March 1 2014

Talking with Pedro: Shit’s Going Down in Venezuela

The failure of all of our traditional news sources to keep us informed of what’s going on in the world is ghastly. Thankfully we now have VICE and VICE News which is in private beta right now. I got an invite, and it’s wonderful filled with news about Caracas, Ukraine, Central African Republic, South Sudan and even here in the United States. Reporter Alex Miller has been reporting for VICE News and today reports that anti-government protestors have taken to mobile caravans to take their message to the middle class neighborhoods. Miller is reporting that no violence has broken out where he is today, but as with all things that is subject to change. From what I’ve read and watched in his dispatches you have the student protesters and Nicolás Maduro’s government, the offspring of Hugo Chávez’s. The students want an end to the dictatorship; the government is claiming the protestors are right-wingers who want to overthrow them with a coup. That brings me to Pedro, a 21-year old student who lives outside of Caracas but studies in the city. I asked him if he wanted to bring the Maduro government more accountable for the actions and be more transparent, he agreed. “In all honesty, that’s what we want,” he said but he didn’t think that would be possible with this regime. “When you see an oil-rich country with far-right communists (they exist! Who would’ve known?) that blatantly lie to people and Photoshop pictures on the official tv channel and call the opposition fascists and insults all who differs. The only real way you see out of this is to overthrow the government.” Pedro pointed back to the Venezuelan Youth Day on February 12 as the origin for this uprising. Students from different universities got together to protest the arrest of fellow students in front of the Public Ministry in Caracas. They also protested the general state of insecurity and the high crime rate (24,000 were murdered in Venezuela in 2013 according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence). “The paramilitary killed two students, and ever since, we’ve been protesting against violence, illegal arrests and armed paramilitary killing our students,” Pedro said. One thing that marks a difference between Venezuela and other popular uprisings we’ve seen over the last several years is the fact the poor sides with the Maduro government. “Propaganda works in here as rascism and classism,” Pedro said. “It’s bad if you’re white, if you differ, if you have money or if you have ambitions. Ever read 1984? That’s exactly the idea. It’s a fascist state, you survive only by it and you have to worship it or else.” There have been reports that right wingers have co-opted the student movement. “That’s what the official tv channel says to alienate their followers, to keep them from joining the protests,” Pedro explained. “I actually hate some opposition people, but we, the youth, have one focus: we need to live and we want to live here. Most of our parents tell us to finish school, uni, whatever to get out of the country and we don’t want that. We want to produce here. “It isn’t something about opposition or not. It is a social yearning for a better lifestyle. As they say, ‘we don’t live, we survive.'” With the 18 claimed to have been killed already in the protests, the hundreds detained and scores injured, I asked Pedro if he was scared. He said the fact that people have been killed, that over 200,000 have been murdered in 15 years, are the reasons he’s willing to stand up. “By now we rather die fighting for a free country than being part of some statistics,” Pedro added. After chatting with Pedro, it became even clearer that what’s happening in Venezuela isn’t as simple as black-and-white, rich-and-poor, left-and-right. Something has gotta give. While I hope it’s peaceful, I’m not very optimistic. People clinging to power are always desperate, and lord knows what they will stoop to. Here are Alex Miller’s dispatches from Caracas:

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What Do I Have to Do?

It was summer 1996 right before my senior year of high school back when my curfew was 10. I spent a Saturday with C who was at a UCLA summer camp. While hanging out in her dorm room and traipsing around Westwood Village, I ended up buying a used copy of Stabbing Westward’s Wither, Blister, Burn and Peel at the Wherehouse. “What Do I Have to Do” was played quite a bit on KROQ, and while I thought it was NIN-lite, I couldn’t deny how catchy and good it is.

I got home a bit late, around 10:30, and that was when I had the worst fight with my mom. She had gone to bed early and woke up when I went to the bathroom. Naturally she asked where I was and didn’t believe me when I said where I was or what I was doing. I kept telling her that I was just spending the day with C at UCLA, and she insisted that I wasn’t. I could only imagine what she thought I was doing. I wondered what I did to make her not trust me — I didn’t drink or use drugs; I was a good student in AP classes. At this point I had only started smoking cigarettes for several months. I listened to dark music. I liked to hang out at coffeeshops with my friends. I had horrible self-esteem. I was loud and angry with role models being Howard Stern and Roseanne. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t think I was off the rails.

