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^^^ November 30, 2004         Consistency as Self-Deception [asfo_del] It's probably a natural tendency to want to act in a manner that is consistent with one's beliefs, but most of the time it isn't really possible. Every day we have to do something that doesn't fit with what we believe, whether it's working at job whose ends serve to increase misery for others, for instance by deceiving them into parting with their cash in exchange for worthless crap, or whether it's telling kids left in your charge things that you yourself don't believe, maybe in the interest of protecting them, or simply to appease the people who are raising them. We all live paradoxical lives, in which we say and think one thing and then go and do something else altogether, something completely inconsistent with what we think is right. Most of the time that's more-or-less okay. It's what you have to do just to live. A much more pernicious problem arises, it seems to me, when we feel that we have to change our beliefs in order to conform them to the things we do. That's when it becomes moral relativism. So if we're a part of a radical organization that, in order to survive, has to accept funding from meddling foundations, we shouldn't then twist the group's core beliefs into a pretzel in order to make our indecorous begging okay in our own anxious eyes. The honest thing to say is, "This totally sucks, and it's not what we think is right, but we're gonna do it anyway, with our eyes wide open and with full knowledge, because it's what we have to do." That almost never happens, though. Everybody wants the moral high ground and, by seeking it through self-deception, gives it away. In our personal lives it's more complicated but comes down to the same thing. Bush supporters feel they have to embrace the entire Bush agenda, lock, stock, and barrel, to the point that no one is even willing to say that while he or she supports some aspects of the Bush regime [and it's hard for me to imagine what those might be] s/he nevertheless deplores the deaths of 100,000 people. Saying so, or even thinking it, would seem, to someone whose mind is fixed on the idea that consistency is a virtue, disloyal and inconsistent. I'm vegetarian but I'm not vegan. Do I think there's some justification for consuming animal products that are not meat? Not really. I do it because it's inconvenient not to. I couldn't grab a slice of pizza or make a cheese sandwich or buy most cookies and candy bars. Does that make me a worse person than someone who has a good reason why she thinks it's okay to eat meat and therefore has a consistent point of view? The answer is: I don't care. I'm not trying to be a good person, I don't care whether anyone thinks I am one or not, and I'm not trying to find reasons to explain what I do or don't do. Most of the time, minute personal choices only have an effect on ourselves. Whether we feel proud for having made a given choice or guilty for not having done so is utterly irrelevant to others, and in the larger scheme of things. Having said that, the effects of our actions may not always be obvious or immediate. Mass movements are made up of individual people, and individuals acting at cross-purposes to what they would like to see happen are not going to achieve their ends. I'm sorry that I don't know how to convince millions of people not to drive a car or consume needlessly, but I'm not going to just throw in the towel and start doing those things myself. As a mass culture in the U.S. of A. we have collectively made the choice that it's okay to shit on everybody else in the world by taking up the lion's share of the earth's resources, and that it's okay to help corporations control the world by supporting them with our purchases. I would like to resist that path, whether it makes a difference or not, but in many ways I don't, because I'm lazy and comfortable and I'm not going to become a Buddhist nun who owns nothing but a bowl and a pair of sandals. I'm tired of listening to lame justifications for selfishness. Everything that I do doesn't come with an excuse attached. It just is. I will continue to do plenty of petty and small-minded things, but I will refuse to rationalize them. That way I can continue to climb on a moral high horse that serves only me: my personal high horse is not that I won't do wrong-headed things, it's that I will -- sheepishly and with a weak, apologetic grin -- do them knowingly. [Comments at livingonless.journalspace.com] <+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+> ^^^ November 20, 2004         Coca Cola Sucks: Spit it Out! [asfo_del] Coca Cola is a worthless product to begin with. It's nothing but sugar water, with some other flavorings and carbonation added. In the most benign assessment, it certainly isn't worth $1.25 for a 20 oz. bottle, nor even $.99 for a 2-liter bottle. It's bad for your teeth. The diet version has its own health issues. In addition, it's not very good at hydrating you if you're really thirsty. From a site for serious hikers: "Caffeinated beverages do not count as "drinks". Caffeine is a diuretic, so you lose almost as much fluid as you gain by drinking the beverage. Highly sugared beverages also "draw water" out of the body." That it also makes you fat is not a personal concern of mine, since I couldn't care less if I'm fat and I don't personally think anybody else needs to either, unless they have a specific health problem for which being fat is counterindicated. But to each his or her own. Okay, if any of this wasn't bad enough, people are being killed over the production of Coca Cola. In Colombia, "there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola's workers, including nine murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so. Most troubling to the delegation [investigating this issue] were the persistent allegations that paramilitary violence against workers was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers." More at killercoke.org. But wait, there's more. In India, several Coke bottling plants have drained the local aquifers to such a severe extent that local farming has literally dried up. Additionally, the fields have been polluted with toxic sludge which the company claims to be fertilizer due to its high concentration of phosphorus. From indiaresource.org: "The entire globe has already started experiencing the scarcity of water. Therefore giant multinational companies have started their most wicked efforts of grabbing control of water, and making criminal profits by selling this most valuable sustainer of nature at incredible prices.... "The Coca-Cola plant in Mehdiganj, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh draws out more than 250,000 liters of underground water per day. Due to this horrible abuse of the source of life the water level of the area has receded from 25 to 40 feet under the ground. The immediate effect of it is visible on the poor people and farmers. The company pollutants have rendered many acres of agricultural fields infertile." People's organizations in India are currently on "a 250 km march, between 2 Coca-Cola bottling facilities, to