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I spent two hours in the library at school today, trying to create flyers that I plan on wheatpasting all over campus and downtown soon. I'm collecting quotes from Einstein, Gandhi, and a few others, and I plan on attatching them to pictures from the recent protests. One of the flyers I was working on today featured a young woman with flowers in her hair standing a foot in front of one of those storm-trooper cops in full riot gear, face shield and gas mask and all. She stands unafraid, just staring into where his eyes should be. The quote I plan to attach is:

It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, ruled us we should have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence.
-Mohandas Gandhi

They don't have photoshop on the library computers, but since there are no classes right now, that's all that was open. I fiddled with it for an hour in MS paint, and I finally got it to be the right size, text where I wanted it, etc. Then I did the final save, and it didn't work. It said that paint had to be shut down, so I lost all my work. I've never had a school computer act so crappy. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

I left campus, and wandered down to Powell's. I looked through a book about climbing the world's tallest mountains, then looked at adbusters. I read a story by Doug Coupland.

I'll summarize: 1% of the population of the earth started disapearing in ever increasing intervals. The first people to go were the movie stars and millionaires, and everything still functioned normally, but then more people started vanishing. Soon, there was only 5% of the world's population left. These all happened to be construction workers and engineers. This is when the aliens arrived. They brainwashed all the people into obeying them, and then they set them to work at cleaning up the planet. The cities were destroyed. Buildings were turned into gravel and mulch, and nobody missed them. For generations, people toiled at this, until thousands of years later, there was almost no evidence that civilization existed. All that was left to do was get rid of the nuclear waste. After that was taken care of, everybody was given an organic poison that caused them to decompose instantly. This is when all of the millionaies and movie stars mysteriously reappeared, right where they had vanished from. The aliens left, because they had grown tired of humans. the question was, what would all of these millionaires and moviestars do with their new planet.

I'm summarizing a bit too much, or too little, but that's basically it. Science fiction works bestas summary, because it's usually just the idea of the story that's the important thing. That's why I liked Breakfast of Champions.

When I left, I placed Adbusters open to the two page spread of the billboard they're going to start putting in U.S. cities. There's a picture of Uncle Sam, and it says "I want YOU to curb your consumption." I can't wait to see that.

When I came back home, I found the strangest thing in the mail. The parents of my roommate who hasn't even moved in yet sent me a check for $25. They said they hoped it would help with the bills. They're so nice it frightens me.

The title of this entry is quoted from Albert Einstein