Existentially Dynamic

We are not the same, I am a Martian

2011-11-06T19:52:00.000-05:00

This post has been brought to you by the three mugs of Bud Light I had while writing it at Thunder Jackson’s on Bleecker Street and Sullivan Street near Washington Square Park. Thunder Jackson’s is currently a Halloween-themed bar playing a trance remix of “Missing” by Everything But The Girl. Fake spider webs are strewn across NYC train signs, chalkboards advertise cheap beer specials, pillars holding the building up have a million stickers advertising local bands and artists, and the scrawny bar hostess is promoting her own cleavage. I think, as I write this, I will tell you what song the hostess is blasting each time a new one comes on, just to try to bring the atmosphere to you and also because I fu%#ing feel like it [now Guns’ N’ Roses -- “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is playing].

Ah………the disappearance of The Clandestine Samurai. Let’s see…..when I was last here to push my values on you, I was discussing the mockery and satire of the Mathema-Christian, what kind of video games people should really be blaming real-life violence for, and the Near Government Shutdown by selfish Republicans. Then, like Keyser Söze, poof……..I was gone. I’ll tell ye where I bloody went: after 10 months of unemployment (starting in August) from being laid off by this old, cheap and idiotic Jazz Museum owner who ended up not being able to afford the salary he offered me, I was finally hired by an appliance warehouse located at a 30-mins. train ride South from my home [“Creep” by Radiohead]. I was hired as a Customer Service Representative (a position I’ve been doing for years) in May, and on the day I found out I was ecstatic. I celebrated over some beers with a pastor at my church at a pub in Chelsea and then headed home to watch SpongeBob before rejoining the labor force. The next week I showed up at my scheduled time, ready to learn, administrate, problem-solve and conquer. Two weeks after I started, I ran head first into the cold, disillusioning truth that the search for a new job had not ended at all [“Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana, which features one of my all-time favorite lyrics: “I wish I could eat your cancer*”]. If anything, it became more desperate.

I was placed in a seat and told to stay there at all times, answer the phones (there’s literally an incoming call at least every 6 seconds) and help customers. This demand came with no training on how this company wants its employees to conduct themselves with clients, no stable source of information about the products I’m supposed to help these customers with, and no education on company policy [“Roxanne” by Sting]. Just a seat amidst the most immature and insipid group of people I have ever had the chance to encounter. A customer will call me with any number of questions, ranging from “Do you have the compressor for this model?” to “Where’s the part I ordered 4 months ago that your company told me I’d have in 2 weeks?” to “I need that part that connects to the thermostat but powers the defrost heater and shuts down the Condenser Fan Motor. You got it?” I’m just as equipped to answer these questions as you are [“Seventeen” by Winger, which I find an oddly……inappropriate song]. Everyday, the other employees here are constantly screaming and arguing with customers trying to force them to accept half-baked answers to these questions just to get them off the phone. Where are the managers, you ask?

There are 2. One is an inept, narrow-minded hypocrite who tries to get the company more money by forcing people to accept the items we send them although they are either wrong or defective. The other is a senile, extremely old-fashioned maverick-wannabe who only helps when he wants to (which is never) and is the walking incarnation of a character most religious folk are familiar with [“La Grange” by ZZ Top].

There are other aspects of this hellhole, such as the overly-aggressive, simple-minded Tea Party member; the violent psychopath veteran (by veteran I mean both that he’s been at that company for 8 years, and he was also enlisted in The Army and stationed in South Korea earlier in his life) who does customer service mind you; the dopey, inept secretary whose life has not an iota of recognizable meaning; and 2 technicians, one of which is just as simple-minded and neglectful as the rest of them, and the other one, a selfish, alienating court-jester type who laughs everything off and does not recognize any importance other than his own.

Although it is constantly repeated on the news that there aren’t that many people that can afford to buy food and clothing, much less appliances, right now, this company is flourishing. They’ve started with a handful of employees years ago, and now have a marketing department, a customer service department, a sales department and a bunch of other people that do other crap. It’s obvious this company has zero interest in helping the unwitting clients who make it stay afloat. They have nothing but terrible ratings on Yelp.com and the Better Business Bureau is probably just waiting for permission to send F.B.I. agents busting through the windows at this point. But they’ve been in business for decades and had one of their best sales years in 2010. So now, if for every business relationship made with one client, the customer service team drives 2 other clients away (who then spread the word to other prospective buyers), how is the company generating this success? Obviously something corrupt is afloat. But I digress. All of this is way too much to unpack now [“Ready To Go” by Republica].

I’m sure you come across a bunch of people telling you “be grateful you have a job, others are struggling right now”, or “at least you’re not unemployed” just like I do. Or perhaps you are one of these people. If you are, you should look in the mirror and give yourself the middle finger for me. Just because jobs are low in supply right now doesn’t mean it’s ok for me to throw my humanity away just to keep one. If people woke the f@$% up and realized being rational about things would carry us better and much quicker through a recession than being a land of scavengers would, there wouldn’t be things like 99 Percenters protests or elevated rates of crime like there is now. I don’t ask for a lot, but my point is that there are jobs that you can do until something better comes along, and then lower than that are jobs that have to be vacated and replaced with a new one immediately because they are torturous to be at. This job is about 5 levels beneath both of those.

Nah, not really, but it definitely is the 2nd one [Another dance remix of “Missing” by Everything But The Girl].

Notes:
The title of this post is a reference to a line used extensively in this song.

*Been trying to use this as a pickup line for a new girlfriend. Will let you know when it produces a phone number instead of a look of disgust.

Resurrection

2011-09-17T12:33:00.001-04:00

I have been gone for quite some time, but this blog was never out of my thoughts.
I will return, my friends. I will return.........

No Heaven for Old Zealots: What Can We Learn?*

2011-05-28T13:42:00.002-04:00

[For numbered parts, see Notes at the bottom of the post.]

So. Here we are. Post-Rapture.

I don’t know you if you caught a piece of the eschatological fervor, but recently headlines were made by Harold Camping, former engineer, present 89-year-old mathema-Christian¹ and show host at California-based non-profit broadcasting station Family Radio. He predicted, through some “Biblical Numerology” that just appeared to be a handful of high school algebra problems mixed with plot points from “The Da Vinci Code”, that on May 21st, 2011 all humans who were pre-handpicked for Salvation by Christ like contestants on “American Idol” would ascend into Heaven and vanish. The Left Behind would slowly die off until October 21st came, when there would be an official death for Earth itself.

According to an essay he wrote on this whole thing: due to God being sick and tired of Satan-owned churches (regular churches that are now owned by Satan because God is not with them anymore) and the Gay Pride Movement, earthquakes were to start on the Western Hemisphere of the world at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and then roll across to rest of the world. I’m not sure why Camping foreseen the specific time of 6:00 p.m., although I’m sure it’s because he knew Christ was to use that morning for laundry and that afternoon to meet someone in SoHo for lunch, and He wanted to get this project done before that day’s new episode of “N.C.I.S.” premiered.

A glance at the date on your cell phone can tell you that May 21st has long passed. As far as I can see, which is only a few feet since I haven’t been able to afford a renewed prescription on my glasses, no one has Left. But I’m sure there are reports of people mysteriously missing and piles of clothes lying around floating about somewhere or other. Or there would be if Camping’s P.R. people were smart about this.

Family Radio used millions of donated dollars to put up posters saying that the non-picked unfortunates only had until October 21st to talk to that person on whom they’ve crushed for so long, or to go skydiving, or to complete “Grand Theft Auto 4” before you sold it back to GameStop, because Camping knew for sure that that’s the date Jesus put on His Google Calendar to return to Earth, despite the fact that a large amount of Family Radio’s employees were planning to return to work on the following Monday. Believers in his prediction setup websites to give their pets to others because they had a heart and didn’t want to leave their chihuahuas and goldfish alone in their respective apartments after ascension (although I wonder if some of them have since embarrassingly tried to get their pets back).

Yet, here we are. As it stands, people have gone to Camping’s home to question why nothing has happened, but he has not been available for comment.

I suppose it would stand to use up internet space to criticize Mr. Camping for ignoring the Holy Word itself and instead using a solar-power calculator and scrap paper for his eschatology, but no! The question here is: what can we learn from Mr. Camping?

Is it the reexamination of our lives under the fear of its impending end?
I tried this theory by helping to enliven his teachings. On that fateful day, with my mother in her bedroom sleeping, I starting thumping fists against the walls in my apartment to simulate an upcoming earthquake. The bass-sonorous booms sounded distant at first, but I gradually increased the strength in each slam to signal a closing proximity. My mother, frightened at the anxious prospect of becoming a piece of spiritual-nothingness, cried aloud in fright: “Boy, turn dat damn Lil’ Wayne shit down, I’m tryna sleep! You ain’t too ole’ fo’ me to bus yo ass!”². Hmm…..not the results I sought.

Are we to then learn that theories can become realities when the belief in them becomes strong enough? Well, as I’ve said, I haven’t gotten news of anyone being Returned To Sender on 5/21/2011, but what about the fact that so many believed that Christ was to return that day and take His handpicked back with Him? Was it Mr. Camping’s conviction in voicing his Family Radio broadcasts that told these guys he was the Truth and the Light? Do his teachings “all make sense” in some form or fashion?

I tested this theory myself after having my own revelation.
After multiplying the digits of J.K. Rowling’s birthday with the number of text messages sent globally in February of 2006, and then dividing that by the number of planets in our universe, and then mixing Kool-Aid powder and a Starbucks Frappuchino in a glass and throwing it at a pigeon, then coloring outside the borders on a black-and-white “Dora the Explorer” picture with crayons, the Answer came to me.
On December 25th, The G.A.S.³ Force Trinity: Walt Disney, Hitler and Mel Gibson, will rise from the dead and reclaim the war against the Jews of this world, committing a “Holy Genocide” and leaving us in a new, reborn Earth where people are liberated from overpriced Lox bagels and Natalie Portman⁴. The Palestinians will be free to take the Gaza Strip for themselves and interest rates in everything from bank loans to credit card payments will mysteriously go down.

Hitting the streets with a painted van and a cheap bullhorn a few weeks before Camping’s predicted date, I promoted this vision with an obnoxious voice and a lot of finger pointing. I went to parks, restaurants, community centers. Synagogues⁵. I did an interview or 2 at radio stations and for journalists. I screamed and ranted that people wake up and receive this most pious warning.

After fighting with a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses for territory at a train station, one passerby had the nerve to question the Truth that I labored to enlighten mankind with. Behind a table with pamphlets and Kinko’s printouts, I shouted through the bullhorn “Forsooth! Cut your earthly connection to the Jews, for the G.A.S. Force will return and their judgment will be swift! The roads will be coated with blood, and the new Earth shall become!” A curly-haired youngster of no more than 15 years of age accompanied by his clearly-skeptical father took a printout and read it, showing some semblance of curiosity.
I said “Prepare yourself, youth! Read “Shylock the Jew” multiple times and make sure you and all of your friends never tune into “The Jon Stewart Show” again!”
He responded, “Dude, this doesn’t make any sense. These gas force people are going to rise from the dead……but Mel Gibson is still alive.”
I felt sadness and pity at the prospect of this child’s spiritual darkness and failure to understand……but I didn’t have the patience to explain anything to him. So I smacked him in the head with my bullhorn and then ran to keep his father from wrapping his hands around my throat.

Generally, except for a ragtag group of White Supremacists (oddly enough) who loved what I was saying, but wanted to promote my teachings on their own time with a great distance away from me, no one came on board.

So then, what are the lessons about fear and belief to be learned by Harold Camping? I have no idea. When you figure it out, please notify me. I have to see about moving Halloween to September since no one will make it to its traditional date.

Notes:
*The title of this post is a reference to this book/film.
1) “Mathematician” – “tician” + “Christian” =
2) Translation: Young man, I am trying to attain rest! Turn the volume on that most disturbing rap raucous down this instant! You have not surpassed an age where a bout of physical discipline is no longer eligible!
3) G.lobal A.nti S.emite.
4) I kid, I joke. I love Natalie Portman and her shaved head to death. God is in the rain!
5) Didn’t get too warm of a reception in those. No idea why.

Answering some Plinky questions 5/14/2011

2011-05-14T13:10:00.000-04:00

Oh…hello! Didn’t see you there! Welcome to another episode of The Samurai answers Plinky. I’ve decided to throw out the old formula of picking three random questions to answer, because I won’t have answers for them all. And some of the questions are kind of corny and clichéd. So, I picked these three questions for this time around:

Posed on Thursday, Oct 21st, 2010
Are you an optimist, a pessimist, or something else?
Hmm……I expect the worst from people, so I guess I’m a pessimist. I still have hope for a brighter future, so I guess I’m an optimist. I’m not sure either one of those concepts completely color my life viewpoint, but if I had to pick one, I’d say pessimist. Humans create their own reality, but they don’t always keep this in mind when they give in to destructive and shallow urges. Continually.
However, it is fully possible for them to put a general halt to this, and in the state of the world today (as well as throughout history), the more substantial human being lives, hopes, and strives for what is possible. Not what simply…….is.

Posed on Sunday, November 28th, 2010
Yay or nay: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?
I look at love as a solid affirmation and appreciation of a human being. To truly love someone is to do for them as you would do for yourself (with respect to their [moral] desires and well-being). As that stands, I think it would benefit a person to love them, so that even after you lose them, they come out of the relationship a changed and spiritually stronger person. So, I will say better to have loved and lost.
Note: this answer does not take into consideration a person you’ve loved that was a piece of shit.

Posed on Monday, October 11th, 2011
Your house is on fire. Which keepsake items do you grab, and why?
You see, this goes back to the question of whether a person is who they truly are when they just act out of a blind passion or when they first deliberate and plan. This could also yield some pretty sad personifications for people, including me.
I’d like to say that I’d grab my books, T.V., Xbox and cellphone (shows you what I value, right?). But I highly doubt I’d be able to carry a 6-foot bookshelf full of novels out during a fire, and the Xbox might be a bit of a hindrance, too. So I may attempt to grab other things that I actually have the strength and energy to salvage.
Clothes are replaceable, and I can sleep on the floor just fine. The items I listed are replaceable as well, but look at how much an Xbox and flat-screen T.V. costs! Replacing those takes much more work than replacing the clothes (replacing a bed is costly as well, but I can wait for that just fine). I can’t do without my novels, “Law and Order” repeats or “The Saboteur” game-time; those are things that will help me in the down time while I struggle to get back on my feet.

