Party On, Authoritarian Dudes!

Below you'll see one of the more interesting and comprehensible parts of a phone exchange that took place yesterday between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, broadcast on Chavez's weekly daily late-night show, Aló Presidente-For-Life.

Castro: Well, you say that I know English. I did at one time.

Chavez: Did you forget it?

Castro: The trauma afterwards has made me forget it. This is why I no longer have that excellent memory you have, the capacity to summarise or your musical ear, your talent to remember songs. I cannot believe that you have partied so much as to remember all those songs.

Chavez: I never partied as much as you.

Castro: I envy you that.

Chavez: Not as much as you. Not as much as you.

Transcript featuring mas -- mucho, mucho mas, even after a brevity edit -- aquí. Sitio oficial de Aló Presidente aquí. YouTube video of the show, featuring a weary and decrepit sounding Castro (starts about 3 minutes in) debajo.



Apart from Castro sounding on the brink of death, the highlight of the video comes about the 11:45 mark, where Chavez, seated at a desk in front of lacquered, fake-wood paneling, notes that he has just "last night approved an exceptional economic- and social-development plan" -- price controls, methinks -- to last for three months.

He then turns into an insane auctioneer, rattling off a rapid-fire, crazy list of foodstuffs (including mortadella) covered by his plan. Watch as the speed with which Chavez speaks just about causes the hands of the on-screen sign-language interpreter to fly off.