It's Cinco De Mayo Time 2025!

Just a quick note or three about CINCO DE MAYO this 2025:

Find yourself in sunny Minot North Dakota!!

Head out to Herbert's Taco Hut!

Get yourself a taco!

Aim both middle fingers in the general direction of donald Racist Orange Shitgibbon trump!

And Celebrate the Battle of Puebla as General Zaragoza intended!!!

P.S. more blogging to follow this Monday. brb.

It's CINCO DE MAYO 2024

I still haven't seen taco trucks on every corner. It's been EIGHT YEARS. The fearmongers LIED to us, America.

In the meantime, here's some taco recipes with DANNY "Yes, a blade is involved" TREJO!

On a personal note, there's a couple of personal anniversaries and remembrances for me this month of May, some of which I'll post here and at least one that'll post to my librarian blog across the corner (WHICH ALSO DOESN'T HAVE A TACO TRUCK, AAAAAAAAUUUGGGGHHHH).

It's Cinco De Mayo 2022 and Where the HELL Are My Taco Trucks???

You know, we're two years in to Joe Biden's legitimately won Presidency, and it's May 5th which makes it CINCO DE MAYO, and yet I am utterly pissed off right now.

I mean, in 2016 the trumpian assholes declared that if Hillary would win the election, there would be and I quote "TACO TRUCKS ON EVERY CORNER." And this was a good idea, this was tempting, and goddammit not enough of us voted for Hillary to make it happen.

What I said back then:

Just think of the economic benefits of having taco trucks on every corner! No, this is serious! Food truck service is actually a smart investment in the right markets!

Hell, give me the seed money right now! Lemme go start my own taco truck service!

But now we got Democrat Joe Biden in charge, and yet we're STILL WAITING ON THOSE TACO TRUCKS!!!

Where's the funding, Joe? WHERE'S THE SBA GRANTS FOR TACO TRUCKS?!

How the HELL are we going to be able to effectively celebrate General Zaragoza's incredible victory over invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla? We need those taco trucks, we need the beer license to sell Mexican brands! 

WHAT THE HELL, JOE! 

JUST SIMPLE TACO TRUCKS, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

/cries

Brief Thought About Cinco De Mayo This 2021

Look, I understand it's CINCO DE MAYO, the annual day of EATING ALL THE TACOS and DRINKING ALL THE MARGARITAS.

I understand we're slowly coming out of a year-long pandemic that had kept a lot of us from restaurants and bars that would be serving us those tacos and margaritas.

I know that a lot of us have gotten our vaccinations, that a lot of us can risk going out again to restaurants as long as we maintained some respectable distances and kept wearing the masks.

Sad thing is, when I went to my local Mexican restaurant to pick-up a Carryout - I am NOT going to sit in a restaurant until we are damn certain COVID-19 has been contained/managed - I ran into a full parking lot, with 30 people gathered at the front door ignoring every social-distance rule and most of them not wearing masks, and when I went inside to get my meal it was worse: tables packed back to back with every seat filled. I may have only been inside for less than five minutes to get my meal, but my anxiety levels were through the roof.

What. The. Bleep.

To hell with DeSantis and the other deniers saying it's safe - or worse, the ones who keep claiming COVID is a hoax - they are overlooking the reality that COVID-19 is STILL out there, it's still a risk, and Florida alone is one of the higher-risk states (we're ranked 9th right now) thanks to a less-than-average vaccination effort. 

I know people want to go back to normal. I know you want to go out to bars and night-life and stuff. I know you want the ambience again of crowded places and happy noises of fellow diners.

But Christ, Florida. We're not there yet.

Are we going to have another spike of COVID by next week?!

This is not what General Zaragoza fought for, people. /sigh

When Cinco De Mayo is on a Taco Tuesday, With Revenge of the Sith On Our Minds

#CincoAtHome, America. General Zaragoza didn't fight off the French at the Battle of Puebla so that you all get sick with COVID-19 today.

If you wanna honor the Sith as they take their Revenge, do your part to pre-order from your local TACO TRUCK AT EVERY CORNER and pick up curbside service to avoid spreading the coronavirus.

To help, the LA Times has Five suggestions to do Cinco right.

These are easy things to do, America. Sith Responsibly.

Cinco De Mayo in 2019 Baby Time to Honor General Zaragoza and the Mexican Forces of Beer uh Puebla

But hey, do you even know WHY we celebrate Cinco De Mayo? Ellen's audience doesn't even know.

But Ellen's kind of right. The United States really only celebrates it because beer.

SO DRINK AND DRIVE RESPONSIBLY, WHITE PEOPLE. Sheesh.

Update: And it IS Revenge of the Fifth...

Cinco De Mayo 2017

To be fair, there's not much to celebrate this year.

Having that anti-immigrant Hater in the White House is enough to put a dour mood on any celebration.

...

What the hell, let's do this!

It's CINCO DE MAYO Again!

And this 2016 could prove the most bittersweet...

Artist Ted Rall, posted via Forbes.com

Could this be our last reason to celebrate the Battle of Puebla, Mexico's defiant stand against an invading French force?