The Near Government Shutdown

2011-04-16T09:45:00.001-04:00

People try to stay neutral and give all political sides (which in the U.S. is primarily Democrat and Republican) a chance to govern in various situations, even if it’s just to be in the name of being open-minded. I read people’s comments in blogs, news articles and on Facebook about how people shouldn’t vote for politicians based on ideology, but rather on how they are proposing to address important issues of the time. I, a staunch liberal, try to adopt that outlook…but it’s a bit difficult for anyone with logic and humanity, in and out of politics, not to see patterns that constantly emerge every time a right-wing candidate gets a hold of power.

Just a week ago, a government shutdown, what would’ve been the 9th or 10th in American history, was almost going to be administrated by the Conservatives and Tea Party members in the House of Representatives and the Senate who wanted to stop Barack Obama from spending government money on programs for healthcare, unemployment, the arts and sciences and education.

A government shutdown means that employees who work directly for the government would’ve been sent home on non-pay status (unless exempted because people lives depend directly on their job) for an indeterminate amount of time, national parks, museums and monuments would be closed down and forced to lose potential revenue, patients stop being admitted into the National Institute of Health and toxic waste clean-up around the country comes to a halt, amongst other stuff. In an economy that’s just barely making its way back to a healthy state, the Repubs want to stop more people’s income, which will in turn ripple its way through society and affect others trying to make a living.

Since 2003, Dubya the Monster led our country into a sharp economic descent with his unnecessary and unjustified war in Iraq (which was primarily meant to claim the oil refineries in Iran for his and his Big Oil friends’ pockets). After his second term (which he won by his brother’s corruption) finished, Barack Obama stepped in and began initiatives to get people hired again, to get quality education to kids whose families wouldn’t be able to afford, to get healthcare to people who can’t afford it, amongst other things. The conservatives are up his ass because he began using government money to achieve these ends, although the nation is in debt.

Funny, since everyone will tell you that this recession is as bad as the one that occurred during World War II. And government spending is exactly what got the country out of the recession that time.

For the last few weeks, conservatives in the House of Reps and the Senate, with John Boehner as one of their head speakers, fought to pass a bill demanding as much as $70 billion in budget cuts, with the riders that the government stop sending “Abortion Funding” to Planned Parenthood, a national reproductive health services organization, and that they stop funding environmental policies, particularly one that would’ve installed Federal Wilderness Protection for a certain million-acre plot of undeveloped land in the West.

The Repubs say Obama is only installing the FWP to prevent private sector companies from coming in and drilling that land for oil. As far as I’m concerned, the idiots just made a solid case for him without him even saying anything.

But with the first rider, they’ve again proved that in order to espouse patriotism, you have to get rid of reality. The government funds Planned Parenthood so that they may be able to give treatment for STD’s, pregnancy testing, cancer screenings, birth control and other services to underprivileged women who can’t afford it. None of this money goes to abortion, patrons pay for those themselves. Not to mention the fact that abortions are an infinitesimal portion of the services that P.P. provides, despite the Repubs wanting to identify the entire organization as an “abortion center”.

But here’s the kicker in all this: if the Republicans were to have gone ahead with the government shutdown, pay would’ve been delayed for soldiers in Afghanistan and Libya and wherever the hell else there’s probable oil sources are.
The military, an institution usually shunned by liberals and praised as high as God Himself by the right-wing for being the symbol of what a “worthy” American looks like, would’ve had their pay taken away from them by the conservatives if the Federal Government didn’t stop their “abortion funding”. I hope soldiers are paying attention to this, so they may see the party that will actually make the military suffer if they can’t push their illogical and inhumane agenda on the nation.

I watched a video of a Fox News interview with Mike Huckabee where he was asked his opinion of this whole thing, and during his explanation that the Republicans should take whatever they’ve won from this battle and move on, he said that “The President, the Senate and the media will blame the Republicans” for the possible shutdown because “they won’t see it as ‘The Republicans were really trying to save America’”. Come, come now. I would think that modernism, or even post-modernism (perhaps especially), would completely decimate the mentality that bringing a country salvation means destroying its spirit. But the GOP still drags their antiquated ideals into today’s spotlight. And it’s still left to the more enlightened folk to fight these clowns.

Answering some Plinky questions 3/19/2010

2011-03-19T18:00:00.001-04:00

Good lord, man. Earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, the U.S. just launched an attack on Libya (while we're still in Afghanistan), The Jasmine Revolution in Egypt and new ones in Tunisia and one in China. What the hell is the world coming to? A long time ago, I plagiarized the question "Is life all war with periods of peace, or all peace with periods of war?" It appears to be one of those things that are pointless to ask for an answer, but rather an existentialist inquiry to inspire people to push life towards one side or the other. At any rate, it's been a while since I've come here, and my life is a bit too stressful to cover any one of those subjects in full detail for individual blog posts of their own, so, I'd like to task myself with a Plinky e-mail for blog updating purposes.

I choose one of the e-mails of random questions they send me, pick three random numbers (ranging from 1-6, usually) and try to answer one of those corresponding numbered questions. Answers are not always guaranteed, since no human person has a valid answer for everything. Here we go:

Posed on Tuesday, March 1^st, 2011
Is chivalry dead?
Hmmm.........I guess, in some ways. I certainly won't say I was a fan of it. The idea of me having pre-written behaviors for my relations to the other sex is a pile of garbage, if, by "chivalry", we mean the whole make sure you hold the doors open for women and put your jacket in the puddle so they could step on it and taking more than the actually-needed chunks out of my life and mental energy to remember what should be said to a woman, and what kind of gifts to buy a woman, and the specific things done to honor their beauty and all that other rubbish.
These are things that should be done for everyone! Or I should say, if there are to be codes of conduct, they should point to the way of behavior towards human beings as a rational and loving people. And they should be done because they're heartfelt, not because they're obligatory to me as a man. There's more to say in order to clarify, but I'm a bit tired now. A future edit will come.

Posed on Sunday, February 27^th, 2011
Describe your most embarrassing foot-in-mouth moment.
Off the top of my head, I don't remember one, although I'm sure one exists. In today's political climate, inappropriate comments do more good for society than proper ones (based on the individual's definition of proper, I guess). I usually associate what is and what is not proper to say with patriotism. So, perhaps the right-winged pundits deem it inappropriate to speak badly about your country. And consequentially this issue goes into the realm of lies and truth (only speak about the good things your country does, or about your country doing "good things", or go somewhere else). Of course, no true intellectual deems this kind of semantic trichotomy worth its salt, and so, an almost fervent rebellious religion of speaking out loudly against the country develops, in order to preserve the truth and an enlightened republic, instead of drinking the ridiculous conservative Kool-Aid and spouting "Our Country is the Best Country" all over the place for no reason other than pride and simple-mindedness.
But I digress.........I don't remember my most embarrassing foot-in-mouth moment, although I'm sure some would say it's my answer to the first question on this post. Or perhaps this answer.

Posed on Saturday, February 26^th, 2011
What unusual food combination is surprisingly tasty?
What comes to mind upon reading this question is my friend Kevin, who, years ago, used to eat sandwiches composed of peanut better, jelly, and nacho-flavored Doritos^TM. This was a most curious delicacy, but I've never worked up the testicular fortitude to try such a thing. Another dish that comes to mind is my ex's ex-best-friend's boyfriend, who used to eat chicken alfredo with ketchup. Now this was a terrible sight.
As for me, I'd probably have to say that chopped hot dogs in tomato sauce with rice is probably the tastiest unorthodox combination on my palate.

Analyze This 2

2011-03-03T13:06:00.004-05:00

A dream:

I was going to some sort of corporate office to use their shower, which was right in someone's cubicle.
Some guy, a manager of some sort, asked me how the hell I managed to get in the building. I didn't know, so I left for the final time (it felt like using their shower was something I did on the regular basis)
Downstairs, it was a sunny day out with rich, blue skies and the whiteness of delineated clouds reflecting off the columns and rows of windows on the corporate building (many images of which can be seen here). Groups of people in business suits were going in and out of glass revolving doors to the lobby. Typical corporate machine imagery.
I start talking to some window washer, an older black guy, and he's telling me that if we board his elevating platform, we could wash the windows way up where the building meets the sky. I was not going for this, so I began to walk away.
The point-of-view in the dream began to move away, and suddenly I was a character in a video game, shooting a two-armed cannon at a creature of some sort. I had teammates. Then, I took off a virtual reality helmet in which that was playing out, and I was actually in an office that took up an entire building floor (I knew this but didn’t see it). Others were next to me and took off their helmets as well. I began to be yelled at by my supervisor for trying to work more hours than I was scheduled. So, I went to my supervisor’s room to start packing up to go home, and she asked me why I was leaving since it wasn’t time yet. Back in the room with the helmets, my co-worker, an older Asian guy, asked me what I wanted to do to pass the time. I suggested we go back in the video game. So we both put the helmets back on, and then I woke up.

"Invisible Things"

2011-02-10T11:57:00.002-05:00

"'How can anyone estimate the ballistic qualities of words? Invisible things happen in intangible moments. What should keep us writing is precisely that possibility of explosions.'"

--pg. 205 in the hardcover of "Ilustrado"

Answering some Plinky questions 1/21/2010

2011-01-21T15:30:00.004-05:00

Are you there, internet? It’s me, the Samurai. Once again, the thought-provoking site Plinky has e-mailed me a list of things worth pondering in the spare moments of life in today’s economic and political climate. I have to announce, though, that the nature of these questions will change in the future, as I personally selected the following 3 questions instead of them being randomly chosen, which would produce a truly heart/body/brain-picking blog post.
So then, I shall attack them and then be on with myself. Commence!

Posed on January 8th, 2011
Do you prefer to talk or text?
I was just arguing with an ex-friend who became un-ex’d about this. I much, much prefer to text.
I notice a lot of people complaining about how technology is distancing people from each other. That we are in the Wired Age and that all interaction goes into smartphones and iBooks way before they come into contact with actual people.
If you notice, before this age was the age of a lot more wars and conflict amongst distant countries and even in the countries themselves, where the North or West was completely disconnected from the East or South. Also, the age before this was the one where the only communication soldiers had with their families back home were letters and phone calls, as opposed to the Skyping that unites the two with live visual, audio communication that we have now. It was also vaguely the age where people who did not have money or status would not receive information about the poverty, death and disease that goes on in other parts of the world and be filled with the humanitarian spirit to speak on those things to others or go attend to them. The age before this was the one where life in different geographical areas would grow in completely different directions, until they would perchance meet and crash into each other and the streets would run with blood. But I digress.
I’m not a people person in the least. It used to greatly antagonize me to have to call someone and meet them just to ask the few simple questions “How are you?” and “What are you up to these days?”. A phone call to this effect is chock full of anxiety from awkward pauses and meek attempts to come up with stuff to talk about when there’s clearly nothing worth conversing on.
A text message is ultra-efficient in this situation; I can send a text asking those very questions, and continue to go on about my business while the recipient of said texts get back to me in their spare time. There is no forced attention on a conversation that has lost all relevance before it even started, no anxiety about forcing the phone call to be full of talk that isn’t there. If you want a clear picture of why phone calls, mixed with prudence, waste huge amounts of time and energy, go to link I placed above.

Posed on December 16th, 2010
If there were no consequences, what is the most evil thing you would do?
Hmmm….well…this would then suggest that I want to do evil and am only not doing it because I would have to pay for my actions; quite the picture of a soulless person, indeed.
Although, I’d be lying if I said I was above this. There are a few people on this earth who deserve some suffering time for things they’ve done, and a few corporations who’d be just fine if their banking accounts were Clandestinely tapped for a few million. But I’m afraid that that is all I have to say about that.

Posed on December 17th, 2010
Is it always better to know the truth, even when it hurts?
A principle that should be written in stone, I’d say.
An informed life is 10 times as important as an emotionally comfortable one, even rendering the latter an absolute sin in some cases. And I’m aware that saying this now may curse me to live out some situation that might make me want to eat those typed words, but even then I’m sure that I’d say the truth is the one and only valid option.

Call of Wikileaks: Black Ops

2011-01-10T17:06:00.008-05:00

You know, I noticed that Politicians and “concerned” parents will rant and rave about a piece of media that has violence (and sometimes gore) if it goes against their values, usually voiced under the cloak of being worried about the impressions said media will give their children (or "the" children for a more humane feel). But when another piece of media comes out that captures their values, despite it promoting all kinds of things that are wrong with international thinking today, all is quiet on the homefront. Just take a look at this and humor me for a sec. Or an hour or so, this blog post is long. NOTE: This video is graphic and very real.

Not sure of what you just watched? Let me try to summarize.

Julian Assange, A 39-year-old Australian journalist, publisher and software developer, started a website named “Wikileaks” in 2006, a place where the public can have access to secret and classified documents that governments in their respective countries try to hide. Whistleblowers contact Assange through encoded channels on the internet and pass him files that may show a bit of a different side to a particular war, business practice, government affair or what-have-you that the media presents.

Here is one of those Wikileaks, published in 2010: a video that takes place in Baghdad, 2007 during the Iraq War.
It’s from the point of view of United States Army soldiers, coming from a full day of attacks with Iraqi Insurgents with small arms and grenade launchers. They’re hovering in an Apache helicopter watching another group of “Iraqi Insurgents” walking through an open area. The soldiers swear that a few members of the group are holding AK-47’s and one has a Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher. They ask authorities over their headsets for permission to shoot and receive it, immediately firing upon the group, sending a few of them to the afterlife and the rest running and injured. One particular “Insurgent” has been shot and is trying to continue escaping, but the Apache pilots let him have another healthy barrage of 30mm rounds before he gets a chance at life again. A van appears and one of the wounded hop in, but the pilots once again request permission to fire before they can get away and they pierce the van with a hail of ammo.

Typical military activity for the safety of our nation, except for a few, miniscule notable bits:
--Almost everyone in Iraq has an AK-47, to protect themselves amongst other possible reasons. The presence of an RPG was the real alert. The problem is: besides the fact that the ground group was literally doing nothing but walking, the U.S. Army soldiers were given permission to fire on the group before the authorities were even told that they had RPG launchers.
--That guy crawling on the floor? His name is Namir Noor-Eldeen, he was a freelance photojournalist, not an insurgent.
--The RPG launcher Noor-Eldeen was holding? Was not a launcher, it was a camera.
--The van came to pick up the wounded and take them to safety. The people operating it were unarmed.
--The injured guy trying to get into the van? His name is Saeed Chmagh, a camera assistant working for Reuters news service and helping Noor-Eldeen. Also not an insurgent. The “RPG” he was killed for holding was also just a camera.
--Amongst the van’s occupants was an unarmed father of two children, who was shot and killed.
--Both of the aforementioned man’s children were also in the front seat: a 4-year-old girl who was shot, and an 8-year-old boy who suffered brain damage from shrapnel.
--The firing soldier’s response to injuring the kids? “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their children to battle.”