How do you communicate this to a mother with just as bad of a temper as you and who refuses to believe you?

It was getting late, and I wanted to go to bed. My mom didn’t want to end the argument. As a 17-year old, I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I knew I was hiding something big, and I had no intention of ever telling her. But my mom kept yelling at me saying I wasn’t telling the truth. Then I blurted it out.

“I’m gay.”

Fuck. As those words came out, I knew it was a fucking mistake. I knew nothing good was going to come out of this and that this argument was not going to come to an end anytime soon. Predictably, my mom went even more berserk perfecting every melodramatic beat from Korean dramas.

I knew I had to just stand there and take it. Then she said it.

“If you ever bring this up again, I will shoot you and shoot myself.”

Everything blurred after that. I knew I was never going to get my mother’s love, that no one was going to be there for me. It definitely explains the relationship I have with my mom, and it probably explains why I have never been in a relationship or see myself ever being in one.

Since then whenever I listen to Stabbing Westward I think about this night.

All of this to say that I did go see them Friday night as they promoted their re-recording of Wither to celebrate its 30th anniversary along with PIG, Acumen Nation (celebrating the 30th anniversary of Territory=Universe) and 16Volt (celebrating the 30th anniversary of LetDownCrush) as a part of Cold Waves LA. It was a great show of reliving the 90s guitar industrial metal and seeing bands I didn’t get to see back in the day. Hell, PIG even played “Juke Joint Jezebel” which I guess you could call a KMFDM cover even though Raymond Watts was the original featured vocalist.

As I cursed my aching 47-year old feet and back standing for hours at the Pacific Electric, I did think back to that argument 30 years ago and wonder what other climatic moments the people around me had. What traumas are the guy next to me exorcising as he is screaming out the lyrics very much off key?

Around 1 am they finished the set with “Save Yourself,” and the house lights turned up. Sure, I’m still carrying all of that baggage, but at least I got to shake my ass a little and enjoy myself a little, pain be damned.

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This is 47

The only reason I really look forward to my birthday is that I get time off from work and that I usually rent an Airbnb out in the middle of the desert in the Joshua Tree vicinity with a pool, hot tub, and no one around for 5 acres. So here I am in Landers (or a bit away from it really) whose claim to fame was that it was the epicenter of a 7.3 earthquake in 1992 just hours before a separate 6.5 earthquake centered in Big Bear hit on a Sunday morning. Wild stuff.

I arrived here yesterday, and on the way had to stop to get gas. Since this stupid fucking illegal war with Iran has driven gas prices sky high again, I’ve mostly been back on public transit again because, fuck that. There I was at the Arco station jaw agape as the $30 went to $40 and on up until it landed at $72 for 13 gallons of gas. Yes, the “cheap” gas.

I’m going to be spending most of the time in or around the pool trying to finish Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz. I’m at around page 604, so I have about 400 more pages to go. I’ll be honest — I have no fucking clue what’s going on in the book. It’s a slow, slow read and demands your attention but not in a painstaking way. It’s a very enjoyable read, but I honestly don’t know how we get from one part to the next. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I’m just riding the wave, going where it’s taking me and try to make sense of it later.

I’ve started working on a couple of things with myself and hope to get better at as I begin my 48th year on this planet: I have started to journal more. It’s the most mundane scatterbrained thing. I hope it doesn’t cause someone’s head to explode when they go through my journals after I’m dead. (How cute. I think I have any importance that people will actually read what I write rather than just dispose it like they should.)

I need to curb my YouTube addiction. I don’t watch tv shows. I don’t watch sports all that much. I don’t use TikTok. I only doomscroll through Facebook at 3 am after I have woken up to take a piss. I am no longer perpetually online. But I will sit down and waste hours upon hours watching YouTube videos. I really need to get that in check.

That’s all I’ve got. Overall, I’m not happy, but I’m not completely depressed. Let’s just call it nonplussed. For someone who feels like a stranger in his own country, I guess that’s about as good as we can hope for.

Here’s a picture of the desert sunset: