metraboy online: july 20, 2000

Back when I started metraboy online, I updated quite frequently. A big part of that was attempting to avoid ending a "streak"; like the great Cal Ripken, Jr., I anted to be able to keep the streak of consecutive update days going.

And I still do, in fact. My long-term goal is to be able to join always, a 'burb (collection of journals) that you can only be a part of if you update as near to every day as humanly possible.

What does this mean to you, the above average (since you are reading this *chuckle*) consumer? Well, it means that you cna expect me to try my durndest to update a lot. I don't know what might happen after I get a new job or when I start school, but for now, I will make it a go. I may even add updates from days that i missed, after the fact, by keeping a journal at home. We'll see.

Today in work I had to finish up the godawful job of deacidifying a group of scores by a composer named William Ferris. It was kinda cool seeing all of his nots that went into the musical that these scores make up, but it is sad being stuck in a room, all by yourself, with a tape player that works, but tends to speed songs up a bit (those of you who have heard "you are invited" by the dismemberment plan--it sounds even more tweaked when sped up) (did you know that they played with pearl jam for a few weeks on their tour? me neither.). Then I got back to my fave job--ph testing. Just me, some books, Punk Planet, Belle and Sebastian (i'm trying to catch up with ro in her knowledge of them by stealing her cd's whilst she resides in palestine).

Oh, and the "new left."

I just read a bunch of interviews about many of the people involved in the ever-more-visible leftist movements. They even got Noam Chomsky to interview, for god sake! He said that "making himself available for interviews" is how he contributes to the cause now. Neat.

Anyway, the stuff I read had a lot about a16 in DC and the protests in Seattle and it really made me feel like this is a movement that could do a lot of damage to corporate America and could really help to de-consumerize our world. Chomsky was talking about why the WTO is a bad thing--that what happens is that, for instance, peasants in Colombia are "driven, by external forces, mostly from the U.S., to become rational peasants producing for agricultural export, unable to produce for local markets because they're being flooded by subssidized American agriculture imports. When they try to do things like, say, stabilize commodity prices for coffee, they get smashed. Put together all these forces and you have people growing coca and then you send in troops to kill them".

Wow.

So I'm reading all of this while I am also trying to figure out what to do this weekend, and I have come to the conclusion that I need to go visit Nate. He's the guy who got me into these sorts of things, he took pictures of labor parades and anti-U.S. protests while he was in England, and he was actually there in DC snapping photos. I think that as I begin thinking about these things again--or some would say, as I begin thinking again--I find that going to visit nate and ang ould be a lot more sensible than going home to beer, old friends, and wiffle ball. Because while going home is comfy, going to Valpo makes me uncomfortable in that itching, burning, let's-talk-about-smashing-the-state (but not violently) way. I can start talking to Nate about the fact that I think I want to, maybe even need to, go to the next big protest that he knows of. Maybe that means I will end up going to Philly with him next weekend. Who knows. The point is that I have been trying to deny that I have been scared to get involved for a long, long time--and I am beginning to get scared about not getting involved.

Plus, who knows? Maybe I'll learn something that will aid me in my quest to be a "fucked-up punk/anti-capitalist artsy guy". Well, maybe that isn't my dream yet. But someday....

Join me (hopefully) tomorrow as I (hopefully) examine these questions: "Why do I distrust books written by dissenters who view things the way I do? Why do I need to see that such books are put out by "reputable" publishers before I can believe in what they say?"

love,
metraboy

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last updated july 20, 2000