"remember, remember..."

while everyone is focused on november 4th because of our election, (and rightly so,) i am inclined to mention that the very next day will be november 5th.

"remember, remember, the 5th of november."

yes, november 5th is guy fawkes day. while i was oblivious to guy fawkes and all things related until the movie 'v for vendetta,' came out, i did love the movie and the idea that the masses might in a time of corruption and opression, rise up and resist en masse, is like a dream to me. plus the movie is rife with great lines. i've compiled a bunch of them here. read and savor.

"artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use lies to cover it up."

"people should not be afraid of their governments, their governments should be afraid of their people." -v

"...if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you..."

Oppenheimer was able to change more than the course of a war. He changed the entire course of human history. Is it wrong to hold on to that kind of hope?

More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives.

Remember, remember the 5th of November. The gunpowder, treason, and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like "collateral" and "rendition" became frightening, while things like Norsefire and the Articles of Allegiance became powerful. I remember how "different" became dangerous. I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much. -valerie

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot... But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget. -evey

Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici. -evey

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe. -v

A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world. -v

You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it. -gordon

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government. -v

Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof. -v

A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having! -v

One thing is true of all governments - their most reliable records are tax records. -finch

God is in the rain... -evey

There are no coincidences, Delia... only the illusion of coincidence. -v

Concerning non-violence: It is criminal to teach man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. -male voice-over

Sex and Race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organising human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about Humanism. -v

and then there is this:

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [V carves 'V' into poster on wall] The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. -v

isn't that fun?

discrimination by any other name...

still discrimination.

this prop 8 thing here in california is bugging the hell out of me. i object to those who favor it on moral grounds. that's right, on moral grounds.

this kind of discrimination is acting like a sort of super x-ray vision light for me, illuminating the bigots and hypocritically religious among us. is your church in favor of prop 8? i know there are plenty of church's opposed to the proposition including mega-church pastor rick warren. (perhaps his purpose-driven life is similar to ted haggard's in its mission to stamp out homosexuality.)

the united church of christ in berkeley and the davis united methodist church as well as all saints episcopalian church here in pasadena, among others, are all opposed to prop 8. and good for, (and on,) them. it seems to me churches should be about love, not hate, inclusion, not exclusion, tolerance, not intolerance, harmony, not strife. by favoring prop 8, religious communities err, plain and simple.

when one thinks about slavery, to include its acceptance here in the united states for nearly 100 years, it is valuable to think about those who accepted it. many of the pilgrims and those who populated the u.s. in the early part of its existence were of a pious nature. surely in those days those people rationalized enslaving people just as ours rationalize legislatively discriminating against gay couples who wish to marry. that is a fair and apt comparison.

nowadays i guess the mormon church and pastor warren and those others who favor prop 8 would freely admit that slavery was immoral. (this is not to say only the religious were in favor of slavery or are in favor of prop 8. it is simply those i am taking exception to at the moment and surely the religious groups are leading the charge to pass prop 8 today.)

the idea that gay people should not be allowed to enter into a legal union of two consenting adults seems to be rooted in religion. in response i refer to thomas jefferson and this sentence from his famous letter to the danbury baptists of connecticut:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. -thomas jefferson

the wall of separation jefferson conjured protects the various faiths as much as it suggests they should keep their beliefs away from the public sphere. (one would think the mormon church would be especially sensitive and considerate of this point in light of the persecution they have endured.)

one other point i want to make on this subject regards the commercials in favor of passing the proposition. they have highlighted a couple from massachusetts talking about how their child was subjected to teaching about gay marriage in school. laws in california differ from those in massachusetts and because state law requires schools to inform parents before sex or other sensitive issues are discussed, and parents have an opt-out clause which allows them to pull their child from any classroom in which a subject or curriculum they do not want their child exposed to is taught before the subject in question comes up, this idea that children will be taught about gay marriage should in fact be a non-issue.

lastly, regardless of how you may vote next week, please do get out there and exercise your right to vote.

tim's space

as if the internet is not the most amazing thing ever. as if google is not the 2nd coming of jesus with their idealistic ethos and willingness to weigh on all things to try to set the world right and those freaking spiders speeding around through imaginary tubes and wires to democratize the world of information. as if yahoo is not like the world wide web's pants, so basic but necessary. and yet, there is still more.

we live in the age of facebook and myspace, the two heavyweight monsters of internet networking, and no one is safe. if you are alive, eating and breathing and shedding dead skin cells, then i bet i can find you because you are there. right? admit it. you're on one of these sites if not both of them.

last night i dreamt, ("that somebody loved me, ooh-ooh-oooooohhhhh,"-just kidding, i digress,) i dreamt of an old friend of mine. in my dream i was at an airport, like an international airport where one must pass through customs, and my old friend, tim, was approaching me and we both had sheepish grins on our faces. so coolly i waited as he snaked through a line and passed a checkpoint turnstile until at last i was able to walk right up to him and greet him. at that point he seemed to become cross. i guided him over to a place to sit and stuck my hand out to shake his and tim refused. his hand laid limply on his armrest and i asked him what was up. i went right into a monologue about how i had tried to find him and even sent him an invitation to my wedding two years ago to an address i found online in st. louis on a street called maryland heights. recognition of the street name showed on his face and he sort of indicated perhaps he believed me. right about then my two-year-old son, mark, who was sleeping in the bed with me started kicking me in the head like kimbo slice. end of dream.

it was 6:20am so in fact i had just been allotted an extra 20 minutes of sleep time by mark who rules my nights, mornings, sleep patterns, moods and several other facets of life. i got up and put him in front of the doodlebops, who really should not air at that time of the morning because, (and i can only speak for me on this but,) they cause a lot of anger to well up inside of people so that one might want to kick a tv or hurl a cereal box across a kitchen. next i opened up my laptop, waited for it to find my signal and connect to this vast network that is everyone and everything in the entire freaking galaxy, and i went directly to myspace.