demand that Coca-Cola stop stealing water from communities," that started on Nov. 15 and is scheduled to end on Nov. 24. [At least as far as I know. I'm not privy to any updates, and I only know of this from their web site.] The least we can do stateside is stop drinking the crap. I know that habits die hard and it's easy for me to say just don't drink Coke, because I've never liked sodas. I find them syrupy and cloying. When I was a kid, we drank tap water, and that's what I drink now -- except for the occasional forty of Ballantine's Ale [not really]. We only had soda at birthday parties. My favorite was a mixture of Coke and Fanta, which might explain why I don't like sodas to this day.... Of course, all corporations deserve our refusal of support. But some are arguably more heinous than others. [Comments at livingonless.journalspace.com] =%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%= ^^^ November 20, 2004         Nothing and More Nothing [asfo_del] I was supposed to be in Houston today. We had many plans: Mike's band is playing a show for the first time in 20 years [if anyone reading this is in Houston, it's on Sunday the 21st at Rockpile Records...]; my old boyfriend Bill, who is still my best friend, had an art opening Friday night, and Tuesday is his birthday so we were all going to go out to eat; Thursday we would of course have had Thanksgiving with Mike's mom and his brothers and sister and their families; we were going to spend time with Mike's old friends, some of whom visited us this summer for the RNC and are just lovely, wonderful people. But I couldn't go because I was too sick. I was so tired and sore I could barely move. Well. I just have to get back into the mindset of appreciating the contemplative life instead of getting frustrated and pissed that I'm not doing anything that I think I should be doing or wish I could do. I'm gonna be lying on the couch looking out at the rain, meandering through the idle thoughts and stories that populate my head. Would somebody kindly please go save the world? Sorry I can't help. I'm too busy doing absolutely nothing. [Comments at livingonless.journalspace.com] +"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+ ^^^ November 16, 2004         To Hell With the Government [asfo_del] When you hang out with radicals, you get spoiled. You start thinking that everyone who is left-leaning has a basic understanding of how political power works. Then when you're confronted with a group of milquetoast liberals who are crestfallen over Kerry's defeat, they talk about doing things like writing letters to their congressmen as a way of creating political change. Or they say the electoral college needs to be eliminated. Hell, sure it should be, but that's not going to happen and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. And your congressmen or women could not give a fuck what you think. They only care about what the corporations that fund their reelection campaign want. So to hell with the government and electoral politics. The government only matters to you personally because it has coercive power. It can pass laws that can get you locked up for not following them. Locked up or, alternately, dispossessed, ruined, deported, refugeed. It can gear up its staggeringly huge military power to go and indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of people it finds inconvenient. Or just kill them wantonly, for no real reason, just because it can. It can create laws that increase and perpetuate the misery and abject poverty of billions over the globe. Other than that, the government can go fuck itself. Sure, as long as the government exists, it should be called to task for not providing for people's basic needs, which is its most elemental function. So, yeah, it's worthwhile to demand that the government provide universal access to health care, for instance, but, strangely enough, no one is actually doing that. So, whatever, keep writing letters to your government representatives and then hold your breath. Hope you don't choke to death while you're waiting.... In the meantime, the only route to social change is grassroots action. What the guvmet is not doing, we have to do: build alternative institutions like progressive schools, community centers where people can find each other and share ideas, free food pantries and kitchens, skill exchanges, whatever. It's not happening, though, because people are focusing on other things; pointless things like trying to petition the gubmint to do the right thing, which it will never ever do. I wish I could get involved in something like that, and it's frustrating to me that I can't figure out how. I can't do it by myself, obviously, and dealing with people and personalities in the past has left me utterly disheartened by the casual cruelty and narcissism that seems all too common. Plus, I'm sick as a dog. So what's the use of talking about something if I can't do it myself? Ack, I don't know. I'm just blabbering away uselessly. I'm no different from all the former Kerry supporters who have resorted to either helplessly weeping in their coffee or "moving on" by just ignoring everything and focusing on their own private lives. I'm pissed off but what good does that do? Go make a lot of noise. Please. I'll do that too. Really. The purpose of protesting is not to get the guvmint to change its tune. The fact that millions of people demonstrated against the war in Iraq before it happened proves that the government doesn't care what you want. The purpose of making noise is to let your fellow citizens know that those who oppose cruelty and brutality exist: to shout in the street in order to be loud and clear, so that we can find each other and band together. And I'm not using citizen in the legal sense by which some people have been officially sanctioned as being worthwhile human beings and the others can just die alone or hide out in fear. A citizen is every person who is part of a given society, whether it's the global society or anyone's local one. David Grenierhas a bunch of ideas for things you can actually do. For starters, i think you can stop supporting the bastards who would kill you if they got around to it. Don't pay federal income taxes, almost half of which fund the military killing machine. You can do this legally by just not making enough money to owe any taxes. The Picket Line has very eloquent insights and practical suggestions of this subject. Don't support corporations, which are the engine behind all anti-human initiatives: refuse to buy their needless crap. This can only have a meaningful effect if it was a mass campaign, but there are no signs that that is about to happen. Even the coffee-weeping types are not ready to give up their smallest comforts, it seems. Still, your small change can go elsewhere. Everyone knows about Buy Nothing Day: have a Buy Nothing Life. I'm way too chickenshit to try this myself, but I'm in love with projects like Graffiti Art [found via Infoshop News] and the Freeway Blogger. Don't wait for your minimal freedom of speech to be sanctioned. I learned more about politics from graffiti when I was growing up than from any other source. In