Photography Blog #2

I ordered Che Guevara’s book The motorcycle diaries because I wanted to read about someone who lived life passionately and made an impact on the world he found himself in. Given my own propensity for laziness and my alarming capacity for staring at walls for days on end, I thought it might do me some good. I don’t believe in socialism, so this isn’t a disguised treatise designed to inculcate you into the struggle, you’re not my Comrade and I don’t care.

The diaries were written in Che’s pre-revolutionary days and deal with a time he and a friend, Alberto Granado, took off around South America on La Poderosa(the powerful one) a 500cc Norton. They are either qualified (Alberto) or qualifying (Che) doctors with an interest in leprosy. Che qualified as a doctor in three years, half the normal amount of time, which gives an indication of his intelligence and determination.

As they set off Che is torn over leaving behind the wonderfully named Chicina. The women seemed to love Che, many months later in Chile a girl comes on to him at a party and as he is leading he outside she realizes her husband is watching and changes her mind. Che is drunk and doesn’t understand and pulls her towards the door when she tries to kick and falls over in full view of everyone at the party. He fled the scene with Alberto following roaring about the free wine he had cost them and the entire party in pursuit.

The first few months consist mostly of the lads getting drunk and endlessly falling off the motorbike. It finally gives up the ghost in Chile. After that they have to hitch up through Peru, Columbia and Venezuela. In their final days in Chile, they volunteer as fireman, (mainly on account of the fire chief’s three pretty daughters) and promptly sleep through the sirens for the first fire. They redeem themselves on their third and final day when Alberto rescues a family cat from a burning house.

The hospitality they encounter is remarkable. Everywhere they go strangers put them up, feed them and buy them drink. One time a drunk police sergeant gives them some wine and urges Che to let him shoot a cigarette out of his mouth for 50 soles (Peruvian dollars). Che resists and the offer goes up to 200 but though tempted he still declines. So the sergeant throws his hat in the air shoots, misses and blows a hole in the wall. The landlady comes in incensed and goes off to get another police officer who on seeing his sergeant standing stiffly in front of the damaged piece of wall, inquires off Alberto with a wink if has anymore of the bangers they were letting off. Alberto plays along and they all get off with a warning.

The book is marked by a complete absence of polemic. Although Che’s sympathy for the poor and disappointment with the systems that brought them to their condition is obvious. There are some intimations of the man he would become. Speaking of Lima he says, It is still waiting for the blood of a truly liberating revolution.

It ends with an after-note which describes an encounter with an old man who predicts his death, you will die with you fist raised and jaw tense, the perfect manifestation of hatred and struggle, that is so hallucinatory in nature in made me doubt whether it actually happened. Apparently his Bolivian diaries were also published, covering time when he was an actual revolutionary up until he was assassinated by the CIA. Perhaps I’ll get those, in the meantime there’s a wall that needs my attention.

The Guardian casts a weary critical eye over George Bush’s America in the latest special report.

Soulwax - 2 Many DJs is one of the first bootleg albums to come out. Like the Rubiks Cube and Carrothead, the bootleg is entering it’s 15 minutes. Doncha wanna say you were there first? BTW, that link previous gets ya the whole album.

The album, as you’ll see, is impressive as shit technically; and occasionally brilliant, but also fairly grating with prolonged exposure. Perfect for a fad!

Thx to LV15 for the album rip and encode

We want Brian Tindle (if this huge page fails to load try here). Goats, sex, hepatitis, shit-eating, shitty English football clubs; this is Big Brother for geeks. Thanks to umboto for the link, spread the word.