Contact
<+>
Our Web Sites
The Common Wheel
Collective Book on Collective Process
<+>
Journal Archives
2003
|
m |
j |
j |
a |
s |
|
o |
n |
d |
2004
|
j |
f |
m |
a
|
m |
|
j |
j |
a |
s |
<+>
Link to Us
<+>
Book List
<+>
Recommended
Web Sites
50 Years is Enough
AKPress
Anarchist Communitarian Network
Anti-Slavery
Better Times
Brazilian Landless Workers Movement
Catholic Worker
Committee to Protect Journalists
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
Crimethinc
East Bay Food Not Bombs
Enough
Free Free Now
Fundación Esperanza
Indymedia
Infoshop
Institute for Social Ecology
Just the Facts
Kensington Welfare Rights Union
Noam Chomsky Archive
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Organic Consumers Association
Overcoming Consumerism
Oxfam
Pacific Environment
Path to Freedom Urban Homesteading
Peasant Movement of the Philippines
People Against Oppression and War
Peoples Global Action
Poor News Network
Reclaim the Streets
Ruckus Society
Shack/Slum Dwellers International
The View From the Ground
We the People Media
<+>
Journals and Blogs
Abada Abada
Aldahlia
A Ten, a Five, and Five Ones
Authentic Congruent Evolution
The Autonomist
Baghdad Burning
Being Homeless
Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity
Bicycle Commuting Now
Bombs and Shields
The Common Man
Conflict Girl
Crazy Woman
David Grenier
Dru Blood
Ex-Lion Tamer
Experiment
Goodbye Forever
Green Gabbro
The Homeless Guy
Indigo Ocean
Jawbreaker
Kick All Agricultural Subsidies
Land Claims
Lost in Transit
Madame Insane
Margaret Cho
Mixin'Jam
Molly Moo's Milk Bar
Monumental Mistake
Mute Complications
New Cities, New
Soviets
No More Bigwheels
Oligopoly Watch
Path to Freedom
Political Graffiti
Postmodern Anarchist
Punk Rock Academy
Rebecca's Pocket
Resolute Cynic
Red Polka
Route 79
Scratchings
Shameless Agitator
Slacktivist
Squat the Planet
Subversity
Syndicalist
Thanksgiving Is Ruined
This Is Class Warfare
Treesit Blog
Wood's Lot
Zuky
<+>
Odd and Interesting Links
<+>
Thrifty Tips
&
Radical Thrifty Tips
<+>
[a] Dark Age Ahead <^><^> [a] Rappers and Blood Diamonds <^><^> [a] Bah <^><^> [a] Who's Worse: Burglars or Cops? <^><^> [a] Time For a New Design? <^><^> [a] Underwear Goes Inside Your Pants <^><^> [a] Continental Divide <^><^> [a] It's the Media, Stupid <^><^> [a] Obsolete by Choice <^><^> [a] Art and Rock and Roll <^><^> [a] Richard's New Blog <^><^> [a] Litany of Complaints <^><^> [a] Yeah, I'm Sick, Whatever <^><^> [a] Consumers All, From Richest to Poorest <^><^>
| <^><^><^><^><^> |
^^^
October 28, 2004 Dark Age Ahead[asfo_del]
I just borrowed a book from the library: Dark Age Ahead, by Jane Jacobs, author of the famous The Death and Life of Great American Cities. A Dark Age is "a culture's dead end," and she believes North America is currently sliding toward such an end. The death of a culture, as she describes it, is a form of "mass amnesia," in which the characteristics that previously made up a thriving culture are not only wiped out, either through genocide, economic decline, or a more general erosion, but entirely forgotten by those who remain: "even the memory of what was lost [is] also lost."
I've only read a portion of the book so far, so this isn't going to be a discussion of the book. [The five "eroding pillars" she points to are: family and community, higher education, the practice of science and technology, locally-based taxation and governmental power, and self-policing by professionals.] I can revisit that when I've finished reading the book, but the title alone made me think of another way in which the culture seems to be declining -- maybe into a Dark Age.
When I was in school, I spent more time on art history than actual history. Art history is basically the study of cultural artifacts. This is especially true of ancient civilizations, whose spoons and cook pots we display in museums, but all stuff that is produced by a culture is art. [The only real question for art critics is whether an object is any good as a work of art, not whether or not it fits the category. If anybody is still asking the question, "What is art?", that's my answer: everything.] In the history of art, one of the signs of cultural decadence is a widespread, societal loss of interest in the integrity and fundamental honesty of the products of the civilization. [I'm using the word civilization to mean all human communities. Indigenous cultures, for instance, usually have high standards and traditions for the production of personal adornments, useful tools, shelter, and the like. Cultures that uphold these traditions are not seen as being in decline, unless they're being wiped out by outsiders.]
It's not just the shameless vulgarity and stupidity of reality TV -- or, really, of most of TV and the entertainment media in general -- that show a terrible dumbing down of our own culture. The process is much more insidious and pervasive. I can't walk down my street without seeing fake cultural artifacts standing in for the real thing: vinyl siding that is supposed to look like wood but doesn't even do a halfway credible job of faking it, plastic fences and borders around planting beds, cement blocks standing in for stones. Sure, these alternatives are cheaper , but even these materials could be shaped and manufactured to have some kind of grace and style of their own. What's alarming is that no one cares. As long as something looks in some way recognizable as what it stands for, that's good enough. As long as intellectual artifacts like movies, TV and magazines are garish and passably entertaining, that's good enough.
Our society is doing away with real things and replacing them with symbols of themselves. Fast food outlets are built as sort of huts in the middle of a parking lot, with a phony shingled roof slapped on top to suggest an idea of hominess. Strip malls include only the barest signifiers that they are rows of shops and not just scary, hastily erected warehouses.
