Whoa

Photo: Guatemala Government via Flickr

In case anyone has the notion that this post will be about either The Day After Tomorrow, Dante's Peak, The Core, Deep Impact, 2012, Descent, or Megafault, you will be disappointed.

I didn't really know what a sinkhole was, and I certainly didn't imagine it would look like that. If Guatemala got the choice of where to have the massive, bottom-not-visible hole, they might have chosen a field, swamp, jail, or better yet-landfill! Certainly not the middle of an intersection. I would have been terrified to be driving in front of the other cars, because getting people to all go backwards during traffic seems really hard. "There is a sinkhole, please tell the person behind you." I guess at that point you have to get out of the car and run, but if I had a chance to make a sharp right turn and save my car while avoiding the sinkhole, I think I'd have to do that.

It really seems like the rest of the world is just getting smacked around with some kind of big, dirty, and government destabilizing mop. Maybe not Europe. They usually seem to be doing ok. I figure there are two barometers for this:

1) The Euro is worth more than the dollar, rather than being valued somewhere between 1/2 and 1/1,230,000th of the dollar, as so many currencies in the world are.

2) The top headlines for today's European news are "Families honor Air France crash victims" and "Fergie to Oprah: I was drunk during sting". Problems just aren't on the same level there.

Meanwhile, Latin America just can't get much positive going at all. Last year in Juarez, a border city across the river from El Paso, Texas, 2,660 people were murdered.

Numbers can often be misunderstood or underestimated, but I don't know any city in America where on average more than 2 people are killed every single day; Juarez has by far the highest murder rate of any city in the world. For comparison, New Orleans has the highest murder rate in America, with 174. Juarez even had more murders last year than New York City did in its worst year in history.

The President of Mexico called in the national army, only to realize they are outmatched in terms of weapons and equipment. I just imagine these cartels with a bunch of hovercrafts and dune buggies, but apparently they actually use submarines and jets. Personally I prefer this smuggler's choice of transportation:

Photo: Flickr/Shiny Things

Silver linings and improvements are not part of the story right now. The publicized burden falls on the leaders of Latin American governments, but the actual struggle encompasses ordinary people, those who have no choice but to live in a community where they don't even feel safe at a library on a Tuesday morning. The Obama government would be criticized whether they intervened more or less, and honestly, it's just not that cut and dry. I can't imagine the people of Mexico are unified in a desire to have the American military in their cities, and a true solution involves the fiscal and political sectors of another corrupt country.

Cue Bono.

Always with Bono. It's like Sting before him. If more, or any of the musicians I liked more than Bono were in to anything, maybe they' be on TV more like him. If it wasn't him, it'd probably just be Dave "who is more vanilla than me?" Matthews, so I've decided not to complain.

Enthusiasm for this once in 4 years extravaganza is unbridled from the United States to North Korea, but especially in Latin America, which sends 6 different national teams to the World Cup, not including Brazil. Mexico has a chance to move on to the next round, is certainly not a favorite to even sniff a title game, although they would probably put Italy's celebration to shame.

Starting in a group with France (boo, of course) and host country South Africa is an opportunity for Mexico to play on a global stage, and for a damaged nation back home to root for their own. Even the criminals will be reminded that they themselves are less important than the game of soccer, but as they sit down to watch the very same game in front of a new flatscreen, it won't bother them in the least.

I have Spain beating Holland in the finals. Book it.