Italy in the 70s it was everywhere. I remember asking my parents what abortion was, because there was a referendum on abortion coming up in Italy and taggers had plastered the issue everywhere. I don't think my parents told me what it was. I sure as hell knew what the hammer and sickle was, though. That symbol was graffitied, it seemed, on every available surface. In Brazil, also in the 70s, graffiti was pretty popular. It was called "pissing." Mostly it wasn't political, though. The most common image was a quick study of a penis. In my girl-adolescence, I thought it was a picture of a fish. In Providence in the 80s, there was a tag we always drove by that said, "Sit down, relax, and have a can of juice." Mighty fine advice. As long as you then get up and go smash the state. [And I mean that only figuratively, of course....] Have I mentioned that I'm not an anarchist? =|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|= ^^^ November 15, 2004         Music Stuff [asfo_del] Other people's taste in music is almost always puzzling, even when it comes to someone whose tastes you would normally understand or even share. So here's my selection of some favorite music for anyone who cares to wonder what the hell it is I like about it. It's not a top favorites list or anything, just some random mp3s that I was able to find around the web. Links are not to the actual music files but to the pages that link to them. In most cases you have to scroll to find the songs I'm referring to. [I'm talking as if anyone is actually going to do that.... But I don't care. This was a lot of fun to put together.] 1). Mushy Green Dayish stuff: http://www.greendayauthority.com/streaming/albums.shtml Green Day "Holiday" Green Day "Jesus of Suburbia" Green Day "Give Me Novocaine" (This page contains every song from all seven of Green Day's albums.) http://www.lookoutrecords.com/sounds/list.php3?offset=60 Green Day "Going To Pasalacqua" Green Day "2000 Light Years Away" http://www.lookoutrecords.com/sounds/list.php3?offset=140 Pinhead Gunpowder "Life During Wartime" Pinhead Gunpowder "MPLS Song" 2). Rockin' but still palatable: http://www.lookoutrecords.com/sounds/list.php3?offset=120 Operation Ivy "Sound System" http://www.lookoutrecords.com/sounds/list.php3?offset=160 Screeching Weasel "Shut The Hell Up" http://www.fatwreck.com/audio.php3?sd=QZhHEdHRMXIAABjobY0 Dillinger Four "Noble Stabbings" http://www.epitaph.com/bands/index.php?id=63 Descendents "Everything Sux" http://www.badreligion.com/media/ Bad religion "Do What You Want" Bad religion "White Trash (2nd Generation)" http://www.adelinerecords.net/mp3s/mp3s.html The Frustrators "Living in the Real World" http://www.epitaph.com/bands/index.php?id=190 Red Aunts "Freakathon" 3). If you met me you would not think that I would want to listen to this in a million years: http://www.urbanhonking.com/greatestband/ Minor Threat "Straight Edge" http://www.static-pulse.com/ausrotten/sounds.html Aus Rotten "Xenophobia" Aus Rotten "When You Support These Fucking Bastards" http://www.g7welcomingcommittee.net/propagandhi/audio.shtml Propagandhi "Back to the Motor League" -(The rest of their site is also worth checking out. This is from the FAQ: "Why do you hate Americans?" "We don't hate Americans.... Some of our best friends are Americans. Seriously, criticisms of America have less, if anything at all, to do with individual citizens, and everything to do with a level of power concentrated in the hands of "American" policy-makers (by and large, rich corporations and their lackey politicians).... And we think that if you take time out from the shallow, whitewashed analysis we get from the corporate-owned media, you'll begin to find a lot of ugly answers about how the world actually works.")- http://www.thepist.com/ (click on multimedia) The Pist: This site doesn't include any song I would consider a favorite. http://www.interpunk.com/mp3clips.cfm?size=0&start=2071&&searchfor= The Pist "Street Punk" [This is my favorite of their songs but it's only a clip.] [For anyone who is as 21st-century-impaired as I am, to listen to mp3s click on the name of the file and Windows Media Player, or whatever player you have, should automatically open and start playing the song.] "+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+"+" ^^^ November 13, 2004         Arrested Development [asfo_del] Don't know if it's just because I'm too sick and tired [yeah, in both senses of the phrase] to have a real job, so I haven't had to knuckle down, give up, forget who I am and what I believe in order to be able to get along -- and I don't get along, not with anyone, just about, and not with the world, certainly, which I find shockingly cruel and careless -- but I'm at 40-fucken-years-old like a restless and disaffected kid. I love loud, raging music like it's some kind of a lifeline. I think my boyfriend is a sweet pie and I don't have any compunction about fawning on him and covering his face with kisses, which he finds pleasant but weird. I love really stupid jokes. I can't understand real grownups. I don't grasp the urge for propriety and order. My house, for instance, is mostly just messy right now -- although I did manage to paint the living room, which is yellow and green with a pink door, a green door, and bright orange baseboards -- but if I were to actually decorate it like my dream house it would be like Pippi Longstocking's Villa Villekulla. Why isn't everybody's house like that? We had some people over last week, and one of them mentioned that when she had spent the night at our house a couple months ago she had run into our other houseguest -- who stayed here for three months on and off and is an eccentric crusty old radical in his seventies -- in the middle of the night, and he was naked. I thought it was funny. I said, "Hasn't everyone seen Red naked?" Mike thought my reply was funny too. But no one else did. There was general dismay and disapproval. I can relate to [some] teenagers, the ones who are into radical politics and anti-authoritarian culture anyway, more so than adults, because they have an immediacy that is such a welcome relief. But I'm always caught in some weird middle. When used to actually be involved with people and groups -- for a short period before I retreated back into my familiar and comfortable misanthropy -- I knew a lot of teenagers, even though I was in my thirties. And friendly as we were, I always thought I shouldn't really intrude into their adolescent lives. Then when I started dating a guy my own age, I never quite knew what to tell him about my day: "I got into a food fight with Mikey today"? Not that I would want to be a teenager myself. It's good to be old, to be able to know much more than a few years on the earth will let you find out. It's good to not feel estranged and put upon by a tangle of cultural conventions that were wound into place long before you came along. If you live in a culture that you saw evolve it makes at least some sense as a result. Still, there's something that tends to get lost along the way as people grow increasingly weary over the years: earnestness, uncompromising belief, a disarming and direct sense of friendship. If