Now, this isn’t as bad as what followed afterwards, when these same soldiers targeted an apartment complex with three families and bombed it with Hellfire missiles, but an important point in the commentary on this video was made. The group on the ground were calmly walking somewhere and the pilots opened fire on them, in the same way you’d open “Tetris” or “Pac-Man” on your phone while waiting for your laundry to finish the dry cycle. In this video you see “these young pilots, acting like their playing video games…” Yes, but surely, playing “Donkey Kong” or “Guitar Hero 4” wouldn’t breed psychological results such as this. So which video games?

Two games immediately come to mind: “Grand Theft Auto 4”, a 3rd person urban crime story, and “Call of Duty: Black Ops”, a 1st person war narrative. Sure, there are numerous games which can come up in discussion of this topic, but I picked both of these because one received a whole bunch of controversy it didn’t actually deserve, while the other mostly made its way into millions of households and game systems without the speculation and criticism it should’ve gotten. Entertainment wise, both of them are excellent to add to the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 library. But we’re talking about the way their violence influences.

“Grand Theft Auto 4” was pure fodder for massive controversy when it came out; almost solidly criticized by the right-wing. They called it a “murder simulator” and said it promotes heartless criminal activity to the youth, although I’m willing to bet the real problem was because the game portrayed the law and the government as corrupt as ever.

The main character Niko Bellic, upon being told by his cousin Roman that riches and a luxury life await him in Liberty City (New York City), leaves a war in his unnamed Eastern European country to find that his cousin actually lives in a shabby apartment, running a cab business and in debt to numerous loan sharks. Niko goes to attend to the loan sharks and begins to get caught up an intricate web of criminal activity. The story from there on is one of someone paradoxically trying to escape crime by participating in it. The whole thing was a criticism of America’s capitalist ways, and the dream it promotes to the world that it has the ability of realizing for everyone, although America doesn’t describe the morals you have to trash in order to achieve it.

Missions never require you injure or harm innocent people, although it is fully possible for you to do so and even profit from it. People of all nationalities have evil and good traits, as well as their own personalities and interests. Finally, murdering is not even close to being the only that you do. Other missions include racing, stealing cars, driving the taxi for your cousin, escorting people to safety, amongst many other immoral and moral things. This particular portrait is the fabric of life for many people. For the game to make the kind of commentary that it does, that kind of realism is required, and to the true intellectual (and mature), that realism is much more preferred to, say, silly noble-wannabe games and shows where children never die, the good guy always prospers, authoritative figures are always wholesome and dedicated, nuclear families are the pillars of all thriving societies, and minorities can only ever be supporting characters to the big picture.

That much controversy was not made of “Call of Duty: Black Ops” when it was released, which was really the only time I was seriously moved to be against a game not getting in the hands of children.

It is the story of Alex Mason, a SOG operative who mysteriously keeps having numbers flashing in his head, being strapped to a chair and held captive in a dark room. Electronically cloaked voices from elsewhere interrogate him as to the meaning of the numbers and the game’s stages themselves are flashbacks through Mason’s military history during the 1960’s as he and his interrogators work to figure out why these numbers keep popping up.

Bear in mind, what I just described is something you just watch, or, at some moments and even worse, simply observe. But the one, single, solitary thing you ever do in that game, the only thing you ever interact with from start to finish is:
Kill the communists.
Kill the foreign communists.
Regardless of the year in the 1960’s; regardless of the city or country: Kill the foreign communists.
Your American friends and a few from other countries occasionally have faces and things to say. But ultimately you have all kinds of guns at your initial disposal, all of which project from the center of the screen as if you yourself are holding it, and you stay permanently aimed your enemies, who are facially nothing more than indistinguishable blurs that let out segments of foreign language for authenticity and appear as abundantly as ammo for your guns do.

First-person view.
Unregulated violence towards a national other.
The cloak of military cause.
Putting all this under the label “Hero”.

Which violent video game looks much more like the Wikileaks video than the other?

The conservatives will swear on every innocent life they’ve taken that Wartime is mostly the place where a Hero can thrive. Then videos like this one come out from out of the rug they’ve tried to sweep it under, and the dismal side of Heroism suddenly becomes some sort of “necessary evil”. Violence in all places is bad, regardless of where it happens or why. But the difference in the cases of these two games is that one kind of violence is a critique on a shallow American concept that is to cause its players to think, and the other kind is something the game tells you to wholeheartedly embrace if you want to be a national hero, consequently producing soldiers like the ones you hear and watch in the first video above. I was doubtful about Assange and this Wikileaks project, but now I keep it as a favorite site on my browser. You should too, if you’d really like to make informed decisions in your life…in and out of politics.

Obama's Minority Report

2011-01-03T17:15:00.004-05:00

Hmmm.....so, I have other things to write but didn’t feel right putting them down here unless I first (briefly) tackled what I now generally thought of Obama’s presidency.
Well, while he certainly is no W. Bush and I don’t regret voting for him at all, I’m not entirely sure yet that I would vote for him again.

A Facebooker once expressed that presidents need one term to settle into the Oval Office seat and a second term to truly get down to action. On the one hand, people would’ve obviously ate chapstick for a year before having W. Bush as commander-in-chief a second time, and yet he snatched the seat again, with numerous environmental, war and civil crimes under his belt to prove it. So, I don’t see why we should not grant Barack a 2nd chance as well, since a majority of his first term was spent bickering with Senate Republicans and the people over things like the 2007-2010 Financial Crisis and him handing over tons of money to the banks to bail them out (so the people wouldn’t receive foreclosure on their houses), him pulling troops out of Iraq but raising their numbers in Afghanistan, this recent issue on the Bush Tax Cuts, and the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

On the other hand, it’s that inclination to constantly seek the approval of conservatives, alongside promises unkept, that destroys his original 2008-2009 liberal image. His original supporters deserted him over his decision to keep the troops in Iraq, whom he promised he would withdraw immediately during his campaign (and eventually did, the last combat brigade was withdrawn on August 19th, 2010). Furthermore, his continual seeking of a compromise in ending/continuing/altering the Bush Tax cuts (which had the rich pay the government less in taxes) with the conservatives hurt his public image even further, although his attempt at this compromise did allow unemployment benefits to be extended and funded. In general, a lot of people aren’t sure what they voted for anymore.

He did bring a bit of redemption lately, however, by repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which basically states that if military personnel find out and determine (with evidence) that a soldier is gay, they have the right to kick them out of the military. Obama himself has never agreed with homosexuality, or at least he doesn’t agree with gays being allowed to get married. But he at least had the civility to respect their right to serve our country, which matters a lot to me since I don’t see how the fingers that pulls triggers and place bombs and drive tanks rely on the sexuality of their owners to be able to perform their service. He also, this morning enacted the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which provides funding and medical help to those who are sick as a result of helping out with recovery efforts after 9/11, something no rational human being can see the reason for not being in place a long, long time ago.

So, as it stands now, he is in purgatory. The liberals are starting not to like him because he keeps looking like he’s more conservative than they originally thought (which leaves me not understanding why conservatives are complaining). I don’t fully understand where his administration is coming from in telling the government workforce to stop looking at WikiLeaks articles and asking other governments to restrict Julian Assanges’ travels in response to the WikiLeaks situation (both a person and situation that I’m very interested in and will be blogging about later). I’m still waiting for the news to blast a bunch of reports on new bills passed and government investment into improving the infrastructure of the Native Americans (which he also promised during his campaign), although he understandably has a lot on his plate as it stands now. I certainly and staunchly want a liberal in the White House, but until I see a truly progressive fire in O’s belly, I’m not sure he will get my vote again.

Mario Savio on the operation of the Machine

2010-12-16T13:44:00.006-05:00

So, like the rest of the latest generation, I first heard a piece of this speech as a sample from the Linkin Park song "Wretches and Kings" off of their latest album "A Thousand Suns". Mario Savio, presented in this video, was the leader of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960's, a campaign of protests in Berkeley, California by the students of Berkeley University against the university administration for free speech and academic freedom on-campus (against which, there was a ban).

I was so moved by it that I was compelled to designate it a blog post of its own. So, here it is (needless to say but being said anyway: Mario Savio is the 2nd speechgiver):

10 All Souls Questions

2010-12-11T16:00:00.010-05:00

So, I came across The Pixies’ blog today and, on his most recent blog post, read answers to 10 random questions that were posed to one of his friends on an All Souls College exam, which he decided to answer himself. I was quite intrigued and stimulated by the questions and wanted to provide answers that were different then what Pixies put. I went to the site where a PDF of the questions were posed, and there were 10 sets of them, tackling all kinds of issues.

So, I wrote down the range of number of questions in each set and asked my mother to pick a random number in each range. Here is what she wrote down.

So here is what I answered:

2) Do we need a written constitution? European or other?
Most certainly, if not for the God-less literalists who ask dumb questions like “There’s nothing saying that killing people is wrong, so why shouldn’t I do it?”, then just for the sake of any given nation’s people being united by the document that declares the basis for what is considered a civilized and law-abiding person in their country.

24) What difference should it make to feminism whether gender differences are natural or socially constructed?
A rational feminist fights for equal opportunity in labor, school, and any other infrastructural or social position, as well as equal weight in their say of the direction of the country or world. If the gender difference is socially constructed, then the fight is against humanity’s stupidity. If the gender difference is natural, then the fight is against their own physical limits.

31) Should we regret the establishment of the green belt?
Most certainly not. If anything, some green belts should re-created.

30) Does archaeology allow us to assess standards of living?
I was under the impression that it did. I don’t see why it wouldn’t.

19) Can happiness be measured?
In very general, socially perceived ways. Not scientifically, unless there is specific biologic actions/reactions that occur when the body believes happiness is present (most of this can be observed during sex). I think a good start is finding out if the individual is happy – generally satisfied, happy – in good spirits, happy – appreciative, etc., and go from there.

17) If the world were run by economists we would not need a World Trade Organization. Discuss.
Economy is not my strong suit, but I suppose this is the same as saying “If America were run by Wall Street, we would not need government regulation.”

15) Should governments support scientific research when there may be no technological benefit?
Why must the only benefit be to technology?

4) Is there anything a historian of literature can learn from soap-operas?
Soap-operas can make just as much of a statement about their current time and social context as literature can. So, the historian can learn from it the same things (s)he learns from a thorough study of literature.

7) Does contemporary aesthetics need a concept of beauty?
Tricky question, much trickier and in-depth than what I'll give here.
By establishing a central concept of it, beauty can be subject to innovation, agreement and union amongst a majority, standards, and can just be something tangible in everyday communication. Of course, the downside of this is that if there is a solid concept of beauty, you, by default, designate a solid concept of ugly.
In response to this, multiple types of beauty concepts can be constructed, but regardless of how many there are and the number continues to grow to, there will always be someone who doesn’t fit any of them.
So, I will lean in the chaotic direction and say no.

29) What does sovereignty mean today?
Today? It means “rich businessman”. Note: this word is also interchangeable with the adjective “corrupt”.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and believe I will pick another random 10 questions to answer in another blog post!

Zombies........Damn*

2010-11-25T17:10:00.000-05:00

First: Today is the day when, in the Year of Our Lord 1621, there was a 3-day harvest feast in the Plymouth Colony in America, attended by 90 Native Americans of the Wampanoag tribe and 53 Separatist pilgrims from Europe. I think, if I or this country were to progressively affirm the harvest feast of American Thanksgiving, it would be celebrated by re-establishing a relationship with and strengthening the presence of various Native American tribes whom are now suffering greatly in many aspects due to the almost non-existent assistance from government, business or societal entities.

But enough of that........ this particular blog post is destined for a bit more loose and frivolous blabbering than what you are normally used to on here. Today, instead of reiterating my personal battles with stiff, rich knuckleheads who put their own savings and profit over giving other people jobs, I’m going to answer a question I got from plinky.com, a site that poses random questions for people to answer in order to inspire thought, emotion, whatever. The question I chose is:

“The zombie apocalypse has arrived. What do you do?”

Well, to be extremely childish in my honesty, the first thought that comes to mind is the opportunity to be a make-pretend Ninja! I mean, zombies do not require special skill to be attacked and put down. A 10-year old with her father’s pitchfork could squash a relatively small army of them. I’ve always relished the fantasy of being a lightning-quick, direct-hit death machine with the agility of a panicked squirrel and the fatal effect of an infant forced to smoke crack at birth. I actually have neither of these strengths, due to laziness and real life not having the same existential fabric as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, but the zombies wouldn’t know the difference. They’d just be busy toppling over from the furious force of a foot, fist, baseball bat, barbell, printer, Android phone, Grandmother.

I also think about the stereotypical scene in any given zombie film where a character is fighting off a horde or two, but realizes they’re trapped in a gruesome circle of undead and reacts by making an idiotic face of horror before fatally submitting to the zombie’s hunger for flesh. This is, has always been and always will be, stupid……although I guess it depends on where you are. If they’ve trapped you in your garage or room or something, I guess that’s different (and even then, you could probably fight your way out). But you could climb on top of a light fixture or a car or something and wait until help arrives. They usually come in thick packs, stumbling over each other for dinnertime access to your innards: I’m sure simple amateur ballerina moves will allow you to walk on their heads and escape to less claustrophobic areas, which is a better defensive move against zombies than just standing there and screaming from being overwhelmed.

Perhaps the realism of such situations escape me, but hypothetically speaking, that’s where I stand. What say you?

*The title of this post is in reference to a line said in this film commercial.

In Spite of Spite or The Unemployed and the Anxious

2010-10-08T14:04:00.000-04:00

Have you read "The Courage to Be" by Paul Tillich? Quite the pivotal read for me. In it, he speaks having the courage to be [yourself] in spite of the things that antagonize or the dark consequences that may come out of having such in attitude. He speaks of having the courage to have hope in spite of things seeming hopeless. The courage to affirm your individual life in spite of it being social fabric-death.¹ I struggled with writing this blog post because: 1) I wasn't really sure what point it had, 2) I am always reluctant to be more than a certain level of personal on here and 3) of the possibility of hurting my working-man future. But in spite of these things, the reality is that a certain matter or idea comes up in my life and begs me to be written. I then have to fight with finding how to properly word it and then putting it on loose-leaf paper/blog page/toilet paper², which in this case is my recently acquired unemployment status. I cannot have lunch or go to work or even work on my novel in peace without putting it down and expressing it satisfactorily, in spite of a missing point or a fear of a perception of self-importance. Spite, however, has been an unfortunately common theme in the recent areas of my life, and not in ways that inspires courage.

