is, and just how silly it is, notwithstanding all of these articles coming out about how vital Twitter is to marketing your services and whatever else it is you happen to be selling.  And that's not the end of it.

Jennifer, being the new media guru that she is, advised me a while ago that I ought to post any SAS post I make on my Facebook page, which I do.  But now that I'm on Twitter, she tells me that I have to announce my SAS posts on Twitter as well.  I'm beginning to feel like every time I go to the bathroom I'm going to have to announce it on a dozen different media outlets. 

Whatever happened to having a day when nothing happened?  Has every day, every hour, and yes, every minute of everyone's life now become newsworthy?  I think what's happening is Andy Warhol's old quote is morphing into "In the future everyone will be famous every fifteen minutes."

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Facebook, Andy Warhol, 15 minutes of fame

The Rise and Fall of Good Enough English

As newspapers shed staff faster than autumn leaves, a goodly lot of copy-editors may have bit the dust.

Planning permission to build a home on the property had already been issued, but as it was waterfront, they knew there would be fierce competition from other perspective buyers.

And the New York Times, an organ we thought we could depend upon to keep up grammatically correct, has let us down. Of course, nothing warms the cockles of my heart more than finding others’ mistakes.

Technorati Tags: grammar, copy-editing

Thinking, for a Change, about Latin America

The average Estadounidense doesn’t think about what lies south of its border very often, and when he does, he thinks of the border wars, Mexican immigrants, and some nasty business in Colombia, with a taco thrown in for good measure. Even the above-average, well=-educated Estadounidenses, the kind who’re respected by their peers and often even put into positions of great authority, don’t pay much attention to Latin America, tossing off gems like “Mexico doesn’t have a real middle class.” These folks desperately need to rethink Latin America, starting right here at the Brookings Institution’s report on Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations. Even if the report is plagued with platitudes, partnerships and dialogues.

Credit goes to Two Weeks Notice for alerting us to this report.

 

Technorati Tags: immigration, Latin America, Mexico, Brookings Institution

 

Buy Me an Island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne didn’t know about this island, situated just off the shores of Quintana Roo and now on sale for a cool $5M USD. It could be the perfect Christmas gift for your favorite blogger.

 

Technorati Tags: Cayo Culebra, Snake Island, Mayan Riviera, Mexico Law Blog

One Magazine to Die For

It’s no secret that I’ve never met a magazine I didn’t like. (How’s that for a triple negative?) From Prison Living to Tapestry (a magazine for cross-dressers and transsexuals), I’m fascinated by more than just the content. The paper quality, binding, blow-ins, inserts, advertising lineup, and even the masthead all pique my curiosity.

The perfumed strips and makeup samples, musical cards, tiny booklets, and little gifts (does anyone else remember when Smirnoff included a set of mittens with its ad?) only added to the rich magazine experience. And who could forget the issue of Vanity Fair that weighed as much as your average major metropolitan area telephone book? Online magazines are better than no magazines at all, but there’s a lamentable loss in tactile quality.

There are lots of magazines about getting married, giving birth, raising children, being a modern drunk, caring for gerbils, practicing law, cooking fine meals, loving Texas, living in Mexico, growing and dealing dope, getting 0ld, and being rich. There are trade magazines for every occupation under the sun from raising lab animals to formulating pet food and designing packaging materials, from operating a car wash to developing operating systems.

But until now, at least as far as I know, there hasn’t been a magazine about checking out. And it’s about time. It’s something that exactly every person reading this blog – and every other blog under the sun—will do eventually. Obit, whose mission statement reads “What death can mean to the living and what living may have meant to the dead” may be the final word.

 

Technorati Tags: Obit, obituary, death, magazines, periodicals

First Stop in the New World Should be the Next Book You Read

We pirated this video from David Lida, who just happened to write one of the best books about Mexico published this year. Don’t ask any questions. Just buy the book. Trust me. It’s that good.

