For a while now I have been hoping for an encounter with death– Saint Death, that is, or Santa Muerte, affectionately known to her (largely Mexican) followers as La Flaca– the Skinny Girl. She’s all bones, you see.

I don’t remember how I first found out about Lady Death. It was some time last year, while I was prowling the Texas-Mexico border. For the uninitiated, Santa Muerte is a crypto-saint not recognized by the Catholic Church. Nobody seems to know where she came from- one source I read speculated that the cult was new, dating back only to the late 1960s. Another speculated that it was much older, and arose as a result of peasant confusion between a Catholic Saint and an Aztec deity of death. Whichever variant is true, Holy Death emerged looking like a figure from a death metal album cover: grinning skull face, scythe, hooded robe etc. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »

On Monday, I helped an 88-year-old man move a Coca-Cola vending machine from the floor of an industrial warehouse to the back of his pick-up truck. He was buying it for the employees at his scrap metal business in Houston. The owner of the vending machine was out of town, and I had agreed to meet the old man and help.

Alas, I wasn’t much use. I soon discovered that even if I pushed the vending machine very, very hard with my shoulder, it wouldn’t move. Fortunately there was a man across the street with a forklift truck. If he hadn’t been there, the Coke machine would still be standing in the original spot, or perhaps the 88-year-old man and I would be lying under it, two bloody smears on the warehouse floor.

And so the week began with a new discovery: VENDING MACHINES ARE INCREDIBLY HEAVY. Reflecting upon this, I wondered what other things I had learned from Coca-Cola which, like the air we breathe, is a ubiquitous part of modern life.

So: what else has Coke taught me? [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, travel & foreign lands by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »

December 21, 5:50am:

Worst news ever. Flight has been cancelled. Huge snow storm. Horrendously long lines— in one of them now, hoping to get on the 2:30 flight to Copenhagen and catch connecting flight home tonight.

December 21, 9:33 am:

Still in line, moving painfully slow. Someone in the family in front of me has a case of the farts. Annoying. I bet it’s the chubby kid. It’s always the chubby kid.

December21, 10 am:

Not going to Copenhagen. But guess who is? That’s right, little mister fartface and his whole slob family. Blood pressure rising.  Need a Cinnabon.

December 21, 10:13am: [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, travel & foreign lands by Peter Mann
No Comments »

It’s important to seek wonder in everyday life, to retain a child’s fascination for simple things. This is not always simple – the sheer grind of daily life can easily knock the joie de vivre out of your system. Fortunately you can find wonder in the most unexpected places, so long as you keep your eyes open. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »

Back in the Golden Age of easy credit I’d walk around Britain wondering where all the money was coming from. This abundance of cash was especially baffling in Scotland, where nobody makes anything any more. Who was scoffing down truffles in the fancy restaurants? Who was shelling out a fortune for houses that had been built for miners in the 1930s? Of course, the high priests of money-voodoo insisted that there was nothing to worry about. Then the global economy crashed. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
1 Comment »

I lived in Prague for a while in the 90s, back when it was a favorite spot for American college grads dreaming of Bohemian greatness. Once or twice I even attended their open mic nights, at which Henry Miller wannabes would read aloud rancid poetry to similarly minded aesthetes bankrolled by daddy. Years later I still remember my pain, if not the content of what I heard- except for the first line of one mediocre song: [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »

I recently moved and one of the things that attracted me to my new address was the church at the end of the street. It’s a white, wooden structure, with a narrow spire: classic Americana, like something out of a movie. Best of all is the message board outside the entrance, which reads:

One out of every one will die.
Life is a terminal illness.
Where are you going?

Now some individuals might object to being confronted daily with this bleak message, but I was delighted. It’s good to be reminded of your mortality, even- or perhaps especially- when you’re running down the store to buy toilet paper. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
1 Comment »

Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security that’s been going on TV brow-beating the American people about how safe and needed body scanners are, runs a security and risk management firm and one of his clients is one of the biggest manufacturers of body scanning machines in the country. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands by Dan Sterlace
No Comments »

Tags: politics & government, terror & war, travel & foreign lands by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
No Comments »

There are many people who are willing to give up certain privileges of privacy to ensure safety. I cannot fault anyone for thinking of the safety of their children and loved ones. There is a point, however, where our so-prided ideas of “freedom” and “liberty” are being needlessly handed over because of outright paranoia and the illusion of safety. [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands by Dan Sterlace
4 Comments »

The People have finally found their limit, the line that they are not willing to cross in order to be safe from terror or danger and that limited line is the new Transportation Security Administration’s use of Body Scanners and policy of Pat-Downs that seem more like Feel-Ups.  [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands by David Alfreds
2 Comments »

For most of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union served as Yin and Yang, each nation opposing its righteousness to the other’s evil.