Okay, so why is any of this even worth mentioning? There are obviously much worse things happening: wars, poverty, inequality, human rights abuses, mass murders, and totalitarianism, to name a few. I think it's worth talking about because we seem to live in a culture in which, increasingly, nothing matters. It doesn't even matter if your very home, that you live with every day, is made out of fake materials standing in for an idea of real materials. It doesn't matter that the food people eat every day is not what it pretends to be, or that it's flavored with chemical agents to taste sort of like the real thing. These aren't even good fakes. But we don't care. So what do we, as a culture, care about? Not surprisingly: nothing, really. It's become more glaring than ever in this election season. Apparently, we only care about being pacified and entertained, so that we don't have to pay attention to anything.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
^^^
<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>
^^^
^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^
^^^
*::*::*::*::*::*::*::*::*
^^^
[*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
^^^
^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^
^^^
|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|
^^^
<|>-<|>-<|>-<|>-<|>-<|>-<|>
^^^
#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#
^^^
<*>=<*>=<*>=<*>=<*>=<*>=<*>
^^^
^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^=^
^^^
[==]=[==]=[==]=[==]=[==]
^^^
:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:
^^^
<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>
[Continue to September Archive]
[asfo_del]
A few weeks ago I was browsing through the TV channels at my parents' house and I saw a music video by a group called Faithless [who are probably well known, but I didn't know them] with the haunting refrain:
Whether long range weapon or suicide bomber
Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction
Whether you're soar away sun or BBC 1
Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruction
You could a Caucasian or a poor Asian
Racism is a weapon of mass destruction
Whether inflation or globalization
Fear is a weapon of mass destruction
Whether Halliburton, Enron or anyone
Greed is a weapon of mass destruction
We need to find courage, overcome
Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction
Today I came across an opinion piece in The Guardian [October 18, 2004] by the group's singer, Maxi Jazz, calling other rappers to task for glorifying a flashy lifestyle, in particular the ostentatious display of diamonds, when the diamond trade finances brutal civil wars in African countries:
"What you hear today is not hip-hop, it's rap music. Hip-hop is a cultural movement born to draw together disaffected youth.... Part of the reason young people don't march as the conscience of a nation anymore is that most hip-hop is now merely rap.
"Our political leaders and media moguls, with their skillful use of language, make sure that people don't know that before one can usefully help the weak, one must first tackle the greed that works to keep them weak. And rappers, with their love of bling, reinforce this ignorance....
"50% of all conflict diamonds are sold in the US.... Bling rules, greed is good and, as the (increasingly) down-trodden of that country often remark, 'Ain't a damn thing changed'."
Also on October 18, Amnesty International and Global Witness released a report stating that diamond retailers in the US and UK are failing to adhere to a protocol they signed almost two years ago that was supposed to prevent trade in "conflict diamonds." Called the Kimberley Process, it is a method of self-regulation that the diamond industry agreed to impose on itself.
Maxi Jazz says: "As you might expect from a body of super-billionaires left to regulate themselves, the system doesn't work too well....
"Johann Hari, a columnist for the Independent, wrote last year: 'The central myth of Blair's premiership has been the belief that you can improve the lot of the poorest without challenging the powerful.'
"Given that the Kimberley Process utterly ignores this principle - and the plight of millions of Africans - I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that African-Americans on MTV, whose entire video budget probably costs less than their wristwatch, also appear to be ignorant of just how many child soldiers are bullying child workers in blood-soaked diamond mines in Sierra Leone."
---------------------
From Amnesty International's Press Release:
"The survey of leading diamond companies and stores in the US and UK found that fewer than one in five companies that responded in writing provided a meaningful account of their policy and less than half of diamond jewellery retailers visited in stores were able to give consumers meaningful assurances that diamonds are conflict free."
---------------------
From The Guardian:
"'Conflict' or 'blood' diamonds bought by developed countries have funded guns for child soldiers, provided arms to fight UN peacekeeping forces, and financed several African civil wars, according to Amnesty International.
"Research by the environment group Global Witness revealed that in the 1990s the Angolan rebel army Unita generated $3.7bn over six years largely by trading illegal gems.
"And now, many UK [and US] jewellers are unable to assure customers that the diamonds they are buying have not been sourced from conflict regions.
"The director of Amnesty International UK [said] ... 'The trade in conflict diamonds has fuelled protracted and bloody wars in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, destroying nations and costing an estimated 3.7 million lives.'"
[asfo_del]
I simply can't bring myself to believe that my trying to figure out what's wrong with the world can matter in the slightest way. For a while I used to enjoy looking up information and statistics and then writing little blurbs about them -- not for any practical reason but just to make some order out of my own thoughts. But now I'm tired of the pointlessness of it, and I feel disgusted. [Though I'm just as likely as not to go back to it anytime.] We're all going to hell in a handbasket. There are people killing each other right now. It doesn't matter when you're reading this. Someone has been shot, blown up, hit by a car. Someone is lying dead in the street. Someone's loved one has been struck down or horribly injured. Someone is being tortured. Millions the world over [mostly in the U.S., actually] are sitting in a jail cell. Many of them have done nothing to deserve it. And those who have done something don't deserve to be there either. There are millions of people right now who wish they had something to eat but don't. Some of them will die because of it. Some will have died today. Some of us will have been spared, once we're buried underground, from having been shot at, jailed, tortured, beaten, starved to death, or murdered, but it's just the luck of the draw. An accident of birth landed a few of us into a leafy suburb to grow up with a warm bed and plush teddy bears and a home-cooked meal most every night, oblivious to those not far who huddle in a cardboard box under a bridge and those much further away who cower behind thin walls while machine gun fire explodes outside. And then some people -- very few, but way too many -- are driving a car that cost eighty thousand dollars. I know this isn't anything that anyone who is reading this doesn't already know -- I mean the factual part. The part where I'm cranky and pissed off is neither true nor untrue. It just is.