from there i clicked on find and simply put in my former friend's last name. i have tried to find tim before but to no avail. this time i just had this sense that i would find him and when i clicked find i immediately saw that there would be only seven pages to wade through. (see? not the most common last name in the book.) around the fifth page i found a kid in st. louis who looked like tim and it occurred to me this was tim's little brother. when i last saw him he was maybe 15, but i was pretty sure this kid whose myspace moniker was something like m 4 mustard, (or something,) was tim's little brother. (i guess the name is a reference to some sort of nerve agent or something, or maybe the kid just likes to spread a little sunshine on his sandwiches.)

in any case, i clicked mustard's pictures and lo and behold, there was one in the maybe 100 pictures with the caption below it of, "the last name brothers." on the left, right next to mustard, clad in a spanking red st. louis cardinals jacket, was tim. wow. i was slightly dumbfounded.

tim looked mostly the same. it's been about 15 years since i last saw him so it's not like i was expecting one day he was johnny depp and the next he was johnny grant but his face looked just the same in the photo. i backed out of mustard's pictures to see if i might find tim's own space in mustard's friends and sure enough, he was there. jackpot, baby, you just can't hide from me. i'm serious. if i want to find you, i will. take it to the bank.

tim's myspace page was not set to private so i was able, (later in the day when i had some time,) to get an eye-full of his kids at the st. louis arch in matching, green tee-shirts for st. paddy's day. (they're adorable.) i discovered that tim hunts. many of tim's comments were all tim. for example, myspace asks one to list: music? tim put: yes please, with testosterone. vintage tim.

i requested tim to add me as his friend. so next time he signs on to his space he should see a familiar face from his past. and for all of this, the fact that i could find tim so easily and from the comfort of my living room while the ridiculous doodlebops were on the tv and sane people remained asleep, amazes me anew nearly every day.

tim moved back to st. louis in 1992, i think. we were in contact for a season there and he came back for a visit and caught up with me one night at my dad's probably in '93 but it was a strange and difficult time for me. i remember he was excited to tell me about his daughter and while i was happy for him, i could not relate at all.

so we lost touch. i had an address and phone number for him but at some point those things changed and i sent him a piece of mail and it came back to me. i tried 411 at some point in time but he was not listed.

somewhere around '96 or more likely, '97, i got online. i had a little macintosh apple se and i signed up with earthlink, (a local pasadena company i felt really great about supporting in those days,) and voile i was dialing up to the world wide web, which was so much smaller than it is now. the dial-up connection took about five minutes to load most pages. it was exciting though and i loved it.

i definitely tried to find tim using the internet over the years. usually i ended up looking at an advertisement from some detective agency telling me they knew a tim in some suburb or st. louis and if i would just pony up the necessary $30 subscription fee i could find all the people i wanted to for three whole months. needless to say, i was never willing to do that. then even in 2006 i sent tim an invitation to my wedding to an address i had caught a glimpse of somewhere online but that invitation was returned to sender.

last week my hockey team was in st. louis to play the blues. whether it is the dodgers or the kings or the raiders whenever one of my teams is in st. louis i think of tim. i always just imagine he is there living the good family life, probably going to church, still listening to u2 and delivering packages. briefly i thought of tim last week when the kings were beating the blues, (and tim and i used to spend some evenings drinking some beers and playing colecovision hockey,) but those thoughts are more and more fleeting as time goes by. however, when tim showed up in a dream, i was just compelled to go find the guy. and this time, as the world wide web just gets bigger and bigger, and more of us have some sort of footprint on it, i found him.

the power of nightmares

there is a great bbc documenatry called the power of nightmares, directed by adam curtis. the doc was made in 2004 and can be seen in three parts, on netflix or on google video at the links below.

the series is about terrorism and the neocons and the radical fundamentalist islamists and the soviet invasion of afghanistan and subsequent collapse of the soviet union and sleeper cells and the assassination of anwar sadat and the near government takeover in algeria and the vilification of bill clinton and the evolution of al-qaeda and more.

part 1: baby it's cold outside, parallels and traces our current state of affairs back to the '50s, primarily to an extreme muslim who was in the u.s. to study and to the original neocons from the university of chicago.

part 2: the phantom victory, traces american involvement in rounding up arab fighters in afghanistan to make jihad on the evil soviet empire while also showing how the fundamentalist islamic movement gathered momentum throughout the arab world and was crushed to some degree in algeria and other places as it became too extreme and threatened to take over governments.

part 3: the shadows in the cave, reveals the myth of al-qaeda's organization and ties that back to how our leaders, (primarily bush and blair,) have presented so-called evidence to the public.

it is in eye-opener of a documentary that should add perspective to anyone's view of the many events documented therein.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=the+power+of+nightmares&emb=0#emb=0&q=power%20of%20nightmares%20part%201&src=2

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=the+power+of+nightmares&emb=0#q=power%20of%20nightmares%20part%202&emb=0

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=the+power+of+nightmares&emb=0#emb=0&q=the%20power%20of%20nightmares%203&src=3

death for betrayal

as wrong as this is, there is something underlying that is completely right. in a town outside of shanghai a public official has been given a death sentence for accepting millions of dollars in bribes. death to a public servant for bribes?!

