Captain's Log: Now you hear from me...

Sorry about the Houdini act I just pulled. You see, I've been quite busy with the job, travels and the rigors of living without water. I leave you with this crazy carved Mayan head, from the Natural History Museum at Chapultepec in Mexico City. Not to worry (if you even were) I´m fine. Apparently this is a dangerous country to live in?! I saw the first images of the Prophet Obama tonight. Actually, it was the first English language media (besides some terrible techno in a disco in Toluca) that I'd heard in over three months. Can´t quite say that it was the happiest news with all of this border violence. I only caught the tail end of the brief as I was eating some tacos, but it sounds like things remain crazy amd are getting crazier. There definatly one American influence all over Mexico - dollars. Just driving through rural Mexico state, you see two-storied mansions in the middle of nowhere just waiting to be finished. Most of the large businesses around have been open with sent dollars. Since I don´t have a t.v. (nor want one) I really have no idea whats going on in the world. I had the pleasure of going to the most unpleasurable Chimalhuacán over the weekend and the tabloids only spoke of more narco violence. Kids are kidnapped from schools, dudes cut up and left in traffic, to name a few. It gets better, one of the giant houses in front of where I live belongs to some locked up narco, who had some neighborhood family holed up down the block. Not to worry, this was long before I blew into town (three months). Since they found the family, the security has been heightened: More cops with machine guns roaming the valley in pickups. I was stopped and searched the other day when I was walking home alone one night (I don´t think that he liked that I told him that I only had a deck of cards and a kilo of tortillas in my backpack.) He gave me the slightest of a hassle, until he only fount the baraja and the kilo, but didn´t even ask where I was from or for my papers. Although they may have Uzis or tactical shotguns, they´re always last to the scene. . . but they were some damn good tacos!