About the only thing I can look to with any [uhm ... can't think of a word] is that I didn't create any children and therefore have no part in perpetuating what is a totally sucky deal. I sure as hell am not glad that I have had to bide my time in this mire of shit, so I can take some small comfort in not having imposed it on anyone else. [This is in no way meant to disparage people with kids, who have my respect for their dedication and love.]
I'm tired of the self-congratulatory pompousness that I see nearly everywhere I lurk whenever I navigate away from the little circle of bloggers I lurve [to steal a phrase from Harry]. I just want to read what someone is thinking. That's all. I don't want to know how smart you are. I don't care. If you told the truth maybe you would expose yourself as being much more of a loser than you pretend, and how would that be so wrong?
Can we please all just get past the election, whose outcome will make so very little difference, except for perhaps rewarding us with a temporary, hollow feeling of moral victory, something like a momentary collective sigh of relief, if someone as evil and hideous as Bush is defeated, only to be replaced by someone only slightly less evil and hideous?
There's a lovely web site called Don't Just Vote, which is filled with the quivering, hopeful anticipation of what many of us collectively could do to make a better world, based on direct action in our communities rather than the meaninglessness of electoral politics. Maybe it will inspire you, though I myself am still at a loss as to what I personally could do. I first read about Don't Just Vote in a flyer I got at the RNC protests from a beautiful butch dyke wearing a shirt that pictured a circled penis [maybe it was a dildo?] surrounded by the slogan, "Sodomy Not Bombs." [Anti-war, pro-gay; it was very cool.]
Maybe we can all just make clever T-shirts and write blogs and beleaguer family members at the dinner table with rants about what's wrong with the Bush agenda -- shaking our fists at windmills to spare ourselves from suffocating in shit and choking on despair. [You know, in a manner of speaking.]br>
I read some wonderful books recently. Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On, by Frank Conroy and Mr. Apology, by Alec Wilkinson. Both are collections of essays, comprised primarily of personal observations and memoir, plus snippets of more traditional journalism. I mention them to show that suffocating in shit is not a full time occupation with me. I sold two paintings I made on ebay, one for $18 and another one for $22.50. I am rich now. Still, it pays for the broadband connection, which is what I set out to do.
And speaking of broadband, its true usefulness -- the one use for which it surely must have been invented -- is to watch Green Day videos. Although I am certain that no one who is reading this is remotely interested, I will link to them anyway:
-http://www.voodoomusicfest.com/home.htm [Live at Voodoo Music Fest in New Orleans, Oct. 16,17 2004. Features Billie Joe, now a 32-year-old family man, masturbating on stage.]
-http://www.greendayauthority.com/streaming/stream.shtml [Hour-long gig at CBGBs will only be up for maybe one more day.]
-http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/greenday/
-http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/green_day/audvid.jhtml
[asfo_del]
I've been very distracted lately. I haven't really written anything that made sense even to me; I deleted one of my recent posts. I've been traveling back and forth to my parents' house in Pennsylvania. I spent two separate weeks there in the last month. I worry about them. They worry about me. They're getting older, and they've always been fretters. So my head's not really in anything.
Somebody broke into our house today. No shit. Mike and I were both sleeping. It was about noon. I had gone to bed only a couple of hours earlier. I woke up suddenly because someone was in our bedroom. I sat bolt upright in bed and shouted, "What the fuck?" Mike scrambled out of bed and ran after them yelling. He was in his underwear. They were two kids, couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. They ran downstairs and tried to get out the back door, but the bolt was stuck. Mike had them cornered and he's a big guy, but they still gave him a ridiculous song and dance about how they thought a friend of theirs lived here. They had come in through a window in the downstairs apartment, then wandered up to the second floor, where we never lock the doors. They didn't steal anything, except for a half empty pack of cigarettes.
Then we let them go. We could easily have kept them here while we called the cops, but we didn't. I'm not sure exactly why, except that, for me, I don't think I can bring myself to intentionally put someone into the criminal justice system, which is so completely fucked. On the other hand, there is no other available alternative. These kids totally violated our little hearth. If Mike hadn't been home I would have been utterly freaked out, waking up to find someone in my room. And I'm sure they'll do it to somebody else. Maybe they'll even come back here, maybe the next time with someone who doesn't seem quite as harmless as they did.
So then we did call the cops, after the fact, because we're conflicted bunglers. I didn't think the cops would be able to find the kids anyway. I wasn't really sure at that point if I wanted them to be found or not. I think maybe I did after all. I'm still not sure. It was just so weird that they had been so shameless, even trying to bullshit with us that it somehow wasn't their fault that they had broken into our house. Still, I didn't feel any real animosity toward them.
There was a cop in a car just down the block. I went to talk to him [The first thing he asked was if our downstairs neighbor was black. I said, yes, she's black, but she doesn't know these kids!] and he called the undercovers, who were here instantly. They spent the longest time looking at everything and filling out a lengthy report. They even took us for a ride in their beat up undercover car to see if we spotted the kids on the street, which was slightly fun. And another cop came out to take fingerprints, although he said he couldn't get anything. I was surprised that they spent so long on this. When I lived in Houston, somebody stole our air conditioner while we were at home. Whoever it was ran up onto the porch and ripped it right out of the window while it was running, in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm. We called the cops then, immediately, and they didn't even come out. They just took a report over the phone.
What are you supposed to do? I don't know. Who's the bigger threat: the cops and their jails or the petty burglars?
A couple years ago, my old boyfriend Bill was burglarized in Houston. He had left the door open, and someone came in while he and his wife were sleeping and took some cash and the car keys, but not the car. The poor bastard actually came back to the house the next day, saying he had found the car keys in the park and asking for a reward. They didn't turn him in either. He was a pitiful homeless guy. They didn't want to send him to jail. So, yes, here we are: we're the bleeding heart liberals you've heard so much about. [Or bleeding heart anarchist radicals, as the case may be....]