I have to move out of my house. Not in a my-lease-is-up-and-they're-raising-the-rent sense, but an it-is-sometimes-absolute-torture-to-live-with-my-mother sense, or an I-am-way-too-old-to -still-be-here-sense. And there was a tangible fight to change these conditions embodied in me working at a furniture store company in Tribeca, Manhattan, with a company that I've been employed by for 10 years. My job as customer service was fine and I worked very hard I might add, not just on the job but with myself in reducing what I spend money on so that I could save up and be gone, but tons of individual factors were a bit more than frustrating to deal with.

Customers would come up and ask for things that were clearly against the store's policies, such as returning a piece of furniture way past time the allowed time to do so or asking to purchase a table for more than half the price the store was asking it to be purchased for (excuses used including "You know that if you don't let me buy this table now, it's just going to sit here for years and years afterwards and you'll lose money. It is impossible for any other single person in the world to be interested in purchasing this table." or "I've been shopping at this store for years. This, in my mind, means I have complete control over how you conduct business"). Of course, I do not have the authority to make decisions on these kinds of matters; the customers have to talk to managers. But, in spite of the fact that it is their job to be present for such times, half of them would usually be nowhere to be found. I would actually go as far to say that one particular manager would purposely hide somewhere or have a cigarette or feign being busy with absolutely nothing just to avoid dealing with customers like he's signed up and obligated to do. So the customer frolics around in their own frustration and I'm forced to tell them to wait while I fetch someone to make a decision. And if the customer ultimately ends in being unsatisfied, the blame falls on us, in spite of the fact that I’ve done all that I could to ensure satisfaction.

If not entrapped in this, I'm usually busy doing tasks assigned by the President of the company that are obviously in someone else's talent to do. Now, don't get me wrong, I have no problem at all doing tons of things outside of the jurisdiction that the company has hired me for, I've been doing it for years. But I mean that, following the resignation of an office worker, the President would just ask us (the team of customer service people) to pick up her slack without actually considering whether we were capable of doing such things or not. In addition, he would demand that huge tasks that obviously and inevitably take some time, due to the disorder that the authorities persistently and lazily kept things in, be done in a matter of minutes. As a matter of fact, I remember certain times when he'd ask me to look up records for a customer whose name he did not have and whose files were buried somewhere deep in a pile of old binders that require Indiana Jones' efforts to dig out, then walk away and turn around literally two seconds later and ask me if I've found it.

At any rate, after applying and sending out resumes by the thousands, a museum finally decided to give me a face-to-face chance and, after 3 interviews and periods of nerve-wracking and frustration, I got the job! I finally obtained an opportunity to move on with my life!...........only to be fired two weeks later.

My immediate boss, a savvy, intelligent and understanding young woman, was fine. She always worked with me and answered any questions I had about things in the office. I would’ve proudly tied her shoes and spread jelly on her bagels in a clockwise motion every morning if she wanted me to. Unfortunately, she herself was under the employment of an illogically manipulative, narrow-minded and unskilled moron who had the highest expectations for employees, in spite of himself being nowhere near able to fulfill these things. In spite of just coming from a 10-year employment in one place where they have their own way of doing things, he expected me to come in and learn all the specifics of working in that office in a matter of just 13 working days. For the most part, I did, but this apparently wasn’t enough for his infinitesimal amount of patience. He criticized membership letters for new members of the museum that I printed, in spite of the fact that I printed what he and employees before me have been using for however long that company was there sans me adding the date of that day and the new member’s name (and I mean he criticized things like there being one space more behind someone’s name, or a semi-colon being where a comma should be). He criticized the way I stapled some papers; apparently it was done too sloppily (it went into the paper too deep), in spite of the fact that he had drawers filled with files that were stapled in all sorts of disorderly ways. He fired me because “my performance is not what the company needs right now”. My mother and a friend told me that I should write him saying how unfair he was, but for reasons I don’t fully understand myself, I decided not to. However, I still fervently believe that that idiot belongs in a place particularly designed by our favorite 14th century poet.

So, I am now still stuck with a mother who is constantly trying to tell me what to do with my life instead of respecting my decisions and is constantly getting upset because I don’t follow her instructions on how to live. She believes her living longer than me and being “experienced” somehow means that I don’t know what to do with myself. The consequences I have been dealt make her believe she’s correct, because I’m not living somewhere on my own with an income of thousands of dollars a month (like I’d like to be). But she has no clue about trying to move on in life and desiring some sort of change and independence. Desiring to be in a place where I can help others who are in need of food or money (which I can still sort of do for now). I used to try diplomacy with her, but it just turns into her yelling and telling me what opportunities she thinks I should’ve taken in the past and how I should’ve listen to her. No more of her crap. I just need to move out.

I was reading an article on a Pre-rally for the Unemployed assembling a few days before the One Nation Working Together rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and it mentioned a promo video for them which showed footage of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch proposing to drug test everyone who applies for unemployment because “you know, we shouldn’t be giving money to people who……basically are just going to go blow it on drugs…..and not take care of the children and their own families.”³ He’s just doing his job as a Republican, which is to just take miniscule problems out of thin air, magnify them, put them in contexts where they don’t belong and then push for adverse and ridiculously wasteful/unnecessary solutions. But in spite of businessmen hiring and firing people at will for the most absurd reasons or even no reason, and demons like Hatch who want to continue people’s misery in struggling to keep a living, I am fighting to be working again. Because in spite of hope seeming like it moved out long ago, I am trying to choose to believe it’s still there.

1) He, of course, means for people to pursue this rationally and with consideration for others. He also goes through pains to define the word “courage”.
2) I confess that I am a reference fiend. I don't know why, but it gives me the illusion of depth in writing. That particular reference was to a part of this graphic novel.
3) When I originally seen the clip of him saying that, it was in a promo for the Pre Rally, but they cut it up and made it seem like he said that on The Kudlow Report, which I disagree with.

A Transparent Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-28T17:20:00.000-04:00

The religious take on this sort of thing presents itself clearly, I mean, the take I’m charged to have presents itself clearly, although civility will not let me embody that viewpoint wholeheartedly, so I will just talk about this here on a cultural level (I believe I will talk about it spiritually in my other blog).
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So what’s this now? An Islamic mosque, named Park 51 or the Cordoba House, is being built two blocks away from the World Trade Center, Ground Zero, the place where, on 9-11-2001, two commercial passenger jet airlines were hijacked by terrorists claiming to be adherents of Islam and steered into the Twin Towers, both of which imploded and collapsed, killing 3,000 people?

Perhaps at the forefront of general reactions to new development is that this is in bad taste. It seems an insult to the people who were tragically killed that day and is kind of a ballsy move on the part of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, author and activist who works to bridge the gap between the West and Islam, as well as co-owner of the Park 51 property with Sharif El-Gamal who purchased it in July 2009 and was originally going to make a condominium until Rauf convinced him otherwise. By building the mosque, which will also have an auditorium, fitness center, swimming pool, childcare services, bookstore, amongst other stuff, Rauf and his partner’s are claiming to establish “a center for cultural learning” for people of all religions (the name “Cordoba” itself refers to a learning center in 8th to 11th century Spain that Christians, Jews and Muslims attended, but can also be a reference to the invasion of the Spanish Christian city of Córdoba by Muslims in the 8th century). His stated goal doesn’t really seem to pacify concerns over the mosque’s location, especially in light of the fact that he reportedly has questionable connections to Islamic groups who have voiced anger against America in the past (he himself says that works towards nothing but peace and diplomacy), or the fact that he once said funding for the project will come from American Muslims but later said it will come from foreign Arab and Muslim nations. He could’ve built the mosque anywhere else without (understandable) protest, but chose this location, on which a piece of one of the crashed airplanes from 9/11 fell, to show that he wants to “push back against the extremists” and send “the opposite statement of what happened on 9/11”.

The feeling of this project being a deep national insult is indeed overwhelming. But however, a few other things come to mind:

If one urban black gang comes and shoots up your house, killing some of your family members, the rational reaction is not to suddenly believe all random groups of urban black people have no right to live in that very area. And I’m not saying that it won’t understandably be your reaction, I’m saying that it isn’t the one on which furthers thoughts and decisions should be based. The Muslims who are building Park51 aren’t automatically the same Muslims who flew the planes into the World Trade Buildings in 2001. Of course, I think, in this emotional and symbolic context, Abdul Rauf should be fully transparent and accountable with his funding, activities and personnel. If he is absolute about building the mosque here and expects it to thrive without violent attacks to bring it down, it cannot be with an indifference of the history of that particular spot in New York City, or even Manhattan alone. This project will certainly be an irrefutable and uncontestable insult if he decides to do whatever he wants without a strong attempt to gain the trust of the people who live there as well those who have had relatives and friends die in the 9-11 attacks.

Secondly, I have a bit of a problem with the idea that the relatives and friends of 9-11 victims suddenly have the authority to declare what is right and wrong for construction by any set of people in any given place. In the 17th century, The English hopped on their boats and came to America, which was already inhabited and cultivated by Native Americans. Indians were more than happy to do trade with the whites, and the whites in return destroyed their land, took their food supplies and burned down their houses. This kind of behavior lasted all the way up and after Andrew Jackson order the removal of Indians from their own land in the South in the 19th century, sending them through tribulations of death, starvation, disease and famine to the West.
The 8 or 9 Native Americans that are left today have to look at the buildings and temples constructed by European decendants on their own land everyday, and now the descendants are crying insult and indignation at this one mosque being built in the name of communication and community.
I mean, for Pete’s sakes……………there are White Supremacists bases IN AFRICA.
Houses for SUPREMACY of WHITES……….IN AFRICA!
A-F-R-I-C-A!!!!!!
What single human can possess this much testicular fortitude?!??????
At any rate, I’ve never seen people in the States protesting this, and not even a meteor the size of Saturn on a 500-mile an hour speed course towards Earth can match the magnitude of that insult.

And no, my second point does not contradict my first. I know that today’s white Americans, the descendants of the imperialistic Europeans, are not the same people as their ancestors. But with this being the case, what kind of real effort by today’s “Americans” have gone to giving the Native Americans back at least most of their land and opportunity to persevere? How many popular Native American actors or authors or politicians do you know? Can you even count on both hands how many of them you’ve even seen in the last decade?

At any rate, despite my reservations about Park51, I say that they have a right to build it. But also, that their operation should be fully transparent, as putting an Islamic mosque right next to a place where Muslim terrorists killed 3,000 people and telling people that they should mind their own business will surely accelerate an understandably violent reaction against them.

Arizona SB 1070

2010-08-01T13:27:00.000-04:00

So, you may or may not have encountered the recent upsurge of controversy over Arizona Immigration Law, also known as:
-Arizona Senate Bill 1070
-Arizona SB 1070
or my personal “patriotic” fave –Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act

signed into the Legislature of the State of Arizona by Republican Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010, as a reaction against the rapid sex and drug trafficking committed by Mexican gangs and criminals who cross over from Mexico into Arizona illegally. If you have not, here is a view of what went into legal effect on July 29th:

A. NO OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY LIMIT OR RESTRICT THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW.
B. FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON, EXCEPT IF THE DETERMINATION MAY HINDER OR OBSTRUCT AN INVESTIGATION. ANY PERSON WHO IS ARRESTED SHALL HAVE THE PERSON'S IMMIGRATION STATUS DETERMINED BEFORE THE PERSON IS RELEASED.

I was a little confused about this Arizona Immigration Law; I read some of the bill, particularly the underlined part above, and I wasn’t sure if it meant that the police in Arizona are now obligated to check people they stop for previous crimes (running a red light, jaywalking) for the proper papers saying that they’re in America legally, or that meant the police were able to just look at someone ~~who is Mexican~~ and say “You know what, I’m pretty sure he/she has a nice ripe kilo of coke stuffed in his/her pocket, or is probably muling it up their ass or in their stomach. Reasonably suspicious enough for me. Lemme go check it out.” Sadly, but expectedly, it’s the latter.

According to polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a conservative public opinion polling firm, the majority of America is in favor of this law going into effect. It was a racist sentiment that had been brewing for a long time in that area, and the Republican steam had finally burst out of the teapot when the news that Robert Krentz, a rancher who lives 19 miles from the Mexican border was supposedly shot by a illegal Mexican immigrant on March 27th (they found a set of footprints that came from the Mexican border, and this is somehow enough to say that not just a Mexican, but an illegal one at that, did it).

This now begs the question of how Rasmussen was phrasing the questions in said polls, although they’re claimed can be backed by the fact that the bill received something like over $100,000 in donations for support. America is confused. It doesn’t know whether it wants to be a “melting pot” or have a solidified racial identity. I think this is because Repubs say they’re ok with the former but vigorously push for the latter. I guess the true questions they ask themselves is “Which will benefit us?” or “Since we don’t feel like trying to understand it, can we kick it out?”. Arizona Sheriff and long-time knucklehead Joe Arpaio says that the cops don’t just go around arresting anyone who “looks illegal”, and SB 1070 isn’t expressly racist, but what people are having problems with is the fact that it gives permission and license to the xenophobic temperament of narrow-minded policemen.

The cops down there use and express their experiences in having to keep criminal activity from illegal Mexican immigrants happening as the basis of this law being the justified move. So, the reaction to illegal Mexican immigrants causing crimes in Arizona is to make it lawful for cops to randomly pick up any ole’ Mexican they see on the street and ship them back to Mexico. Regardless of the fact that many of them also do the hard jobs for big corporations (construction, working in meat factories, etc.) that “naturalized” Americans (I guess) don’t want to do because they are too dignified.

Speaking of which, these American politicians and business owners are against foreigners physically being in our country without the proper paperwork (that it sometimes takes years to get while these people live in run-down, corrupt countries that poor and crime-ridden that they’re desperately trying to escape), but they have no problem outsourcing their labor to other countries. The labor it takes to make AT&T and however many other corporations run doesn’t require paperwork for legal country status, just teams of people from other poor countries toiling away at the menial tasks for cheap costs. Not to mention that many illegal immigrants get here because they are forced through sex trafficking. They are dragged here for sex with strangers, and the American response to that situation is to kick them back out?