(click on the header to see the story in the la times.) it is extreme to put someone to death essentially for greed but relative to our society, it is a little bit refreshing too. i mean, i am not bloodthirsty or anything but in my country we put people in jail for long periods of time for possessing drugs.

as a crime drug use and possession tends to have one victim, the user or, the self. distribution of drugs is clearly a more serious crime. however, in the u.s. the crimes of public officials tend to have especially light sentences. scooter libby was convicted of four crimes, one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and one count of making false statements to federal investigators. randy "duke" cunningham took more than $2 million in bribes and was given a sentence of 100 months in prison. he is incarcerated in a minimum security satellite camp at the united states penitentiary in tucson, arizona.

just as with the vice mayor in suzhou, libby's and cunningham's crimes affect a great number of people. in libby's case, it is likely his crimes hid criminal acts by the president and/or vice president of the united states. it cost one cia agent her career and the united states' taxpayers millions of dollars to investigate and prosecute the case. cunningham's crimes are perhaps even more far-reaching. much of his congressional work had to be reviewed after his resignation because his behavior called into question all of the government contracts he had been involved with. by accepting bribes, he may have accepted inferior products or certainly over-priced military products thereby jeopardizing the mission of our military, which depended on him in his role to conscientiously do his best on their behalf.

libby's sentence was commuted by president bush and cunningham, in july of this year, petitioned the president for a pardon. (in my humble opinion, it is likely bush will pardon cunningham before he leaves office in january of '09.)

death is too great a sentence for any of these criminals. it is a barbaric response to their crimes. that said, their crimes affect more people than many who get more severe sentences here in the u.s. i would advocate for a life sentence in cases like the vice mayor or for cunningham or libby. betraying public trust is a serious crime that affects many people. one who would take public office should be acutely aware of the gravity of their position as well as the penalties for betraying it.

weather underground

i have an insouciant instinct to want to shock you with this post by starting off with an outrageous statement such as, "THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND," or, "THE WEATHERMEN UNDERGROUND, WERE UTTERLY RIGHTEOUS!!" however, because i crave your trust, i cannot in good conscience make that statement.

if you know me though, you know that i prefer documentary movies as my best source for news. (the reasons are the making of another blog entry, another day.)

with all the hubbub around barack obama's association with bill ayers, who was a member of the weather underground, i thought i should watch this movie to see what i could discern, if anything, about ayers, as well as to get a history lesson on this radical group. the documentary did not disappoint. it is as fair and responsible as one could hope for and it is truly well made in every way. (kudos to director bill siegel.) in fact, the documentary was so well done, it caused me to google black panther fred hampton when i was through watching the movie, to learn more about him and the circumstances surrounding his death, and then also to add a book to my amazon.com wishlist which is soledad brother, by george jackson. (when a documentary moves me to further research, i am impressed.)

there is a substantial amount of background i can't possibly convey and for which, you should consider watching the movie yourself. that said, the name the weather underground is a reference to a bob dylan song, wherein dylan said you didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew. the weathermen firmly believed there was a revolution in progress and they were just one group dealing with it as they saw fit.

largely, the weathermen were a response to the vietnam war. the kids who founded it in some respects hijacked and stole a less radical body of students who had been affiliated with sds, students for a democratic society.

i think there was a certain amount of cognitive dissonance going on with the members of weather underground. they were bright college students who lived in america at a time when we were involved in an especially unsavory, often illegal, and wholly destructive war in vietnam. the weathermen were profoundly affected by the war. they read the news reports. they understood the level of carnage going on in vietnam. from mai lai to the carpet bombing of cambodia, the weathermen may have even felt guilty for being americans and living here while the war raged on over there.

i guess they grew up like most americans hearing about how great this country was, pledging allegiance to the flag, believing that goodness and honesty would always be rewarded while those who cheated and connived their way to the top would be caught up with one day. when they arrived on their college campuses, i guess they began to see these notions unravel.

one of the weathermen, mark rudd, talks about how much the war weighed on him in the movie. today he is a math teacher at a community college in new mexico but in those days, he says he thought about the war every day. even on holidays or when he should have been having a good time, he thought of the war.

the people in the weather underground were right, ultimately, about the united states' government. they believed there was a great deal of corruption and there was and is. it is likely in excess of 1.1 million people who died in the vietnam war and that is not even counting american servicemen and women.

to talk about vietnam and the weather underground today without mentioning our occupation of iraq would be to miss the point of history. there are some obvious parallels and so it is easy to imagine and relate to and feel for the weathermen. a month ago or so i watched an hbo documentary called baghdad high, about a year in the life of three high school students in baghdad. it is a great movie because it humanizes these three iraqi kids in a way an american like myself could never get to know them or the nature of their lives.

in essence the weathermen acted as if they had documentary movies of the lives of the vietcong. they imagined their lives and translated the statistics and the news stories into real and palpable emotion.

with the benefit of time, (and a host of documentary movies such as: the fog of war and the trials of henry kissinger,) we can know that our action in vietnam was far from righteous. in turn, it is easy to understand the weathermen's dissatisfaction with the federal government. there was a lot of dissatisfaction at that time, from the black panthers and sds and martin luther king jr and women's groups and others.

where the weather underground went awry was likely in rejecting non-violence. there is a moment in the movie when bernadine dohrn tells a television news crew interviewing her that she absolutely rejects non-violence. her rationale seems to be that the vietnam war is not non-violent, killing fred hampton in cold blood in his sleep was not non-violent, and surely there are and were countless other examples of our government acting violently.

this view is representative of a certain impatience on the part of the people in the weather underground. they wanted change. they had a limited view of history, perhaps even refused to look at history in a macro-oriented way. on one hand they were like the small band of kids on the playground who decide not to be bullied anymore but in another sense they were a little bit like the thing they hated in as much as they thought they had cornered the market on right.
brian flanagan was a weatherman who comes across strongest in the movie in denouncing the actions of his former group. in retrospect he seems ashamed of his actions. and he is the one who suggests they were as wrong as anyone because they felt their sense of right as if it was an absolute. flanagan seems humbled by his error in judgment.

martin luther king jr had it completely right in realizing that non-violence was the only policy worth having. no self-respecting man respects an act of violence.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

mark rudd, one of the most prominent weathermen, admits to embracing his hate. like flanagan, he seems to recognize this as his error.

what the weathermen actually did was bomb symbolic places in order to make a point by way of protest. prior to settling on this method, they had initiated other forms of protest including the days of rage in chicago. their goal was to "bring the war home," yet many of their actions seemed to come up short of the hoped for effect.