Even today, with the collapse of the Soviet Union almost twenty years behind us, multifarious hacks in the Anglo-American media remain wedded to a vision of America and her sinister doppelganger. They pine for a New Cold War. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
2 Comments »

I met Sgt. Ron Martin of the El Paso police department early in the morning, and was about to climb into his car when I found my way blocked by an assault rifle, propped up against the backseat like a faithful dog awaiting its master. A thorny issue of etiquette presented itself: Do I push it out the way? But what if it goes off and blows my brains out? [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
3 Comments »

I am digging Baltimore. In fact, I’ve dug Baltimore since my dad took us on a (not so very extravagant but very memorable) family vacation there in November of 1984. That began a lifelong love affair between me and the town known as Charm City. The streets are dusted with Old Bay Seasoning and crabs roam carefree in the streets. (From both the prostitutes and the Chesapeake Bay.) I went to college in Maryland, so the love increased tenfold after all the great times I had during those years.    

I love the Inner Harbor, I love the neighborhoods, and I love the bars and restaurants. But I love the people the most. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, travel & foreign lands by Marty O'Connor
1 Comment »

10. “I discover your continent, and the only honor I get is a lousy sale at Sears?”

9. “If I knew it was gonna lead to Jersey Shore, I think I woulda stayed in Spain.”

8. “I’m 560 years old; I should be gettin’ all kinds of discounts!”

7. “What’s Joan Collins doing these days?”

6. “I see where cloth has become so rare, some of your celebrities have resorted to wearing meat!”

5. “We had a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on the Santa Maria, as well.”

4. “I’d be hard pressed to say which was the greater discovery: America, or the Snuggie.”

3. “How would I get to the city called ‘Me, Ohio’?”

2. “Why is the bottom of my boat covered with oil?”

1. “I can’t believe my old pal Larry King is finally going off the air.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd, travel & foreign lands by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

Last week Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s mayor of 18 years, was fired by President Medvedev. The news scored lots of column inches in the Huffington Post, Reuters and all the major papers, which is a rare honor for a regional politician in a faraway country of which we know little (and we do know little).  Partly this was because Medvedev fired him, and thus the story fits into the lazy trope so beloved of the world’s kerrrrap Russia correspondents, who otherwise might have to learn something about the country they purport to report upon: is this a sign that Medvedev is his own man, or does he still have Putin’s hand up his ass? [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
No Comments »

‘We’re not going to die, are we Dan?’ asked my friend Joe, a CBS radio reporter, shortly before we crossed from El Paso into Juárez, Mexico, murder capital of the world. ‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘Our guide is a priest. It’s a Sunday. The narcos will respect that.’

I was lying to make him feel better. [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
4 Comments »

I had just 48 hours in Chicago and I wanted to make the most of it.

I picked up my rental car and went straight from O’Hare International (a smooth 90 minute flight from Newark) to Rick Bayless‘ upscale Mexican restaurant, Topolobampo (which is located just a flight of stairs away from Bayless’ flagship restaurant, Frontera Grill). [Read more →]

Tags: recipes & food, travel & foreign lands by Jessica Alfreds
6 Comments »

1) Go to bed whenever you feel sleepy. I know. It’s only 3:00 PM. But your eyes hurt! Just go for it. I promise you won’t wake up until a decent hour in the morning. A nice early night. How refreshing!

2) When you wake up at 2:00 AM and are unable to go back to sleep, the solution is simple: turn on all the lights in your house! Your body will think it’s daytime, and you can just have a really long day. It’s like the summer solstice! Seize it! [Read more →]

Tags: advice, mostly kidding by Matt Scottoline, travel & foreign lands by Matt Scottoline
No Comments »

Reuters has a hilarious story about the hapless German communist party’s attempts to curry favor with schoolchildren by offering them pens that project pornographic images.

To sweeten their first day at primary school German children are normally given a cardboard cone filled with sweets, but schoolchildren in Essen this year opened their cones to find pens which project erotic images.

Wait a minute.

German children are usually given candy at the beginning of the school year? German children? German children are given candy?

Typical German child enjoying sweets. [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, travel & foreign lands by Ricky Sprague
No Comments »