I Wanna take you to a Ta Sar Ta Sar

Hi

This is going to be quite a long post, so if its not your thing, you may just want to go to my post from yesterday. Essentially I'm not sure if what I'm writing about is incredibly funny, or seriously disturbing, or both.

Due to obscene levels of work at UCLA, the main campus library is open on a 24 hour basis. Post 11pm students have to show ID, and, if they don't then they are asked to leave. On Tuesday night a student was stunned with a Taser gun by campus police four times. Police say this is because he refused to leave, the 'victim' says that he was very willing to leave, and the police were too brutal.

For those of you who may not know a Taser gun is sort of a cattle prod, like an electrocution device. Its not all that dangerous if the person it is being used on does not have a pace maker.

So far, So America. However, it just so happens that someone managed to capture the whole event (admittedly badly) on camera phone. The video is now all over youtube and the like, and can be found HERE (Be warned however, it is very long, and sort of disturbing). It has been viewed over 100'000 times. The local media has gone sort of mad over the whole thing, and there is a protest organized tomorrow.

As if the whole thing was not bad enough, the mentality of the police could be explained in the name of the said student. It was Mostafa Tabatabainejad. Sounds sort of Middle Eastern to me... (The LAPD are historically extremely harsh upon minorities, previously Blacks, now Mexicans and Islamics). Now, apparently this character is a bit of a fruit loop, and he was asked to leave several times before the police arrived. The police say that he attempted to get other students involved in his fight (and someone with the name of Mostafa Tabatabainejad inviting people to join in his fight would not go down at all well one would suspect). The police also say a taser gun is by far better than a baton, which is true, however that is like arguing that having your arm chopped off is not as bad as the plague. They are still both fairly rubbish places to be at.

Also, when asking for officer badge numbers, a student was threatened with being taserd themselves. Bit of a public relations disaster.

As if the whole thing were not controversial and disturbing enough, there are some extraordinarily comic elements to the whole thing. This revolves upon about six fundamental comic factors;

1) There is now a group on Facebook titled 'I forgot my Bruincard (ID) Please don't Taser me

2) Conversations revolving around general taser use. For example, Amanda (works in a library) commenting that, they had a taser gun in lost and found. Conversation then proceeds to discussion about general tasering, and that it could be quite fun to taser one another

3) The fact that taser sounds a bit like laser, and then I relized that playing laser quest in a library full of books and computers could be sort of fun

4) The protest organised for midday tommrow carries the slogan 'Since when was it ok to taser students?', which is quite an amusing tag line, especially when you consider G in your head saying "Presumably never"

5) Its quite a fun pass time to pretend your being taserd next to the protest poster;


6) The fact that Taser, when separated into octaves is ta-sar. When this thesis is applied, it fits quite well into Electirc Six's Gay Bar, as in;

I've got something to put in you at the TA SAR, TA SAR, TA SAR
and
Your a superstar at the TA SAR TA SAR

So, a disturbing look at post 9/11 America and obscene police brutality or a hilarious joke? Or both? Im just so confused!!