they started with the port authority in san francisco and in this case, they placed a phone call at a quarter to midnight to warn of the planted bomb, asking the police and fire department to be sure the area was cleared as the bomb was set to go off in 15 minutes at midnight. certainly after one of their bombs accidentally blew up while under construction and killed three of their members, they made a conscious decision to be sure none of their bombs harmed anyone.

according to bill ayers, "We were very careful from the moment of the townhouse on to be sure we weren't going to hurt anybody, and we never did hurt anybody. Whenever we put a bomb in a public space, we had figured out all kinds of ways to put checks and balances on the thing and also to get people away from it, and we were remarkably successful."

what came through from the movie is the fact that the members of the weather underground were patriots. their methodology however, for promoting their agenda, was gravely wrong both morally and practically. bombs are violent by their very nature and masses were not going to get on board with the idea of acting violently.

it is noble to push for righteous change and for that i respect the weather underground. several of the members interviewed also said they remain radicals despite denouncing the violence. these people refused to simply preach a certain world view. they put it all into practice. in that way they may be better than those of us who do not act. however, when change does not occur fast enough to satisfy someone, that person should step back and recognize that it is noble to push in the direction of right. be frustrated but do not compromise your values and ethics on account of frustration.

in the big picture change happens slowly, but it does happen. we are not in the dark ages anymore. here in the united states we no longer allow women to be accused of being witches and hence, burned at the stake. we are progressing. even when we seem to go backwards, it is simply a necessary re-grouping that must occur to start the movement forward again. (this is how i view the bush administration.)

as for bill ayers, based on his actions since his days in the weather underground, he seems to be most respectable indeed. attacking obama for his association with ayers as a political strategy for a major party candidate is nothing more than a death knell for that campaign. still, i am glad ity all came up and i got to take myself to school again via netflix instant streaming and the resources of google, wikipedia and the internet.

paper planes

that was saturday, may 28th, 1983. (it was also mick jones' last performance with the clash.) straight to hell was a political punk rock statement about the war in vietnam, roughly 10 years after the war ended but at a time when the gnarled veterans remained ubiquitous fixtures in our inner cities.

it is interesting how the clash were either unable or unwilling to reproduce the sound of straight to hell in their live performance. at that time, there was a certain sanctity about live music, the idea being that if it wasn't actually live, if someone on the stage in front of the audience was not actually making the sound, it was somehow inauthentic and therefore, for a serious band like the clash, the sound had to be left in the studio. so here you can hear the clash straining to make the sound of the keyboard with their guitars but short of adding a non-member of the band to the stage or piping in the keyboard, they had to do without. it is something of a shame too, because the keyboard part is integral. at the same time, the clash's ethos has to be respected.

you know how there are certain songs you remember where you were the first time you ever heard them? i don't remember where i was the first time i heard the clash's straight to hell but to this day it remains in the jukebox at the colorado, a bar in pasadena which happens to have the best jukebox of any bar in pasadena.

i used to play quite a bit of pool at the colorado, and i had some very good nights in terms of winning and holding on to the table. the colorado is not a hip-hop bar or a dancing spot. it is as grimy as can be. they still let you smoke in there, laws be damned. they have been warned by the dept of health on several occasions and had to clean the place up.

there is no carpet to speak of, just a pattern of cigarette burns on tile and where carpet once was. the owner; pete, and his sidekick; johnny, are a couple of armenian americans who cater to the alternative crowd. johnny 86's people, (which is to say he kicks them out,) for any behavior he does not want in his bar. they serve quality beers in the colorado. yeah, they have some bud light or whatever on tap but it doesn't sell. everyone in the joint drinks boddington's or sierra nevada or guiness or newcastle.

i don't really get to the colorado anymore but if and when i do, i go straight to that jukebox and put on the pixies' gouge away and the clash's straight to hell. those two songs make the colorado feel like home.

straight to hell straddles the line between punk rock and reggae. it creates a stark mood right from the opening beat and in its lyrics conjures images of the clash between corporate america and indochine farmers. ultimately, the clash compares being sent to fight in vietnam with the idea of going to hell, which is of course an apt comparison.

a couple of years ago i went out with a big group of people in a limousine for a friend's 40th birthday dinner. i brought a mixed cd that happened to have straight to hell on it for the limo ride and when that song came on, someone from the other end of the limo where the cd player was, ejected it. when i shouted from the other end asking why they had turned off the music, the person, who is a christian, said the song was offensive. they were saying to go straight to hell, for crying out loud, he said. this was a serious stretch limo so i refrained from explaining across 15 people or so how the song was political commentary and should be respected for its artistic merit. i did not hint at how nearly i was to being offended that a grown man can walk around in the world and be offended by a song saying "go straight to hell, boy."

now, i do remember where i was the first time i heard mia's paper planes. i was at a friend's house late one night after work. maybe eight people from the restaurant i worked at had congregated at this person's house to drink some beers and hang out. the guy who lived there, eddie, had his ipod on and all of a sudden i heard the familiar strains of straight to hell. immediately i knew it was not actually the song but rather it was sampled and my first thought was to compliment the new, younger audience for having such good taste.

as the song went on and the gunshot and cash register effects could be heard, along with the utterly danceable and listenable nature of the track, i was sold and said as much to the youngsters i was hanging out with. often times in the past i had chided this group for not knowing who leonard cohen or jeff buckley was. on other occasions i had introduced them to a song such as haile selassie up your ass by propaghandi, which they loved. i remember too, when i came in to work one night and played the amy winehouse cd and everyone stopped in their tracks, incredulous at my being somehow up to date. ultimately, good is good and it transcends time.

recently i was reading the sports page during the dodger's post season run and there was a quote from 3rd baseman casey blake about how he preferred country music but because the guys play mia's paper planes so often in the locker room, (apparently the song had kind of become their rallying song,) he knew all the words, which he suggested was just as improbable as could be. and again, good is good and transcends genres.

