Bruja

My much-delayed mural "Bruja" was unveiled last week with the rest of a major renovation of one those breezy old mansions constructed in Las Lomas way back in the Twenties for early grandees of the PRI, and while the guests slam down champagne and murmur appreciatively inside, I drift out to the street where my friend Miguel and the other chaffeurs and bodyguards are stomping around and singing snatches of pop tunes to keep themselves warm in the cool night air of the hills above Mexico City in the middle of February.

"The boss says to me, if that crazy yanqui painter don't finish my mural in time for the party, Miguel, you take him out to the farm for me and feed him to the hogs."

"But I like you, I don't want to do this thing, so I say to the boss, It is very unlucky to kill a crazy man, worse luck to kill a painter, and to kill a crazy painter is as the curse of seven brujas."

"So the boss thinks it over for a little while, and then he says..."

"Kill him anyway."

"Ha ha ha ha!"

Our little mob of drivers and mercenaries laughs merrily and congratulates me and Miguel for our good luck that I finished the mural, and then they go back to singing and stomping around until a passing car slows down on Paseo de las Palmas and all of them suddenly fall silent, glaring into the headlights.
 
 

Golden Calf

Is that the tide or some kind of
uncool coital influx?

Flog the waves!
Squeal and drool on the throne of Xerxes!
Are you from Iran?

Are you hiding a gun in your cunt-wool?

I am the Golden Calf of Southern California!

Do you worship the sun?
Is it ogling my titties?

I'm the Golden Calf of Southern California!
Icon of the ironic cowboys!

Don't laugh!
 
 
 

Boulevard St. Michel

 

 
 
I meet my 
therapist (Baudelaire) 
in an intimate 
café on Boul' Mich and while I
blather about my silly problems 
he stares moodily at the passers-by 
or writes pitiful letters to his mother...
sometimes six in one day!

Now he's threatening to beat up some geezer...
his best friend!... and the geezer's 
wife and children and burn down his house!
At four o'clock exactly!

I look at my watch and explain
that he's booked for another session
and another and another and another
all afternoon and yet another
busload of 
British psycho-
tourists is already en route!

Baudelaire is infused with relief and self-abnegation.
Would I beat an old man?
He's my only friend!
I'm in love with his wife!
His brats call me Uncle Charlie!
My mother made me do it!

So he writes her a pitiful letter while I
blather about my silly problems and the
golden 
evening 
decends along the Boulevard St. Michel
from Notre Dame de Paris to the Luxembourg Gardens.
 
 

An Almost-Posthumous Photo of Lindsay Lohan

This is the little girl from Disney's "Parent Trap" in 1998.
 
 

100 Years of Hate, Beginning Today

An American drone attack in Datta Khel, Pakistan killed 44 people, including 13 children, on March 17, 2011.

One of the elders, Malik Faridullah Wazir Khan told the BBC that "the area was completely covered in blood. There were no bodies, only body parts - hands, legs and eyes scattered around. People carried away the body parts in shopping bags and clothing or with bits of wood, whatever they could find."

"We are a people who wait 100 years to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy."



"We announce a jihad against the US and her allies sitting in our country," said Malik Jalal Sarhadi Qat Khel, another tribal leader. "We will avenge our tribesmen at any cost, even if it takes a hundred years."
 
 

Kalasha

The Kalasha inhabit a few small villages in three very remote valleys in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, and likewise across the Durand Line in the Chitral District of Pakistan. Their language and culture are radically different from the surrounding ethnicities, and many of them claim descent from the Greek soldiers whom Alexander of Macedon left behind in Afghanistan. During one of their many, many festivals, in July and August, dancing and singing continue every night for a month.

Starry Starry Night

Looking through DOD photos of soldiers on guard in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, I kept asking myself...

What are they guarding, in the middle of nowhere?



What are they guarding?



Are they guarding these roads?



Roads from nowhere to nowhere!



Tens of thousands of American soldiers, year after year after year...



Soldiers millions of miles from nowhere, in the starry starry night!