Not all or even most illegal Mexican immigrants are criminals, and not all criminals are illegal immigrants. Not all illegal immigrants are Mexican or Hispanic at all, but you wouldn’t know this by the conservative media’s focus. This whole thing is absurd and a waste of money and attention, like virtually all conservative ventures are. As a matter of fact, I just came across an article describing the escape of three white dangerous murderers from prison who are heading to Mexico while the stupid police are putting all their focus on ridding Arizona of un-papered Mexicans! I can also tell you right now that there is no Christian basis for this in the least. Christ would be vomiting pure insults at the entire group who thinks it’s ok to boot foreigners out of God-created land that people think belongs to them. But don’t take my word for it, have a look at the people in Arizona fighting against this:

Let These Detective Show Ideas Help You

2010-07-23T23:50:00.001-04:00

In our recession, it seems to me that television studios are constantly deeming it wise to produce and fund detective shows that are the same as everyone before them but with some sort of ultimately lifeless twist. There is no longer simply a “Murder, She Wrote” there and a “Matlock” somewhere else……..

There is now “Monk”, the detective who solves cases with OCD and social idiocy, “The Mentalist”**, a former con-man who helps detectives by continuing to think like a con-man, “Castle”, a mystery writer who helps the cops solve crimes because they decided to give a shit about him for some reason, “CSI: Miami”**, where crimes are solved by David Caruso putting on his sunglasses in a cool fashion before setting Guinness World Records for saying the most useless things ever, “Rizzoli and Isles”, crimes solved by a pair of women who just do what women and men have been doing before them for years……..on and on the list goes.

The central focus seems to be bringing in people who see things in a different way. So, with the huge chunk of Americans still looking for jobs and new-but-still-old detective shows seeming to be a way for easy cash, I thought I’d offer you guys a few ideas to pitch to studios for the future:

1) “French Fried” – About a detective who was employee of the month for 5 years straight at McDonald’s before being hired to work for the police force. They solve crimes by matching which psychological profiles line up with which Happy Meal toy and examining which suspect Super-Sized what. Catchy lines can include “Well, pal, that’s the way the McNugget is cooked” and “I guess his Big Mac didn’t have special sauce.”

2) “Daniel Microsoft” – About someone who solves crimes from their living room couch by using their mother’s credit card to order anchovy pizza every week and renew their Xbox live subscriptions, the catch being that they can only solve crimes that look like something that can happen in “Grand Theft Auto”.

3) “Tree-Huggers” – About a varied-but-familial investigative team that solve crimes by measuring how the suspects recycled their beer cans, seeing their reaction when threatened with Global Warming, and questioning vendors at Farmer’s Markets. The tagline for advertisements can be “Although they eat locally, they can track your carbon footprint anywhere!”

4) “So You Think You Can Solve Murders?” Uh-oh! Brooklyn pop-and-lock duo DirtyFlow and BubbleFace backflip into the police station with a boombox blasting a generic dance song, convincing NYPD that they can clean up the crime rates of all 5 boroughs and joining the force. DirtyFlow investigates suspects while doing the best robot the world has ever seen and BubbleFace scans Medical Examiner results for clues while spinning on her head for hours at a time, without even a hint of a nosebleed.

5) “Courtside Crimes” – About someone who becomes a detective after having a long career as a popular and very well-paid NBA player. He wouldn’t actually solve any crimes, he’d just go around screaming to people that LeBron James is a backstabbing bag of horse manure.

6) “Ku Klux Khris” – About a guy named Khris who uses his 8-year stint in a white supremacist group to help police solve crimes vengefully after suffering the loss of his brother during a Civil War reenactment in Virginia. He only asks that the police pay for a new moonshine jar for him to spit in and a new 6-foot Christian Cross to burn every week. He, however, is always sure that a Black or Jewish person has committed the crime, even when neither one is existent in the episode………or entire season for that matter.

7) “Gaga in the Underworld” – Mega-Pop star Lady Gaga has decided to leave the music scene behind and fulfill her duty to put criminals behind bars, bringing her talents of wearing costumes designed by a team of LSD abusers and using choreographed dance videos as an excuse to show people that she can hump inanimate objects. Mel Gibson can co-star as the lead gay LSD-head designer while Ozzy Osbourne can occasionally cameo as an inanimate object.

8: “MySpaceBook” – Centuries ago, war was declared between two Egyptian tribes when one tribe member rejected the Friend Request of another in hieroglyphics on a Giza pyramid. Today, glamourous, rich and pointless celebrity Lauren Conrad has accidentally come across a conspiratorial plot against New York City in this continuing secret war by joining a Facebook group called “Everything I learned about Black Culture I got from watching Tyler Perry movies” on her iPhone. Now, she must use the weapons of her animal-tested perfume and brain-damaging reality show to investigate and bring peace to the warring tribes.

To go directly against detective gimmicks, you can have a detective show that focuses on having no gimmicks. But paradoxically, having no gimmick would in itself be a gimmick. Counter-culture fail.

So, I can only hope these ideas carry you well on into Hollywood success and long careers, paving the way for someone else to just copy what you did and add something meaningless to it.

Be well.

**Ok, ok, I watch this show. But still, my point stands……..

Freedom of InterSpeech

2010-06-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

Alright, so this constant monitoring by employers into the social networking sites of their employees is beginning to feel a bit like McCarthyism, if only because they search the personal information of their employees for insubstantial things that have no real bearing on the validity of their employees’ occupation at the business, and fire them for it. Keeping a constant eye out for “subversion” or “un-business like activity” or whatever kind of policy phrases people want to use is ok I guess for big executives and assistants to big corporate players, but it’s kind of absurd when people at a day job in a corner store or a clothing store are getting fired for stuff that’s not even any kind of serious threat to the business’s image.

First, the sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, as well as the blogosphere are places where individuals can freely sign up, set up a profile to connect with their own friends, and express their (emotional, physical, religious, etc.) status at the time, in their own space and leisure. It’s not something that’s funded by the business (unless that business starts to advertise one of those websites at its location) or is depended on by that business to bring in income or is connected to these things in anyway. So, there is no real reason or ownership of any content for businesses in these areas of life. The social networking sites are their own enterprises, and the individual’s expression through them are completely within the individual’s right. Their participation and expression of what’s going on in their life is its own hemisphere and separate from anything businesses should be allow to touch or monitor.

Now with that said, it’s a bit different when said hypothetical individuals act stupid and put themselves out there or do directly subversive things on purpose. But I don’t think companies, especially in these times when they possess jobs position and can easily replace anyone they don’t like for the slightest reasons (scary prospect), are too discriminatory in their judgments in what’s considered “subversive”. There was one story in someone’s comment I’ve read about a girl who worked for a popular charity and was selling the personal information of its donors to other top rival companies. Firing her is understandable. Then there are the reports of people that take pictures of themselves with some huge bag of marijuana or some sort of gleaming Smith & Wesson or whatever suggest pride in intoxicated or violent activity. Firing them is understandable. If you have an employees that post racist content against Blacks or Hispanics or Native Americans, especially while working for a company that puts “[So-and-So is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities are encouraged to apply.”] in their job posts, they should definitely be fired.

But reading about a girl who was fired from her job at a pizza store because she expressed frustration at customers in her Facebook status for making her stay an hour past the time she was supposed to leave? Or about a mascot for a baseball team who was fired because he blandly criticized the team’s terrible coaches getting extended contracts? Or a girl who was fired from an administrative assistant job because she quipped in a status here and there about being bored? That is extreme, unnecessary and tyrannical. This is addition to companies who fire people because they talk online about corrupt practices the company is engaging in, instead of fixing their own morals (“we’re here to make money, right?” I can hear someone saying to me). Even the people who put posts online making fun of their bosses should be fully protected by Freedom of Speech if the post does not have a direct name or the poster’s profile does not name the company they are criticizing. There should be a new amendment to national job laws where businesses have to have tangible proof that status or a blog post online did some kind of damage to the company’s reputation or money. Otherwise, there’s no telling where the limits exist to how much employers can control their employees lives.

BioShock in BP

2010-05-19T20:34:00.000-04:00

Disgusting, isn’t it?

More than three weeks ago, British Petroleum, the oil company, had an accident at an oil rig they were leasing in the Gulf of Mexico. Gas built up in a well 5,000 feet deep in the ocean and exploded. The oil went to the surface of the water, where it erupted and sank an oil rig, killing 11 workers on it in the process. The broken well has since not been fixed, and there is an amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Jamaica and growing from the 5,000 barrels a day that continues to leak out without stopping. Every day that passes, there is a news report on how close the oil is beginning to come to various shorelines in the most Southern states of America. What did Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, have to say about this (actually about deep-water drilling)?

"Apollo 13 [the unsuccessful third mission to the moon in 1970] did not stop the space race," he said. "Neither did the Air France plane last year coming out of Brazil [which mysteriously crashed] stop the world airline industry flying people around the world. It's the same for the oil industry."

Hmph. You know what this reminds me of? “BioShock”. Have you ever played the game? It’s very well written and designed. In this first-person shooter fantasy action title, you play the role of a plane crash survivor in 1960, who ventures to an underwater city called Rapture to find out about its origins and consequent destruction. A main character in the game is a man named Andrew Ryan, the creator of Rapture. He built it as a place of the greedy capitalist’s total paradise: people were allowed to “pursue greatness” and flourish successfully without morality or regard for other people’s lives antagonizing that greatness. That’s what Hayward’s comments bring to mind.

It doesn’t matter that the fishermen who work in the Gulf of Mexico’s waters to bring in food, sell it on the market, and make a living for their homes and families are now out of work. Even when they offered to work for BP by helping to clean up BP’s mess, there was debate on whether they should be paid for it or not. It does not matter that the oil being vomited out this broken well is sinking deep into the ocean, killing off the ecosystems and endangered marine life that have been living there for God-knows-how-long. It does not matter that the deaths of the 11 workers is a single incident in a line of accidents BP has a record for. All that matters is the refining process of the oil industry to rake in those crude oil bucks.

As to why Obama let offshore drilling continue a while back, I have no idea (it has a clean record? Oh please.....), but as long as Mr. Hayward and BP (as well as other oil companies) continue with the delusion that they can compare “the offshore-drilling technique”, a practice that in itself is immoral, with the Apollo 13 mission or public transportation, they will continue to “destroy, baby, destroy”. And this delusion is held up by the money they make from us putting their product in our gas tanks. I can only hope an official nationwide switch to alternative fuels rides the fervor of this oil spill.

Bullets and (Star)Bucks

2010-04-18T14:49:00.001-04:00

You know, Pro-NRA people have the collective I.Q. of a stuffed ash tray, thinking that the world would be a better place if everyone bought groceries or went to work whilst packing a .45 in their waste or baby carriage. This makes a society of tension instead of safety. A room full of people shooting at each other is not the ideal way to bring down a victim count. But naturally, it looks like there are corporations that want to help you foster your nightmarish environment for your placation.

Apparently, Starbucks retailers in Northern California, as well as in Virginia and some other places, recently (beginning in January) started allowing people who owns guns to walk into their baristas with the weapons out in full display, to buy coffee or some variation of. Opencarry.org, a website for extreme pro-gun activists, started using this nihilistic policy to organize group walk-ins to Starbucks with their weapons strapped at their sides in the name of the “Open Carry” movement, an ideological statement to “normalize” their right to carry guns. Because, you know, the way “law-abiding” citizens should exercise the Second Amendment is by walking around with objects created to destroy everywhere they go.

When asked about this decision, execs representing Starbucks say that they defer to federal and state laws concerning the issue. Federal and state laws say that Starbucks has the ability to ban people from bringing guns into their stores, just like they ban people from walking in with bare feet (it’s Cali! Isn’t there people that surf and walk in from the beach?) They then said “we would be forced to require our partners [employees] to ask law abiding customers to leave our stores, putting our partners in an unfair and potentially unsafe position.” So then you are aware that these pistol-packing shitfaces can become a threat to your store and the people in it?

Forget that there have been plenty of studies showing that more citizens with guns generally make people feel less safe. Forget that plenty of studies show that more guns into a community means more crime. I first ask why Starbucks would think that their new policy would keep their sales and customer numbers high? Have they looked at most of the demographic that shop at their chains? Screenwriters, novelists, architects, programmers, designers, musicians. People in the arts world who are [relatively] civilized, cultured peaceful customers that actually gave up on complaining about the fact that they charge an arm and a leg for your extra strong, corporate formula slag. I highly doubt this original fan base will want to suddenly start clashing with knee-jerk cavemen that spend their whole lives idol-worshipping John Wayne everytime they stop by for a vanilla latte.

I’ve seen comments below the articles I’ve read from teams of weapon-loving meatheads saying that people who buy these guns are trained in the ways to use them. Of course, I’ve also read in plenty of places that Gun-Morons are working on softening federal and state laws so that background checks on people who purchase firearms are more lenient. What these people who prefer using their triggers instead of their brains fail to understand is, a person’s intent with a weapon is not always easily determined, so the more investigation there is into the psychology and history of the gun-carrier, the better and more sure of the choice to arm them. These guys are constantly comparing themselves to cops, saying that cops make mistakes in judgment too, and therefore don’t see the difference between giving police and civilians guns. Extra thorough psychological, physical and emotional background checks are conducted on applicants, as well as there being tests to pass with perfect scores, before becoming police officers, which explains why they are charged with representing and enforcing the law. In any given hypothetical year, how many mistakes will police make, and how many mistakes will civilians make?

With lowered background checks, it is fully possible for someone to go through all the bootleg, shallow training civilian gun-carriers can put them through and be granted a shiny certificate indicating they are proficient in
killing people
defending themselves, and still decide to go on their own homicidal task. Other people can stop them with their own guns, only for the bullets to accidentally hit bystanders, not to mention the many ways a dedicated killer can simply get around being attacked by “law-abiding” gun carriers. Training your aim doesn’t stop people from panicking and moving, running into the path of a bullet instead of avoiding it, nor are guns the only way to stop crime¹. As I’ve said, a room full of people shooting is not an ideal situation for lowering victim count.

All of these excuses, from “a gun takes seconds to access while the police take minutes”, to “I am the only person that can protect myself” all come from fear. Fear that they will walk into a situation with a violent offender where no one can save them. And that’s understandable, but it isn’t really the place in themselves from which they should be making decisions, is it? That fear is exactly what divides you from the police. Although both may get scared, a policeman is trained to be cool and calm and observant, working to bring a volatile situation to an end without violence. A civilian just reacts in panic. I can only hope that a large majority of businesses will act like California Pizza Kitchen and Peet’s Tea and Coffee, and refuse to let these nuts walk into their store with weapons. Links to articles on this are below.

