25-Sept-00: Highway 180

Am on the first-class bus to Mérida. It's relatively comfortable, though I'm restless: am seated in a chair, after all. First-class buses come equipped with video monitors and a VCR the driver controls. We're watching a made-for-US-TV production of Crime and Punishment. I 'm wondering whether the scenes intended to depict gruesome poverty in 1856 St. Petersburg really seem so dire to the Mexican passengers: all the movie's slums look so clean. Muttonchop sideburns quite the accessory for dubbed Spanish.

Distracted here by Raskolnikov's pangs of bad conscience.

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