[asfo_del]
I've been thinking about redesigning this page for some time, but I've put it off because I didn't feel like messing with the code, which has been stitched together [by me, and I have no idea what I'm doing] like a patchwork embroidery, and it's full of mistakes. Since the page displays fine on my browser, I assume it's fine, though it may very well be a mess on other browsers? That's not a good attitude, I know, but I haven't found that it's particularly easy to get information about web design because it tends to be geared toward people who are already expert: most of the time I don't even understand the terminology. [Web validators are a pretty amazing service, but they don't tell you how to fix the mistakes, only that they're there.]
Anyway, I've made two attempts at a new design. One is kind of serious, the other one more goofy and colorful. Any preference? Or should I go back to the drawing board? Bear in mind that I have only the most rudimentary knowledge of HTML, and the only design tools at my disposal are tables, colors, and fonts.
[asfo_del]
[Found via Simple Living Discussion Forums, where you can also read a transcript of the lyrics (if you register).]
Music video:
Underwear Goes Inside Your Pants, by Lazyboy.
Excerpt:
We’re in one of the richest countries in the world,
but the minimum wage is lower than it was thirty five years ago.
There are homeless people everywhere.
This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought, hey, that’s what I’m going to use it on.
Why am I judging this poor bastard?
[...]
I walked behind this guy the other day.
A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looks right at the homeless guy and says "why don’t you go get a job, you bum?".
People always say that to homeless guys, like it's so easy.
This homeless guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants.
Outside his pants. I’m guessing his resume isn’t all up to date.
I’m predicting some problems during the interview process.
I’m pretty sure even McDonalds has a “underwear goes inside the pants” policy.
Not that they enforce it really strictly, but technically, I’m sure it's on the books.
[asfo_del]
Growing up, I always had a map of the world hanging up in my room, and I have one now. I like to be conscious and reminded of the rest of the world, and on a map I can actually see it, even if it's only in an abstract, symbolic form. I also often find that I don't know exactly where places I might read about are, so I like to be able to just glance at the wall and place them.
It strikes me that the United States comprises a vast portion of a continent, and that in other continents the areas that take up a broad land mass in the interior tend to be remote, isolated places: the jungles of Brazil and the African Congo, the Australian outback, and central Asian countries like Kazakhstan or Mongolia. I was wondering in my last post about the apparent disconnection of Americans from contemporary politics and social issues -- I don't know if I'm hopelessly overreaching, but maybe simple geography has a lot to do with it.
In the U.S. we have an illusion of interconnectedness and national identity that is corporate-driven: we are all able to watch the same TV shows and movies, shop at the same chain stores, and we are offered the exact same products to buy, from food to clothing to cars. But these are identity-makers that have an agenda. They exist to make us consumers and to learn to parrot a particular point of view. Shopping and TV don't create interpersonal connections because the experience doesn't flow from person to person but between an individual or family unit and a main purveyor, which in turn connects to other individuals and families. Just because millions of people are watching the same TV show at the same time doesn't mean they're sharing anything with one another, just that they are drinking in the same propaganda. But because it's an experience in common it gives the illusion that we are all somehow alike and that we can understand each other better as a result of knowing and having heard about the same things. Mass culture affords each of us an instant topic of familiar conversation with virtually any stranger.
Just because people on the North American continent don't live in remote jungles or rugged deserts, they are in some respects no less isolated than those who do. Yes, Americans are much more easily able to travel over their continent, but what good is traveling a thousand miles only to eat at the same McDonald's and shop at the same Wal-Mart and watch the same CNN that are available back home? It's like never having left.
I don't experience suburban culture that often, but when I do I find it stifling and kind of disturbing. What can you say to someone who thinks it's normal to drive an SUV, live in a new housing subdivision, do all her shopping at chain stores, get all her news and opinions from one source, and never come in contact with anyone who holds a position different from her own? You can say that, yes, in fact it is, sadly, normal. And if she thinks that Bush will keep her safe and that Kerry is a flip-flopper and that it's worth giving up your civil liberties to prevent another terrorist attack, that's normal too. It's a mainstream viewpoint. It's difficult to make the argument, and have it believed, that millions of people can in fact be wrong.
It's true that an enormous amount of information is available to those who wish to inform themselves, but many people, it seems, only absorb information passively, so any news or ideas not handed to them by the most convenient and accessible source will never reach them: if a point of view or fact isn't in the local paper or on TV, it's as if it did not exist. I don't condone willful stupidity, but I am at a loss as to what can be done about it.
[asfo_del]
I don't normally write about the election because I have nothing new to say. I still don't, but it's really pissing me off.... While I have no particular fondness for the prospect of a Kerry presidency, which I don't think will make any real difference in the fundamental conditions that drive the lives of all the world's people, including Americans, I am disgusted and horrified at the possibility that Bush could win. And it seems to be a very real possibility. After all the shameless lies, the needless deaths of tens of thousands, the torture, destruction, unmitigated arrogance, gleeful corporate boosterism, the swollen domestic deficit, increased income inequality, further loss of access to health care, the wholesale shredding of civil liberties ... how could the Bush administration enjoy the support of about half of the American public?
The very obvious -- glaringly obvious! -- answer is that the U.S. mainstream media has not only allowed the administration's lies to go unchallenged, it has reinforced and legitimized them.
From FAIR:
"Major U.S. news outlets are hardly inclined to be up in arms about Rumsfeld’s record of prewar deception when they remain so dainty about critiquing their own. What passes for soul-searching at the New York Times and the Washington Post is much more like autoeroticism than self-flagellation."
"Coverage that insists on a false even-handedness, while pretending to expose political mendacity, actually gives cover for it by neutralizing criticism."
A telling piece of news that has been published today by the UK's The Guardian is that folks in other countries, who are not subjected to the barrage of misleading reporting that floods the airwaves and print media in the U.S., have a much more sensible, it seems to me, and sane view of the Bush administration.