I actually had any friends, I would like to relate to them on those terms. But it's just too hard. Everything falls apart too easily; everyone's neuroses and pretensions get in the way. You have to act like a grown up and never say anything that you really think if you want to get along with other grown ups. ::-::-::-::-::-::-::-::-::-::-:: ^^^ November 11, 2004         Okay, I've Moved the Blog [asfo_del] I've moved the blog. The drop-down and pop-up ads from geocities are just getting out of hand. I'm not sure if the new site will be the blog's permanent home, so I'll probably post to both sites for a while, but, in the meantime, if you want to read the blog without ads it is at: http://livingonless.journalspace.com. +_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+ ^^^ November 11, 2004         Wealth, Poverty, Privilege and Class Status [asfo_del] Recently, there was a thread on Chuck0's blog that included a discussion on how class is defined. In spite of my own shrillness on the subject, I realized that it's not something that I entirely have a handle on, and -- not surprisingly, since it's an issue so fraught with controversy, personal hand-wringing, and a desire to either use the issue to define political struggle or, alternately, to obfuscate it -- I discovered, once I searched the web on the topic, that neither does anyone else. Okay, there's the Marxist definition, by which there are basically only two classes: those who own the means of production and those who have to work for a living. That definition works as a way of framing class struggle, but it falters in describing the reality of modern society. A lawyer who makes $400 an hour works for a living, but is she in the same boat as someone whose job it is to wash floors? Okay, the lawyer would probably also have investments, but then a number of people fall into the category of having both a job and some investments, to varying degrees. And what about the Middle Eastern guys who own the 24-hour corner bodega in my old neighborhood? Are they members of the ruling class? [I don't want to get into the minutiae of defining the position of the petit-bourgeoisie, farmers, etc. I'm not versed in Marxism and don't really care.] In the United States, the common definition is that there is an upper class of the super-rich, a middle class of the (reasonably...) comfortably employed, a working class of blue-collar Jills and Joes, and a lower class (or underclass) of the very poor. But even that is fraught with contradictions and taboos. Many still cling to the absurd notion that ours is a classless society and would have the middle class include everyone who is not either driving a gold-plated Rolls Royce or sleeping under a bridge. In our own radical scene, everyone seems desperate to define themselves as working class. But calling someone who has a job but makes pretty big bucks "working class" just doesn't have the ring of truth. And how do you define "big bucks"? An individual whose income is $60,000 a year is approximately in the top 10% of the population. Is that big bucks? I dunno. Compared to what? A single person making $30,000 a year is doing somewhat well, but a family living on $15,000 a year is barely surviving. It just seems dishonest to lump them together, even though it's true they're all powerless and essentially being equally screwed by the system. Another stumbling block is that the term "class" is not used just to define economic power but also more nebulous notions of cultural snobbery. If I were to take this [summarized below] as a working definition of class, then does it not say that a part-time college professor who makes a lot less money than a unionized tradesman is actually in a higher socioeconomic class? It seems to me the criteria should be just money, or access to money. But even so, maybe how hard that money is to come by should be included in the mix. Teaching may not be easy, but working in a coal mine, for instance, belongs in a whole other category of physical toil and misery. And if someone lives off their investments, even if the income from those investments is not very high, are they then members of the upper class? What about people whose incomes are very low but who have family or other means to fall back on? Is it fair for them to wear their superficial poverty as a badge of honor? Solidarity with the poor and working class has to come, it seems to me, with an honest assessment of one's own privilege. SOCIAL CLASS A. upper class 3-5% of the population [possesses 25% of the nation's wealth] - upper-upper: [old rich, wealthy for several generations, incomes from investment] - lower-upper: [new rich, may be wealthier than the old rich, generally less prestige] B. middle class 40-50% of the population [less wealth and power than the upper class, better occupations than working class] - upper-middle: [professionals, business, high income and education, doctors, lawyers, executives] - lower-middle: [more diverse occupations, small business owners, salespeople, teachers, secretaries] C. working class 30-40% of the population [manual jobs, less education, carpenters, plumbers, physically demanding jobs, some unskilled workers, janitors, waitresses, working poor] D. lower class 15-20% of the population [joblessness, poverty, welfare recipients, chronically unemployed, poor jobs, underclass] Looking only at wealth is a tidier, more mathematical way of framing the issue [these figures, as far as I can determine, refer to household wealth and income]: The SocialClass.org Definition of Wealthy (2004) 1. Poor [20% of the population] Income <$15,000, Assets <$10,000 2. Lower Middle [29% of the population] Income $15,000 - $35,000, Assets <$55,000 3. True Middle [33% of the population] Income $35,000 - $75,000, Assets <$500,000 4. Upper Middle [17% of the population] Income >$75,000 , Assets $368,000 if<30 yrs old, $1,000,000 if <60 years old, $5,000,000 otherwise 5. Upper [1% of the population] Income >$1,000,000, Assets >5,000,000 if <45 yrs old, >$7,000,000 if <60 yrs old, >$8,000,000 otherwise So why does any of this matter? Because class is the forgotten, ignored, swept-under-the-rug issue of American politics and society. People have become so blind to it that there is a general tendency to support policies that benefit the class one aspires to be in rather than the class that one is more than likely stuck in for life. There's a very interesting article in Tikkun [found via Thanksgiving is Ruined] that argues that Americans have bought into the idea that the U.S. is a meritocracy, and therefore blame themselves for not being wealthier, rather than addressing the underlying economic structure that only benefits corporations and the wealthy while leaving everyone else in the dirt. Need proof? Here are some always-fun facts to make any of us weep with rage: -The financial wealth of the top 1 percent of households now exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent. -In the fifteen-year period between 1983 and 1997, only the top 5 percent of households saw an increase in their net worth, while wealth declined for everyone else. -The Wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans grew an average of $1.44 billion each from 1997 to 2000, an average daily increase in wealth of $1,920,000 per person ($240,000 per hour or 46,602 times the U.S. minimum wage). -Executive pay at the nation’s 365 largest companies rose an average of 481 percent from 1990 to 1998, while corporate profits rose 108 percent. -The pay gap between top executives and production workers grew from 42:1 in 1980 to 419:1 in 1998 (excluding the value of stock options). Of course, if we were to take a step back and look at the global situation, we would find inequality on a scale so mind-boggling that the existing classes would have to be completely rethought. According to Global Rich List, which is a handy-dandy calculator of where one's income [though it doesn't address wealth or assets] fits into the world picture, someone who makes $10,000 a year is in the top 13.26% richest people in the world. "::"::"::"::"::"::"::"::"::"::"::" ^^^ November 9, 2004         Sometimes People Say Nice Things About Me [asfo_del] Sarah, over at Another Rainy Day [formerly Crazy Woman] says: -I Hate Hate -"I think this is probably the best post-election blog entry I've read. Here's a snip of it:" [followed by a snip] And Lisa of Goodbye Forever says: -"By the way, I am linked on a site I am very proud to be linked on! Clicketh hereth to visit one of my favourite weblogs! Whoo I'm giddy, I'M LINKED ON A SITE I LOVE." 14-year-old punk rock chicks rule! Go get 'em and DESTROY! <+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+>=<+> ^^^ November 8, 2004         Grapes Sour Enough to Choke On [asfo_del] Sometimes something that someone else made [someone else made it -- of all the nerve! -- not you] is so heartbreakingly wonderful it makes you giddy with joy, only to be suddenly overcome by wild-eyed rage and envy, a desire to destroy it, cut it down to size, figure out how somehow it has failed and is in fact not wonderful but benighted, obscene, offensive, stupid, and pretentious. It's just a flash, an instant, like all jealousy. Like standing alone and bored in a crowded room with a drink in your hand and glimpsing out of the corner of your eye your ex kissing his or her new partner. I can love music with blissful equanimity -- although there's actually very little music that I love, and my taste is extremely prosaic -- because I am completely incapable of making music, but really good art just pisses me off. I'm fortunate, in my desire to feed my petty small-mindedness, that a lot of art, especially fine art, is chokingly pretentious, which makes for a convenient reason to write it off. And then so many of the greats lived so long ago that it's hard to hold a grudge against them. Plus, much, if not all, of the art that was created in centuries past was at the behest of wealthy patrons, who came by their wealth at a great cost in human misery, so there's a handy moral high ground in rejecting its context. Some of that is still true today, as it happens, to my self-righteous glee. I came to an appreciation of music pretty late, which may be why I love really simple music, mostly punk rock and folk music like bluegrass and early blues. My family is just not musical. My parents don't even own a stereo. When my dad was in kindergarten, he sang so tunelessly that the nuns asked him not to sing with the other kids. He got so bored he just went home. The nuns freaked out when they realized he was missing, and when they found him happily at home with his mother, she said he wouldn't be coming back to their school. Ha! It's been a month and a half since I went to see Green Day, and it made me so happy I just about peed my pants.... I've been reluctant to mention it because it's just too damned embarrassing, but I don't care. Okay, I do, but I shouldn't care. Why should I care? Everything sucks so bad on so many levels that if one thing is just a plain old source of unadulterated, goofy, jumping-up-and-down happiness and joy why should that be a reason to feel somehow wrong? It shouldn't, right? Eh, I don't know. ............................. Billie Joe making a sandwich +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+ ^^^ November 8, 2004         Things in My Living Room [asfo_del] [that I can see from where I'm sitting] 1. felt applique flowers-and-butterfly stitchery, about 8x10, in orange wood frame 2. painting of mountains in small wood frame, 9x12 3. painting of vineyard on canvas board, 12x16 (no frame) 4. set of metamorphic rocks, labeled, in sectioned cardboard case 5. guitar tuner 6. glass vase, fluted, oval section, about 6 in. high, clear 7. horse chestnut in its shell 8. head kerchief, emerald green with tiny multicolored flowers 9. small chest of drawers, wood, with seashell design embossed on front 10. padded mailing envelope, used, about 14x20 11. white plastic bag 12. stack of about 6 sheets of pink paper, 8x10 13. torn sheet of white paper 14. book: Green Day "Dookie" song book for guitar 15. sheet of paper with hand-drawn crossword puzzle on it 16. end table, wood, with blue glass top 17. vinyl case containing a microphone 18. oval glass tray with decorative scalloped edge, clear 19. electric guitar 20. guitar pick, green 21. stick of wood, 1x1 square section, about 20 in. long 22. guitar practice amp 23. guitar cord 24. black leather couch with large section of leather missing from center seat 25. cloth couch cushion covered in white/green/yellow/red striped and flowered tablecloth fabric 26. dark-red airline blanket 27. five white curtain panels 28. 2 Mexican cement doves, yellow with gold, pink, and green decoration 29. scraps from packaging that contained a pen 30. pen, black felt-tip 31. sheet of paper folded in two, with writing on it 32. sheet of paper with writing on it: list of things in the room 33. book: "Tallinn", large hardcover, used as writing tablet 34. clickable ball point pen with pharmaceutical ad on it: Micardis HCT 35. fuzzy sweatshirt made out of teddy-bear fabric, light brown with checkered black-and-white trim 36. black pants 37. stack of old newspapers, about 2 in. high 38. CD player and speakers 39. bus map of Staten Island 40. flyers 41. 