Could this be the last time we make the f0cking Chimichangas?

Could this be the last time we celebrate Mexican-American and indeed Latino heritage in the United States of America?

Could this be the last time we can fantasize about Salma Hayek?

...

NEVER!

SAVE CINCO DE MAYO!

Stop Trump from ruining one of the great made-up holidays in the United States!

UPDATE: Pinku-Sensei has the margaritas over at his blog! PREPARE THE CHIMICHANGAS!

FOLLOW-UP TO THE UPDATE: There is an ungodly image of Trump trying to eat a taco salad in his office claiming he's all up for Cinco De Mayo and that his restaurant grill in the building serves them all the time. No. Just... No. That is not how you impress Hispanics. That's how you make them watch the movie Machete over and over again in a growing rage...

Cinco De Mayo: More Than One Remembrance

Today is Cinco De Mayo, kiddos!

But something else of note: today is a Tuesday, and if City of Heroes was still up and running this day would be a Tanker Tuesday.

Some background (taken from a fanpage I created ages ago on a now-defunct website):

Tankers are one of five original Archetypes for the City of Heroes MMO character designs. There's meant to be a role played by each AT, and a way of balancing these ATs out. Blasters are long-range damage dealers with little or no armor. Scrappers are close-quarters damage dealers with some armor to compensate for being in melee range. Defenders are healers and protectors with some attacks but not as powerful as Blasters. Controllers are literally crowd controllers, with some damage abilities but really their forte is Holding mobs at bay for others to wipe out. Tankers are armored front-line attackers that are shielded from head to toe, but with limited attacks.

There's not supposed to be one AT that is better than the others, but the Tankers kinda bend if not break that unwritten rule. Tankers can survive fights almost entirely on their own, if properly designed. Only Scrappers can match that, and even Scrappers don't get the higher Hit Point counts Tankers get that allow them to survive longer in battle. Certain Tankers (Fire, cough) have offensive capabilities that can rival a Blaster or Scrapper. A good Tanker can overcome the disadvantages of not having as many attack options as a Blaster or Scrapper. And an expert at playing Tankers can perform a game trick known as 'Herding', the ability to draw or 'aggro' a series of mobs together across an entire map if need be in order to kill enough of the mobs all at once. And to be perfectly honest, when confronting a high-level villain class known as Arch-Villain (AV), you NEED a Tanker there to get the job done because that Tanker is the only one with enough Hit Points and with the needed aggro control to survive the fight.

As a character build, Tankers became popular enough that entire teams were built around the Archetype.  On Champion server, the Tankers even formed an event on the first Tuesday of the month.

One month, Tanker Tuesday fell on Cinco De Mayo.  One of the main organizers, online name of The Ring, decided to throw a Cinco-themed Tanker event:

On the day of Del Dia Tanque itself, there was another large crowd of Tankers waiting at the designated spot in Kings Row. We grouped, we gathered, we danced, we waited for Ring to show up and start this gig. Ring did show, bringing along a special guest, Gen. Zaragoza himself! Sure, he was Level 1 and all, but the General had arrived to start the celebrations off with the proper style. We praised the General and then got the lineups going...

 We ran the Hess Task Force, with the ever-awesome MegaMech!

Ah, one of the best Tanker Tuesdays we ever had.

I miss City of Heroes.  I am not the only one.  The other hero-themed MMOs - DCU Online, Champions Online - just don't play well.  I guess I got spoiled on CoH.  Kinda waiting on a variety of potential replacement hero build MMOs - City of Titans is one, Valiance another - but it's shocking how there's few superhero MMOs in an age of a massive comic-book media wave of television shows and movie blockbusters.

Oh, and as for Cinco de Mayo, don't forget this:

The Day Is Just Packed

Personally, a very busy day for me both at home and work (it's so busy I had to drag dad across the state to help at home).

But it's also CINCO DE MAYO!

But wait!  It's also - because yesterday just happened to be Star Wars Day - The Revenge of The Fifth!

Are we having fun yet, kids?

A Serious Reason to Celebrate Cinco De Mayo

Here in the states we gringos* get our Mexi-CAN attitude up during May 5th for all things Mexican... mostly Mexican food (TACOS), Mexican drinks ('RITAS), and terrible attempts to speak like Speedy Gonzales.

But there's a good reason to celebrate this day of Cinco De Mayo, in honor of the Battle of Puebla, not only a positive moment for Mexico but for the hemisphere as well.

You see, back in 1862 the nation of Mexico was a huge mess.  The aftermath of the Mexican-American War left the government divided and the people's spirits broken.  From 1857 to 1861 they suffered a civil war (see? another one) that wrecked their finances and made it difficult to pay off their debts to overseas creditors... which happened to be France, Spain, and England.

Around this time France had fallen under yet another would-be dictator in Napoleon's nephew who declared himself Napoleon III (there really wasn't a II, but III needed to include his dad into the equation for his claim to stick).  Itching for an overseas empire of his own, and wary of the United States - even in the middle of its own civil war - growing into a global power if it ran unchecked across the western hemisphere, Napoleon III used the default to convince the Spanish and British governments to jointly send troops to Mexico and force the Mexican government to capitulate and pay off those debts.

