still alive. mexico city is wild. unbelievable actually. will try to write something later this week or next.

caroline has raised some wonderful questions. the most interesting, and i imagine least pressing, is who, indeed, owns the identity ¨peaches¨?

some ideas:
1. the first person who comes to mind, and who my family knows but few others who might be reading this, is ashley burnett. back in the day, way back over 10 years ago, riding around in gents`s old car, the honda h-ho, ashley, sara/jeanette/other people whose names i forget now, would listen to the presidents of the united states. the most popular of their songs at the time was, clearly, ¨peaches.¨ although i believe ash´s favorite might have been ¨little blue dune buggy.¨ nevertheless, i dont think she has ever read this blog and it has been almost one year since we spoke, so i am doubting the validity of this deduction.
2. a spammer. somebody who just wants to write weird stuff in hopes of some material gain. ya, that is a b.s. answer, but what else do spammers want?
3. one of the two jim´s that i am good friends with: richvegas jimmy ¨i just got married and have been too cool for school to write will back in over two months¨ dougherty, or seattlean tron ¨not from the movie but from the real world sketch on chapelle´s show a few years back¨ saunders. both are candidates, and though i have proof that richvegas jimza at one point read this bloggy, i have no evidence that ¨the colonel¨ (saunders) has ever even seen this thing.
4. someone i met in flagstaff or san fran that somehow got hold of this bloggy site and likes to harass me. given my own penchant for obnoxiousness, this might be considered payback for something i did. however, given that i have no clue which person it might be, and keeping in mind the shere volume of peeps that i met in both places, and that i have done more than enough things to deserve payback, i am at a loss.
5. a person from georgia. i am not sure how many people i know living in georgia at the moment besides sissy, james and this slightly strange young man i met at a conference a few years ago at uga (ames might remember) who seemed to really want to be my friend. i have ruled out the first two for no good reason other than they have no good reason that i can imagine. the latter i just think is weird, so maybe it is him. also brian hooker robinson, but he just moved to vegas, which might be why i have not heard anything from this peaches cat in months.
6. aliens. i have always believed that there are some other forms of life out there. have they decided to communicate with me through the internet instead of taking me into their ship and touring the galaxy? i would be very disappointed if so. note to aliens: i´ll pass on the probing, but will chip in for gas if we get to tool around in the ship for a while. do you accept mexican pesos by the way?
7. this one is pretty obvious, and is not really specific, but someone who knows what shiprock is. who is familiar with the dine´e (navajo) rez in western new mexico? or, who has been reading tony hillerman novels. once again fingers are pointed at sissy(ames) bc now there are two solid links- georgia and knowledge of shiprock. again i strike that though bc it seems a bit random for my sister. ok, it seems a bit random for just about anybody.
8. i dont really know who reads the blog, or who has access to it. i know some of my friends have passed the addy along to others, but how far has it gone? the infrequency of the posts by this elusive peaches character, and the lack thereof in the last four months or so, leads me to believe it was a former friend, one who became quite bored with the posts and just gave up reading. if this is the case, well, dammit, there is nothing i can do bc he or she is not even reading this. and that would be a shame.
9. this is when i just have no idea but need a placeholder because all i really want is to actually get to the number 10.
10. if you have not considered 1-8 a stretch(are we even counting #9?), then this one will be as solid as if i read it in the tarot cards that i stole from seattle jim´s troy mc´clure lunchbox: me. i go through and type my own comments. but i dont do it when i am aware of what is going on, only when the aliens have recently returned me to earth and drugged me so that i dont sell their secrets to fox and rekindle the now defunct x-files. mulder and scully, where are you when your countrymen, albeit x-patriotated, need you?
E. and then there is number ¨e,¨ which as all you mathematicians know, is not a number at all, but still finds its way onto many a standardized test: none of the above.

so the short answer to c-line´s querry is no. but how much fun would that have been.
as for the rest of her questions, i shall save them for another day.

i leave you, and by you i mean peaches, which as we know now could well be me, with an offering, something scattered to the four winds under the watchful eye of a harvest moon: the few lines i can remember from another popular prez of the u.s. song:
¨lump lingered last in line for brains,
and the one she got was sort of rotten and insane. . . .
she´s lump, she´s lump, she´s lump,
she´s in my head.
she´s lump, she´s lump, she´s lump,
she might be dead¨

happy hunting

what up y´all? i am in the city (mexico city, d.f., mexico, whatever you want to call it) and have a place to live, a good job and am making new friends. lots of opportunities to do so many things i have wanted to do before: bull fights, soccer matches, cinema, piano lessons. i know. piano.