i remember that first time i heard paper planes telling eddie he did not know the song mia was sampling but that he should as it is a great song in its own right. mia, (who is called maya,) has said that the gunshots and cash register elements of paper planes can be interpreted as they will be by the listener and she has also said her music is for civilian refugees, so there is a political element to her music.

joe strummer passed away at the tender age of 50 back in 2002 but i have a feeling he would have enjoyed paper planes. it has a pop hook for days and the sample of straight to hell just bounces along in the background like a good infection.

last night i was at a costume party and when paper planes came on, everyone there moved into the room where the music was. some in attendance were into hip-hop, others liked country, still others preferred rock or alt rock. from what i could tell though they all liked mia's paper planes.

w.

w is film as scathing political commentary. at the same time, its greatest accomplishment is in humanizing president bush and those around him.
stone essentially imagines who george junior is and brings the character to life on the screen. who he ends up being is at best a regular guy, and at worst a vacuous idealogue with a grossly overrated self-image.

this film is as artistic as anything but in the final moment as bush stares even into the camera but more importantly into space, as if looking for a sign that has never arrived, stone's point is made. w is no different than any college frat guy who failed at several businesses, spent a bunch of time drinking way too much, found jesus and quit boozing, and ultimately arrived at a place wherein he becomes the very definition of the peter principle.

josh brolin gives an amazing performance as w. the entire cast is superb but thandie newton and ellen burstyn are especially remarkable as condoleeza rice and barbara bush respectively.

stone, for his part, seems to have a very even hand with this film. while w may be propaganda, it never comes across as such. not once does stone allow any of his characters to devolve into the caricatures it would have been easy to allow them to be. dick cheney, (expertly portrayed by richard dreyfuss,) never once snorts like the devil or slinks away from a scene like a poisonous viper. laura bush never recoils at the sight of her husband as he gets ready to join her in bed.

in many ways, stone portrays w as a nice, if idealogically misled, guy. he also carefully crafts the relationship w has with cheney and rove, so that w reminds his cohorts that he is in fact the guy who is in charge. w has adopted the idealogy of ronald reagan and so believes himself the architect of his own presidency, never realizing rove got him into office and cheney has been subtly directing his actions from behind the scenes.

the relationship between w and his father, (wonderfully played by james cromwell,) is one of the best aspects of the movie. it seems an honest relationship, one of love and disappointment, one with barriers and imperfections.

stone may have missed all of this. all of these relationships may be as far-fetched as can be. but for an artist who can get meetings with genralissimo marcos in the jungles of chiapas, i have a feeling stone probably had some real insight here. (i couldn't help but wonder if scott mcclellan was a consultant.)

i won't take w as fact, but as possibility it is plenty plausible. as art it is what film is all about. in fact because it deals with so much reality, (i.e. the various events depicted,) the imagining must have required more skill than usual.

ian welsh

i have to direct you to this firedoglake blog entry from ian welsh. if you click on his name in the header, you will go to the post.

ian welsh is pointing out that ben bernanke and henry paulson and all the rest are basically screwing us all over. if welsh is correct america will be the land without opportunity for some years to come. those who have administered this economic bailout, have taken great care to ensure those who caused it will not have to pay for the massive amounts of money recently printed by the federal reserve.

the idea seems to be, according to welsh, that the guy's who hold the levers of control are trying to keep things just barely acceotable to the masses so that later as any amount of prosperity returns, it can be gleaned right off the top to pay for the investment that is this printed cash.

it is a great age we live in. the internet affords us a previously unfathomable ability to communicate. so if bernanke and paulson and obama and even krugman, are willing to sell us all down the river by signing off on all this, we are fortunate to have people like ian welsh who blog about it and are able to translate economic facts and theory into layman's terms. hence, why i am sharing this with you.

the wire

have you seen the wire? it's an hbo cops and criminals series. it is unique because it tells stories from both perspectives, that of the criminals and that of the cops.

i am watching season 1 right now. it's coming to me two or three episodes per disc from netflix and i am now through eight episodes. it is a spell-binding show primarily because of how realistic it is.

the show is set in baltimore and when it focuses on the cops, there are actually about 15 regular characters who are all ranks of cops, a d.a., a judge, even a state senator. so their perspective is as political as a robert graves novel. the cops have certain alliances and they all seem to have different motives behind their actions. furthermore, they tend to get drunk often and can often be seen drunk-driving and worse, thus supporting the idea i have heard before about cops and criminals being of a similar mentality.

the criminals are perhaps more interesting. their drug-dealing business is a serious and lucrative enterprise. the guys at the top are sober businessmen who engage in a certain amount of charity and even take classes at the local city college. the rest of the totem pole, (those who play "the game,") includes junkies, kids who hand-off drugs, high school age kids who collect the money, signal a kid and point the users towards the kid who is carrying, rivals in the game who would rip-off the particular ruling cartel, a snitch, people who attend group meetings and are in recovery, they're all there.

perhaps the most compelling character on the criminal side is a guy named omar who has a scar that crosses his face like someone laid him on a table saw face down. he has his own little crew and they bust into a house in the projects where the drugs are being divided up and they pistol whip a few people and steal their drugs and money.

obviously, avon barksdale does not take kindly to this so he figures out who has done this and seeks revenge. ultimately, he kills omar's gay lover, which upsets omar to no end. omar decides to give information to the cops and even offers to be an eye witness. when barksdale's guys close in on omar they get more than they bargained for as omar guns one down and wounds the other.

omar is a free agent and i am sure his days are numbered but as a character on a television show, he comes across as so authentic i think the series must have some great consultants, from both sides.

for the cops side it seems there are likely some dirty birds high in the ranks, which creates tension between the guy on the street, (the main cop the show follows is named jimmy mcnulty,) and those higher up the ladder. mcnulty is a true believer. he is not particularly astute and perhaps has limited skills for the political aspect of his job. he is an utterly competent detective though. mcnulty is tired of seeing drug dealers get away with what they do. he is sick of seeing murders go unsolved.