3 cassette tapes 42. bus schedule 43. reel-to-reel tape, in box 44. box covered in pink fabric, about 12x12 and 4 in. high 45. bong in the shape of a fish, green, plastic, about 14 in. high 46. pink felt tip pen 47. TV 48. map of the world, about 4 ft. by 5 ft. 49. flyer 50. book: "The Birth of the Republic", small red paperback 51. black felt pen 52. pencil 53. wristband to Green Day concert, orange 54. end table, wood 55. swiveling end table, wood 56. zippered case containing health products, dark green 57. partially used book of matches 58. stack of books: "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," "Up All Night" (library book), "The Working Poor" (library book), something about the West Indies (can't see title from here) 59. Copy of Harper's magazine (library copy) 60. small, narrow occasional table with lower shelf, wood 61. CDs: Punk Sucks, Punk-o-Rama, Pinhead Gunpowder: "Jump Salty," Punk USA #77CD, the Mr. T Experience: "Love is Dead," Operation Ivy, The Pist: "Ideas are Bulletproof," Jon Easdale, Green Day: "Insomniac," Screeching Weasel: "BoogadaBoogadaBoogada," Rancid: "Let's Go," Pinhead Gunpowder: "Goodbye Ellston Ave," Rancid, Green Day: "Having a Blast," Happy Anarchy, Green Day: "1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours," Tracy Chapman, U2 Achtung Baby (partial case only, no CD) 62. record, 7 inch: VEX 63. cassette tapes, no cases, about 12, (can't see titles) 64. zippered dress boots, black, men's 65. black plastic bag 66. stack of Italian magazines: "Bell'Italia" 67. pair of shoes, black, lace-up, rubber soled, men's 68. extension cord 69. TV cable 70. record, 7 inch: "I Wanna Be Billie Joe" 71. wood chair, Windsor, painted white 72. stack of folded laundry: 4 pants, 3 shirts, one sweater 73. pair of jeans with belt in belt loops 74. tall 5-drawer dresser, painted off-white, scuffed 75. white plastic bag containing political flyers 76. couch covered with woven bedspread, beige and light brown 77. white plastic bag containing anti-war banner and T-shirts, yellow and light blue 78. drop-leaf table 79. stack of painted canvas boards, about 6 80. large glass bowl, yellow inside, black outside 81. small plastic bowl, pink 82. 2 books (can't see what they are) 83. ceramic figurine of a kangaroo 84. ceramic figurine of a cat next to a book (bookend) 85. flowered kitchen tablecloth: white, yellow, red, green, purple (used as wall hanging) 86. two mini embroidered pillows, square 87. mirror in wood frame 88. hand painted poster: "These colors do not run the world" 89. painting of houses and trees on paper 90. wing armchair, blue 91. manila envelope 92. fabric with psychedelic background and fish design 93. needlepoint of fruits in red, pink, yellow, purple 94. zippered jacket, purple, fleece 95. telephone cord 96. coffee table, wood 97. small back-pack, black vinyl 98. cloth napkin, pink, blue, and green plaid 99. couch upholstered in beige striped fabric 100. couch slipcover: striped and flowered fabric in green, yellow, blue, white 101. two couch cushions covered in tablecloth fabric 102. towel, beige 103. 2 seashells 104. small bookcase 105. books: titles I can see: Merriam-Webster Dictionary, paperback dictionary, thesaurus, "Seashells," "Don't Try This At Home," something by Pico Iyer, Social Anarchism journal, "The Lunchbox Cookbook," Marx: "The Grundrisse," "Jesus the Rebel," "Prince Borghese's Trail," "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," "The Pentagon Papers," Italian-English dictionary, "Left Turn," "Summerhill" 106. calendar, Habitat for Humanity 107. 2 paint-by-numbers paintings of classical gardens, about 12x16, in wooden frames 108. two embroidered squares of fabric, Moroccan 109. landscape painting of Texas bluebonnets, in frame, 12x16 110. checkbook [I have nothing I want to say, and what I have on my mind I'm not telling, so I'm back to making lists. I posted an explanation last year as to what I think about lists. What I didn't mention then is that rote tasks that have a clear completion, especially if they're essentially useless, are like a kind of refuge from disgust. There's a scene in the movie The Wall -- at least I think so; I saw this movie about 20 years ago, so my recollection may be wildly fanciful -- in which the character has completely trashed a room he's in, and when it's done he sets about placing every bit of debris into ordered rows.] [=]=[=]=[=]=[=]=[=]=[=]=[=] ^^^ November 6, 2004         Memoirs of the Sullen and Despondent [asfo_del] I love to read memoirs. I'm reading a pretty great one right now, called How I Came Into My Inheritance and Other True Stories, by Dorothy Gallagher, who is, coincidentally, also the author of a book about Carlo Tresca, an Italian anarchist murdered in 1943, that Mike read only recently, but I didn't pick it up from the library thinking it was written by a radical leftie. Which bring me to the question: why is it interesting to read about the minutiae, sometimes extremely mundane, of someone's else's life? I ask that because I often find myself starting to think about writing something for the blog and then saying to myself: why the hell would anyone care about reading this? Okay, Dorothy Gallagher is an awesome writer, and she is able to make her stories engaging and even thrilling. I just want to write down what I think without too much artifice or self-consciousness. I have never thought of myself as "A Writer" and don't ever want to. Identifying oneself, one's life goal, with an artistic pursuit tends to become an invitation to jealousy, envy, and self-importance. I'm not a writer. Sometimes I write stuff down. Everybody who has completed the second grade can do the same. I like to think that what makes Gallagher's book so interesting is not her ability to write an engrossing sentence, but the trip into her thoughts, which seem so dynamic [like she's never without an interesting thought in her head -- which, realistically, is probably the product of a great deal of editing and re-thinking (it took her eight years to research and write the book on Carlo Tresca, only to have it rejected by the publisher who had originally signed her to do it as too poorly written)] and soul-baringly truthful. Sometimes I think that I don't have any thoughts, but that's not it. I just don't have any that I'm willing to share. It's embarrassing to live such a small, circumscribed life, made up in such great measure of sighing and wondering what I could possibly do, given that every day I drag myself around the house feeling like -- and some might say looking like -- a stuffed bunny-rabbit who's been left in the road and run over several times. I'm so very tired, but I'm unwilling to let my illness become the definition of my life, which happens not infrequently, it seems. I remember reading a book a few years ago by Jim Knipfel, Slackjaw, who is or was -- I don't actually read that newspaper -- a columnist for the NYPress, about his descent into almost total blindness. When he went looking for some kind of help with practical living, he encountered a community of the blind whose sole focus had become identifying themselves as blind people. Their conversation topics all seemed to revolve around complaining about the failures of the various organizations for the blind. It's fine to want to be a disability advocate, but it cannot become the sum total of who you are, or, at least, I don't think it should. Knipfel himself is a caustic commentator on modern life, a hard drinker, and a very funny author. Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest poets ever, and she was a complete recluse who rarely dared venture out of her house. So the life of one's mind really need not be limited by four walls. But what if the inside of your head is like a clothes hamper full of discarded ideas, unrequited wishes and half-baked insights? What if the things you yearn for are so mundane that not having been able to achieve them is laughable and pitiful? Do you bravely recount what they are and make yourself an object of pity and scorn even to your own eyes? To what end? Granted that I enjoy reading depressive narratives. There's a kind of voyeurism to them. The strength that should come out of something like that is the idea, that, look, we're all in this together. Maybe you're doing okay now, and maybe you weren't at some point and maybe you won't be soon. You know what? Eh. Dorothy Gallagher ends a chapter about a dismal year she spent right after dropping out of college, working at an insurance company and being tailed by the police for having had an illegal abortion, with a fantasy letter about the glamorous life she did not lead: "In June, at the end of my sophomore year, I dropped out of Hunter College. That summer I thumbed my way across the country. I stopped off at a lumber camp in northern Montana, where I waitressed for a month, then crossed the Cascades into Washington and headed down the coast to San Francisco.... I hung out with the Diggers in the Haight and went on the road with the Grateful Dead. After a few months of communal life, ... I took passage on a freighter bound for the South Seas. In Tahiti I was courted by a handsome prince, but I soon tired of the indolent life of the islands and took up my travels once more.... In Barcelona I studied flamenco and was celebrated as a prodigy of that art.... I married a famous and wealthy left-wing writer, who had fought with the French Resistance. Together, we founded a journal to disseminate our ideas. It became very successful, read by influential people all over the world...." *|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|* ^^^ November 4, 2004         Hate Springs Eternal [asfo_del] Not mentioning the election would be like ignoring the elephant in the room. If Kerry had been elected, I'll admit there wouldn't be much of anything to look forward to, but a Bush reelection is so very disturbing because it sanctions all the evil his administration has done. The majority of the American voting public, albeit by a slim margin, has officially approved, condoned, and effectively cheered the mass murder of over 100,000 innocents, the shredding of civil liberties at home, the incarceration of thousands with no charges ... the list goes on and on. I don't claim to understand. I don't understand. I've never heard or read an argument in support of Bush that made any sense or was even based on accurate, true facts. According to television polls, whose reliability seems highly questionable, but let's go with that, many people who voted Republican voted primarily on what they felt were "moral" issues. Never mind the obvious lack of understanding of what a politician's purview is, which does not include the mandate nor the means to be a moral leader like, say, the pope. It should be clear enough just on the basis of simple logic that morality cannot be legislated. But what's much more alarming -- it's almost surreal, like being from a parallel universe -- is that this has to be the most bizarre interpretation of morality that could possibly be conjured. Is it moral to kill over 100,000 hapless and defenseless human beings? I'm not up on my catechism, but last time I checked I think the first commandment was "Thou shalt not kill," not "Thou shalt not stand idly by while two people of the same sex go about their lives, loving one another, raising families, and even getting married if they so choose." I don't believe in religion. I think it's a lie, flat out. I've always been opposed to Christian religious education, for instance, because, well, first of all, I believe it teaches a fundamental lie -- the existence of god *-- but, more pragmatically, it teaches intolerance, since no matter what a particular persuasion may publicly state, there's always the underlying implication that ours is the right way to believe and everyone else's is wrong, and, what is most sinister, it teaches not to think for oneself. One must have faith and not question: critical thought on the matter is actually forbidden. Yes, some people are helped by religion; there are times in people's lives when there may be nothing else left to hang onto, and the comfort of religion provides the needed solace to carry on. And some people actually do receive valuable moral guidance and inspiration from religion. I can think of one person in particular, whom I greatly respect as being one of the kindest and most unassuming people I have known, who is deeply religious. She doesn't talk about it. She doesn't try to foist her belief on anyone. She's just a lovely human being. And, not surprisingly, she's a peace activist, not a Bush supporter. But the harm of substituting one's judgment for someone else's, someone who claims to be infallible [or giving up one's critical thinking to someone's writings as conveniently interpreted by some other someone who also cannot be questioned], en masse, is too dangerous and has too long a history of resulting in bloodshed and irrational, fervently passionate hatred. Whenever you give up your ability to think for yourself and surrender it to another party, you've made yourself a pawn for some constituency to use for its own self-interest. And you're complicit. You may have been duped but you are not blameless. I think it's shameful to pander to liars and demagogues, to pretend we should be building bridges, as some have suggested we should all do in the aftermath of the election, with people who want nothing but to crush us with pure hate. That's what it is when people rabidly demand that love between queer couples and women's reproductive freedom be criminalized. It's hate. It's not a difference of opinion. And nothing galvanizes loyalty and solidarity like shared hate. That's what the Bush campaign so cunningly capitalized on: it ran on hate. Not just religious hate directed against gays and women but hate of foreigners, immigrants, the poor, and of anyone who holds any belief or thought different from one's own. And -- we should hardly be surprised, I guess -- won. ----------------------------- * There are doubtlessly many things in the universe that we puny humans will never comprehend or even begin to imagine, but the likelihood that a fable invented by us humans will turn out to have been the correct explanation of those mysteries is, in my I'm-aware-I'm-not-being-very-humble-right-now opinion, zero. +^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+ ^^^ November 4, 2004         My Sweetie is a Punk [asfo_del] Well, it took 20 years but Mike's old punk band now has its first record release: six songs recorded in 1983 and 1984 and pressed onto a seven-inch record on snazzy see-through purple vinyl, put out by Houston's Hotbox Review. VEX: "New Words for an Old Revolution - Houston Punk '83-'84" From the liner notes: "VEX, formed in 1982, were part of the second wave of Houston punk bands, ... exhibiting the same penchant for social and class conscious lyrics and a d-i-y spirit that ran throughout the scene. [...] This disk is plastered with enough disgruntled, dystopian, discordant, and disaffected verbal discharge to have you stockpiling ammo and forming collectives for the seemingly imminent societal breakdown, full of catchy tunes you'll find yourself humming as you and your comrades storm a police barricade. -Torry Mercer" To hear some VEX songs, though not the same ones that are on the record [except one, "Picture on the