"A June poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund found that 76% of respondents in nine European countries disapproved of Mr Bush's handling of international affairs.... It also found that 80% of Europeans polled - compared with half of Americans - said Iraq was not worth the human and financial cost."
"A poll conducted by 10 of the world's leading newspapers, ,,, show[s] that in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Spain and South Korea a majority of voters share a rejection of the Iraq invasion, contempt for the Bush administration, a growing hostility to the US and a not-too-strong endorsement of Mr Kerry." Respondents in eight out of the ten countries polled want to see Bush out of office, and, "on balance, world opinion does not believe that the war in Iraq has made a positive contribution to the fight against terror."
Perhaps even more significantly, "73% of British voters ... say that the US now wields an excessive influence on international affairs, a situation that 67% see as continuing for the foreseeable future. A majority in Britain also believe that US democracy is no longer a model for others. But perhaps a more startling finding from the Guardian/ICM poll is that a majority of British voters - 51% - say that they believe that American culture is threatening our own culture. This is a fear shared by the Canadians, Mexicans and South Koreans."
Meanwhile, CNN reports on anecdotal opinions offered by random voters who seem uninterested in facts but say they will vote based on their gut feelings and a nebulously defined personal comfort level: " 'I don't think [the debates] really explain a whole lot to the public one way or another. I think what will do it will be just gut feeling when we get right down to the election.' For some in this voter group, long-range concerns override debate results. 'Really, it boils down to one thing for me personally. I feel more comfortable with Bush at this particular time. Kerry scares me because of his legislative record. Kerry's got to win me over and he didn't.' "
The most frightening statement made by a voter in the CNN article goes unremarked by the reporter: " 'I listen to Rush Limbaugh when I'm in my car,' she said. 'We can only get one radio station really clear around here. It's so negative. I never heard a good thing about Kerry.' But when she tuned in to the presidential debates, she 'liked Kerry's presence. I liked the way he spoke.' " The only station this voter can hear is the one that airs Rush Limbaugh! And even though she developed a positive opinion about Kerry when she saw him on TV, it was his demeanor that impressed her. Policies just don't matter.
[asfo_del]
Okay, I did it. Yikes. I got a broadband connection. I have to say it's very disconcerting. It kind of feels like an extravagant luxury, like when you step into somebody's new car and it's like you're suddenly on the deck of the Starship Enterprise -- the one in TNG. For one thing, I'm used to having things that don't really work or are barely usable. I complained about quite a few of them in a recent post, but the truth is that it gives me satisfaction to make use of something that doesn't really function or is so old that most of its function is now obsolete. I hate wastefulness, and I am aesthetically put off by the slick but thoughtless design and pointless gadgetry of modern electronics and appliances.
Years ago, my old boyfriend Bill and I used to be inveterate dumpster divers, not for food but for stuff. Some of the things we collected were just random objects that appealed to an artistic sense of taking notice of the physical detritus of society, which is often beautiful. We had a huge, red propeller, a broken down electric piano, a highly polished, chrome motorcycle fender, a rusted fire alarm bell that looked like a wooden bowl. But we also salvaged plenty of stuff that was in perfect working order. At one time we had three black-and-white TVs. I think Bill sold them for $5 apiece.
I like using what I already have. It's one of the reasons why I don't need very much money to live. My TV has a rotary dial and rabbit-ear antennae. My parents bought it at a yard sale over ten years ago for $25. I don't have cable. [In New York City, we get better broadcast channels than my parents get on cable in Pennsylvania.] My parents' car is a 1990 model. They're thinking of getting a new one now, but they haven't done it earlier, as I think most people who could afford to would have, because it was and is just fine. When was that notion lost? That if something works you don't have to replace it?
I don't have a car and don't want one. Having a car, between the purchase price, insurance, gas, and maintenance, is very expensive. And of course there's the environmental damage to consider. The last time I had a car was eight years ago when I lived in Houston, and it was a 1976 Chevy Nova. The engine was very good; you could fly like the wind if you wanted to, though I'm a very cautious driver and rarely took advantage of that. The tape deck worked. There was no air conditioning. The transmission was bad. In order to force it to shift into the next gear you had to stomp on the accelerator, briefly, then suddenly let up. That worked every time, though anyone riding with me would usually react with alarm. Starting too quickly from a stop made the engine stall, which was bad if you were trying to pull into traffic, but as long as you expected it -- and the car was nothing if not consistent -- you could adjust for it by waiting until the traffic thinned enough that you could make a slow start. So it was great. Okay, it was a gas guzzler, but I didn't really drive that much, so I didn't use very much gas. The car cost me $550. Why does anybody pay $20,000 for a car?
I'm definitely outing myself as a grumpy old lady here, but I can't stand the level of gadget-connectedness that is so prevalent in contemporary society. I don't want a cell phone. They're expensive! And I certainly don't want one that takes pictures, sends email, allows me to play games, and sounds like my favorite pop band when it rings. I don't really want to be bothered with phone calls, so having a cell phone would just run counter to my desires. I also don't want to be online all the time, but the broadband connection is always on, so there's a constant, whispered temptation to come hither and rummage aimlessly among the cyber-debris. I used to not even turn on the computer every day. I like the silence, the absence of endlessly open channels.
Of course, computers rarely work like they're supposed to, but that's no comfort: they're new! They should actually work! It's different if you're putting up with something old and cranky, and it's your choice to live with its idiosyncrasies. Our computer is only two years old. Earlier today, only a day after the new connection was set up, the computer froze up completely, and I had no choice but to take the risky step of turning it off manually and restarting it. Seems to be okay for now.... Whenever the refrigerator turns on, the image on the screen vibrates. It didn't do this before, with the old dial-up connection. Why? Dunno.
