I guess I thought Argentina would be like Mexico but maybe a little more well-to-do and just a slightly different flavor, like, say, the New England and Canada. But it's nothing like that. Buenos Aires is much closer to Rome than to Mexico City, and the air of the country is European. Everyone is Italian (a handful of Germans sprinkled in from after the Second World War), and there are very few Hispanic or indigenous people to be found, even in the poorer parts of the city (the metropolitan area has 20 million inhabitants and the city is vastly larger than NYC). In Buenos Aires, there is no such thing as a moving violation, so cars drive two to a lane if possible, weaving, flowing, crossing double solids, and it's a surprisingly efficient system. Traffic moves. The lights go from green to yellow to red to yellow to green again, which was strange but seemed to fit in well with the overall fluidity of their system.

Thanatology is the study of death, the process and custom and science of dying. Hood College is the only accredited degree-granting institution in the United States that offers a master's degree in thanatology.

The food in Argentina was nothing like what I had expected. Everything is ham and cheese, maybe with a hard boiled egg for good measure. Pizza comes with a layer of ham. Hamburgers come with a layer of ham. And an egg on top. Even at McDonald's. Calzones come with ham and cheese and tomato. Tortillas, which are actually strange sandwiches generally come with cheese, ham and cheese, cheese and tomato, or ham and cheese and tomato. But not ham and tomato. They never use spices. Garlic, olive oil, and salt is what you have to work with. I ate a goat.

Have you ever seen a full-on drag show? I attended one at a nightclub called Club 69. The performance impressed, mesmerized me. While there I talked with the son of a Peruvian diplomat named Alfredo. We drank beers and danced to some kind of pulsating Argentine turbo-tango musica.

Until a few years ago they put mercury in children's vaccines. Now they use aluminum, mostly.

At the zoo they let all kinds of ducks (exotic ducks, not just the plain white and brown ones) wander about. There is duck shit everywhere. They also let a few other kinds of animals roam freely. They have "acuti," which are so adorable that customs might forgive you for trying to smuggle one back in your carry-on. The grizzly bear looked powerful; the polar bear looked miserable.

Female human babies are harvested by American bio/pharmaceutical companies in countries like China just before they are born. They have a full compliment of eggs, which are removed and fertilized using DNA from other animals. These chimeras gestate in cows, pigs, and tanks of synthetic amniotic fluid. Then, various experiments are performed.

There is a cemetery where all the rich and famous Argentinians are buried. The tombs are ornate, with polished white, gray, and black facades. Some are faced with glass so that the caskets can be seen. Even in the middle of the day it was so haunting that there were certain alleys, crowded with vaulting, tremendous tombs, that I could not walk down the full way. There were many couples on dates. There were lots of dead brigadier generals.