you say you want a revolution...

i think i'll take number nine (beatles or magic hat) instead of whatever was going on yesterday. instead of going for some super bowl festivities (oops) i decided to go to what was billed as a talk at this place. i didn't think it was going to take all that long; figured i would go and walk over to the party for the second half of the game. the event was a prominent figure from an organization called copwatch L.A.. i guess a few western cities have groups like this, the idea is that they keep an eye on what the cops do and how they treat people and document their unfair actions. sounds pretty cool on face, and i was really interested because it had occurred to me while i was doing legal observing that the cops do a lot of shitty things outside of protests. i also just kind of wanted to see what the place was like and who showed up and how things went down; my nature is to observe a happening as much as to attend. well, i had plenty of time to gauge, as the speaker didn't make it until like almost forty five minutes past when things were allegedly going to get rolling. the room was alright, long and narrow, with quite a commendable library for an organization of that stripe. mostly the sort of things one would expect, left-leaning literature, a well-stocked pamphlet rack, but lots of real books and a surprising variety of fiction and non-documentary films. i killed a lot of time browsing a deleuze book i hadn't encountered before, sort of a chance to expound on anti-oedipus. most of the people who showed up were white and looked like most of the social justice people i've encountered. presumably to break down the power structure of presentation, the seats were rearranged into a large semi-circle for things to actually start going down. for whatever reason, we went all the way around introducing ourselves and describing what we were affiliated with/why we were at the thing, which mostly proved to be an opportunity for people to drop names and spew acronyms. the end result of the setup was that a lot of people talked a lot about their personal views and experiences, which i did not find to be real illuminating or helpful, as much of the talk had some self-congratulatory tone. not as much of that as there was rhetoric though; an awful lot of generalization and what i guess could be called term-dropping (fill-in-the-blank/industrial complex, including "non-profit/industrial complex"). the talk quickly turned to a prolonged discussion/argument of gentrification, which was not really what i showed up to listen to, but one of the more articulate and thoughtful participants drew a respectable connection which devolved into some pretty rude and pointless crap. overall, there were some bright spots, but the "dialog" was mostly dominated by a lot of unsupported claims everyone wanted to believe and no one wanted to provide evidence for. i don't doubt the things people said, but i would really appreciate documentation. which is what i thought things would be a little more concerned with. only about half an hour of what turned out to be a nearly three hour ordeal really dealt with the ins and outs of what the copwatch group did. a good chunk of the people spent a lot of the time looking bored and uncomfortable, and a few people spoke more than was necessary. overall, it was kind of depressing. how these people intend to get the world to agree with them and fundamentally change surprise while they can't act right in a group of thirty-odd bodies supposedly gathered for a common concern is beyond me. suffice to say that i did not leave feeling real inspired. i had kind of hoped that the whole thing would make for some better blogging material, but the more i go on the more i realize that i couldn't even glean a whole ton for that purpose. ah well, you don't know if you don't go. hey, i got out on the weekend. i guess going to a super bowl thing would have counted too, though. gone are the days of reserved seats at the bar proper on said sunday, with requisite breaks for private truly super bowl celebrations.
