nekare

I was thinking yesterday of how I don't think I've ever watched Daria in English. And like, I'm not sure if I want to? That dubbing was a master piece - it managed to be contemporary, hip and faithful to the characters while translating suburban US English into neutral latinamerican Spanish. Apart from the first Shrek, very few things manage to sound actually decent in dubbing. It even used the word 'cool' in english as part of Trent's chain smoking voice and actually managed to use it right for the like two seconds it was popular in the late 90s!

I also just very very recently got to watch Back to the Future in English. This was less due to nostalgia but to the fact that I watched it a million times in my childhood with the shitty dubbing of canal 5 (with aproximately eight thousand commercial breaks in it), and Marty's absolutely horrifyingly awesome yell of 'DOC!! DOOOOC!' is so hilarious in spanish that I never felt the need to see how it compared XD

Anyway, I watched Take Shelter last week and while it was good, the pacing was so slow I wanted to hit things. The ending pretty much made everything worth it though. And then I went to see Side Effects on sunday, which was also really good. It's so cleverly written - it completely turns around on you as it plays out. I don't really believe Sodebergh when he says he's quitting, but I guess it was a good send off.

I don't get why cayenne pepper is considered Mexican? Like, I've never had any Mexican food with cayenne pepper in it, hell, I've never cooked anything with cayenne pepper in it myself, because I've never been able to find it in any supermarket. And that's probably as far away as possible as you can get as being 'native' to a country.

It's the same with chilli (I hated seeing it called 'chilli con KAHR-NEHEE' in the UK) and chilli powder - not abailable anywhere, so I made my own with ground up chile de árbol, cummin and paprika, which I'm pretty sure is not quite right.

Anyway, one day I'll see somewhere refering to Mexican food and it being tongue tacos and I will cry of happiness.

BECAUSE TONGUE TACOS ARE THE BOMB, OK, AND IF YOU BIN OUT A PERFECTLY DELICIOUS AND GOURMET PIECE OF COW INSTEAD OF CHOPPING IT UP WITH TOMATILLO SALSA I MIGHT HATE YOU A LITTLE.

So, I watched Savages, and I'm not quite sure what to think of it. On the one hand, I did like it, and it was well made and stuff. On the other hand, it trivializes the very, very real issue of drug traffic in Mexico, and makes it all about a bunch of hippie white people with Hearts of Gold© and Good Intentions©.

It bothers me that we don't see a single Mexican person that is not an evil torturer/kidnapper/murderer/criminal. Ah well.

But at least we got a threesome? So there's that.

So I managed to convince the boy to watch an episode of Game of Thrones. I'm not quite sure but I think he's already finished the first series? After like two days, lol. this morning he texted saying 'good morning khaleesi'. Am ridiculously proud.

I'll make a nerd out of him yet. *wipes single tear*

Anyway, I went to the tiny town my grandad comes from with my parents for the holy days. I usually don't go anywhere near my grandparents around Good Friday because it means going to church a bazillion times and not eating meat and all that blah stuff, but we lucked out and we weren't made to go to mass at all! SCORE. And I got to eat LOTS (and lots and lots, ugh) and I got to laugh a bit at the low-rent via crucis they put up, in which the romans had hard hats painted gold and all that marked Mary Magdalene was a giant pair of hoop earrings.

Also, there was a story in yesterday's paper titled: JESUS OF NAZARETH GETS STABBED IN ZAPOPAN. In one of those fortitous events that are strangely hilarious, a dude called Jesús de Nazaret (I KNOW RITE) got lightly stabbed by his wife on holy Thursday. It wasn't serious, but, I mean. What are the chances, right?

On the way to said tiny town with questionable easter parades (including KKK-like hoods during the march of silence, Spain-style), a van in front of us dropped some giant cushions in the motorway and one of them exploded under our car and cloth and foam or cotton or whatever the hell they put inside coated every single bit of the insides, so we had to get a tow back home today. Almost three hours with the arm rest digging into my side, as we all had to forcibly fit inside the tow cabin. ugh.

Common mistakes about Mexican terms:

It's not tamale. It's tamal, in singular, and tamales in plural.

It's not Montezuma. It's Moctezuma, and it's pretty damn offensive that people repeatedly spell that wrong. No one has ever written Queen Victorria, or something, have they? It's not like it's even the hardest pre-hispanic name to say. (that's probably Coyolxauhqui. Hee. Or Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli.)

