may 14meanwhile amy worked her job, and my old english paper lay fallow.
swarthmore is winding down; everyone is drinking beer and smoking pot,jerry seinfeld goodbye:
except me.i took a break for some passive media this evening: one hour of jerry seinfeld goodbye, which turned out to be two hours, followed by some video footage of peasant revolt in chiapas.
it was like going to someone's bon voyage party, someone you've hardly met. i've seen the show once. i guess i expected to understand a cultural pheonomenon from this - it was certainly the largest gathering of people i've seen around the satellite here in worth dormitory.so what was jerry seinfeld's goodbye? a greatest hits and a self-reflexive parading of past guests as jerry and co. end up in jail
jerry seinfeld and friends made some very funny jokes about relationships. there was a midget shown a few times. jerry and his male buddy almost hugged, but thought better of it. characters were criticized for acting too effeminate. a slick-talkin' black johnny cochrane parody character acted lewdly towards women. the cast was chastized by a palestinian. the insightful humour and montage of cut-ups could not well sustain two hours, and the apple ads were not entertaining enough either. but my friends were there, and at least seinfeld and co ended up in jail. i guess they realized their time is over, props for that.then a friend invited me and wil(son) to watch some scenes videotaped where farm families in chiapas stood their ground against military police blocking them from reaching a well. the police, in basic spanish i could mostly understand, argued that they were helping the people, they were there to provide assistance. they were armed with automatic rifles and tear gas shooters, riot helmets and shields. (last time i saw a lineup like that i was arrested.) the head policeman was reading off a script taped to the inside of his riot shield. a helicopter hovered overhead, drowning out voices, as a policeman took pictures of everyone. against them young and old mothers stood hands locked and babies on their backs, as the front line in front of the police. their men stood behind them and argued for hours with the cops.
(gratuitous paragraph break for web readability)
some enterprising northerner taped the whole thing back and forth over the lines and zoomed into faces. the troops didn't seem too happy - it was clear the police leadership was trying to convince the troops of their helpful role as much as they were trying to convince the peasants. everybody looked pretty unhappy, and the situation was made even more absurd by the presence of multiple cameras and microphones. i must admire those people for holding their cool; they must have known the two fisted american audience would have wanted violence. the bravery of the campesinos was enough, and i shared some small sense of their frustration having police help offered instead of water, and freedom of mobility.
i started thinking about my thesis, about the soldiers representing technological society, and the peasants reserving their right to develop their right livelihood, instead of being forced into working in maquiladoras as their land is taken. the helicopter makes a great spectacle, a lot of noise and wind, and the threat of photos is impressive. i just kept thinking, one well placed rock at the spindle of that rotor, you could send that helicopter down and cost technological society a pretty penny and get some real good footage for the sympathetic college students up north. i guess technology aids both sides. from my desk, i support the chiapas rebellion; i think the PRI of mexico is a farce - "the Institutional Revolutionary Party" ?
and then i started to think about zdtv, and what i'm doing to aid in the machinations of global capital, and then the video ended and wilson's stomach hurt and we passed a fellow that i remember talking to about christ years ago.
and now that i think about it all again now, i think, i want to write about this on my web page, because it's media, and americans know seinfeld, and maybe i can dose folks with some good chiapas links and at least i know, from working on my thesis, that there aren't any answers. but hey, i'm still only 23, i contemplate however briefly doing something radical on behalf of the struggle. but then after that wave passes, i'm just a junior-writer-wanna-be with a web page. so here it is.
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today's muzzik: i wrote in silence; it was faster tonight. during layout and links, i put on all of "the orb's adventures beyond the ultraworld" - an album i used to only appreciate for the little fluffy clouds opener. since a recent full straight through listen, i think it encompasses a dizzying range of musical and cultural ideas in a most excellent 2 disc sonic odessey.
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justin hall | <justin at bud dot com>