"Experts are puzzled by the unexpected find of such a large number of skulls at what appears to have been a small, unremarkable shrine...."

"The heads were carefully deposited in rows or in small mounds, mostly facing east toward the rising sun, sometime between 660 and 860 A.D., a period when the nearby city-state of Teotihuacan had already declined but the Aztec empire, founded in 1325, was still centuries in the future."

[Georgia State University archaeologist Christopher] Morehart said some of the skulls were found with finger bones inserted into the eye sockets. “It was common enough that it was intentionally placed there in the eye socket,” Morehart said, though the ritual significance of that remains unclear.

Twinkies will return... from Mexico.

There's a good chance:

Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest bread baking firm, which already owns parts of Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Thomas English Muffins.

Bimbo has already sniffed around the bankruptcy proceedings that have haunted Hostess for a decade, in a bid to further expand its North American portfolio and pad its $4 billion net worth. ...

With US sugar tariffs set artificially high to protect Florida sugar-growing concerns, a non-unionized shop with access to lower-priced sugar in Mexico could be the Twinkie lifeline, economists suggest.

Plus, the brand is getting all this free advertising coming out of the threat of extinction.

"Why are Mexican troops up in the mountains of Sinaloa and Guerrero and Durango looking for marijuana..."

"... and why are we searching for tunnels, patrolling the borders, when once this product reaches Colorado it becomes legal?"

"The growing middle class that is fast becoming Mexico’s majority is buying more U.S. goods than ever..."

"... while turning Mexico into a more democratic, dynamic and prosperous American ally."

While news about headless torsos, drug barons and illegal immigration dominates the headlines, and much of the Obama administration agenda south of the border has focused on law enforcement, economists say another story is one of roaring trade.

"Natalia Juarez, a philosophy professor who is running as a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, rolled out a billboard recently showing her posing topless..."

"... with six other female members of the party. The billboards were posted around Guadalajara, the mostly conservative capital of the western state of Jalisco and Mexico's second-largest city."

You say you want a revolution...

Should students who party on Cinco de Mayo be shamed for their ethnic insensitivity?

That's what's going on here in Madison.

“It was a good opportunity,” said [a UW-Madison student who designed a Cinco de Mifflin T-shirt, "Mifflin" being the name of the location of an annual block party dating back to 1969.] "People have been calling it ‘Cinco de Drinko’ for the last four years and they’re very much relating it to a drinking holiday anyway.”

Eunji Kang, another student and shirt designer, said that “it’s part of American culture” to drink alcohol while celebrating holidays.

Other students are disappointed by the misappropriation of Mexican culture. The organization Badgers Against Racism formed over ongoing conversations between students concerned with the lack of cultural sensitivity on campus.

Racism?!

“As members of the UW-Madison community we strive to create a learning environment that promotes social justice education, cultural awareness, and respect,” the group said in a statement obtained by The Daily Cardinal. “We should be able to participate in traditions like Mifflin without promoting stereotypes that dehumanize our peers.”

What's the stereotype? The only stereotype I see is UW students as drinking and partying too much. And (other) UW students getting all censorious and political.

IN THE COMMENTS: Don't Tread 2012 said...

Acro-observation:

Badgers
Against
Racism

In the spirit of race-baiting, the first round is on me.

I know. I noticed that too, and when I read your comment, I thought maybe it's a satire, and I took it seriously. I went back and reread the article. Is this really dry humor? But taking into account the context — Madison, Wisconsin — no, it's real. I'd love to be wrong!

"Mitt Romney’s father was born in a small Mormon enclave where family members still live, surrounded by rugged beauty and violent drug cartels."

"This state of feeling in between, I would soon learn, defines nearly every aspect of Mormon life in the old colonies."

The settlers’ descendants, numbering several hundred in all, keep alive a culture that’s always been caught between Mexico and the United States, between the past and the present, between stability and crisis....

The Mexican Revolution played a critical role in the history of the Mormon colonies. Were it not for that 1910 uprising and the years of war that followed, Mitt Romney might have been born in Mexico, and might be living there today raising apples and peaches, as many of his cousins do....

And disqualified from serving as President of the United States.

When the first settlers arrived here in the 1870s and ’80s, some were fleeing a U.S. crackdown on polygamy. (The practice ended after a 1904 LDS edict that polygamists would be excommunicated.) They dug canals to channel the flow of the Piedras Verdes River to their crops, though the river’s waters dropped precipitously low afterward. But lore has it that the Lord quickly provided: An earthquake triggered the return of an abundant flow....