Notes:
1) Meaning, guns are small tools in the bigger movement against crime, not the movement itself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/28/starbucks-gun-policy-refu_n_480062.html

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/crazy-continues-starbucks-still-allowing-guns-in-its-stores

Worship the Hero Worship

2010-04-01T23:50:00.000-04:00

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World , Kick Ass, Defendor, The T.V. show “Fanboy and Chum Chum”. Heck, even the adaptation “Mystery Men” from years ago.

I feel like there’s this sudden influx of films not about super-heros, but about hero worshippers wanting to be their idols. Or, the films are no longer about mythical figures, but about the people who participate in the cultures these stories of mythical figures create. Or, sometimes they mock the movies, but underneath show homage to them.

I’m not entirely sure I’m interested in stories about the fans. Yes, the fans are important. Yes, I myself am a huge fan of the Batmans and Hulks and Matrixes and Star Wars, but the fans aren’t characters that can bring the bigger, more abstract ideas to life. Batman, for instance, explores revenge, insanity, and vigilantism vs. respect for the law. A film along the lines of “Kick Ass” can try to explore these things, but of course won’t take them seriously or will not be theoretically logical. I’m sure “Kick Ass” is not trying to be any of these things or anything more than comedic entertainment with commentary on being a hero.

The super hero films, particularly “The Dark Knight” and “Watchmen”, take the mythical figures and attempt to place them as an actual reality people have to face in the world. These stories bring unique and abstract issues to light. The other films usually just end up being about characters with fantasy worlds in their heads having to confront reality. I don’t know. I haven’t read “Kick-Ass” the graphic novel, but Rotten Tomatoes gave the film 95% approval rating. The writing and directing looks pretty shoddy, but I’m interested regardless. Perhaps this new sub-genre of hero films have something to say that I’m completely missing.

Parental Advisory

2010-03-06T08:36:00.000-05:00

A little while back, my father told me about something he witnessed while at a basketball game with my little brother (who was playing). There was another boy on my brother’s team who reportedly wasn’t playing hard enough defense or not passing or whatever. His mother, who was sitting in the stands watching, called that out to him. She told him to push harder, and in response, the boy gave his mother the middle finger. Neither the mother or father (who was also there) did anything about this. I, on the other hand, would shortly afterwards be on trial for assault and battery against a minor*, but this article at the Huffington Post says I would be wrong.

The article by Ellen Galinsky, about preventing aggression in children and refraining from responding to aggression with aggression, says that you have to show physical affection (hugs and pats on the head and s&%t), have to be vested in whatever your child is trying to do with themselves, reward them for their achievements.

I think any realistic person will say that raising a child has to be a mixture of love and discipline, serving the child but at the same time mentally and emotionally strengthening them to stand on their own, or to be civil and respectful people rather. Being warm and sympathetic and hippie to your child 24/7 fails to teach that child any kind of respect for anything, since their will is unhindered by any kind of discipline for destroying things or taking them or corrupting them in some sort of way or fashion. But also, you can’t completely invade your children’s will and thought. You must teach them to be able to assess decisions for themselves.

You shielding your children, keeping them ignorant and in fear of losing your love if they don’t follow your rules seems to me like a display of your own fear. Perhaps, for some parents, it’s easier to keep their children in the world of things they know themselves. They have not fully inspected or have come to understand the world, and so, are not fully aware of what will or will not hurt their child. But perhaps your child can teach you things; can come to understand things about the world that you would not perceive from your viewpoint.

I watched an episode of a reality show called “The World’s Strictest Parents”, where two kids, a constant martini-drinking and cigarette smoking girl and a cursing, disrespectful gay teenage boy from England flew to the American Deep South to live with two extremely conservative Christian parents. After the first hour or so that the Brits came into the house, there was sharp tension. The Christian father, who was strict on inspecting every piece of media, from songs on their children’s iPod’s to the T.V. shows they watched to the detail of every turn and stop their children made when out driving the car, went through the British boy’s bag and looked all through the pictures of his camera. Of course, the boy voiced his rebellious opinion about this, and all the father would say is that in their house they have strict rules about what content is there and what isn’t (the mother said that if she listened to a song on her children’s iPod during “inspection” and heard just one word she didn’t like, she would delete the song).

I’m not a parent nor a child psychologist or professional, but I am always a proponent of the belief that good ideas about subject come from brainstorming as well as the hands-on approach. And in some situations, a solution to a problem becomes obvious to both sides. The two teenagers were reckless brats and the parents would’ve been great Nazis during World War II. The personalities don’t have to crash together like this, because that seems to be about conflict. And I think to prevent this, there has to be understanding and civility between the parent and child. The child should respect the authority of the household, but the child should also have an opinion in things.

*I joke, but I’m trying to say that there would have been some severe disciplining for that.

Haiti and Hope

2010-01-31T14:23:00.000-05:00

Just my rambling again, but many of the problems brought on by the earthquake can be solved in a relative cinch if everyone had the right hearts and minds.

3 months for temporary shelter and a year for transitional shelter in Haiti is the reported plan for recovery. How quickly this would all be left to emotional trauma, jarring memories and fodder for historians if we and they all worked together, instead of thinking about the self. I mean, nothing can allay the shock of the massive death toll for the communities, but I’m talking about getting the country’s infrastructure back to what may even be a better existential basis than there was before the earthquake.

And by “thinking about the self”, I mean the people who see items in a dilapidated apartment or destroyed store and hurt other people to get it for themselves instead of sharing the items. I’m talking about the profit and non-profit organizations from every country who swarm to Haiti by the hundreds (good thing) and compete with each other to do services for Haitian residents to get their names in the media, using up time to argue amongst each other instead of helping (bad thing). I mean the government arguing amongst themselves to see who will head the rescue effort and draw up a plan, instead of collaboratively drawing up a plan and just sending whoever is equipped to whatever function to work.

A friend at my church who works in engineering told me one chilly night of the different ways companies build foundations for buildings to stand up. He told me of there being a way to put something like wheels under a building, so when in a natural disaster, the building can just roll back and forth across the land. Or, engineers can put something like a spring under the building, so that when there is an earthquake, the spring can absorb the shock and leave the building intact for the most part. These things can prevent large disasters like the one Haiti has now, but they are costly and mainly given to contracts and projects that can afford them. Anybody with a heart and 7th grade education can see that these things should be standards that go into the construction of buildings in places such as Haiti, India, the U.S. west coast, wherever.

The Haitian government, particularly Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, is saying that they need emergency short-term relief. Housing for the people, safe water to drink and wash in and food. But looters who are still in this competitive mind set, who put three things our pastor talked about last Sunday (Take, First, Do)¹ as their primary motives of action, antagonize the healing process and make things worse.

Besides flying into the Dominican Republic and taking available roads into Jacmel and possibly Port-Au-Prince, what can we do about Haiti from here? We can donate money and supplies. Of course now, there is negligence in that area as well. Money/supplies can sometimes takes years to get to the designated causes. In the meanwhile, things keep decaying. And even when the money gets to wherever, it is seldom fully spent on what it's supposed to be spent on, in addition to the fact that only a part of the whole sum actually shows up. So things only get half done. Roads are relaid but not sealed. Areas of debris are just left to rot. And no one, for some reason, can account for where the other chunk of money has gone. Sending the money in text, or giving it to representatives of organizations on the street asking for it is great, but I think we should also begin to find ways to see if the cause or organization is holding itself accountable to the promised tasks (somewhere or other, I imagine someone is reminded of Obama with that last sentence).

Whenever there is a disaster, people rush to find out ways to secure their own wealth, which puts national/global/communal security at risk. But I think that, the less you think about yourself, the quicker you will be restored.

Notes:
1) Just take what you want; Me first; Do something just to keep busy

Forced on the Dole

2010-01-03T12:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was talking to one of my bosses, a man of Hong Kong descent who drives from New Jersey to get here in the Lower East Side and manage employees. We began to, or I should say he began to, talk to me about a salesperson’s survival in the individual business we worked for.

The salespeople have a quota, a certain amount of sales that have to be made every month to be considered a worthy salesperson. I think, the (hypothetically) worst salesperson in there sells enough merchandise to make $50,000 - $55,000. To the impoverished and modest of heart, this would be a delicious annual earning [or maybe, just to me]………but it is not quota. There are (in reality) salespeople in there that make six-digit earnings, and others somewhat under that, and under, down to the 50’s. The mid-section of that whole spectrum would be the quota. If after a certain amount of months you rank in the bottom level, a manager takes you into their office to issue you a warning about staying on the bottom ranks, and urges you to be aggressive in attacking customers and forcing money out of their pockets for the sake of your sales increasing. If after another few months your sales do not increase, you’ll be “back out on the dole” as The Streets would say.

Of course, the problem here with the boss’s (who explicitly stated he’s only concerned with money and numbers, as is the person who runs the company) is that this shallow idealism crashes with reality and causes victims inevitably. Only about 10 – 12 customers come into the store per day. Half of those, if even that low of a number, go past the “window shopper” phase and actually buy some of the merchandise. The other half usually are returning stuff or canceling purchases. So, the salespeople, which number about 10, are structurally setup to step on each other for those 5 customers. Systematically, someone is forced to not make the cut for the next round. This kind of working environment is good………no, never good……..valid in a financially prospering nation where someone who doesn’t became some scavenger Spartan salesperson and just wants to make a living can fall and find another job somewhat quickly. Or more easily than they would in this economy, where forcing there to be employees for the cutting floor is ridiculous and anxiety-building.

There was a blog post on the Fox News website about how employers are swamped with hundreds or even thousands of resumes from people answering job posts that those employers put out¹. Some companies have resorted to having programs on the computer that search for keywords in resumes and select those, then throw the rest out. One of the comments written on the post railed about how people who e-mailed applications were losers and that real people should be out networking with big wigs for opportunities. They railed on to say that people that thought things should just be handed to them had a really “false sense of entitlement”. And while I left whoever that was to figure out that this isn’t late 1930’s Germany, I started to think that if people aren’t entitled to a living (shelter, food, works), then this would mean that they’re entitled to being left out on the street to starve and have no input on anything. No voice or action. And if we’re to think that they’re not entitled to anything, we can deduct from this belief the subsequent one that there are people who are born to be meaningless to society. But I digress.

These kinds of beliefs and economic systems are setup for those who enjoy destroying other people’s living to make their own. I think it’s pretty obvious that this needs to change, but I feel like people are so used to things being this way that the word “change” frightens and unravels them, regardless of the fact that they know it would be for the better. Bloody hell, the creature of comfort will always be worse than the civilized person of revolt.

Notes:
1) Why put out an internet post asking people to apply for a job, and then ignore them when they do? Jobs are scarce. If there is an open one and you ask people to apply for it, how many did you think you would get? If you don’t want people to e-mail or fax you their resume, why ask for it that way? Just to see who can get creative with getting your attention? Since when is the job hunt turned into “American Idol”?

The Confusion of Moral and Your Own Uncomfort: Homosexuality

2009-12-20T13:17:00.001-05:00

I think it’s one thing be against people of a certain social type, quite another to deny them their rights. One article I’ve read from the Huffington Post considers that gay marriage shouldn’t even be considered a subject up for democratic vote, on par with requiring Congress to vote on whether Jehovah’s Witnesses are allowed to stand at train stations or go door to door and peddle their “The End is Nigh” pamphlets. You may not like it, but it is a fundamental civil right.

It is pretty stupid and actually not any of anyone’s business as to whether people of the same sex want to get married or not. Even considering it as a sin, how is this even close to being a top priority for healing the world? Will Wall Street re-crash and bankers’ greed recharge if we do not stop gay marriages? Will an influx of gay marriages produce another Hurricane Katrina? Do gay people become part of Al-Qaeda if they marry? Was the Swine Flu produced by homosexuals marrying? You can go ahead and consider yourself officially retarded if it takes you more than a microsecond to answer these questions correctly. I don’t see why gun control isn’t front and center of every news briefing and political blog post, especially after Seung-Hui Cho’s free and flowing access to weapons of swift destruction and his war-path at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. I don’t see legal and federal fights over the mistreatment and torture of animals at farms that kill them and put them on your plate¹. No, these things are fought in the smallest of media arenas. But, if you stroke the male-dominated society’s libido wrong, then it’s an all out war against you on every T.V., radio, website and book.

I guess then, labeling myself a Christian, I’m charged with the task of stating what Christ thinks about all this. Since no one can possibly and absolutely know this, I’m tasked to state what I think He thinks. Yes, you can sit there and point to each and every verse that says homosexuality is a sin or that it’s wrong for a man and a man to do this, that and the next thing. But this is text in a book that has started to physically exist since the 2nd century, passed through more hands than there are words in the book itself, has had just as many translations by people with a variety of biases, all of which were ping-ponged back through God knows how many languages and cultures who all thought they truly knew what the parables and narratives meant for their historical contexts, etc. A comprehensive person would understand that it can be a bit difficult to take something at face value when considering this (homosexuality meaning man and boy? Rape, like in prison? Sexual abuse? Can gay men be together and just not have sex?). I have not done enough studies to presume a particular context behind what the Bible means by man on man relationships, so I cannot explicitly tell you what Christ thinks.

I can definitely tell you what He isn’t thinking, though.

He isn’t thinking of making laws like the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill proposed by David “Asshole” Bahati in October 2009. If this law were to be passed in Uganda, authorities would be allowed to arrest people doing public displays of same-sex affection, along with people who have HIV or have sexually been with people under 18, and put them to death or life-imprisonment. Since Uganda seems to be ran by people who are frightened of their own sexual confusion, they are trying hard to gain a good majority of support for the bill by painting the picture of gay people as tongue-wagging monstrosities that ride the streets and countrysides in trucks, scooping up fresh kids by the bundles for fresh molestation. I mean, death or jail because a person kissed another of the same-sex in public? Because it’s “against the order of nature²”? Can we say Holocaust? Can we say Neo-Genocide? Can we say Satanic-level persecution? Violent oppression? Corrupt and evil authority? Can we see Christ shaking His head and slapping his forehead saying “Nooo, no, that is not what is meant!”

