Tijuana Gringo : Diary

Domingo 21 septiembre 2003

Tijuana, Baja California

Sonnadaeg 21 Septembrus 2003

Tijuana, Baja California

Philip asked me to mention by quoting the New Yorker Magazine that TODAY...

At 2:57 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Galileo will be travelling at a speed of thirty miles per second, and its boxy octagonal frame will start glowing red. Seconds later, it will be white-hot. By 3 p.m., many of its eighty-five thousand components will have separated from each other, and will continue to break up, becoming a hail of rapidly liquefying shrapnel. By the time the spacecraft’s remains are three hundred miles inside Jupiter’s atmosphere, where the temperature is twelve hundred degrees, all its aluminum components will have vaporized. At six hundred miles, its titanium parts will disintegrate. Jupiter is a gaseous planet, with a radius of forty-four thousand miles—big enough to contain all the other planets and moons of the solar system—and Galileo will have hardly penetrated its outermost atmospheric layer. Having just crossed Jupiter’s threshold, it will vanish, leaving no clues of its earthly origin or its complicated mission.

This was a direct quote FROM The New Yorker Magazine

Question #1: Who do you believe more? -- #2: Or less?

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

President George Bush the 2nd

Crest has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice which can be of significant value when used in a consciensciously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.  This product contains no sugar... If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, seek professional help or contact a poison control center immediately.

Crest Toothpaste the 1st

Ayer

La gente, mucha gente, come en el Fondo de yo no sé que nombre, pues, se me olvidó el nombre y que. Está en la segunda entre tal y cual. Un omelet con salsa verde, por favor. Ya hay más muertos y heridos en Mesopotamia. Me da pena. Solo quiero conocer a Mesoamérica, nada de esa tierra lejana en Asia entre los ríos de Babilonia, no, no más quiero escribir sobre esta continente acá entre los mares. Las mares (feminina), según como decía mi amigo allá en Totonacapan Veracruz. Por supuesto nuestro rentero aquí en TJ, Ramón Huerta, va decir que ese es una estupidez, una pendejada hablar así y que el indio (fijate que Ramón dice indio y no indigena) no sabe nada del idioma nacional pero yo recuerdo bien la leyenda que nos hablaba sobre el travieso Tajín y me voy a decir que yo soy él que no habla, no él y que él sabe más cosas de su pueblo que yo y que Ramón sí sabe. Por allá se dice "la" mar sí es cierto me lo juraba. Pero Ramón no quiere hablar de dialectos, no, él es demasiado puro y curado y culto para ese juego, no. Entonces... no le decía más mas yo les quejo aquí en la pagina de mi ironia fracasada y pues como dijé sí soy él que realmente no sabe hablar no obstante me atrevo andar entre pluma y penacho de las teclas, maquineandome así con computadora ya. Ya basta.

Ni tampoco te voy decir quien es.

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Memory

where a cat waits inside the gate
between two stores on busy street
				my landlord Ramón
knows the old lady
who lives back there
in her hidden house from 
when he was a boy .

her mother was a founder 
with his grandmother in
the park across the street
			the men drove
their trucks from Kate
Session's garden
		to Tijuana .

forty years later Ramón was a boy
left his bike out in the yard
that does not exist
that last safe time ever
	before
the sixties were burned alive in
Vietnam, assassinations, and moon shots
from the other side
		of the line .

Between

Swollen beyond its banks, the river ate the earth.  Let it fall downstream in mud.  Egrets and curlews pierced next year for tasty crawling things exposed by the moon.  My tide is ink, my worms eat paper.  All things turn in a circle but I cannot see every edge.  This disturbs me to forget my dreams, or every reverie against the bus window crawling between Mexico and New York.  Imagine something will emerge from the sea, primeval monster, to devour me before I reach the great white way.  It does not help that my children and nephews are burning on crosses in Mesopotamia.  Or should I say crescents?  Fertile rivers weep for every death.  I remember filmstrips (DING advance the frame Now) in elementary school, when we still studied ancient history.  I tell Danial and he says, yes, he too saw them when they were new.  Now there are only rising waters to....

Endgame Beginword

When a train leaves, cars may cross the tracks after.  After the sun sets I remember night is only a shadow.  My shade is winter.  In the windows, ice reminds me of youth, before I came west.  Wisteria and bougainvillia now embrace this cottage and give me something worth writing for, perhaps even fighting.  Four horsemen turn against the wind.  When.

Economy

I invite any number of lines to
lean and loaf at ease in Tijuana

vision from the future when worlds collide
cultures fornicate, languages cross-dress

a rich man on the hilltop fears no storm
he'll hire helicopters to hold up his house

addicts in riverbed screw coins for food
five tacos get their crystal rock drug

while a million others only want work
build a home, buy a car, go to school

on the other side of the line consumer
desire trickles down crap from heaven high

this is the true power of border life
objects in mirros are closer than they

appear

BABYLON


interactive input output talk shop
talk show demographics prove

gobbledigook bla  bla     bla

Babel			on

not on TV		not
interactive

interactive is only
answer			response
stimulus			touch

no ten foot leather belt
on Paul Bunyan

didn't the bubble burst
before 2000

or was it tape-delayed
for the Maya

calendar	2012
asteroid	2014

tell me something I don't know
a television said and

said again		but
everyone was gone	outdoors

looking for computers in the sky .

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-- Michael Arthur Thomas --

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Copyright 2003 Daniel Charles Thomas except the New Yorker quote, the President's infamous xvi words, and the celebrated message on the toothpaste tube, which is/are absolutely and completely each and every individually their own property and properties and are abdominally and abominabully pulpit abused or rather free use citation used here only for purposes of entertaining informatttttttive reference and maybe if they paid us which they didn't more's the pitttttyyy we would be inducing you to visit their site and sites, to buy their magazine and use their toothpaste and support your great leader #2 who should have been Mister Tilden elected instead like in 1876 but hey, I support the supreme court and so do we all here and of course otherwise consume eat drink etc you know the routine up against the copyright wall motherfreeuser... yeah like you reallllllyyyyy were going to read this oh right Brooklyn Bridge for sale on the MOON Alice! Ah the great one, they don't make'em like him any more do they... how sweet it is etc. Oh great now I want a cupokafe NOW.... SO...any way Bye........