well, i will write more later this week, but i wanted to let anyone who might still read this that i am doing well and loving the big city. did i mention i chose the job in d.f. over the one in puebla? well, i guess that is obvious now.

later jones.

i had definitely not planned on writing today. i figured tomorrow, maybe sunday i would send an update. but then, you know, crazy stuff just happens to me and as i am all alone right now, i have no one else to share it with. lucky you.

so i woke up at 330am this morning to catch the 430 bus out of ixtepec. last goodbyes, peace out, all that. so of course i chose the earliest bus possible, mainly to avoid absolutely anyone and to catch the coolest time of day to walk the 1.5kilometers to the bus station with, oh, idont know, 80 pounds or more strapped to my back and in my arms. didnt work. i was soaking wet with sweat after 10meters. lovely.

i arrive at the bus station, if you can remember this far back, this is the exact location where i ate cow head. as you might expect, it is a place that sticks out in my mind. anyone, i arrive 15min early, which is what i wanted, and notice something slightly out of place. there are two regular ADO (just think Greyhound) buses out front, and then a smaller white bus painted with the OCC insignia(another company). if i have not mentioned, ADO buses are awesome. air conditioning to the point where you need a blanket, movies, big seats that recline, bathroom. there are better classes of buses, but there are far fewer in the istmo, so i went with regular first class (again, does not mean the same thing here, but anyway).

right. white bus. old. upon stepping up inside the volvo(most large buses are volvos or mercedes benz), i noticed smaller seats, tiny tv`s, a general crappier feel. anyway, it is 425 in the a.m. so all that just really roles off my back. i wake up 30 minutes later for the first stop in juchitan. goodbye juchitan, which the locals call muxetan(mooshetan) bc muxe means homosexual and the town is like the s.f. of mexico. so i wake up, look around, notice i still have a free seat next to me, and, yup, right back to sleep.

the next disturbance another 40 min later meant i had to move so the girl could take her window seat. whatever, i am in full sleep mode so i crash back out. i wake up a good bit over the next hour bc of the curves and the velocity with which our driver (i mean, buses do not really meet formula 1 racing standards, but try telling mr driver that) takes these turns. then around 745 we stop. strange. no town, no station, so i am thinking the driver was doin his business outside. i look at the girl next to me who has woken up also and ask whats up. she replies that she thinks the driver went for coffee. makes sense.

almost 15 min later we are going again. ok. nappy-nap time. yeah, not so fast.within ten minutes we are stopped again. except this time, the rats are totally fleeing the ship. i notice, too late, a new bus has pulled behind us as we have stopped and mexis are scrambling to get their shit out of one bus and into another.

first, we hear it is engine trouble. i strike up a conversation with a young couple who are criticising the bus comp for buying a crappy bus. one hour later, and after many heated altercations between what i thought was a rather gentle looking woman of about 60 and the driver and another bus arrives. except, we dont get on the bus. instead, a bucket and long rubber hose are produced. after working for antney over the years, i know what is coming next.

we ran out of gas. idiots. happy trails istmo.

45 min later we stop again. this time? la tour de oaxaca. a bike race? indeed. so we went super slow as we were paced by the two leaders as they climbed the huge mountain roads. ridiculous.

a 4hour and 30min trip becomes, what? 9hours. oh. my. god. i was pissed, but then the woman who began bitching before called everyone she knew and in the loudest voice possible (she was 10 feet behind the drivers seat) cussed him. and not just ¨damn him.¨ no, she is mexi, and istmena (a woman from the istmo) on top of it. ¨this stupid mother fucker forgot to gas up. i know, what a dumbass son of a whore. motherfucking ADO is going to hear from me about this. damn right i am complaining, fuck this ignorant bastard¨

of course, imagine a few pauses for her to let the other person on the line concur, and this went on for about, oh, 45 minutes. and when she finally got of the phone, she just cussed him from where she was sitting. dude. this vieja was so mad, i actually felt bad for this jerk driver who forgot to get gas. and i was real mad before this began.

all this before 130pm. i hope the rest of the weekend is less exciting. if not, you will be hearing from me again sooner than i plan.

Like so many library books I finally returned (damaged), a reinvention of myself is long overdue. Billy, version 2.006: new and improved exterior and packaging, updated with a second language for ease of use outside the states, although the adaptation time varies according to climate, altitude and location of Jupiter and its moons Io, Europa and Gannymede.