A long time ago (as I’ve related to you, Amanda), I watched a T.V. special on MTV about a young man who talked about his experience with a particular church as a gay man. If I remember correctly, the church he attended was always kind and genial with him for however long he used to go. One day, he decided to confess to a pastor of his that he was gay. I forget the detailed account after this, but the church arrived at the solution of applying electro-shock therapy to the young man to “cure” him of his homosexuality. They took him to a back room in the church and strapped him down to a table. They attached some sort of apparatus to his penis. Then, they would show him pictures of gay porn, and everytime he got aroused from it, they’d send a severely damaging voltage amount through his genitals. They repeated this process, upping the voltage number everytime he was charged to come back for being “cured” through this “therapy”. The young man walked and talked to the MTV camera about this, stating that after that whole ordeal, he now suffered random blackouts even seizures.
Christ. Is. Not. Thinking. This.

Come on, people. It’s good to be devoted to a Will higher than your own, but to not think for yourself is to say that God made you into a hollow-shelled nothingness. Is to say that He made you for nothing. There is clearly no real logic or justice or God in stripping people from any orientation of their rights or life. Lest you send the message that He created their lives for no reason as well. Although He may be hurt or angered by their actions, God takes pride in all of His creations. Regardless of where they put their genitals. Just take a gander again at this clip and ask yourself who the social monster truly is: a homosexual or the woman in this video?

Notes:
1) In saying this, my own hypocrisy must be noted, as I am a huge fan of cheeseburgers and sausage and bacon. But I am trying to make the transition over to less meat. Much less. Or perhaps finding companies that get their meat from farms that wait for the animals to naturally die before putting Bar-B-Que sauce on them.
2) How so? How natural is it for a man/woman to force themselves to be with a woman/man when they clearly want to be with another man/woman? And if there’s a specific way that nature looks, how come all of these other things outside of that specific way keep naturally happening?

Indecisive Filler

2009-12-07T18:26:00.000-05:00

A month. It’s been a month and some change since I’ve posted something on this blog. And not for any reason other than a lack of things to write about. So here, take some rambling.

In a thin fabric of everyday routine, reality likes to punch through with the sharp end of a knife. I was driving home the other day from Astoria back to the Bronx, having just got off the Queensboro Bridge and heading towards FDR Drive, when piercing red and blue flashes start to dance throughout my windows out of nowhere. I routinely just move to the side, since this usually just means that they want to drive up ahead of me, but the reality was that the lights were for me. Policemen show up, knock on my closed window, ask me for my license and registration. I can only pull out the license; registration is somewhere or other in hermitage. They go back to their squad car, lights still blasting through the darkness in my car, and then come back and give me a ticket because the brake light is out. This was annoying, as the brake light had went out weeks ago and then mysteriously started to work again ever since. So it decided to go back out and be a problem in the one moment a pair of cops would notice. This was both annoying and a relief: annoying because they could’ve simply slapped my palm and said “replace your light, bee-yotch”, and a relief because too much “Law and Order”/”CSI: Miami”/”Criminal Minds” made me suspect that they may find some random dead body in my trunk or that they were serial killers posing as cops who enjoyed pulling people over and then shooting them to tidbits.

The following Thursday, Obama decides to show up at the United States Military Academy in West Point and disappointingly announced/explained that he’ll be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Some of his more popular fan and supporters, including Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and even the reknown former Weather Underground member, college professor and colleague Bill Ayers have spoken out against him. Against this, I should say. I’m at a crossroads about the whole thing. I mean, he made it a specific point to not be like Bush, but now I’ve read reports about him protecting Bush’s policy for illegal wiretapping (when he said he wouldn’t), not closing Guantanamo Bay (which he said he’d close it first thing), not being too active on protecting gays in the military (when he said he’d ban the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy), and making compromises with conservatives on Health Care. And now, his Afghan War.

I don’t know all of the super deep details about it. He says that we are to go over there and quiet-down-now the Taliban. If we don’t, they will plot and scheme and blow us all up again. But when won’t they plot and scheme and blow us up? The libs are saying that he’s continuing Bush and making a terrible decision of going to war in the light of just having received the Nobel Peace Prize. Some say that this is his Vietnam War. He made it one of his key points to come into office and not be this war president, but he’s already going back on promises, although he did also say from the beginning that he would be making some choices we would not agree with. Also, he did set a time limit and a very fine objective to defend the Afghans (alongside Pakistan) and train Afghan soldiers to defend themselves, in opposition to the Texas Fascist who just wanted to “blow s**t up” and his disciples McPain and Stale-lin who wanted to be at war for 100 years¹. This makes sense to me, but at the same time, the whole thing seems like a lost cause and Obamsky really needs to start attending to matters in his homeland.

I imagine the “reality” that may hit many people who campaigned hard for him is that all politicians are the same in office, the difference is just in how they campaign themselves during election time. But this obviously isn’t true either. Doubting everything and everyone is just as stupid as believing everything and everyone, even if you have the experience of being tired of being betrayed by people you have faith in. Obama did help to qualm Russian beef with us left over from the Cold War, as well as signing the Matthew Shepard Act into law; two things I’m sure Bush would’ve used to wipe himself with after using the bathroom. 3 years left. We’ll see the reality of how he carries himself. Meanwhile, excuse me while I tend to this traffic ticket.

Notes:
1) John McCain and Sarah Palin. McCain once said that it would be fine with him if the United States military stayed in Iraq for 100 years. Go google it yourself.

Cultural Rupture

2009-10-31T00:15:00.000-04:00

I thought I had become racist. For a second.

A Hispanic woman who did not have extensive English or seeming of much wealth (for lack of a better description) came into my store the other day and I immediately knew she wasn’t going to buy anything. I thought this conclusion came from me starting to breed that terrible mental illness known as racism. But It wasn’t. Of course, I work in a linens-and-furniture retail store and it’s my job to attend to customers in the store as soon as I see them and attempt to sell them merchandise….and I did. She told me she was looking for a circular dining table and we started on our pre-determined path of no fruition. I showed her all that we have, each piece individually costing as much as open heart surgery, and last but not least, the cheapest round table we had, the quality of which matched the price. She, of course, left without buying anything and I stood asking myself why her race was able to tell me that this would happen ahead of time. The answer ended up being that it’s a dynamic consequence of the fact that our store is in a neighborhood that can barely afford anything we sell.

If I had to guess, the President of the company picked the location of this store, a lower class Hispanic neighborhood in the South Bronx, because renting the property would be cheap. It’s built over a sewer which odorously makes itself known to anyone who walks inside. It’s built next to a river that’s so polluted the fish would have better chances of survival if people fed them opium everyday. There are as many rats in the store as there are customers and employees combined. Cheap electric and heating bills. Cheap water bills. All to upkeep a franchise made for the economic class that lives in the Hamptons, Long Island, Manhattan and New Rochelle, while keeping money in the capitalist’s pocket. Makes perfect sense to someone who just considers their own pockets in their decisions. And why should anyone be considerate of anything else when making decisions? Years ago, a decision like this wouldn’t have made any difference in whether the President of the store made his millions or not.

Circa 1999, citizens of the neighborhood were able to afford all of the ridiculously priced things the linens-and-furniture was selling. Italian sheet sets flew off the racks. Classy handmade chandeliers were pulled off the ceiling almost as soon as they were hung. Brand name leather sofas were bought up like iPhones. Two years later, a couple of planes consecutively crashed into the Twin Towers, making an economic vacuum that sucked loads of cash right out of American (and international, subsequently) circulation. A certain Texas-bred Fascist used the media, anger and sentiment over this to direct the country towards more violence. And the war started, with him spending $80,000,000 of taxpayers money per month on this. Then concepts like bad mortgages and housing bubbles bursting started coming into reality. And now here we are. The company is not making any real money, because it’s still busy trying to force high prices down people’s throats.

I’ve heard billions of complaints from customers about the smell of the sewer over which the building is built. Billions of inquiries as to whether the neighborhood is safe to walk through. Plenty of people who can’t make it to the store before closing time because they live and work in Long Island or Manhattan or New Rochelle and then have to travel to the Bronx to shop (without a car). Economically, if we cater to these areas, shouldn’t the store be located there? If we are stationed in the Bronx, shouldn’t the merchandise be affordable to Bronx residents? Then we’d have customers. Even people with money are complaining that things are too expensive, although this could be because they think everything in life should be cheap, regardless of the fact that it’s not really doing them any real damage to purchase things at the prices that are already there.

I originally questioned whether placing this business in poor neighborhood was right or wrong. A co-worker says that question really doesn’t apply to the situation at all since there really isn’t any obligation to the community you enter. I say that you have no business being in the community unless you’re supporting it somehow or are not really affecting it in any major way. Of course, selling furniture and bed sheets is not about any moral obligation at all, but I also don’t see the point of entering a culture without positively adding to it. We could talk about the company hiring local residents so that a few more of them would have some income, but that isn’t even the case.

The co-worker said that you cannot put your beliefs on other people, and that free will should not be violated. So, the company is free to posit itself wherever and run however it likes. This is true, but when you have this as the basis for all other thoughts, it leaves all kinds of room for immoral activity. People who mow down forests to setup corporations and test products on animals and “constitutionally bare arms” that end up in high school shootings solely have the free will argument behind all they do. If the world is to heal somehow, good ideas need to be guiding those actions. Only thinking about how you would materially benefit is never a good idea.

2009-10-03T18:12:00.000-04:00

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The reason why crime still persists, not enough people allowed to be heroes."][/caption]

So, at my job, one co-worker was telling me and some others about how strange he found the bond between two of his friends to be. They were in a relationship, and he was absolutely boggled at the fact that they still considered themselves to be together, but were not having sex. "What are they doing???" he exclaimed with a shrug. "They been goin' out all that time, and they ain't f*** not once?? Nah, if I'm dating a woman, she gonna give me some he** or somethin'. If we ain't fu***n', what am I there for?" Me and someone else tried explaining to him that perhaps they weren't ready for that yet, or that it's possible that in this day and age, some people still do just enjoy each other's company. "What the hell are you talkin' about? What am I hangin' out with her for if she ain't givin' me no pu**y"

Some of you might be focused on the fact that he thought all of what he was referring to absolutely had to happen in a designated deadline of spending time with a woman. But I will say that that is no here or there, only because it's just one of a list of things some people of each gender still strictly expects from the other.

I was just ~~talking~~ arguing with an old friend over dinner a couple of days ago about the gender specific things she wanted in her own future family. The husband is being charged with throwing money at the house from his job as a construction worker/businessman/one-man army that's hired to destroy all socialist/communist nations and making himself dumb and muscle-bound in order to be a man (I'm totally exaggerating, she just said she was looking for someone to "protect and provide"). She as a wife would stop having an actual job and would instead stay at home to play with the kids, scrub the floors, cook dinner and be on demand to do what my unwitting co-worker was asking for in the first paragraph of this post (she really just said she'd be taking care of the house and child for a little while [but even after that stage of child-care is done, she'd only return to a "woman-friendly" job]). She, of course, slathered this shallow vision for herself with "I want a marriage founded on God, which is an indestructible foundation". Ok, I agree with the foundation part, but what she's describing is the annihilation of any kind of presence of a spirit in that home. What the co-worker shows is a complete negligence of humanity altogether.

Wars, depression, serial killing, famine, and 10 billion other rote forms of destruction to this world that I could list all persist partially because there really isn't enough people looking at past their own biological makeup for potential for solution-building. They're too busy sacrificing that potential to attend to infinitesimal-scale things in their own home or listening to jackasses like the Batman in the comic panel above and actually deeming it sensible ideology. Even in people who claim to be progressive, there is this illogical and toxic focus on what role this or that man/woman/alien/cat should be playing. Thus, I will venture forth and say that God is absent from this.

The strength and spirit of Christ was not in the title "Mary's son"¹ or "Jew" or even "Man" for that matter. It was in the title "Carpenter", "Teacher", "Prophet" and "Son of Man (server of the community)". It is in these roles that he worked fervently to be. He fostered his 12 confidants on the basis of their titles as "Disciples", not "Men". He disliked what the Pharisees represented as "Teachers of the Law".

Thus, the answer to who we truly are, the places where are souls get their expression, does not lie in "man", "woman", "wife", "husband", "black dude", "homosexual", "parent", "Iraqi". They lie in the titles "astronaut", "writer", "teacher", "janitor", "dancer". There is not a checklist of things you add to a relationship as a woman or a man, but there sure is a journey you can take someone on or go into as a preacher, a musician, a social worker, an origami folder, an environmentalist or fireman. These titles coming together in a relationship are where the Foundation of God can be found and the spirit thrives.

Notes:
1) Go ahead, click on the link in the words "Mary's Son" above and tell me what you think of it. There's more than one example of Christ following something bigger than himself and not simply his own bloodline.

Don’t Stunt*

2009-09-22T18:21:00.000-04:00

So, this is very basic stuff. Save your money. But, upon thinking of Matthew 6 25-34, it seems to me that the act seeps much more in to the person existentially than I thought. However, in all reality, I wanted to post some new thoughts on the blog. So, if this is old hat, or boring hippie stuff, feel free to go somewhere else. Also, this is written through the eyes of a very cynical and sarcastic person. Thus, many things will be exaggerated to make points.

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I've been wondering how the hell people are able to travel to London, Africa, Mars, Saturn and other solar systems on their spare time without a single piece of copper to their name. I've read of novelists (actually just two, "Shantaram"'s Gregory David Roberts, who was an Australian criminal and probably hitched every plane or boat ride he got, and one of my favorite authors, Roberto Bolaño) who have been all over the world while being stark-raving poor. Everyone assumes it's in the drive to get more money. To get a higher paying job. To rob more banks per week or hack a few more checking accounts. Win more hands at the AC or LV crap tables. Play more lottery tickets. Sell more silly, insubstantial hip-hop songs for download to the Sidekick/Facebook teen ignorance-is-bliss masses. But the ability to travel or live an enjoyable life doesn't necessarily come from getting more money, but spending less of the amount you already receive.

A job isn't disqualified as a good job because it doesn't pay you enough. I mean, with this pending, you can get a second one or marry rich (I joke. Don't do that). But if you've found your niche in the labor world, I'd highly advise against leaving it for any reason other than it not being your niche anymore. Nowadays, your job is the primary source of survival, and if you found one that you like and is about something good, that is an occupation you should grip with the strength of The Hulk. Yes, there is a lot of people who are just glad to have a job…..or at least they say they are. But even they are picky at what they want to do. I know people at the absolute bottom of the barrel that do not just do any piece of labor handed to them, even when it seems like they may be good at it. A luxurious lifestyle of choice is infused in all of us. Even the homeless and poor refuse food they don't want, although there's obviously something to be said about this².

