che and his books

1. I saw two kids with Che shirts on today. I thought to myself what terrible, ignorant, hypocrites those people they were. Then I thought, kids pissed about kids wearing Che shirts are like Christians who flip a bitch over using the Lord's name in vain. In the end, we're all still in university/church.

2. On a related note, in an effort to better adhere to the third commandment, I will henceforth modify a common singular first person stative to "I amsh."

3. I'd say most my social program for this year has been a failure. I have kissed no babies, contracted no cuddly parasites, attended no protests, and converted no Muslims. Then, the other day this guys stopped me on campus. I'd known him from my refugee studies class the previous semester; he's from Liberia. He'd asked me for my readers, 15 burdensome, half-read, soporific tomes I was more than happy to unload - they would have really put a cramp in my packing-for-home style. I thought nothing of it, figuring it would be a miracle if he made it through the first half in a year.

I guess motivations make a difference; he'd read them all and posted them to this sister in Liberia. It made me so happy to hear that. These are hard to get here, he said, expensive. I was a bit shocked: expensive? The copy center that produces these readers--often entire books copied--is about as above board as an Edgar Allen Poe piece and I can buy a semester's worth of reading for what I would pay for a single reader in the 'States. I can go into any library or internet cafe anywhere and access half of those readings online through my university website, and once I get home, I can find near all of them in the library.

After all my bitching and moaning about the pomp and inconsequence of academia, Yayah touched Marxist me with a story about information in the right hands. Really, what I look for in my readings is what it tells me about myself. Blessed be the souls who can do their readings and learn something about others, but I read my readings with me. And the readings I do the fastest, the trembliest, and again and again, are the ones that I know are about me, and everything, and me.

No doubt Yayah the refugee found much more to take him through those readings than I did. And no doubt he knows much better to do with that information than I ever will. No doubt, if I gave him the means, he could make that information in a way I never could. And no doubt, that sort of international information is something in scarce supply in his country. Academia, like the rest of us, might yet have a redeemer.

4. I think I'm finally getting used to Egyptian humor. There's these two kids next to me who--wait, we're sitting onthese big steps, like each step the size of two normal steps--and there's this water bottle two big steps down from these kids, and they want to drink from this water bottle but its far away. They've marshalled all their straws connected them end to end and are now happily drinking from their water bottle. It works! they shouted and I laughed.