mcnulty also lives and breathes his job so he is always on the job even when he is sitting in a bar getting sauced. he is divorced with two kids and it is clear that his job cost him his marriage. meanwhile, his bosses, the lieutenants and such above him in the pecking order, are driven by different goals, like keeping their footing on the career ladder or just maintaining the status-quo without rocking any boats. so mcnulty is often at odds with his boss who just wants him to relax and go back to punching a clock and stop caring about his work so much.

at one point, a scheduled exchange is picked up on the wire, (a set of phone taps,) but when they stop the car they find the guy is not carrying drugs, he has $20,000 in cash. next we find out he is connected to that state senator and the lieutenant is telling his cops to cut the guy loose and give him his money back, to which, mcnulty and his peers become dramatically incredulous.

as the viewer, one is to believe this is how the real world is. in the real world, cops sometimes take a drug dealer and murderer into a room and beat the crap out of him. in the real world, a kid alerts his crew to the fact that he has spotted an enemy only to see him publicly laid out after being murdered within view from his bedroom window and in turn, the kid of maybe 14-years-old stops showing up for work and just sits in his room for days on end disconsolate.

and i do. i believe it. the wire is as gritty as the roughest sandpaper and makes the law and order shows look like father knows best. they made five full seasons of the wire and i am not even through season one so i feel fortunate as i have plenty of viewing in front of me.

4 candles

outside of when we got married this was the second time faith and i got our families together, this time to celebrate terra's 4th birthday. it was saturday in fallbrook at my parent's house. the weather was brilliant. the pool was heated though it probably did not need to be. unfortunately, terra, mark, faith and myself all had colds.

still, nothing could dampen our moods on this day. terra had a great day playing with her cousins: ben, cassie, lacie, mikyla, paige, lexi, and her brother, mark, of course. grandpa and grami were great for opening their home to 25+ people. grandma was awesome for bringing the cake's for terra's and faith's birthday.

terra and faith both cleaned up on presents, which just proves the generosity of this group. special thanks to uncle chris and aunt traci who gave terra a leapster, which we haven't been able to tear her away from since, (not that we've tried much.) i kid, but it is nice when one of the kids is somewhat self-contained.

all in all it was truly a wonderful day.

proposition 8

Proposition 8 - Eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry. Initiative constitutional amendment.

prop 8 if passed will overturn the california supreme court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. (in fact, the state supreme court's decision on may 15, 2008, merely made 2000's prop 22 unconstitutional on the basis it violated the equal protection clause of the california constitution.) $40 million is being spent to influence the 16.2 million registered voters of california on this issue.

those who support the amendment, which would in effect put a stop to gay marriages, are suggesting that the insititution of marriage is being threatened and that if the proposition is not passed, churches could lose their tax exempt status, public schools might start teaching gay marriage and/or people could be sued over their personal beliefs. "it's no longer about tolerance," according to supporters of the initiative.

those opposed to prop 8 contend that the proposition does not mention education and would not force churches to do anything. "california's laws already prohibit discrimination against anyone based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

the kinsey report may have intimated that 10% of all male humans tend to be homosexual and 5% of females, but more conservative estimates suggest the numbers are more likely about 4% and 2% respecticvely, world-wide and across all times. so again, by conservative estimate, perhaps one of every 33 people in the state of california is homosexual and would thereby be discriminated against by this initiative to ban gay marriage.

this initiative, along with the obama versus mccain race for the white house, is going to energize the vote in california on november 4th. i have driven past churches with huge signs unfurled from second story balconies urging voters to support prop 8. today i saw a homemade sign in the window of a trailer park that said something to the effect of: marriage should be about love, not gender. vote no on prop 8.

howard f ahmanson jr has put $900,000 of his own money into supporting prop 8. (it is not the first time ahmanson has put his money where his values are in fighting for conservative values.) money is prominently involved in our political struggles because it works, which of course infuriates some people and leads to discussions about campaign finance reform and the like. it is difficult to tell someone how they cannot spend their money and while i am not opposed to that fight, i see it as for another day. what is important now is not to be swayed by the money. every voter in california should vote their conscience on proposition 8.

that said, one should be sure they have uncovered their real conscience before proceeding based on their initial thought. i have read recently of mormons who are defying the mormon church in protest of its stance on this amendment. (the church is officially in favor of prop 8.) i have also read of at least one catholic priest who has risked his job in order to stand up against prop 8. aside from the episcopalians, it seems most churches are officially in favor of the ban. you do not have to be.

jesus was known to hang out with, or minister, to the sinners in his time and place. so if god does indeed hate fags, or to put it a bit more mildly, if homosexuality is in fact a sin, it would seem a couple of christian values are contending with one another. by ministering to harlots and the other downtrodden the pharisees took exception to, jesus as much as preached tolerance by example.

prop 8 is about discriminating against a segment of society, perhaps two of 66. the other 64, or 32 couples, may marry, while this one couple, (who is gay,) is denied the benefits of marriage under the law. is that loving your neighbor? is that fair? is that doing unto the least of your brethren as you would have done unto you?

the benefits under the law may be health care through an employer to one's spouse, or the right to make a decision about that person if they are severely disabled to do so for themself. these are important things.

some may prefer civil unions to marriages for gay people, which does deal with the nuts and bolts of the issue by affording equal rights under the law. in california's case, however, prohibiting gay marriage was deemed unconstitutional as it violated equal protection clauses. it is prop 8 which would add language to the state constitution defining marriage as strictly between a man and a woman.

again, is that fair? if three of 100 are gay, is it reasonable to say to them, "you are not entitled to your own version of the same institution so many of the rest of us have?" it's not like those who would marry are out to commit crimes.

tolerance is about allowing for differences. for example, i make a point of never discriminating in any way against those who would eat spinach. i would never do something so gross and disgusting but for those who would and do, (like my wife,) as foreign as i may consider them on some level, i tolerate their love of the leafy green.

perhaps a better comparison would be to conjure those who would discriminate in this way, by banning gay marriage. i am not in favor of discriminating against them in any way, even though the behavior may be in my book, much like a sin is in the christian's book. i am not worried though that they will take over my world and force me to go to church or hate gay people or anything of the sort. i believe in the united states constitution and the separation of church and state and therefore, i am comfortable with the idea that i can practice tolerance ad nauseum without any real repercussion to me. since tolerance makes me feel good, since tolerance makes me feel like i love others and respect differences, it is simply a plus plus for me to stand in favor of tolerance, and squarely against prop 8.

i will vote no on prop 8 and i encourage all californians to do the same.

consumerism

At the household level, intelligent consuming rather than consumerism, along with saving money, will help protect families from fluctuations in the market, especially with energy. Intelligent consuming is the simplification of wants and desires that arise from an understanding of the social crisis and its underpinnings.