As I have mentioned to a few people, I have a job interview in mexico city with Tecnologia de Monterrey. Or tec de monterrey. Or tec. Depending on which circles you run in and, obviously, their familiarity with Mexican schools. Tec, and its 33 campuses in the country, is a self-styled bastion of higher learning; they also carry the self-proclaimed title of “the MIT of Mexico.” Ok. Basically, they are the most well-known and most expensive school system in Mexico. Their reputation extends well beyond mexi-land, but you would have to run in the technology circle probably. As I run in the “let’s read a book, talk about it, then write a critical analysis of it and make it relate to current events/culture/(insert noun here)” I had never heard of the place before I came to this land of mariachis, mole, and fried grasshoppers (legend has it that once you eat a chapuline-grasshopper- you will never leave oaxaca (my state). Of course I ate them. along with varying types of iguana, sea critters, and of course, the infamous cow head. Well, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, this cracker is buying a one-way out of this hole in less than 4 days, so I doubt the veracity of this particular mexican legend). Either way, this school, tec, is highly respected, and criticized, in Mexico.

The criticism comes mostly from haters. People who feel that their rep is undeserved. These people call the students fresa (literally-strawberry, but, this word means snob, arrogant, a la mode, condescending). Fresas are everywhere in this world, and some are obnoxious, while others are rather normal and good people. Some prof friends and my students claim that tec is horrible bc the kids think they are better than everyone else. They show up to school (it has a high school and university (-ncluding master and phd programs) in extremely expensive cars and wave bye to mami and papi when the driver opens the door for them. from an early age, these kiddies are told they are the best. The most intelligent, heirs to all that is good and will be good. Cream of the crop, you dig? Thus, the trikes run around like they own the place, and, ok, they probably do. This rubs many people the wrong way. Many believe that the school produces brats rather than elite engineers and business persons. Nonetheless these kids go on to the best schools in the states and Europe. Tec students have been learning English since they were 2 or 3 yrs old. Thus, English teachers teach ESL, which is taught in usa schools, rather than EFL which is what I teach now. In other words, these kids need help with their academic English skills- writing, argument, pronunciation, etc. take a tour through most public institutions in the usa and you will find the same skills being taught-albeit with varying degrees of success. The students also learn german and French as the former is an important language to know for engineers and tec peeps in general (I have heard at least), and anyone with a serious affinity for “ the hoff” (this of course is how david hasselhoff referred to himself last week as he was escorted out of wimbeldon for being a little too sauced for the conservative all-england club) and the latter is important for understanding fashion, snootiness and joie de vive in general (I cant spell joie de vive, but I think you get my point). Of course I made the last part up, but I am sure there is a good reason for French. 20^th and 19^th century theorists? Brie? Bordeaux? I imagine sis ames or possibly, jameson sanderthols IV, currently of seattle, previously of the greater phoenix metro area, could help us (yes, that is the royal “we” I am using) out with that.

Anyway, after all that rambling, let me come back to the point- I have an interview with what many people deem either the best education mexi pesos can buy, or the biggest cash drain in the country. If you were able to follow the above ramblings at all, you might have noticed something very important in my description of the type of students and families that patronize the tec. They are wealthy, exceedingly so, and all that the school offers its student as far as facilities, supplies, etc. are, without discussion, the finest quality. Depending on where you went to high school and to some extent uni, this may sound familiar (especially if your high school was not called a high school, but, oh, I don’t know, perhaps a boarding school, and your uni was, for example, in the northeast and has a vanish collective nickname). Lucky for me, I went to boarding school with a lot of, um, confident people. We also were told we were the best. Arrogant? At times. Condescending? Once or twice maybe. This does not make us bad people, but it does make slightly difficult to get along with at times. I have run into many people in life who have issue with my boarding school background. They bitch that the school are overrated and the privileged kids do not deserve the given privileges. Bollocks (and this british term is important for many reasons here.) Am I defending the snooty? Not really. Do I have a little more patience with this type of person than the average? Possibly.

So let’s get down to brass tacks. My job in puebla pays about 12500 per month. I work 23 contact hours with students and am at school from roughly 8am to 2pm daily. Plus there are the occasional open house, weekend shindig with parents, yada yada yada. Good money for the hours? Fo sho. I am not questioning the position or denigrating it in any way. I can take graduate classes in puebla and the school will pay for it. A sweet deal? Of course.

But then there is tec. I doubt there is an employer in mexico who values a university higher than tec. Their reputation in the professional ranks is unparalleled. Perhaps their students get a little carried away at times and try to buy their way into or out of things, as the case may be. I am not condoning it, but I do recognize it for what it is and do not grudge them their advantages. The mexi system is real fucked up. Lets not kids ourselves about that, however, let us also realize that a few spoiled brats do not mean all of the students are that way.

