10 may 2003
In case you missed the big announcement, the FIRST, COM-PLETE, CAPTAIN HEATHER COMIC is liiiive and ready to rumble on the comics page. This is the best comic work I've ever done. Another reason you should see it: me in a swimsuit on the last page. Oh la la. I RULE!
Hey, my friend Cort´s site is up and lovely, go read about nasty political things at Cort´s site.
i´m not making this up
The Bush admin has decided to fine Ry Cooder one hundred thousand dollars for doing business with Cuba, in his making of the masterpiece, Buena Vista Social Club. And Clinton said we should all get in line behind Bush and support the war. ¡¿What the hell?!
taken to Taxco
(copied out of my journal yesterday)
We are passing home through Tetetla, economically bound to existence by the grace of the Bacardi dum plant. You can smell burnt, fermented sugarcane inside your car with the windows rolled up. The canefields repeat themselves for miles, and the trucks haul the cane in for processing stacked over the cab roofs in bushy toupees. Alyssa says they look like lions driving down the road, manes ruffling in the wind behind growling, coughing engine snouts. Christine says they look like Tina Turner. I say Beaker from the Muppets. Silvia says nothing, drowsing with poise in a long black sundress next to me.
Taxco (toss-co) was picturesque and hot, and it sweated color and friendliness for market day. Alyssa was buying silver for another teacher back in the states. When we met back up for lunch at two, she wore her backpack on her belly and said, "Five months pregnant. I figure that’s about what this feels like, Yeah?" I hefted the bag. Five months pregnant does not sound wrong.
We saw the aftermath of a car accident this morning. There were three bodies tumbled like stiff and dirty rags in the newly plowed field, thrown thirty feet apart. One was a woman in a red skirt., and her blouse hiked up exposing her back, skin gone pallid. Groups of men in black like crows huddled around the bodies, around the car, around themselves. No one was huddled around her. Today is Mother’s Day in Mexico. A twisted black Jetta, looking like it had been hit by a wrecking ball at the driver’s side had come to rest behind them, looking defeated and embarrassed. One man ran out to the woman. And we drove on. We drove past the field 20 minutes ago. The field had been cleared of people and the car. On a stoop porch on a nearby farmhouse a man sat with his head buried in his hands. I might have gotten his picture. I had black and white film in my camera. I feel sick but I hope I did.
I write this in the car, driven past whitewash cemeteries; past crows, 15, all hunkered in the same tree;down unlined black blacktop backs; bu Alyssa crushing time under her tires.
(end of journal entry—the next page is a sketch of a Cabbage Patch Kid, labeled "Explaination (sic) to Sylvia. Apparantly(sic) had no Cabbage Patch kids in Germany)
