Ethan G. Salwen

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"Abandon hope all ye who enter here." (Visit Stateville at your own emotional risk.)

My video commentary in my last post related to the insanity of ridiculously harsh penalties for producing, transporting, selling or consuming illegal recreational drugs. It’s your body. Do what you want with it.

Now, that said, if you watched the full segment of the portion I featured from the Stateville episode of National Geographic Television’s “Lockdown,” you might have noticed that Mr. Super Dad Drug Dealer was actually convicted of murder. OK, that’s not so good. It’s your body. Do what you want with it, as long as you don’t use it to hurt other people’s bodies.

Still, regardless of crime — and, yes, I understand that many crimes are horrorshow heinously unforgivable — no human being should be locked up in a place as horrorshow disturbing as the Stateville Correctional Facility. Honestly. Even the poor guards are living in a soul-damaging hell that flips my stomach inside out. Way too much human suffering to try to digest. This place shouldn’t exist. (All links are coming, but you can start here, if you want to see what I’m on about.) (more…)

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That’s right. I insist that all drug dealers are bad people. You’ll see a choice example of why if you listen to what this condemned dealer has to say. Thank god this horror is off the streets.

He is featured here on YouTube in a segment from the the Stateville episode of National Geographic Television’s “Lockdown.” (Gulp.)

A dictator-in-waiting thanks his applauding farm animals.

Why do people willingly, downright eagerly, toss away their freedoms like nasty bits of garbage, cheering as we hand over our historically rare semi-democratic powers to megalomaniacal nut-jobs?

Actually, don’t worry about trying to answer that question, and neither will I. It’s too big and too sad of a question to address in my admittedly not-too-serious blog. I don’t thing there is any real answer anyway, although George Orwell does a pretty neat job at exploring the mechanics of such rapid digressions in freedom in his “Animal Farm.”

The reason this question of freedom-tossing comes to mind for me today is that — and I honestly can’t believe it, even thought I should — the a massive percentage of  Venezuelan voters have whole-heatedly pushed through President Hugo Chávez‘s agenda to do away with term limits. This paves the way for him to easily extend his wackier-by-the-day presidency by years if not decades if not until his last, clinging-to-life days like good ole Fidel Castro. This, of course, seriously increases the chances of Chávez becoming yet another one of history’s unfortunate, how-did-we-let-this-happen dictators overseeing a totalitarian state in which the ability to even vote at all could quickly become a dream. (more…)

Actors waiting to audition at the first Starbucks in Buenos Aires.

My dear, dear buddy Meghan Scibona has just gotten her new blog up and running, and this post is nothing more than a hearty congratulations to her in the form of a ping. That is, I’m going to use this post link to her latest post on “Low Budge Girl” in hopes that she gets alerted via her email. That way she can learn what such a ping feels like.

I’m trying to learn a little as well, as I’m not totally clear on a bunch of these blog-related phrases, such as “ping” and “linkback” (or is it trackback)? There’s probably a “pingback” and a “backlink” and a  “linkping” as well. And they all probably have very specific meanings. But who really gives a poop? It all really just means “more interconnected,” no?

So Meg, this one goes out to you. Congrats on the great blog, and the interesting stories! Who knew what you could do with a little blood and a condom!

Make sure you comment on this post and let us know if you found in though the “pinging backlink frontbang,” or if you just stumbled upon it.

No Ordering Required!

Don’t worry, I didn’t lie. My standard porteño breakfast is still “café con leche y tres medialunas de manteca.” The reason I share the same fact today, at the end the week, having had it four more times since my post on Sunday, is simply to share an aspect my daily dining life that I wasn’t served up in Caballito, at Américas, where they know me, but not like they do in my own hood.

Here in Barracas, when I dine “afuera” for breakfast — which is, um, likely basically every day that I dine for breakfast — I almost inevitably choose Pop. It’s not just because pop is close or that it features Roy Lichtenstein artwork in its façade. And it’s not even that Pop serves up the best medialunas in the neighborhood.

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Yesterday, just after 5pm EST, Indira stopped our phone conversation to marvel at the fact that–thank god!–there was still a touch of sunlight in cold, cold New York City. Here in Buenos Aires, just after 8pm local time, there was still plenty of light, not to mention sticky heat and pesky summer bugs. But even when our seasons swap and I have less light and more cold I still won’t get the freezing weather of  my Upstate New York childhood or my New York City adulthood. And I miss it.

Like most people I appreciate the beauty of a landscape–country or city–freshly painted with pristine snow. But it’s so much more than that. Not only is my stocky, pale, hairy Northern European body engineered for dark and cold, but my spirit seems to be as well. I feel enlivened by the biting sting of cold–as if my engine revs up automatically–while the heat knocks me on my physical and emotional ass. Snow and sleet and ice and biting, (more…)