-tom leh



i was involved in a virtual discussion recently regarding the downturn in the economy, the bailout, and all things political. there were perhaps 10-12 people involved in the emails, (four or five of whom were active,) and a friend of a friend's, tom leh, pretty much had the final word.

leh's last post was actually a lengthy diatribe on the various events and decisions that brought us to our current situation wherein we have stock markets plunging all over the world and the american people bailing out the wealthy class and ceo's who are most responsible for the problems. his analysis was pointed and accurate and he ended it with the quote above.

for all the corruption and greed and poor decisions which spurred this economic catastrophe, leh's final thought was constructive and hopeful and it gave me pause. i am chagrined by the fact that i have not been at good these things historically.

the american middle class has been notorious for living above our means. we use and rely on credit too much. we don't save. we're generally ill-informed as to the consequences of our consumerism.

as an example, i bought a truck a few years ago on credit. i knew it was slightly out of my league, or more costly than what i could afford, but i rationalized the decision on several levels. first, i bought this large, gas-guzzling vehicle because i had a new daughter and burgeoning family. i further rationalized that one by reminding myself how environmentally conscious i had been in the past with regards to my vehicles. recently i had owned a honda civic del sol and prior to that i had a daihatsu charade, which got 40 mpg in the city. in addition to those two i've owned a couple of other hondas, a toyota celica for a couple of years when i lived in japan, and my first car was a ford pinto so i am familiar with the small car.

the cost of the truck and the fact it was slightly higher than what i should have purchased, cut into my ability to save money. i figured since i did not have any other debts, no credit cards or outstanding loans of any sort, i could go ahead and bite the bullet on this one. it would be an asset once i paid it off anyway.

the point is, tom leh is right and i hope the american middle class hears this message and gets it. decisions like mine with the truck will be punitive in the coming economy. intelligent consuming means avoiding mistakes.

in my home we will continue to purchase the need-to-haves, while bypassing the want-to-haves or nice-to-haves. we're going to eliminate unnecessary bills and try hard to save some money even if it seems less than significant. we're going to try to simplify our wants and desires because we understand the social crisis at the heart of the economic crisis and the associated behaviors that beg to be checked.

at a time of a previous national crisis our president told us to go shopping. this time it will be important for americans to understand that this is bad advice. in this coming holiday season businesses who make the majority of their yearly profit in about a six-week span are going to fail and come january our financial crisis may look even worse than it does today.

unemployment is going to climb, as will crime and inflation and all the other indicators of despair. as a self-proclaimed champion of the middle class, i hope we all choose the behaviors that will help us to weather the coming storm and likely make us better citizens and more disciplined individuals for the future.

4!

4 years ago today this little angel came into my life.

terra has changed my life in so many positive ways i could hardly list them. the four years have been like a flash, too. i feel so fortunate to get to be her father.

ceep

that's him, the elusive and effusive christopher alonzo pryor. yesterday i was informed chris no longer walks the earth with us. apparently he passed away just about one year ago.


i feel badsadmad. chris was the real don quixote.


chris and i stopped actively being friends probably two years ago. we were out one evening at a bar we both praised as the coolest in pasadena. chris had a couple shots of cognac, i think, but it might just as well have been tequila. in any case, he was into mixing a couple of shots in with his oat sodas, (his term for beers.) the shots were like a truth serum for chris and as we sank into the familiar but confusing state of inebriation, chris could not be shut out of a round table discussion and in his zeal for stirring, interesting conversation, he let me know that he did not like me.

i think it was his way of saying he loved me. there was some follow-up discussion that spilled out on to colorado boulevard where his bike was tied to a stop sign. he kept trying to explain to me that he disliked me because of some great potential he saw in me. chris thought i was a marxist, (which is not all that far from the truth, i suppose,) and as such, he could not imagine how i could work where i worked at that time doing what i did at that time. in fact, chris and another friend of mine, the inimitable spifler, had argued about all things economic and race related in the comments of my blog a few years ago. were you to look through the comments of my blog in its earliest days, from inception in february of '05 right through the summer of that year, you would see many comments from chris, aka "crash pryor." we undertook blogging around the same time.

i think "crash," may have been a name he adopted after the oscar winning film came out, but i am not sure. he also went by "ceep," when i met/knew him. he meant it to read as "c.p.," but the funny thing is my wife always read it, like when he commented on my blog, as "seep." i preferred chris. because of the monikers i always felt like "chris," was more personal or intimate, and since he was my friend...



chris was a bad-ass writer. in spite of the fact that he got paid very little for what he wrote, he wrote volumes as evidenced by this blog. chris loved all manner of worldplay as should be noted by just a cursory scan of that blog. moreover, he commanded a vast array of knowledge and understood a wide variety of references. he was a renaissance man, which is at once refreshing and rare these days.