Technorati Tags: David Lida, First Stop in the New World, books, Mexico

What’s Good for General Motors is Good for America—and for Mexico

Last month, I bought a new car. Even though my beloved Eldorado had served me well, it was time. I flirted with the notion of buying a Hitler car, and I flirted with buying a Honda, but I came to my senses and bought a car made by General Motors. And you know something? I know I made the right decision.

Brand loyalty has served me well for nearly half a century. If you want a computer, you buy a Dell. If you want a printer, there is no better brand than Hewlett-Packard. If you want good clothes, it’s Neiman Marcus. Well, Saks does run a close second. And if you want solid, reliable vehicle, there’s none better than a General Motors product. All decisions in life should be that easy.

There is no company around which has produced cars longer in Mexico and the U.S. than General Motors. That’s got to tell you something. The Big Three are what made both countries great.

Now I really don’t know enough to even have an opinion about whether a bailout or a bankruptcy is in General Motors’ best interest. But I do know that if every new car buyer in this hemisphere did the right thing and bought a General Motors product we’d all be better off.

Technorati Tags: bailout, bankruptcy, General Motors, GM

A Rorschach Test for Latin American Democracy

Steve Cotton at Same Life – New Location analyzes what The Economist’s Latinobarómetro poll really means.

But then there were always people who could find meaning in William Faulkner’s The Bear.

 

Technorati Tags: democracy, Latinobarometro poll

The Girl Effect

I came across a remarkable web site today - The Girl Effect.  The site describes how ending child marriages for girls in developing countries and getting them education improves economic and health conditions for them and their community.  They provide ways that you can support their goals.

Why girls you may ask?  Why not girls and boys?  The site explains:

Only one-half of one cent of every aid dollar spent in the developing world is earmarked for girls.  And yet when a girl has resources, she will reinvest them in her community at a much higher rate than a boy would.

There's more at the web site.

Here's one of the videos which you can find at their site:

Food for the Apocalypse

It started innocently enough. A Mexican friend, a worldly and sophisticated kind of guy, a man who had actually lived in foreign countries for substantial periods of his life, started out with a fond reminiscence about canned chili. One thing led to another, and before long, the topic of misunderstood canned food came up. Well, it had to, sooner or later.

And then before you knew it, Daily Show writer and otherwise famous guy Rob Kutner writes this book, Apocalypse How, telling us how to get ready for the end of the world. But he carefully leaves out one very important fact. Guys who plan to survive do this, you know. (We have to mention his name as frequently as we do law or sex, because he sends us $10.00 each time we utter his name. We know a good thing when we see it.)

So, I’m at Albertson’s in Santa Fe, and what do I spy on the shelves? Yes, you guessed correctly: Hormel canned tamales. Those rich celebrity folks in The City Different know their gourmet cuisine, that’s for sure. Only hours after returning home to Morelia, it was time to send out a plea for more, and a very connected person in the next town over had confirmed orders for replacements on their way all the way from the U.S. to Mexico in a matter of minutes.

Suddenly, canned tamales became all the rage in central Michoacán. The mere sight of a can brought tears to the eyes of even more sophisticated, worldly folks, the kind who hang with the cognoscenti of Mexican culture. They spoke fondly of the first tamal that ever touched their tongues in far-off places like Springfield, Missouri, Dallas, and San Diego, savoring it right down to the paper wrappers, congealed orange morsels of flavor, and playfully light chili sauce.  One elderly man recalled his very first brush with the humble canned tamal in Denver some fifty years back.

Only yesterday, a half-case of Hormel canned tamales was placed in my custody. I fondly read over the label of the canned tamales, carefully noting that no xanthan gum, red dye number five or diethylhydrodemocratic acid or other foodstuffs not found in nature lurked in this all-natural, all-beef, preservative-free product. Yearning to open a can for my own selfish pleasures, I read the stamp on the cans, only to find that this stuff is best if served in 2011. This means that I have to wait three more years before this stuff is fully matured.

It’s for the best. Come 2011, we’ll all be good and hungry, if not starving, once the Apocalypse comes.  And those canned Hormel beef tamales in chili sauce will be even more damn delicious.

Technorati Tags: Hormel canned tamales, Apocalypse How, Rob Kutner