The infinite wisdom of Chris Rock

I made a conscious decision not to post musings here about politics/colonialism/race/militarization/the environment/sartorial choices, since there are others far better equipped to expound on such subjects--in blog form--than I. You'll see some of those writers to the right.

Also, I have no other place in my life to publicly post photos of slugs or what I ingested for breakfast.

But despite a mighty effort, I can't ignore those nasty "little" incidents popping up in daily life, whose occurrences increase in their frequency and ability to irritate me. The Drowning Mermaid's recent post about contact with military personnel exposed the marrow more clearly than I (and I imagine, a lot of locals) care to admit, and my mood's been a bit on, ahem, check, as it were.

So without yakking on about my thoughts on racism and all that other shit--acknowledging that her post touches on profound theories of local/tourist, military/civilian, Chamoru/not Chamoru--I guess the best possible way to (not) explain where I'm at personally, desde Sanlagu para Guahan after two and half years here, is to rely on Chris Rock to do it for me:

"If you're black, you gotta look at America a little bit different. You gotta look at America like the uncle that paid for you to go to college . . . but molested you."

Uncle Sam, indeed.

An American education?

Today I met Chuukese man who had been a community worker back on his home island. He taught everything from breastfeeding and preventive healthcare to what he called "consumer education."

Specifically, he talked about how in Chuukese people make kon, a foodstuff made of boiled-pounded-oiled/dried breadfruit, and fishing. Those activities, in his words, are "custom and values"--which seemed to imply that he considered them the soul of Chuukese being. However, since Chuukese people have adopted elements of a cash economy, he said that he needs to "go with them to the store, show them how to buy."

Whatever he teaches in consumer education, I certainly hope it includes a lesson in how to NOT blow up their economy by securitization, deregulated markets, and cheap credit. Although to be fair, if a Wall Street trader has yet to figure out to tranche up coconut futures, I can have high hopes for Chuuk after all. Here's hoping.

This is one way to sum up the Guam Experience

First of all, while that submarine in the previous post did leak radiation in Guåhan's waters, according to the U.S. government, the amount was a "weepage" as opposed to an actual leak. You can read about it here.

And in other news, of course the Olympics is happening. We don't have a working television (we do have one--it's on loan from an aunt, and it's in the closet) and decided that the internet is itself enough of a time-suck and so didn't get cable either. Consequently we're going to watch some Olympic events on the internets.

But we can't. Because we're not attached to servers in the stateside "U.S."/Sånlagu (according to NBC), we can't access Olympics coverage on the internet. (NBC has exclusive Olympics distribution rights in the U.S., so any coverage via the internet goes through NBC, so to speak.) But because the server we use on Guam is also not "international," we can't access Olympic coverage on YouTube, which has the international distribution rights.

So between the nuclear leak from a military vessel and this internet purgatory of between-international/U.S., you can pretty much deduce a significant bit about the relationship of Guam to the rest of the world.

Note: And yes, I used the term "Guam" here intentionally as opposed to my usual invocation of Guåhan.