Biographers of the Romney family have pointed to the “indomitable will” of the forebears. But this characteristic, it seems to me, is common to many of the Mormons of the colonies. Their shared determination is one of the things that has allowed a relatively small number of English-speaking people to keep their language and way of life essentially unchanged for more than a century, despite being surrounded by an often hostile Spanish-speaking culture.

Leighton Romney, Mitt Romney’s second cousin, told me he hasn’t met the former governor of Massachusetts. (They have the same great-grandfather, Miles P. Romney, one of the 1885 pioneers.) I met Leighton the next day, on a visit to the fruit cooperative, packing house and export business he runs.

A 53-year-old dual citizen, Leighton has lived in Mexico all his life. Four of his uncles and one aunt served with the U.S. military in World War II. He knows the words to both country’s national anthems. Like people of Latin American descent living in the States, he hasn’t lost his sense of “kinship” to the country of his roots. “We’ve got a lot of similarities to Mexican-Americans,” he said. “We’re American-Mexicans.”

I wonder if the Romney campaign has a plan to roll out this American-Mexican dimension of the candidate. How should that be done? And are Americans ready at this point to absorb the story of how the government of the United States persecuted the Mormons?

Was your first thought I hope Malia is safe?

I read the emailed news alert out loud: 7.9 earthquake in Mexico. Meade's first response: "I hope Malia is safe." (Have you been following the Malia spring break stories?)

I looked it right up:

A strong, long 7.9 earthquake with an epicenter in Guerrero state shook central southern Mexico on Tuesday, swaying buildings in Mexico City and sending frightened workers and residents into the streets.

Let's see, Malia's in Oaxaca. Google maps... Oaxaca, Guerrero... 375 miles (by somewhat indirect roads).

I hope everyone is safe, and I wonder what it says about us — or, specifically, Meade — that we think first of the one American we know is in Mexico right now.

"For them the whole mountain is a temple..."

"... and the gold and silver below the ground are there for a reason — they contribute to the energy, and it would be best if they just left it alone."

Religion versus mining.

Search of an Acapulco prison yields 2 peacocks, 100 fighting cocks, 19 prostitutes, and 2 sacks of marijuana.

"Guerrero state spokesman Arturo Martinez... didn’t say how the women, birds and the other banned objects got into the prison. He referred to the peacocks as 'pets.'"

"Obama Sold, Tracked, Same Guns To Cartels He Hoped To Ban Because They Were Tracked From Cartels."

Scandal.

How big is this scandal?
	It will destroy Obama.
	Serious, but people won't pay enough attention to cause much to happen.
	A minor matter, pumped up by Republicans for partisan gain.
	So minor, I'm not bothering to read enough to be able to have a valid opinion. Paradoxically!
pollcode.com free polls

IN THE COMMENTS: Paul Zrimsek said:

I won't know how big a scandal this is until I've seen the wine list. Anything over $100 a bottle, I say impeach him.

"I'd also like to know whether Paul really believes in a conspiracy among the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments..."

"... to turn North America into a 'borderless, mass continent' bisected by a 10-lane superhighway. Because that's what he said in 2008. 'It's a real thing,' he said of the imaginary threat to U.S. sovereignty, 'and when you talk about it, the thing you just have to be aware of is that if you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut.' Very little paint is needed."

Did Obama's speechwriters write Calderon's speech?

That's what I thought when I heard this:

In Arizona, there is some racial profiling criteria in order to enforce the law that it's against any sense of human rights; and, of course, is provoking very disappointing, uh, things -- or very disappointing opinion -- in Mexico and around the world, even here in America.  So to introduce this kind of elements, especially racial profiling aspect that are attempting against what we consider human rights, it's the principle of discrimination which is against the values of this great nation.

I thought that before I heard Rush Limbaugh say that's what he thought. Read the whole thing. Don't miss the Wolf Blitzer interview.

I said Lady Gaga looked like she'd been swimming in seaweed, got caught in a net, and then, without removing the net, took up beekeeping.

But let's hear how Television Without Pity's Jacob describes her woeful "American Idol" performace:

A giant angel statue under blue lights, a naked gay man having spazzers on the floor, and Gaga at the piano covered in spray-painted black branches, herself in a black chiffon version of the costumes they had to wear in The Handmaid's Tale....