on the other hand, i did make it out on saturday as well. way out, in fact, about an hour's train ride to the northern burbs. i brewed some with a classmate and her husband, some really good people, and there's a lot to be said for that. got to hang out with some dogs, too, another bonus. i really enjoy riding on trains, but this particular route was one i didn't need to see twice. i don't know if parts of the area are really that shitty, or if whatever is next to the railway is bound to take a dive for some reason, but the view was mostly a downer. however, there was some surprising changes along the way: a forested area would suddenly pop up, or xeroxed undersized family homes would yield to hospital-esque apartments or palatial estates. when i finally got where i was headed, the whole town came off as a little bizarre because it was very old and yet distinctively a suburb. back home, certain areas are of comparable age, but they spent a large portion of their history in a distinct format of farmland, whereas this had always been a respectably sized suburb, albeit also couched among what had traditionally been agricultural enterprise. brewing itself came back like riding a bike, even more simple than i had remembered, but i didn't really get to do a whole lot. the dude goes all-grain, and we had a scare with the runoff, but a tactic i've long espoused proved to solve whatever the problem was: just let it sit and see if it fixes itself. it did. in the intervening time, i was introduced to venture brothers, an occasional adult swim feature. it was quite strange and satisfyingly amusing. they fed me some solid food as well, the dude has some respectable cooking chops. in fact, chops is what he made, and some solid mashed potatoes, all rosemary and garlic. those kitchen aid mixers are capable of some badass shit. they lent me a book to read on the way back on the train in the dark, freakonomics, which i was glad to finally get a crack at. i blazed through it with the quickness, closed up within twelve hours of lending. anyone who was gonna read it probably has, so i don't have to tell you to. some of the arguments i felt were better than others, and i was really surprised at how intuitive the whole thing seemed to me, given the out-there connotation the authors try to give the theories. maybe i missed my calling. wait, i definitely did, i just don't know what it was supposed to be. not pop economics, even if i knew where they were going and what the argument was going to be a decent portion of the time.
so i tried to make the most of the weekend for once, and it had its ups and downs, but i was back to business today. in the middle of one of my classes, my buddy who sits next to me straight up started to lose his shit. i don't know how he wound up there, but he was tickled by the notion of bacon salt. as was i, as was i. i feel like someone i know mentioned the product to someone else recently, so i'm not claiming first discovery, but if the rest of y'all (not marked! also, i discovered that spell check does not mark irregardless. what gives?) have not been alerted, let this serve. it really is sort of outrageous. check out the blog, with links to a disturbing variety of cocktails calling for the product. on the other hand, the bacon chocolate turned out pretty good; better than it sounded at least. i don't know if everything should taste like bacon, but it is pretty amusing to read the thoughts of those who do think so.
the other strange product of the day is a nicotine vaporizer. a guy i know at school was pretty psyched to get his, and has been making liberal use of it inside buildings whenever he has the opportunity. no one has said anything yet, as there is no smell and the whole apparatus sort of resembles a pen. the way it works is that there is a nicotine solution, and the head is enough to vaporize the liquid, so you still sort of feel like you're inhaling smoke, but it is not as hot, and also there is no tar, leading to a somewhat less satisfying feeling. but the nicotine is all there, i guess. they're big in europe and parts of asia where smoking is popular but recently strictly regulated. at any rate, the dude i know has been getting away with it with no hassle thus far. i mean, what are people going to say, anyway? there is no odor, and so nobody even really notices. indoors, there is no visible vapor upon exhale, and a trivial amount results from the puff, but it quickly dissipates and like i said, no one can smell it, because it is more or less steam. i don't think i will be quickly converted, but i guess it works for this guy, who was one of the biggest chain smokers i have ever met in my life. however, he is also the sort of person who gets such a big kick out of being able to get his nicotine in a semi-smoked format in areas where tobacco use is prohibited. on the one hand, i wanna be like more power to him, but on the other hand, it is one of those strange and perplexing features of our present era.
well, originally this post was going to have a whole lot more about that meeting at lava and what power means and how it functions in society, but i think this is for the best. i guess the point after much deliberation was going to be that tearing down structures of power inevitably creates a vacuum which is in turn filled by one person or another, and that is why the change people envision is pretty unlikely. history bears witness alongside the microcosm of a roomful of "progressive" folks. go ahead and tell me i'm looking for an excuse to legitimize structures that favor me, and i will tell you that those structures intrinsically favor me to agree but also require me to compromise the culture i envision. power makes rules, and people are more or less left to decide whether they will legitimate power by accepting the rules and ascending via being co-opted or attempt to replace those structures with something else that will inevitably lead to it's own injustices. i am left wanting an historical contradiction, and nothing leaps to my mind. i am loathe to capitulate to nature and genetics, but there is some compelling evidence to suggest a large part of the way people act is predetermined to some degree, and that means there will always be someone to take advantage of a vacuum. at this point i would like to willfully misinterpret that to envision someone sexually abusing a vacuum cleaner. i'll leave you all with that.