Thursday Morning Coffee

After yesterday's bleak string of posts, I'm probably going to go light on bumming myself (and everyone else) out today so I can catch up on other work. But since the annoyance never stops...

* PINK'S "I'M NOT DEAD": After the excellent, but criminally undersold, "Try This", and the brilliant "Stupid Girls" video, I was geeked for this album, but it's a so-so mish-mash of really good stuff with some rather mediocre and awfully precious tunes. Hits: "Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)", "Stupid Girls". Misses: "Conversations With My 13-Year-Old Self", "Dear Mr. President" (yet another dreadful, illiterate Dubya-bashing song. Pffft.)

* LAST NIGHT'S "SOUTH PARK": Taking a break from pissing off religions, Matt and Trey did a episode starring the dope-smoking Towelee that also made Oprah's minge into a talking Cockney thug. It was wrong on so many levels, but in a good way.

* GOD IS DOING BILLBOARDS AGAIN: There was a spate of austere billboards that were supposed to be from God. Along I-94 westbound, near I-75, there is a new one reading, "Are you lost? Use my book as your map. - God Not bad, but nothing compared to the signs Allah puts up commanding death to the infidels.

* MEXICO TO U.S.: "DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO": Dubya's good pal Vicente Fox has been leaning on Dub to allow free access to our country, resources, services and jobs - and Dub's going along, the loser - but it's curious that Mexico wants migrant rights in U.S., but is harsh to undocumented Central Americans.

While migrants in the United States have held tremendous demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central American migrants in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.

Considered felons by the Mexican government, they fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take all their money.

While Mexico demands the humane treatment of its citizens who migrate to the U.S., it appears to be unable to guarantee similar rights for Central American migrants to this country.

The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was underscored on Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard in central Mexico state shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made him look like a Central American.

Also read about how Mexico exploits their migrants and how few rights non-citizens have there. (Hint: Everything they're doing and demanding here is forbidden there.)

* AND NOW SOME GOOD NEWS: Fans of Kevin Smith movies are probably aware that Jason Mewes, who plays the drug-dealing Jay to Smith's Silent Bob, has had a long-running problem with hard drugs, but did you know that he's been clean for three years now? I didn't, but you can read about his trip to Drug Hell and back in a NINE-PART series that Smith has written which finally concluded so I could post the whole series in one swing. Start here and get ready to read for quite a while. Good stuff.

Have a good day, folks.