Link added.

She's still got a fishnet thing over her face, because she's weird about her face. Because it's weird.... The song is very slow and not my favorite of the catalog...

Yes, it was slow. Leaden. Odd when a [big star's] mediocre performance takes place on the "American Idol" stage. Even though the judges won't judge it, you construct judgely comments in your head. Man, if she were a contestant, they'd flay her. They'd peel off that seaweed and netting and flay her.

Lady Gaga stalks over to a giant Halloween Tree/Meat God, and plays the piano hardcore and things get kind of Shakira for a second, musically, but now she's singing about somebody named "Roberto." Maybe this song is actually written from the perspective of somebody named Roberto and she's even more about appropriating gay men's sex lives than usual, taking it global. Or maybe those are the names of two of her dancers and she's just making this song up as she goes along. Or maybe this is a tribute to Cinco de Mayo, because she keeps talking about Mexico....

I thought it might be some sort of commentary on the immigration crisis. What I heard was: hostile words for a series of men with Hispanic names — get away from me Hispanic men. I imagined that she might be on the anti-immigrant side of the debate — or trying to tap into that side of The American Brain.

But we can read the actual lyrics here:

You know that I love you boy.
Hot like Mexico, rejoice.
At this point I gotta choose,
nothing to loose.

Don't call my name.
Don't call my name, Alejandro.
I'm not your babe.
I'm not your babe, Fernando.

Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch.
Just smoke one cigarette and hush.
Don't call my name.
Don't call my name, Roberto....

Don't bother me.
Don't bother me. Alejandro
Don't call my name.
Don't call my name, Fernando.

My theory is not so far-fetched now, is it? She even cites Mexico as their country of origin.Yes, I realize there's love relationship talk in there, but I'm talking subtext. (Remember interpreting "American Woman" by the Guess Who?)

Jacob has nothing to say about the immigration subtext. He's all about her questionable relationship to homosexuality:

Lady Gaga creates culture, but more importantly if you have a subculture of any kind, Lady G would like to be a part of it, because she's an upper-class prep school New Yorker and thus has been exposed to subcultures her entire life that do not admit her. So when that happens -- when you are too interesting for your world -- you have to do things like this, which are awesome, but also things that are not so awesome, like glomming onto gay culture so hard you actually have to pretend that your bisexuality is more than hypothetical. 

Glomming!

IN THE COMMENTS: Daniel wrote:

I got into Lady Gaga because of American Idol. Her first performance last year. Playing that bubble piano then rocking out, with that S&M zippered leather eye cover. Whew! Hot.

Now, symmetrically, I'm souring on Gaga because of American Idol. Yesterday was a snort fest. Her cheap costume. The dude skirt shorts -- a weird mix of rib-high waists (because you're not a woman, you're a mom!), bike shorts and mini skirts. The gallons of sweat pouring off the dancers shaved chests. The fake tree. The flame spitting angel -- because that's what angels do, they shoot flames out of their heads. Gaga's apparent boredom (the only part of the performance that was dead on for me). TERRIBLE. Between that and her crappy telephone song, I really don't care how many women she makes out with -- she's sucking hard right now.

"Jose Flores Pereira, 44, who carried a Bible and a small box wrapped in packing tape, explained that the date - 9/9/9 - was the number of the Beast upside down."

"He forced the pilot of AeroMexico Flight 576 from Cancun to circle Mexico City seven times before landing, and demanded to talk to Mexican President Felipe Calderon. 'He had a revelation that Mexico was threatened by an earthquake,' said public safety minister Genaro Garcia Luna. The hijacker released all 104 passengers unharmed before SWAT teams stormed the plane, freeing the crew and capturing Pereira without firing a shot."

So he was only a lunatic. But he showed us that it's still pretty easy to hijack a plane.

"Susie, one of the longest borders on earth is right here between your country and mine. An open border."

"Fourteen hundred miles without a single machine gun in place. Yeah, I suppose that all sounds very corny to you."

"I could love being corny, if my husband would only cooperate."

***

DVD — "A Touch of Evil" — screened as the sky behind the TV darkened to a tornadic yellow-green and 2 large bowls of popcorn were consumed. It's a wild movie, and here's my favorite scene:



My favorite thing in the movie is the figurine of a chipmunk on the table there. It made me think of the evil "woodland critters" from "South Park":