MMM, WHAT ELSE. I know there's tons more. OH! Not a term, but: NO SELF-RESPECTING MEXICAN WOULD EVER DRINK THE KIND OF PIRATED TEQUILA WITH A WORM. EVER.

Went over to celebrate my cousin's 14 birthday today. He just broke his wrist two days ago, and is walking around probably cursing his luck of getting a fracture days after the summer holidays started, lol.

Oh god I HATE it when Spanish people write Méjico. Yes, that's how it's pronounced. No, that doesn't mean you can call it that. The country is called México and you should spell it like that because the excuse that spelling changes with language is bullshit when we're still talking about the same common language. People would go frothy at the mouth if we started saying Espania or something, wouldn't they? So common courtesy.

The x is there. And matters. It's lovely and it's a reminder of our pre-hispanic times.

Rant brought to you by a stupid article in yahoo Spain, but I've seen it enough that it's been bubbling over for a while.

It was 37C today. I was wearing a skirt and sitting on a plastic chair; I was so sweaty I was SLIDING off that shit.

Maybe this is why I like the rain so much? Because it's such a relief from the blistering heat, and it's so cool and refreshing and the wet earth smells so nice and it's a lovely thing to have at evenings or night and watch it from your balcony with the window open. And summer means thunderstorms everyday that literally light up the sky, not even with lightning but when the sky goes all orange-y and it looks almost like daylight and then there's lightning and you can see the drops falling sort of in slow motion. Rain in England was freezing and a bit dreary to have all day long when it's already freezing outside anyway, and it's easy to see why it's disliked. But here - rain's a bit magic, and it means grass going finally green and lovely smells and an end to the horribly hot spring.

There was hail tonight! Really weird, as it usually doesn't rain until mid-June, the end of our stupid april/may summer and the beginning of the rainy season (which sort of just becomes fall by late november and ends in summer in april. Winter? almost nonexistant. Spring? Motherfucking heat non deserving of a pretty name.)

It sort of bothers me when people use the word 'fiesta' as an ~exotic~ word, meaning piñatas or whatever. A fiesta is just a party, any party, all parties, not just nachos and salsa dip or whatever dim people think Mexican cuisine is all about. Bah.

You know what hurt my little patriotic heart? Seeing an Explorer Dora 'fiesta' doll. man, that was sad.

To be honest I'm quite worried about the influenza outbreak in Mexico City - apparently there hasn't been any (or that many, in any case) cases outside the capital, and just a couple of relatives are there, but still, it's gotten so BIG now, wow, it's all over the news in here... Classes have been suspended until May 6 (!) and I just got an e-mail from Uni in Guadalajara saying classes were suspended monday and tuesday. Woah. My mom says it's crazy over there, that everyone's saying not to shake hands with anyone or say hi with a kiss or pretty much go out at all, although of course that's mostly just in the DF, not in province - yet.

Ergh. It's sort of weird, really, not being there while everything's going down... And yet there's a bit of relief, at the same time? I do hope it'll die down soon, though.

In a less disturbing and shallow note, we saw State of Play yesterday, the US bastardization, and I have to say it wasn't half bad, although it was doomed from the start not to reach the incredibly shiny levels of the UK version. Ben Affleck was especially wooden and boring in this, and the movie wasn't nearly as intense, intimate and emotional as the series. Ah well. I got to wear my new lovely skirt and white high heels, though, I felt so pretty, lol, and Robin actually wore a dress shirt, I should've taken photo evidence that it actually happened, haha. I'm so tired, though, it's so hard to actually fit the two of us in our tiny tiny beds...

I just watched LAST week's Bones, because I'm a procrastinator like that, and the ending made me SQUEE LIKE A WILD THING. OH MY HEART. THOSE TWO. ALSDJFASLJF. ♥

And that's as happy as this post goes, because I'm still shocked and sad and furious over the 'terrorist' attacks in Morelia on the 15th. Finger quotes, because it's obvious to everyone it was the narcs. This is how it went down: During the Independence celebration 'grito', right after the second 'Viva México' by the governor, some people threw four hand grenades into the crowd. A crowd filled with innocent bystanders, families with children, just trying to celebrate our independence and wanting to watch the fireworks. Seven died, and more than a hundred are in the hospital in crital condition.

It makes me sick. The pictures are just gruesome. This country has tolerated narc wars for long enough because it was just them killing each other, but this is innocent people that died and we shouldn't - can't take it anymore.