[asfo_del]
I borrowed a book from the library yesterday called Fever: How Rock 'n' Roll Transformed Gender in America, By Tim Riley. I've only read scraps of it so far, but it's pretty inspiring. I think that's usually the case anyway: it's often more inspirational to get a hint of an idea than to be subjected to the author's bludgeoning to death of his own spark by having to fill up 200 pages of words about it. Writing about Joni Mitchell [whom I adore] and James Taylor, he makes a point about the difference between wallowing in self-pity and making an artful statement about being human while using one's own experience as the vehicle. He feels Taylor is often guilty of the former [Of one song, he says, "It's the songwriting equivalent of holding a kitten's head beneath the bathwater"], while Joni is the undisputed queen of the latter.
There's something about rock and roll criticism that is always disconcerting. Rock music is such a visceral medium that carrying on about it, in writing, with all kinds of big words and intellectual leaps is kind of like having sex and then sitting around discussing the high and low points of the experience. Why would you want to do that? Then there's something a little off-putting about a man spouting about gender issues. He writes: "You couldn't accuse Mitchell of parroting the feminist line (she was way too sexy for that)." Say what? Now, there are plenty of female singers who exploit their sexual appeal in the most lurid way in order to sell records, and even they don't deserve the grotesque public commentary about their bodies that is casually bandied around in the media, but Joni Mitchell? And what the hell is the feminist line?
Don't get me wrong, the book is also filled with beautiful and insightful comments. "Mitchell songs took their time growing on you, and you could enjoy them before you began to understand all the levels of meaning at play between characters. Like Dylan's, her lyrics trailed her quixotic delivery; her arrangements felt intuitive, eccentric, and as deeply felt as any words."
Generally, I'm pretty suspicious of artfulness. I can appreciate someone telling the truth in a way that is raw and devoid of artifice. [And James Taylor is just sappy.] I've certainly written a number of blog entries that could be accused of reeking of self-pity. But I think my failure is that I let dishonesty creep in, not that I was not artful, whatever that would mean in this context. The truth is my life totally sucks. I'm sick as a dog, and I've been getting sicker every year for the last 20 plus years. I'm so fucking exhausted that it's difficult to separate the way I feel physically from the way I feel emotionally, even though I keep reminding myself that they are not the same: I can barely drag myself out of bed but that doesn't mean I can't be cheerful, right? [Grumble, grumble...]
I've recently been waxing loopy about punk rock in a thread on Chuck0's blog. Of course, punk rock, which is not treated in this book [a strange, to me at least, omission], is an example of raw truth told without artifice. But it is still an art form. And if you use the criteria that are used to judge visual art, a field about which enough pretentious, high-fallutin' verbiage has been written to fill entire city blocks, punk rock is a very high art form. [Say what?] In modern art, raw immediacy and no-holds-barred gutsiness is highly prized, as well as letting the process show in all its ragged, chaotic glory. Think of artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat or the abstract expressionists. Of course, the tantalizing promise of delivering something liberating and energizing gets kind of lost in the huge egos and the sycophantic cult of genius that surrounds modern artists. So, really, it's a lot better to leave the genius of punk rock unacknowledged and buried, where it won't do any harm. If punk rockers were to start walking around thinking they were geniuses, that would be intolerable....
And they aren't anyway. Frankly, nobody is. Everyone's accomplishments owe a huge debt to those who came before and to virtually everyone the individual has ever known and everything that he or she has ever witnessed or experienced. The ability to express something intuitively and with passion is available to anyone. Not everyone has musical talent, but everyone is able to express themselves in some form. It just takes a little courage. Rock and roll, and punk rock in particular, are traditional folk art forms in the truest sense. The perceived need for innovation and originality, which derails visual art into a contest of cleverness, is not really the point in rock. Sticking to the form and making it new by putting your true self into it are.
[asfo_del]
Richard, former co-blogger here at Living on Less, has a new blog up and running: http://nomorebigwheels.blogspot.com. Pay him a visit, send your love.
[asfo_del]
This is what it says: a litany of complaints. Read it if you want to. It's my blog, so I can write whatever stupid crap I want. You don't have to read it, though.
I've been feeling overwhelmed by all the piddly mundane minutiae that everyone has to deal with all the time. Like paying bills, keeping track of what needs to be done, worrying about everybody, trying to stay on top of things.
I'm actually good at staying up to date. I like the tidiness of writing out checks, recording them, setting everything into its proper envelopes, doing the math. But I have lost track. I don't know what Mike and I owe each other anymore. The house is a mess and I don't have an established place to keep envelopes that come in. I forgot to pay my property taxes and have to go down there in person now. If I miss the deadline I'll lose the $400 rebate that the mayor recently voted in.
I lost my state-sponsored health insurance because I didn't get the renewal notice when we moved. I had to go to a hearing to have it reinstated and was turned down because I had missed a deadline about which I knew nothing. Now I have to apply all over again, and it takes about three to five months, assuming I'm approved again, which I may not be because I may make too much money. If I have to buy private health insurance it will cost at minimum $200 a month. I guess I just have to hope I don't get hit by a bus anytime soon. The judge was such a supercilious prick it makes me angry to even have had to deal with him. I've been going crazy urging Mike to look into his own insurance, to at least call Medicaid with our new address, so the same doesn't happen to him, but he has been dragging his feet. Mike has cancer. It's been in remission for two years, but he has cancer. He can't be without health insurance.
This has been the summer of the never-ending houseguests, some of which I was gladder to have around than others, but, loved as they sometimes were, having people around all the time is exhausting, and it means you have to put at least some of your own life on hold. One of our guests later learned she had scabies, an infectious skin parasite, so now I have to wait to see if I got it. If I did, I have to tell my parents, sister, sister's husband, and nephew, whom I visited, that they have to get treated, wash everything they own in hot water, and cover all their upholstered furniture in plastic for two weeks. Nice.
