Thursday, September 10, 2009

Light Readings

I haven't really been reading as much as I want too, especially considering I've been out of school and done with my thesis for over 4 months now. Thats a really depressing fact.

Probably my main hurtle reading is that I keep picking up really dense/academic related reads. One of which I'm reading (and only half-way through) is about Chief Plenty Coups and the fall of the Crow Indians, called Radical Hope. Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. It is one powerful look into the total devastation of a culture. To see how a people were destroyed because their entire cultural being (buffalo and war) was taken away from them is tough to get through if you know what I'm saying.

(Plenty Coups)
For example, here is a little quote from Plenty Coup right before he died, "...when the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground... After this nothing happened."

Needless to say, this read is getting me a little down. And I think its lost somewhere in my chaotic shambles of a flooded house right now.

But Dane thankfully gave me something to lift my spirits: The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost is amazing. I love a book that can make me laugh out loud on every page and even manage to tune out a television.
I didn't even know the Rebublic of Kiribati (kiri-bse)was a place, and now I am (almost) questioning whether I should go there and not Indonesia.



Anyway, basically Maarten is documenting is (mis)adventures living on this tiny, dot in the pacific ocean for two years. He survives off raw and boiled fish, and beer. But sometimes the beer runs out. And the water. And the electricity. He spends his days trying to write, and trying to find something edible. He also collects some of the islands toughest street dogs (White dog and Mama dog). His biggest problem though is literally avoiding the shit on the beach.

It just leads me to daydream about living on an atoll where there is one flight, if you are lucky, once a month. And a supply ship even more infrequently. Maybe I just need to find something a little like this in Indonesia?

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