Monday, October 27, 2003

SCATOLOGY, OR SIMPLY SCAT?


Raven and I have had a few run-ins with Nescafe instant coffee the past few days. The Bird is adamant: he’s not having any of that.

“This is a coffee-producing country, for Pete’s sake—and they are guzzling this garbage!”

Rave, of course you’re right. The infamous Pete notwithstanding, the Third World folks will never be free until they stop selling their products for peanuts and buying them back again—manufactured, pulverized, petrified and chemically treated—for big bucks. In the meantime, let’s make do with a couple of teabags—barnsweepings from another part of the Third World, undoubtedly.

Raven dunks a bag in his cup and lets it dribble from his beak as he mutters a few well-chosen Third World obscenities which cast a lot of doubt on his mother.

Rave, didn’t your mother ever tell you not to swear with a teabag in your beak?

He leaves the bag in the cup.

“Let’s change the subject. I noticed in yesterday’s LA JORNADA that Durito (note: Durito is a beetle who accompanies the EZLN leader in his meanderings and musings—in short, his muse) ended up with more than half of Subcomandante Marcos’ speech.”

What are you saying, guy? You want to make a speech? You think you’re not getting your fair share of the blogs?

“A speech? Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that. You think Durito took a class in speeches or something?”

I’m not sure they have those classes in the mountains of southeastern Mexico. Anyway, you have as much—if not more—autonomy than Durito.

“Autonomy is not freedom, baby. Remember when ex-president Zedillo sent the federal cops in to break heads in the “Autonomous National University” in Mexico City?

He was still president then—don’t mislead our faithful five readers. But I get your drift. Like the autonomous nervous system isn’t free of the body—it just allows knees to jerk.

“Weak analogy, given that I don’t have knees.”

Raven dumps a bunch of aji (chile sauce, in Ecuadorese) on his scrambled eggs.

Go easy with that stuff. What did Durito have to say in his speech?

“A lot of stuff about anti-globalization. He compared the globe of the earth to a ‘globo’ (balloon), and he labels as ‘tienderos’ (store clerks) people at the head of puppet governments of countries that have given up their sovereignty to the globalizers—multinational companies and imperialist regimes like the U.S.”

Like that gringo in Bolivia, I guess?

“He made no specific mentions. But he says that it doesn’t matter that they have no idea how to govern—just that they know how to watch the “tienda” (store) and render clear accounts to the owner—Big Money.”

Durito is pretty sharp, Rave. Almost as sharp as you?

“And equally as modest. His final point was that therefore in the globalization of power the world no longer is round, like an inflated bladder, but it bursts—and in its place there’s a big store. And those stores, as everybody knows, are square—not round. And that’s how, he says, globalization functions—or as if we were to call it ‘bladderization’.”

Bladderization? I take it all back, guy. You wouldn’t come up with a goofy term like that! Or would you?

Raven lets loose with one of his ear-splitting cackles.

“Why not? If Bush can block the congressional investigation into 9/11—which he and his henchmen engineered—why couldn’t I popularize as asshole term like that?”

Asshole? No, Rave—the bladder is for doing Number 1, not Number 2.

“With folks like the Bush Gang bladderizing the world barrio—folks who in terms of normal activities cannot find their butts with both hands—Numbers 1 and 2 are the same.”

He might have a point, that Birdbrain.

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