When the overseas force reached the shores of Mexico the Mexican President Benito Juarez had sent envoys to negotiate a deal to pay off the debts at a prolonged period with favorable rates to the creditor nations.  Thankfully, neither Spain nor the UK wanted to start a fight - they were also pissed to find out this was an excuse by Napoleon III to invade, not reclaim debts - and accepted the terms.  Napoleon's forces, however, were ordered to march in and take over no matter what.

Into this mix came Ignacio Zaragoza.  Growing up to become a priest, during the civil war unrest of the 1850s he quit seminary studies and offered to join any army supporting the struggling republic.  At first unqualified for officer rank - he was from the peasantry - and then barred from signing up for foot soldier duty, Zaragoza was able to join a ragtag team of misfits and proved himself with them, working his way into the regular ranks.  By 1855 Zaragoza was the officer in charge of the military that ousted Santa Anna - where Zaragoza should be considered Mexico's greatest military hero, Santa Anna should be considered the worst - and helped establish the Liberal Party's control of Mexico.

Zaragoza was serving in Juarez's cabinet as War Secretary when the armies landed in 1862.  He promptly resigned his post and took charge of the eastern defenses.  As the French moved inland towards Mexico City, Zaragoza's early forays convinced him to pull back to a fortified position and get the French to do something stupid (being the French army he was facing, this was doable).  That meant tearing up the fields in a scorched earth policy and pulling back to the city of Puebla, where two forts were already built and all Zaragoza needed to do was carve out a horse path between the two for his cavalry to maneuver.

I just noted that the best way to defeat the French was to let them do something stupid, which seemed a common occurrence   It was.  While the French troops themselves are as good and hardened as any other army on a battlefield, the French leadership leaves a bit to be desired more often than not.  The general in charge of the invading French force for example - Comte de Lorencez - had been told (and believed) to expect the Mexican citizenry to welcome his forces as liberators (gee, sounds familiar) and so expected any Mexican opposition to get turned over by their own people the second French troops paraded nearby.  He also wasn't too familiar with weather conditions in that part of the world and so didn't think to get his fighting done before the afternoon thunderstorms would roll in.

Lorencez started his artillery barrage just before lunch and didn't send his ground troops to attack the forts until right after lunch.  Zaragoza kept his troops on the defensive, using the terrain and patience to keep his troops fresh and ready, forcing the French to keep charging uphill into a swarm of machete-wielding - yes this part is real - Mexicans.  When the French started their third wave, they were low on ammo, their artillery was useless, and the weather turned wet (hello, afternoon rainstorms!) and the terrain muddy.  During their pullback from the third failed assault, the French forces were confronted by Zaragoza's meager cavalry and a concealed flanking contingent that turned the pullback into a retreat.  Lorencez retreated from the battlefield, and spent the next few days trying to get Zaragoza to chase after him (hoping to get Zaragoza's smaller force into an open field for easier stompage).  Zaragoza wouldn't bite, forcing Lorencez to retreat all the way back to the Gulf of Mexico and call for reinforcements.

Zaragoza sent word back to Mexico City: Las armas nacionales se han cubierto de gloria.  The national arms have been covered in glory.  After the massive humiliations suffered by the Mexican-American War, the Mexicans had won a battle against a foreign army.

Sadly, they didn't stop the war.  Napoleon III wanted his overseas empire and so sent more troops expecting a bigger fight.  By 1863 they had seized control of Mexico City and inserted a puppet "emperor" Maximilian (some guy from the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty).  As to why Zaragoza wasn't there to stop them... well by September 1862 Zaragoza died of typhoid fever, leaving a vacuum of military leadership and skill.

But Zaragoza's victory was a big one: for both Mexico and the United States.  It gave Mexico a year to organize and prepare for further hostilities, which became the resistance fighting that continued the war into 1867.  It gave time for the United States to finish up their civil war by 1865 to give the Republic forces much-needed weapons and a 50,000 strong veteran army led by Philip Sheridan - think Patton on a horse, about 3 inches shorter and 3 times more blood-thirsty - that hampered French resources.  By 1867 Napoleon III's dream of empire was over and he abandoned Maximilian (who foolishly stayed behind thinking he could appeal to the Mexican people) to his fate.

Mexico retained its national identity and its honor.  The United States no longer had a hostile European-backed empire in its backyard.  The Western Hemisphere was no longer under threat of hostile takeover by France or any other European nation with imperial ambitions like Belgium or the emerging nation-states like Germany or Italy (sadly, the Central and South American republics still had - and have - to contend with a meddling US government instead...).

And that, kids, is why we raise a drink in honor of General Zaragoza.  A toast... on this Cinco De Mayo!

* Mexican for "Crazy White Tourists".  I'm not kidding.

Happy Cinco De Mayo

Greets to all who read this blog... um wherever you are.  It's Cinco De Mayo!

And on this day if you find any non-Hispanic Arizonians celebrating at a Tijuana Flats today, you have my permission to punch them repeatedly.