The lights in one part of the house have been flickering on and off. The light doesn't go on anymore in the room I'm in, and sitting only by the glow of the computer screen is a bit surreal. The wall outlet fried the power strip a few weeks ago; it sparked and smoked. I have to call the electrician now. Actually, Mike will call him. I'm thinking of having a programmable thermostat put in in the apartment downstairs, also by the electrician, to try to keep some of the heating costs under control. The tenant would still be able to set it however she wants, and I can't think of any decent way that it could be otherwise. I keep my own apartment at 55, but I can't expect anyone else to do the same, obviously. Last winter there was no one living downstairs, and we were freezing upstairs, but the oil bill was still about $200 a month. I'm a little overwhelmed about what it will be this year. $500 a month? More?
At our old house, which was microscopic, we never paid more than $130 a month for heat. Of course, it was always freezing, but I don't have a problem with that. [You can tell how cold it is in your house when the shampoo turns to jelly....] We once had a visitor say he thought our house was haunted: that was his explanation for why it was so cold. Uhm, have you looked at the thermostat? It's set on 52. Could that be why it's cold in here? I'm sorry, but people are wasteful; a blanket and a sweater are a hell of a lot cheaper than turning up the heat.
There's no light on the porch. So I should have one put in. It goes against every fiber of my being to spend big bucks on something I can just do without. But I feel like I have a certain amount of responsibility to my tenant. Which, of course, I do.
The phone bill last month was $98, of which $77 was local. In New York, you have to pay 9 cents for every local call, including internet dial-up. It appears that we made over 500 phone calls last month. Mike was organizing his Freedom and Peace Festival at the time, so, yeah, he made a lot of calls. Verizon, which is easily one of the most despicable companies on the planet, sent us a "Final Disconnection Notice" when the bill was a mere nine days overdue. I have to get another carrier immediately. This is only the last straw in Verizon's disgusting shenanigans. When we moved, they connected our phone to the wrong apartment, even though the bill they send us actually says "2nd floor," and they said we would have to pay $90 for them to correct their own mistake. When I raised a stink, they said they would waive the $90, but the charge still came on the next bill. When I called again, they said we didn't owe that. It seems to me they had given it a shot, gambling on the idea that we might just pay the fee if they included it on the bill.
A few years ago we, all of a sudden, had a shared party line with another person. You would pick up the phone and somebody would already be on the line. Verizon said it was an internal wiring problem and it would therefore cost $90 to have them fix it. An internal wiring problem? Did they think this other person was hiding in our attic? I took months for them to fix it, and in that time we had to pay for this other phantom person's phone calls. The only conclusion I can come to is that Verizon has a policy by which employees who answer customer calls are rewarded whenever they can extort $90 from a caller. Almost every time I've called Verizon they've told me I would owe $90.
We have to get a CD player because ours broke, even though it's only just over a year old. Electronic products nowadays are so unbelievably crappy. We actually looked at CD players today and they were so junky you could break them just by trying out the display models. For a long time we didn't have a CD player, so in theory I don't have to get one at all. I haven't bought a new CD in over nine years ... well, except for Green Day's latest release, which came out less than two weeks ago and is just so great... [insert loopy grin here]. The computer will play CDs, something I was not aware of until I became desperate, but the speakers are so small it really doesn't sound too great. Mike's stereo, in spite of being over 20 years old and having been knocked around pretty badly over the years, still works [okay, only one speaker works], but it only plays records and tapes. [We have to get a new needle, so actually it doesn't play records right now. Mike's records are so scratched that listening to them is almost funny; on some you just hear random scraps of songs.]
I have to get a new fridge. The door doesn't seal, and pools of water collect at the bottom. Part of the door is held together with duct tape. I'm sure the electric bill would go down if I replaced the fridge, and I plan to get a really small, half-size model. The kind that only goes up to your waist and has no freezer compartment. I just have to do it, but I haven't done it yet.
I normally enjoy trying to live on as little as is necessary, but what that is exactly has become increasingly confusing. I'm actually considering getting a broadband connection, which is pretty much anathema to every belief I have in thrift and simplicity. Ever since we moved, the dial-up connection has been painfully slow. There's something wrong with the phone line, so there is frequent interference and interruptions, and the modem deals with this by slowing to a crawl and proffering constant Cannot Find Server messages. [Again, is Verizon going to fix that? I think not.] My dad is an engineer who worked for a company that makes telephone wires and cables. He said the problem could be anywhere in the wiring connections that run between our phone and the central switching station, so it's really unfixable. My sister justifies my getting a fast connection thus: I could easily make up the difference in cost by selling paintings on ebay, which I have stopped doing because it's just too frustrating to constantly get disconnected and have to start over. [On an unrelated note, my mother just sold a painting she made on ebay for $280, after a bidding war that started at $25! Go, mom.]
Uhm, the end. I haven't run out of complaints but this is plenty long enough for now.
[asfo_del]
I've been sick and tired for years, both figuratively and literally. I try not to talk about it too too much because, firstly, I don't think it's very decorous to complain and bemoan [oh, woe is me], secondly, it's not that bad, thirdly, I assume people find it tiresome, and, fourthly, for a number of other reasons, but the issue keeps coming up because without mentioning my chronic exhaustion a lot of what I say I do doesn't really make any sense. So I end up writing about it frequently after all; I figure I might as well give an explanation.
Of course, one of the important reasons I am somewhat loath to talk about my health is that I have found from experience that to some it's an engraved invitation for sneering hatefulness. I find that a puzzling reaction. Do these same people also go to hospitals to insult patients lying in their beds? If they assume that I am lying, what benefit do I derive from it? Do they really think I care about whether hateful assholes find me lazy, and I would therefore have to come up with an excuse for them as to why I am not? So, you don't have to read this. There won't be a quiz. If you feel the need to tell me what an asshole I am for saying that I'm sick, knock yourself out.
