Cinco de Mayo and The Kentucky Derby

I don't know much about Cinco de Mayo.
I'm never sure what it's all about...

lyric from Mexico on Cake's album Prolonging the Magic.

I didn't know much about it either, so I looked it up. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the 1862 victory by outnumbered Mexican forces over French soldiers at the Battle of Puebla. Mexico had a lot of accumulated debt to France, and the French wanted payment. They didn't get it. It is not Mexico's Independence Day, which is September 16. Only gringos think it is Mexican Independence Day. Now you know better.

Nowadays it is a bigger holiday in the US than in Mexico, mainly so we can have parades, dance to Latin music, and enhance the sales of tequila to previously sober Americans who want to get shit faced in public.

Sort of like St. Patrick's Day, only with tequila.

Here in Boston, bars have had contests for the most creative sombrero; some have Mexican musicians, and they all sell a crap load of Mexican food and margaritas. A friend of mine is having a Kentucky Derby party today, so I will go to that. I'll invite my only Mexican friend, but he probably has other plans.

In case you didn't know, the Kentucky Derby is a horse race.

My friend makes mint juleps for Derby Day. I hate mint juleps. They taste like minty poo. Not that I've ever tasted poo, minty or not, but still. I'll bring wine instead. I should just get some Patron and make margaritas, but his kitchen is too small to handle two different fancy drinks.

Are you planning anything for Cinco de Mayo? Or for Derby Day? Or are you drunk already?

The art is Nude with Calla Lilies by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, 1944.

Sitting in Squatters' Urine

I went out last night with friends to a local bar. As happens, I had to use the ladies' room. Miraculously there was no line. I dropped my pants and checked the seat in the dark stall for urine. I saw none, pulled my thong out of my ass, and sat down on the seat. I didn't realize a squatter had been there.

There is nothing quite so shockingly unappealing as the cold knowledge that you are sitting in someone else's piss. Apparently there exist women who are too scared to sit on a strange porcelain horseshoe.

Squatters are the scourge of all bars, some restaurants, and increasingly even workplaces. Once one of them enters and does her thing, spraying piss about like dogs in the wild, we all must follow suit and squat also.

Our only other option is to wipe up her urine. I am tired of wiping up strange women's urine. I am tired of sitting in squatters' urine.

Is this a female-only problem? Do you squat or sit?

The art is a drawing by Vincent Van Gogh titled Nude Woman Squatting Over a Basin. This was drawn in Paris, in 1887. It is currently at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.