I just love this photo.
From the march for immigrant rights in LA yesterday. Somewhere between half a million and a million, or maybe more, people marched there to protest the Sensenbrenner bill. Is mainstream America hearing about this? On the front page of the LA Times site this morning it's the top story but the eye is distracted immediately to the big picture and blurb about the Bruins winning a basketball game. WTF? And you have to scroll down 2 screenfuls to see a tiny link on the New York Times site. suspira.

I like what Jacob said in his blog yesterday about all this, the idea that the Senate bill is really just a tactic to frame the debate a particular way, to shift everything over to the right. They never expected it to pass, they just wanted the possibility of the extreme to lower everyone's expectations. Oh you'll let us stay if we wear shackles? Ok! Please!?

There are some, maybe many, people for whom it seems almost everything they do is a form of therapy. everything is about themselves, perhaps even about improving themselves, but always themselves. Turned inward. A self-focus. Always.

That's all I'm at liberty to say right now.

An interesting article about Kurdish gasoline smugglers in Iraq and the popularity of reggaetón there.

It would be a stretch to say that the enthusiasm for Gasolina has to do with its subject matter, especially when considering its aggressive rhythm and near-pornographic video. But Daddy Yankee's signature track is a sexually-explicit ode to what gasolina can provide - and here "gasoline" can mean, as Sasha Frere-Jones [says] in the New Yorker, speed, rum, semen or gasoline - and that, of course, is unadulterated pleasure. And at the moment, as Iraq disintegrates, the Kurds are betting quite heavily on what gasoline can do for them.

• steev's blog

Mi amigo Patrick provides a little slice of life, describing his commute through Caracas and musings about class and neighborhoods. Muy interesante.

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human
race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and
those who have no such desire."

- Robert A Heinlein

Nobody seems to know when "Bordertown," the Hollywood J-lo vehicle about the murders in Juarez is going to be released, but it's fairly certain now that it won't be in March, which is what IMDB still lists as the release date. I did find a silly movie-tracking site/blog with production stills. Hard to tell much about the film from them, other than it will be typically sensational, with exploding colonia shacks and all, it looks like. To date I don't think any young women killed in the femicide were killed by burning down their house. But, y'know, J-lo looks good, that's what matters, right?

And in other news, good news, I just got an email from a New York Times writer who wants to talk to me about my film. More on that after it happens.

what do the pros use to author DVDs?
i've been spending the last 3 days doing the authoring for the final version of my DVD of my juarez doc. i'm using apple's DVD Studio Pro and it's not the first time i've used it but i have to say it's one of the most frustrating pieces of software i've ever used. it's got me almost pulling out my hair. and it's so surprising because Final Cut Pro is such a pleasure to use and works SO WELL, and then this other software with apple's name on it just blows. i mean you can do a lot of cool stuff with it but the way the interface works and the general performance of the interface just is fucking shameful.

so i was wondering what people who do this for a living use, cuz the "pro" in dvdsp is obviously a lie.

Here's just one little dumb example: When working with subtitles, you can only move ONE subtitle at a time. You can't select a whole bunch in the stream and slide it around, or move them to a different stream. You just can't. Why? Why the fuck wouldn't they allow one to do that? After 4 versions of the software?

Or here's another one. Why is it that when you import subtitles from an STL file, it blows away any existing subtitles on that stream, even if they don't conflict timewise with the new ones you're bringing in? Why? There's no logical reason for that.

And then there's all the ridiculous wait times. Why can't they come up with some some kind of preview mode so that you aren't waiting for the spinning rainbow wheel of death every time you click? ARRRGGH!! Apple, get your fucking act together!!

Protests last week against the World Water Forum in Mexico City. More info at Mexico Indymedia and a short video from the Centro Medios Libres in D.F.

shit i just lost a long blog post about how i didnt have time to be even posting it and what i did today. stupid browser did some stupid fuckign thing and i lost it all. fuck.
I've been insanely busy working on the final DVD of my film. subtitling sucks and is very time consuming. i shouldnt even be doing this.

I did take time out to go "cover" the peace march today. unremarkable except that there was quite a big anti-peace turnout too. i took lots of photos.

back to work.

The Urban Dictionary has some pretty funny, and mostly negative, definitions of Indymedia. One consistent theme seems to be that Indymedia is anti-semitic, a critique that sort of surprises me. I can see that that would be one critique, because most Indymedia coverage, where it needs to be, is anti-zionist, and zionists are going to label anti-zionists as anti-semitic. But for that to be the main thing people repeatedly harp on is kind of strange.

A chain of several localized websites where 16-year-old stoners with Che T-Shirts can pretend to be journalists and write bullshit news articles containing zero credibility or research. What better way to fight back against the corporate-controlled media by getting your news by some of the most blatantly agenda-driven sources in the world? YUH MAAN FOCK DA SYSTEM RAGE AGINST DA MACHINE!!!1!!
Oh Indymedia, what won't you blame on the Jews?