Supposedly, I have fibromyalgia. I dunno. There are specific spots on the body that really hurt if you just press on them, for no explicable reason: that's the diagnostic criterion, and I fit it. The symptoms are chronic pain in muscles and joints, chronic fatigue, and sleep difficulties, and I have that. Sure, I feel pretty fucking achy and sore most of the time, kind of as if I'd been hiking in the mountains with a backpack full of rocks, but I'm much more debilitated by being exhausted all the time, mostly by never being able to get any decent kind of sleep.
As far as I'm concerned, what I have is purely a sleep disorder. I just can't fall asleep. [Except that sometimes I can, of course: it's not that I don't sleep at all, but it's totally unpredictable.] Even if I go to bed at the same time every night -- and even if I get up at the same time every day -- I may not fall asleep for... two hours, five hours, eight hours, ten hours? It makes no difference how long I've been up, unless it's verging on 30 hours. And even when I do sleep, I still don't wake up rested. I don't know if that's because my sleep is so screwed up all the time that the occasional good night's sleep doesn't have much of a chance to make a dent.
I'm always operating under some kind of chronic sleep deprivation. Doctors, bless their blackened, shriveled little hearts, hate patients who have conditions for which they can offer no treatment, so their solution is to demand you do things that make you feel much worse. Like exercising. Excuse me, but have you ever found that if you were a zombie from sleep deprivation, like if you had been up most nights recently studying for exams, say, that you would feel better by taking a jog around the track? Or would you just fall down in an exhausted heap? Another popular tactic with doctors is to prescribe, over and over, the same drugs that have made you really sick in the past. A couple years ago, a doctor actually sat and named off a bunch of antidepressants -- which are used to treat fibromyalgia, perhaps to useful effect sometimes, I wouldn't know -- until he hit on one that I hadn't heard of. He prescribed it and told me I should take it without investigating it. Right. What do you think I did? Those people are un-fucking-believable.
Any effort that I make uses up what little energy I have, and I feel much worse afterward. And since I can't sleep I have no way to effectively rest, so it takes days of lying around like a wet rag before I feel any better. [When I said this years ago to a doctor who had been insisting on treating me for depression, which I don't have, it was like a light bulb went off over her head: "Maybe you should get a second opinion," is what she said. The second opinion cost me $365 out of my own pocket, and all I got for it was a message from the office assistant saying that the tests came back and I was fine. Hello? Over here? I'm still sick. That was several years before anyone mentioned fibromyalgia.]
I've been to see sleep specialists and read up on the subject, and the only conclusion I can come to is that sleep disorders as such are completely unknown to the medical profession. Recommendations like drinking a glass of warm milk before bed or getting up if you can't fall asleep within 15 minutes are about as useful as trying to empty out the ocean with a teaspoon. A sleep doctor actually told me not long ago that people screw up their wake/sleep clock by staying up too late when they're in college. I graduated from college 19 years ago! Sleeping is essentially involuntary: you can create the conditions that are conducive to falling asleep, but you can't make yourself sleep. So why would it be so improbable for that mechanism to physically break down?
On the bright side, being tired all the time is not terrible. There is no excruciating pain, no gradual and unrelenting loss of function, no mental anguish or disorientation, no painful treatments, hospitalizations, or surgeries. Everybody feels dead tired at least some of the time. Many people are made chronically exhausted by the conditions of their lives, which they are no more able to change than I am able to change my physical condition. I can survive quite well because I have people who look out for me. I have a lot of time to think and a lot to think about. I am incapable of getting bored because there's always something in my head. I live a weird, contemplative, sometimes frustrating but essentially charmed life.
[asfo_del]
A recent article in The New Yorker ["Penny_Wise," September 27, 2004] posits the bizarre notion that the four billion people worldwide who earn less than four dollars a day are a huge untapped market for capitalist corporations. After all, they may be dirt poor, but there are so many of them! The barely-subsisting billions represent a veritable "fortune at the bottom of the pyramid." There is talk of supposed "evidence" which indicates that "poor consumers are similar to rich ones: they like to shop." Of course, if you identify human beings as "consumers," there is little other way to define them except by their shopping proclivities and inclinations. I would think that people like to be able to survive without having to struggle for every crumb. I'm not sure if I would call that a propensity for "shopping."
Furthermore, while "critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things," actually "for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price. In a market economy, the best thing to be -- aside from an oil company, perhaps -- is a customer." If you want to buy crap, and that's what you live for, then, yeah, capitalism is pretty much paradise. But I don't personally think that's what people prefer without having been subjected to a heavy dose of propaganda. The same article states that "Unilever helped create the shampoo market in India, and now owns a large chunk of it." So, if poor Indians were not manipulated by Unilever to want a product they had until then done without, they must have dreamed up their desire for shampoo in their sleep?
Obviously, I would guess that people who are struggling just to survive would like to live lives that are a little less squalid and a lot less backbreaking. Being able to make your hair soft and silky may represent a little bit of joy at a relatively small price. I'm certainly grateful that I don't have to grow my own food or bring back water from a river every time I want to take a bath or wash dishes. I can buy shampoo whenever I want. I can buy canned foods of every variety, a bazillion flavors of ice cream, and shoes and clothes in almost any color and style imaginable. So why advocate against these harmless-seeming treats? Because giving in to the allure of capitalist consumer goods only creates its own never-ending, never-fulfilled treadmill. People in our own society work grueling hours to be able to afford luxuries that have come to be perceived as necessities.
Consumerism is treated by many lefties as a strictly bourgeois issue, one that's only relevant to the rich and middle class who thoughtlessly overspend on needless luxury goods, but corporations know better. Their aim is to make all of us consumers and customers, all the way down to the lowest person on the socioeconomic ladder.
Extremely poor people who are suddenly treated by corporations as valuable customers are not suddenly freer: they are suddenly more exploited, more controlled, and more vulnerable. Not to mention poorer, for having given up what little they had to predators like Unilever.
