Elmowhere You Look

L et's just say Is. is intensely fond of her red monster friend in his many instances. You'd think we (all) live on Sesame Street. Upon request, we improvisationally add his name into songs we sing (i.e., "Elmo goes marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah"). No lyrics are exempt from this practice. We must carry him along when we do London Bridge in the living room. Unrelenting elmogrification these days and learning much about the passional impulses of one delightful toddler.

Absolut Aztlán

A bout a month ago, Absolut Vodka ran an advertisement in selected publications in Mexico titled "In An Absolut World" and showing a modified pre-1845 political map of North America. Evidently the ad (produced by Mexico City-based Teran/TWBA) stirred up quite a bit of discussion ranging from hard-lined close-the-borders remakes to characterizations of Absolut as exceedingly leftist, from calls for boycotts of the vodka to more nuanced historical reflections on the Mexican-American War and reconquest movements. That's quite a bit to come from a localized print advertisement. Absolut apologized before retracting the ads just a few days later. And though many of the spin-offs reflect entrenched anti-Mexico perspectives, there are more takes on Flickr here and here. I've collected some of the links in this entry because I can imagine returning to this fracas as an example of the rhetoricity of maps--an extended foray into what Denis Wood might have been thinking when he suggested in The Power of Maps that maps are always, unavoidably interested. Yes, advertisements even more so--or more overtly so. By no means am I well read or well studied on reconquest movements, but glancing the few threads of conversation linked above does remind me of a line in Silko's Almanac of the Dead when she mentions the quiet celebrations each time a Spanish-speaking leader is elected to public office in the southwestern U.S.

Calendar Says

A gain it's that day of the year when the calendar kicks a certain Fifth-Fifther in the pants and says, "Get your lazy hiney out of bed, birthday boy." On a Monday, no less.

In response to the calendar, I say, "Let 34 be that year when I defend the dissertation and put grad school properly to rest."

And, uh, yes, that is me on the left. First birthday (or perhaps first-ish; might be my brother's fourth b-day). In the background, a vintage Cootie game and B/W kitchen cabinets made to look like windows to the outdoors (with tree branches, etc.).

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