chris was an artist. he was angry. he loved everyone and everything. he raged and he raged. chris was determined to be outside of, to stand apart, to avoid stasis and always move forward. chris and i had differences because i believed if you lived in this world you had to make certain concessions for it. i live by the golden rule of firefighting, (which i learned in my days as a firefighter,) 'you can't help someone if you are not safe yourself.' and so it is that i did not, do not, live the rough life chris chose. despite my reservations about capitalism as a viable economic system and how i would infuse elements of socialism into our society above and beyond what we have today, (to include single payor healthcare,) i work and do the best i can so i can make a home for my family and so i can maintain a certain degree of personal, (social,) health.

it's like the discovery i intuited chris mccandless made at the end of his journey, dying in a trailer in the alaska wild. it seemed he came to conclude that man is in fact a social animal and as such has certain needs to maintain his health which include the pleasant company of his peers. socialization is thirsty work, son, (or yo, either of which chris would have said and did say plenty,) and so i take care of self first in as much as i need to and in my free time i rail against the wicked ways of the world. it works for me. it may have pissed my good friend off to no end. maybe he even judged me to whatever degree. still, it works for me and i judged chris too. i thought he did not understand me. no big deal.

i don't know how chris died and while it has only been 17 hours since i learned of his passing, it is a mystery i can hardly bear. i can't imagine what could kill chris. he was a fucking rock, riding his bike all over los angeles like a crazed banshee on a mission to expose all manners of corruption and write all wrongs.

i used to pick him up and drop him off at a little back apartment he lived in near the rose bowl. never having gone in with him i always wondered what the hovel looked like on the inside. i imagine his computer was central for writing and beyond that station, i doubt the rest of the place received much care. chris was not interested in much beyond his writing. he enjoyed the company of ladies and mixing with his friends. he worked out regularly and rode his bike everywhere he went including to the train or bus to link up for a longer trip.

it's been well over two years since chris and i were in touch. i see his last entry on his blog was in early october of last year, ('07.) he commented on my blog after i posted a picture of my new son; mark, in march of '07. i can see he posted the comment at 9:59am but i have no idea on which date this occurred, (due to the inadequacies of blogspot.)

Crash Pryor said...
Congratulations, man...didn't even know...

out of the blue one day i found this comment and i was elated to hear from chris. i had been lazy for letting go of the friendship. i was not offended, and i guess i will learn a life lesson from this but i just let chris go because life is complicated and i could not keep up with so many people and so because of a perceived sleight, i just let go. so when i found the comment i clicked on crash pryor and i went to his blog and read a few entries and eventually clicked to comment. i wrote a long and detailed message telling chris i wanted to catch up with him but before posting it my computer crashed. i was beyond pissed off about this-i lost the message completely. once i got my computer running again i just decided to let the comment go for now, thinking i would pop in on him one day. (therein lay the regret.)

how did chris die? what sent him to this thing he once referred to with me as "the dirt nap?" i emailed a friend of his today in search of an answer so we'll see if i ever get to the bottom of this mystery. i did not know chris's friends from virginia. he played me a tape once of f-stop, the band he was in once upon a time. they sounded good, reminded me of fishbone a bit.

i had checked in with his blog as recently as about one month ago, primarily because of a comment that was left on an abandoned blog of mine. (as an aside, here is another long exchange between chris and i on the nature of capitalism and its practical applications in modern society.) again i had no idea when the comment had been left so it occurred to me maybe auriferous was in fact chris pryor, the one and only ceep. after some investigation i discovered it was not ceep and had been left in march of this year.

as i write with just a couple of tears sliding down my face like tiny regrets, his friend kevin replied to my email and told me all he knew was that chris died on his birthday last year, or rather, he seems to have crashed his bike after passing out and died two days later, (oct. 17, 2007.)

the friend who originally informed me of all this said he had googled him and discovered the comments page posted by the mortuary in richmond as well as a tribute from one of his friends in mog. so i went and googled him also just now and discovered a well written and poignant blog entry from a good friend of chris's. therein chris's friend suggests chris was riding his bicycle to a local atm when he collapsed. to me, chris was the ultimate outlaw and this is why i remain worried. the pen is so mighty and i suppose it may be perceived of as paranoia but i just hope it really is as simple as all that. (and it probably is.) i am also saddened by the fact it was his birthday and i hope he did not die from a broken heart, from missing his loved ones back in virginia, from struggling so.

chris's blog ominously says "bob's your uncle," as the last sentence of his introduction. and so as i sit here listening to my uncle sing "lively up yourself," i salute chris pryor. he was a man in the best sense of the word. he was always true to himself and what quixotic behavior existed there only served to color him in the brightest hues of the life he lived.

he once quoted this song to me and i find it a fitting tribute to him. lyrically it is one of u2's best songs but it conjures chris in the various images constantly flying at you. chris was like that. in terms of f/stop, he was a 1.4, all at once. i regret that i did not get back in touch with chris in time but i am thankful to have known him.

martial law in the united states?!?

remember when all those house representatives were standing firm against the bailout bill? in spite of how we were told time was of the essence and we had to pass this thing as soon as possible, nothing too out of the ordinary occurred when it was voted down. so they went back to the table and re-wrote the thing adding hundreds of pages to the piece of legislation.

what else happened? well, representative brad sherman, (democrat from california's 27th district,) enlightened us regarding the tactics which occurred behind the scenes in that interim. it seems bush and paulson and the other major proponents of the bill pressured those who had voted no by warning that if it did not pass, "the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in america if we voted no."

MARTIAL LAW IN AMERICA?!

sherman goes on to highlight how it was all about employing fearmongering to get this bill passed. he said the sense of urgency was unjustified as he wanted to write a better piece of legislation, sans the pork and without buying back bad investment from the saudi royal family and the bank of china. (his amendment was not accepted.)

if you watch the entire embedded video above you will see that sherman, who was an accountant who worked for the government of the phillipines to track down and acquire deposed dictator ferdinand marcos' money and who taught tax law at harvard, debunks many of the lies associated with the bill.

it is all water under the bridge now as the bill has passed but it is worth watching anyway so you know the details of what is wrong with the bill. ultimately, the bill is a ruse at best. all american citizens should be plenty upset about it.