The pay at tec is, surprisingly at first, low. 10000 pesos a month. Then you look at the hours per week, 15, and realize that is killer salary for someone part time(full time is over 20000, and I could get full time in the next six months or one year). I could easily give 8 hours of private lessons a week (I hope) and charge 150 pesos an hour. That rate would put me well over the 12500ish I would make in puebla. Plus, tec gives you access to their classes, they offer m.a. degrees and a phd as well (but not in literature which is a problem), they give you a laptop, have wireless in all classrooms as well as the most advanced tech teaching aids available (don’t forget, my students in oaxaca cannot afford books or dictionaries and 90% receive a scholarship that pays up to 100% of their tuition) and they allow you access to their facilities, including a gym, which would be quite nice. On the other hand, tec does not pay you when you are not working, the month of December for example, but they do give health benefits and a xmas bonus. The money is less, but I would be able to live in d.f., which is 200 times more exciting (and dangerous, dirty, etc) than puebla. Museums, concerts, cinema, used book stores, parks, ruins, the city is truly incredible. I would be able to take serious advantage of my free time. Also, in case you have not guessed, I am no longer going to central America. I will wait until December and see how much money I have.

Rent, however is a pain. Probably 3000 pesos a month is a minimum, depending on where I live, and I am not going to put myself in some shady neighborhood (1000 people move to d.f. every day of the year, so crime, lack of safety in certain areas is ridiculous) to save some cash. But, food is cheaper, public transport is readily available and the number of things that I could do for free is quite high (any museum is free for professors for example).

Reinvention. I mentioned bc 1 year I cut all of my hair off. Amazingly, startlingly, I have not started growing it back. The beauty of this is that is if I take the job at tec, I will have to change the way I dress. Shirt and tie daily, possibly even suits (I am hoping not to have to wear those though as they are expensive and I just don’t like them. did I mention I have never owned a suit either? Right, I should have said that, too). it is arguable that I should be dressing better anyway (I blame temperatures that stay in the 100’s for 5-6 months a year). The country boy moves to the city and finds all his clothes, (insert noun/stereotype here) inadequate. In so many ways this is an apt metaphor.

Billy, version 2.006. anybody buying this?

i am not one to pile on, but, um, things are not going so swell right now in mexico. on the one hand, i see the benefits of the leftist candidate, andres manuel lopez obrador, but, and this scares me a lot, i also see the advantages of the more right-leaning candidate, felipe calderon. why? because i am greedy(investors in the states trust calderon, he is of the same party as current pres vicente fox and is free trade, pro-foreign investment. amlo heard that bush was building a wall on the border. his response? ok, we will build another one. we dont want our people over there (the usa) anyway. ya. wow.) when it was clear, for about an hour, on monday morning that calderon had won the most votes, the value of the peso shot up. now that amlo(this is how lopez obrador is known down here) is challenging the vote, and going to take the results to the special election commitee, this is shaping up to be like bush-gore 2000. except, gore conceded, amlo did not. quite the opposite, both declared themselves winners.


so ya, i am leaning republican now. greedy is what it comes down to. if i did not have student loans to pay then the exchange rate would mean nothing. but i do. so it does.

i worry about the violence that will most likely errupt if amlo does not win. his supporters, are, well, emotional. volatile. easily excited maybe. imagine, oh, i dont know, 5 million fans at a rage against the machine (rest in peace) concert. then imagine zach de la roccha saying, ¨hey, you see the security guards here? take ´em out. then, move to the closest city and shut it down. i will meet you all there tomorrow.¨ the sheep would fall in line and violence would ensue. sadly, this is quite possible here as well. the people have little trust in public officials, with good reason after 70 years of single-party rule, and now they are taking out their frustrations on the current system. right or wrong this is the deal.

i will try to write more later. as of now, i am safe and should stay that way (there is an army special forces unit in town with tanks, etc. so the people, no matter how restless, hopefully are not stupid.

uh oh. presidential elections were this weekend and things went smoothly for the most part. until the results came back, and then, well, the problems began.

felipe calderon, the somewhat conservative received 36.5% and lopez obrador received 35.6% (roughly). so about 1% serparates them. unlike gore in 2000, neither guy caved. in fact, they both announced that they had won. kind of funny actually. until the protestors began freaking out. then it was not so much funny as scary.

thus we will not know the final results until wednesday. i am a little worried, for numerous reasons, but the main one is devaluation of currency. i am hoping that the peso does not suffer too much bc of this (the exchange rate has recently gotten worse as the elections neared) for i have student loans to pay and thus i have to transfer money from pesos to dollars each month.

that is the news for now. i will let you know when i hear more.