Wall"] click here. #=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=#=# ^^^ November 1, 2004         Hearing Colors and All I See Are Sounds [asfo_del] When I took driving lessons, which I did at the late age of 21, the kindly old gent who was the instructor told me that my only responsibility is to stay in my lane, pay attention to the piece of road in front of me, and be prepared to slow down. And that's it. Everybody else, and not me, is responsible for the piece of roadway that is in front of them. He told me this because I was overwhelmed by the what seemed to me a frenzied level of activity going on all around me: cars speeding past in the next lane, cars in the opposite lane that seemed disconcertingly close to coming right at me, cars behind me who clearly wanted me out of their way, parked cars alongside that seemed only inches away, and generally cars everywhere turning, swerving, stopping, signaling, lurching, reversing. It's making me anxious just writing about it, actually. Being behind the wheel is, to me, like a circus of overstimulation, and, to make matters worse, one that you have the obligation to navigate without making serious mistakes because the consequences can be grave. The whole "only worry about the piece of roadway in front of you" theory is fine until you have to merge, change lanes, or make a left turn, none of which I am able to do unless traffic is extremely light. In all those circumstances you have to be aware of at least one other flow of traffic besides the one you are in, and I am not able to keep my attention on two moving objects at once. I know that all of this will sound incredibly stupid and maladroit to people who drive every day. I mention it because an interesting supposition, at least to me, is that not everybody experiences their environment in the same way. When I tried to explain to a psychiatrist years ago why I couldn't drive, or could drive only under limited circumstances, the way I put it is that there are too many things going on at the same time and I can't keep track of them all. She said that wasn't normal. She had no helpful advice, really, but it was interesting to hear her say that she did not think it sounded like a case of simple anxiety. [Not that anxiety is simple.] The notion that there are differing perceptions from person to person seems to be mentioned almost exclusively in reference to medical disorders in our science-obsessed culture . Dyslexia, for instance, is frequently described as a difference in perception: the way in which the brain receives and translates what a person sees is different in someone who is dyslexic and someone who is not. But as in many such disorders, the line of demarcation between a patient and a "normal" subject is not so clearly defined. There are many shades of dyslexia. A fascinating neurological condition is synesthesia, in which the senses are mixed and allow a person to, for instance, involuntarily see sounds or taste colors. I first read about it in a book by Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist. [I don't remember which one, but all his books are great and I recommend all of them to anyone -- if I had to guess I'd say it was in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I don't feel like looking it up right now.] This paper by Richard E. Cytowic on the subject [all quotes are referenced to this link] is so intriguing that I want to quote much more of it than is practical. We should be curious about synesthesia, its author says, -- and he's a scientist! -- "because of what [it] might tell us about consciousness, the nature of reality, and the relationship between reason and emotion.... "A synesthete might describe the color, shape, and flavor of someone's voice, or music whose sound looks like 'shards of glass,' a scintillation of jagged, colored triangles moving in the visual field. Or, seeing the color red, a synesthete might detect the 'scent' of red as well." Apparently, synesthesia has been known for three centuries, but it was primarily of interest to artists and philosophers before the field of neurology caught up to it. Kandinsky, the famous Russian painter, was a synesthete, as was Nabokov, [who is, of course, the author of Lolita, but I'd rather link to his butterfly drawings: 1, 2, 3], and the artist David Hockney. Kandinsky, who was interested in the transcendent experience that viewing a work of art might elicit, said, "lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and . . . stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?" A synesthete might think: "'She had a green name - I forget, it was either Ethel or Vivian.' In this example, it is the synesthetic greenness and not the semantic label that is recalled. In other words, if Ethel is a green blob, the next time you see her you don't say, 'It's Ethel,' you say, 'It's the green blob: therefore, it is Ethel'.... The mental gymnastics through which synesthetes go seem counterintuitively to contradict their claims that synesthesiae are 'simple' and 'natural' memory aids." You don't have to be a synesthete to employ a similar way of involuntarily organizing your experience. I think we all do it? Why do file folders have different colored tabs? Sometimes you can remember that a given file was blue-tabbed even if you can't remember the name it was filed under, and knowing the color is what allows you to find it. The reason you can remember that the tab is blue is because you originally ascribed some kind of irrational meaning to the color as it relates to the contents of the file, so that, at some later time when you need to retrieve the folder, thinking about the contents of the file makes you think of blue. I find that I store away ideas in my mind in the same way: I might -- without choosing to do so intentionally -- assign a visual shape and a mental storage cubby to a concept as a kind of shorthand so that I can recall it later. I don't choose the shape or where it gets filed; both suggest themselves out of some kind of abstract, illogical sense of being somehow appropriate to the particular concept. I saw a very old Disney cartoon once, years ago, in which Donald Duck is feverishly rummaging through his mind for something he has forgotten, and his mind is pictured as a library of disheveled, broken down stacks, covered in cobwebs and dust, with random objects scattered about, like sun bonnets and baby carriages. Then, as I think I remember it, although I'm probably making this part up, he would turn a corner and suddenly there would be a monster, or a beach, or butterflies, or an old woman shaking her umbrella at him. It seemed very apt. This tidbit is neither here nor there, but it seemed too good not to include: "As a group, synesthetes seem more prone to 'unusual experiences' than one might expect.... Unparalleled among my collection of other-worldly experiences is that of a woman who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, and to have enjoyed sexual congress aboard their space craft. Having experienced aliens, she confided, human males could no longer satisfy her." -More on the synesthete in all of us. =|==|==|==|==|==|==|==|= [Continue to October Archive]