This morning, I downloaded and watched The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a documentary about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and the attempted coup against him in 2002. (His name was recently in the news again because Pat Robertson publicly advocated his assassination.)

(Torrent here, for those who feel like downloading it for themselves.)

Watching the dramatic power struggle unfold, in which the CIA appeared to be playing an active role in subverting the democratically elected government (even if the CIA wasn't directly involved, members of the Bush cabinet and American media were certainly siding against him), it made me wonder just how many other things that are generally accepted and portrayed as "true" in this country are based on fabrication.

Could it be, for example, that Fidel Castro is really a hero, and all the stuff we've been told about him being a mass murderer is as false as the selectively edited footage shown of Chavez supporters that was shown on tv? (The footage depicted one side of a gunfight, in which Chavez's supporters were shooting and ducking behind a wall. The media portrayed it as if they were shooting unarmed opposition demonstraters, but an alternate camera angle not shown in the media at the time revealed that there were no demonstraters below the bridge from which they were firing. The Chavez supporters claimed that there were snipers firing at them, and they were merely fighting in self-defense; this appeard to be substantiated by the alternate camera angles that were not shown in the media.)

Now please don't misunderstand. I'm not necessarily saying I think Fidel Castro is a good guy. I just don't know. At this stage, given all the other lies that have been exposed, how can we believe anything our government has told us? (Or the big 6 media companies, which operate in conjunction with the state.)

As people who have been reading this site for a while know, it's not as if this were just a sudden revelation on my part. It's just the latest little piece in a gradual, growing understanding.

Here's where I get stuck though: I don't know how to relate this to people who still, to varying degrees, buy into the party line. When talking to someone who believes (as most do) that images shown on network tv and "facts" reported in newspapers are representative of reality, how does one argue with that?

Is there any way to say it without sounding like a wacko? "It's not just Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, all of them. They're in league with the enemy (the corporate state), and they will work to deceive you."

I've given up. It's no use. I'm tired of trying.

Sometimes I still try to keep myself informed (though I don't know why, for all the good it does me), and sometimes I just prefer to ignore the whole shitstorm.

Ride my bike, enjoy the weather, breathe the air. That's the good life.

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Yesterday, a short walk to the nearest hardware store, and I had the cutting implement I needed to trim Serenity's new gear cable. With that, it didn't take long to complete the repair.

Well, mostly. For some reason, it now seems to be virtually impossible to get it adjusted in such a way that the marked stops on the twist grip are aligned precisely with the actual gears. It's not just the precision of the alignment, but the range of possible positions. When I loosen the cable, it stays in the same low gear for the first two or three shifts, but when I tighten it enough to make that work, shifting into the highest position virtually makes the chain fall off the edge and get stuck in the crack (NOT good).

I adjusted it to a point where I couldn't derail the chain, and called it good enough. I can get to both my lowest and highest gears, but the two lowest positions on the handle go to the same gear, and it skips a gear or two in the middle. It could be that there's another spring that needs adjusting or something. A cursory examination didn't reveal any obvious way to change it. At this point, I'm just going to say "Oh well, at least I can shift again," and be happy with that.

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Right now, via irate radio, I'm hearing a track that features a most fascinating fusion of techno/electronic, metal guitars, and tribal vocals. A search reveals that the band, Oblivion_Music, appears to have only released that 1 song: The Road. Too bad they didn't make anything else. Oh well. If you're only going to do one song, might as well make it a good one.

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