| Current mood: | empty |
| Current music: | Nine Days -- Weekend Excursion |
Savages
Two posts in one week... now nobody should bitch at me for awhile. : )
I'm at school still. I'm almost the only one. The 4 day weekend is now half over and all the sports teams have left. At this point I think the RAs comprise about 90% of the people still on campus.
I haven't been as productive as I would have liked to be, but I haven't been a total slacker, either.
Yesterday I slept in and then went to the Core building to read Core. I read and napped on the couches most of the afternoon, it was very quiet and peaceful. I kinda think I wasn't supposed to be there, but nobody challenged me so it doesn't matter. Later I enjoyed the sun and warm by going rollerblading and reading outside by the fountain.
Last night I went to visit Jen and watched the first half of Titanic with her and Nicole Fetla. Nicole's as much fun as I thought she was, I had a good time... even if it was Titanic. Actually, I didn't even watch it that much. I took a laptop and was browsing through asterisk source most of the time.
Today I got up for breakfast and intended to stay up and work on stuff all day.... but I fell back asleep after breakfast and didn't wake up until lunch. After that I finished reading Savages and spent the rest of the afternoon researching more about it. I really got into the (true) story, about the Huaorani people in Ecuador who are being slowly killed by American oil companies. It was interesting to catch up where the book left off 8 years ago. Some of the characters are still alive and active today -- I even found the email address for Moi, one of the Huao leaders, which intrigued me. It's quite interesting to me that I have the ability to *email* a member of a culture that without American intervention would still be in the Stone Age.
It's also really interesting to me what has been done to these people in the name of Christianity. Rachel Saint, a Christian missionary, went to live among the Huaorani ~50 years ago, and their way of life has been deteriorating since then. They've slowly been dying from our diseases, and they've been taught that their traditional way of life -- their language, hunting, culture -- is inferior to ours. And they've come to depend on things like machetes and clothing and internal combustion engines that they can only get from our world. Only a tiny fraction of them are actually Christian; it is inarguable that they have suffered more than they've gained since first laying eyes on cowodes, their word for foreigners which translates most closely to "cannibals". Defenders of our involvement in their culture say that they're better off now because they are less likely to kill each other (before our involvement, homicide accounted for perhaps 50% of their deaths), but if they die just as young and just as miserably because of our Christianity and our oil, it's hard to accept that as a net gain.
I feel like I could go on for hours about them; I really am becoming passionate about their cause. I sent Peter and Capouch several links I'd found; perhaps I'll put some of them here later.
I still haven't started my Core 10 paper. I guess I'll do it tomorrow. Eh.
I'm really lonely right now... I feel really out of it since there's nobody around to interact with, kinda trapped in my own little world. I'll definitely be glad when everyone (a few people in particular) get back to school.
I also realized the other day that I'm absolutely terrified by the future right now. In less than a month I'll be homeless and jobless, and I'm really not comfortable with that. I hope either AmeriCorps or Digium work out, and soon -- I would very much like to have a plan for the next several months of my life.
Calvin called me at 10 til 10 tonight saying he was in the area and he wanted to stop by to see me. But I didn't get the message until midnight, since I was in the computer center. I'm realy disappointed I didn't get to see him or even talk to him. He wasn't around when I called.
I went running today to take my mind off the things upsetting me (the future, being here alone, and our ethnocide of the Huaorani). It was an awesome run. I went up Drexel by Walmart and around the back of the quarry, to Kannal and back up to 231 and home. It's 3 and a half or 4 miles, and I did it in about 29 minutes. Definitely not fast, but it's the first substantial run I've been on in almost 4 months. I was pleased with it. And it gave me focus for a few hours so I got work done on a Core 8 paper.
I've been sitting in the lounge of Seifert for a couple hours now flipping through channels. I guess I have a need to reconfirm to myself every once in a while that television really does suck. I'm convinced. I can't deny that there is something amusing about puppets representing STDs singing and dancing on the Chapelle show, but somehow it just doesn't seem like a good use of my time. Oh well.
Now I'm going to bed so I can hopefully get up at a reasonable hour and write core papers all day. I'm in a bad mood.
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