and i'm sleeping through the night

*photo of Southwestern desert by Michael P. Berman from the book Trinity

last night brian and i finished watching all the breaking bad that is available to watch. that show is incredible and every season ends with the most insane cliff hangers! i can't believe we have to wait until july 2011!

i'm so thirsty for more drug/crime/border drama so we walked to elliott bay bookstore, where i picked up a graphic novel called dreamland by charles bowden. he also wrote another drug war/mexican cartel book called murder city that just came out. i figured if i can get through this 1/2" thick graphic novel and still sleep then i continue on and buy the murder city book.

"Realizing that merely reporting the facts cannot capture the massive disintegration of society that is happening along the border, Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs use nonfiction and sgraffito drawings to depict the surreality that is Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Starting from an incident in which a Mexican informant for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security murdered a man while U.S. agents listened in by cell phone--and did nothing to intervene--Bowden forcefully and poetically describes the breakdown of all order in Juarez as the power of the drug industry outstrips the power of the state. Alice Leora Briggs's drawings--reminiscent of Northern Renaissance engraving and profoundly disquieting--intensify the reality of this place where atrocities happen daily and no one, neither citizens nor governments, openly acknowledges them."

this is exactly what I was looking for. ever since I finished reading coyotes by ted conover i've been fascinated with the reality crime/immigration dramas that i grew up so close to.