Anyway, I think that the solution to this is a revolt against economic entities that try to corner society's needs and then charges top dollar for it. Against corporations and companies that do their best to employ the most amount of labor for the least amount of money. And that is to throw the luxurious lifestyle away.

I was thinking in terms of being able to depend less and less on that job as time passes, as well as you developing a strength of spirit and mind over the urges of the flesh.

A luxurious lifestyle can consist simply of being able to buy a huge bottle of alcohol every two days, or taking a taxi everywhere you go (I'm sorry, this is not a wasteful practice I understand, so it will get the label of 'stupid' from me). Or upkeeping the rims and soundsystem on your Lincoln Navigator, making the value of your car skyrocket over the cost of your house or child (I joke). Of course, you can keep this lifestyle if you're rich and can afford to pay $10,000 for customized Snickers bars. Per day. Per meal even. But this easily permeates everything in your life, and pretty soon you won't think of/do anything for yourself, which explains many of the upper-class figures you see on T.V., devoid of basic wisdoms such as tying your own shoes and knowing what a Native American or Chicken of the Sea is. You create your own prison of comfort in many ways. You stay where you are. You keep doing what you keep doing, thinking what you keep thinking. You do not grow. Even if you go somewhere else foreign, it's only with the presupposition that there is personal space for you to keep being you.

Christ says not to worry about the clothes on your back or if food will come. Others will tell you that this means to just throw yourself out into the world and be reckless with your own resources and don't worry. Just go outside and do what is that you do and, if you have a faith, a huge Caucasian hand will smack you with a box of millions and say "here you go!" to replenish your filthy lifestyle, and then leave. Others will also tell you that it goes against logic or faith to worry. Technically, it may go against faith, but this is as expected. A being who is omnipotent would expect you to be this way exactly. I think the message is, if you are doing what you're supposed to be doing, investing some of your time in what you're supposed to be investing in, good fruit will come. Be focused on the grace and talents God has given you, the culture of sustainability, of community, and others things that will appear in the "The More You Know" advertisements on NBC, and our wealth, particularly in the spiritual aspect but in others as well, will grow. Forget the $5 frappuchino every other day and just get a regular coffee. Forget eating out every week and eat out every other week. Just stop buying sneakers or shoes if your closet already has at least 12 pair that you haven't worn yet (there is no good reason at all why someone would keep this up. NO good reason). At the same time, pursue the opportunity to be something in the world.

Notes:
*Reference to the song "Stunt 101" by the rap group G-Unit.
1) I am not at all saying that this is some sort of excuse to not attend to them. If anything, we should learn some sort of discernment concerning this. I was "dissed" two Sundays ago when I offered a woman on the street food and she looked at me like I was asking if I could probe her brain for Iraqi government secrets, then said "no thanks" and immediately went back to sleep. Regardless of how poor or down someone is, we must still respect their choices. Also, just because someone is without a job doesn't mean they should just take whatever is handed to them. Makes no sense to work at something that is absolute, downright torture. Or demeaning. I cannot blame anyone for wanting to keep their dignity over surviving. I can be ok with judging someone who tosses away morals in order to make a living.

Technology = Spirit?

2009-09-01T17:09:00.000-04:00

A week or two back while at work, the screen on my G1 broke. It's an slide open-and-close phone, as you would see if you clicked on the link I provided in the G1 phrase in the previous sentence. I'm not really sure what happened, nor would it be important. When it was closed, the phone would freeze. I'd have to turn it off and back on in the open position to get it to operate: a situation that immediately called for a replacement. I felt a sharp despair.

Although I'm not socially networking 24/7, I felt thrust out of all important loops in life because I no longer (really) had access to Twitter and Facebook on my phone. At least until the 3 to 5 business days passed before receiving the replacement unit. I tried to tell myself that not being able to see the address of whoever's birthday party/barmitzvah/goat-sacrifice event I had that night was a justifiable reason to be genuinely pissed that my phone died, but it was of no use. I was immaturely angry and felt helpless. I started to ponder what this suggests about our generation, or today's world, especially in the light of T-Mobile representatives rotely telling me "yeah, I hate when that happens, too. You feel like you've lost your whole life. Let's get that fixed as soon as possible." I thought that the beginning of all those hyper sci-fi worlds we've read of in Philip K. Dick narratives and Neal Stephenson writings has very much arrived. Meaning that everything that has even the slightest importance in worldly matters will only fill space on the internet, and will be as tangible as you imagine them to be as you stab the keys on your computer's keyboard.

Anything that we have to affirm in this world will continually/ultimately be filtered through a wall post, or someone else's MP3s on our homepage, or comments on someone's status or a tagged picture. I'm sure the technological avenues will continue to develop. But, speaking as a person who is not a fan of live interaction with people, there is something to be said for it..........

2009-08-17T17:00:00.000-04:00

[caption id="attachment_435" align="aligncenter" width="269" caption="Afore named practice, perfectly captured."][/caption]

Matthew 6:25-34

Very interesting. A bit more depressing and angering, but still interesting I guess.

Currently, the newspapers tell me the filthy Repubs are fighting and protesting Obama over him wanting to use Universal Health Care, tax medium and large employers who do not provide health care to their employees, and use a single payer health care system¹, due to it seeming quite "socialist" in structure. People are purportedly protesting at town halls, outdoor meetings and the like. The liberals are angry with the concessions he's proposing or actually making, I don't remember which.

Meanwhile, at my job, I had a conversation with my idiot Communist Eastern European manager. During a sale we're to have, she expressed that she wished employees were forced to work from some ungodly hour in the morning until 8 or 9 at night, always standing and running around to force customers to buy merchandise they obviously can't afford, without breaks or anything in between.

I told her what she said was disturbing. She said "my problem" was that I don't go after every opportunity to make money, not aggressive enough, because of morals or whatever (her words). I'm supposed to be all about² survival. All this from a woman who needs help just pulling paper from copy machine jams, and has had more complaints from customers than I can count. All this to me, who probably has been working here before she learned how to spell the term "labor laws", who has never been greedy or aggressive about sales and does just fine.

I told her her problem is that she thinks we're all supposed to be a bunch of bloodthirsty creatures clawing at each other's throats for every possible 2 cent sale we could force out of people. She says that's not true, and then tells me to forget what she said and just do whatever I want, which is basically the opposite of everything she wants me to do. I said ok, getting on that right away.

Everybody wants to survive (to kick others aside to make sure they have enough money for keeping up appearances), but no one wants to live (to help each other). I'd bet money that you'd find this paradigm at the root of each and every single problem in the world.

1) A system where money is taken from our taxes, collected by the government or some public administrative service, and distributed nationally amongst the doctors. This is instead of the doctors relying on the patients directly to make their salaries.

2) You do need to survive, but the struggle for individual survival should never take precedence over living your life (which for the idiots, does not simply mean just breathing, but affirming your being).

Individually Individualized Individualism

2009-07-21T12:53:00.000-04:00

¹³"When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say the Son of Man is?' ¹⁴They replied, 'some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.' ¹⁵'But what about you?' he asked. 'Who do you say I am?' ¹⁶Simon Peter answered. 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.' ¹⁷Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in Heaven.

--Matthew 16: 13-17

"You critics like to criticize,
but couldn't visualize,
individual's lives
through a criminal's eyes,"

--Eminem¹

So, I am once again reminded of a general rejecting ethic of individualism in society and in my church. A little while back, I wrote about a woman I went on a few dates with who claimed to be individualist, but was not this at all. And even in my church, though the majority of the congregation² means well and does indeed welcome other people's presences and participation in events and services (their hearts are correct), there is a tiny, tiny piece of group mentality that still, by nature, rejects assertions/notions that seem to stray too far from what Christ is about. Please note that I said "seem to".....to them, that is.

There is also this infesting phenomena of cliques, groups of people that work (consciously or subconsciously) towards being socially exclusive, forming in the church. Understandably, the church is located in Manhattan, a city completely symbolic of what I've described in Note 2. And so, being surrounded by an infinite number of things strange and new³, it would be relief to find people that are from the same background and singular culture as you are and to stick with them for comfort. Perhaps the run-off stream of emotion from this is the fear of judgment or persecution or mockery or condescendence they'd receive from putting themselves out there to people of cultures that are different. Perhaps they've been hurt in the past or have pieces of personal history that they believe would bring public shame or mockery. Whatever it is, their situation is obviously lacking the notion of God's glory and Grace, key elements in individualism. In addition, the church administration is working for the place to be of inclusivity that welcomes people of all viewpoints and emotions, and the cliques hurt this goal directly.

But I digress. If secular readers have not flipped to another web page by now, I thank you for you time. So far, it appears to me when the general person thinks of individualism, they picture either the inconsiderate, destructive capitalist who just goes around stomping, stealing and cutting through everyone else possessions to make a large stash of their own (for a great visual of this, play "BioShock" on the XBox 360. Or look at George Bush). Or they picture the noisy, emo anarchist who works to blow ideals into ash for the sole purpose of causing discomfort, confusion, despair or even pain. Now, while these caricatures unfortunately do exist, it is ridiculous to paint this picture on each and every single person who wants to use a bit of your resources for another end⁴ or to cause you to look back at yourself and ask questions. The rational individualist does these things for good reason or to good ends.

The point of individualism is to go against the mind that treats every man, woman, Black, Chinese or Australian with the same broad stroke of human application. To end the monumentally absurd notion that what applies for one white man, one Indian woman, one black boy, one purple alien, etc. applies for all of that biological breed. ⁵ Individualism recognizes in each and every single person their talents, struggles, grief, complexes, and guides them to a better place based on those elements.

Somebody could argue: "well, if this is done according to this person, and that is done according to that person, and everyone is just doing their own thing, how would there be any unified whole to progress?" But just because each and every individual existential case is recognized and supported doesn't mean that there can't be a transcending whole that people adhere to. Individualism recognizes the key talents in each person that adds to that whole. So, the first person can focus on the fact that 50 Cent's lyrical skill is that of a drunk baby sheep with autism. The second person could argue that selling C.D.s with nothing on them but Bill O'Reilly ⁶ listing hundreds of ways in which people can kill themselves with homemade poison would probably do better for the sake of Hip-Hop as a culture than what 50 Cent is doing. The unified whole they both contribute to is the fact that 50 Cent has no business on anyone's television, radio, wall, movie screen or mind.

Up there in the book of Matthew, Simon Peter was glorified because he came to know God himself, and not through a bunch of images and concepts that other men told him. He didn't tell him to talk to the most voluminous or popular group that worships Me and make sure you do things the way they do it. He said He was proud that Simon came to know God himself. We should all be doing the same, and respecting and learning from each other what the other has "come to know". Perfect world peace or whatever will not come immediately after adopting this approach, but there will then be a tangible welcoming community.

Notes:
1) The point is, he painted the picture of a group of people who could place themselves in other people's shoes. You can take or leave the "criminal" part.
2) This is not necessarily their fault. I, myself must always remember that they come from a more culturally traditional and homogenous background and atmosphere where values and emotions and thoughts are handed to you by elders to have. Where as I was raised in the city, a thriving thing that is culturally varied by hundreds or even thousands of shades, and values and emotions and thoughts are ascertained through self-discovery.
3) Another difference: the rural person is usually encouraged to stay away from the "strange and new", while the urban person knows that if there is to be peace in the Metropolis, the strange and new must be embraced.
4) I speak of the NGOs or the Non-Profits who want to use your money to preserve a particular arctic area or rainforest or species, or perhaps campaign in Civil Rights.
5) In addition to the note in my last post, this ethic could also be argued as part of the basis for violent insurrections, revolts and school shootings.
6) Right-wing political commentator, author, T.V. show host, and all-around waste of time.

The Village Taken

2009-07-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

Alternate Title: The Teacher's Advocate

I've recently read a most curious and refreshing post by a Brazen Teacher some days back about, for the most part, group parenting. It talked about the formative years of the child and how it¹ learns what it lives. Indeed. It talked about how many people go into parenting thinking that it will be easier than it looks: perhaps because of some imagined "oneness" with the child, perhaps because they think children will be more obedient to their friendlier approach, perhaps because they think raising a child and assembling a Lego Castle are one and the same². The post spoke on how this consequence reflects in the formative years. Conclusively, the article spoke on how the tribal groups in New Guinea, Africa, perhaps South America or a few places in un-modernized China or The Golden Triangle³ are perhaps doing something right in having the village raise the child instead of the parents alone. Now, she made quite the point and I think the argument was very well put together. But, as always, a few details not mentioned in the post resulted in this Devil's Advocacy to the vision she proposed.*

The village could raise the child, instead of the job being solely on the parent. And it's a lovely little sentiment for the people of the community to share that responsibility. Perhaps then, young parents can just shoot them right out and expect everyone else to pick up the slack, since the village would look forward to the opportunity to do so. The article does say that "Children are not [completely] taken away from their biological parents, but they are not left with them to fend for themselves either", but in today's world and generation, where becoming a parent is envisioned as weighty a prospect as putting together model airplanes⁴, when the full reality of child-rearing hits that young or naive couple, I'm pretty sure they'll resort to letting the community take over the job. We could then ask, if the potential parents are going to do that, why even bother having the children at all? That is psychological guesswork for another time, but the scenario does happen.

Also, village parenting would work in a world where every adult was a properly trained potential parent and had room in their lives, emotionally and physically, for the task. This is not that world. Of course, it is that kind of world for the New Guinea and African tribes, but I'll get to that later. We must assume the village is unified enough to be a clear, solid presence in the child's life and all of its constituents on some sort of level with each other. They can all teach the child different things about life or a different skill or any kind of range of things, but most importantly, disciplinary measures will have to be shared by most if not all. You can't have the child getting one message here and another there. But, since one adult believes in hitting their child and another doesn't, another believes the child shouldn't risk hurting themselves in the playground and another thinks the child should explore, and another thinks the child should pick up labor as early as possible and another thinks they should focus on their studies, etc. ad nauseum, the "village parent" would self-destruct before it even began, since the variance in message is inevitable.

How does the village parent effect the child's formative years? Well, in one aspect, if that unity were to be achieved, I imagine it would end up looking something like a small rural town or a commune in its group psychology, which in turn would destroy the child's drive to rationally search for the true self/individual. In these kind of social environments, the focus is usually on preserving inherited values, making sure to practice customs, instilling and conserving a specific set of beliefs, so on and so forth. Since the elders and adults of the community have, by default, more experience and embodiment of these things, any kind of purpose or passion for the growing child will be emptied and replaced by respect, worship and the carrying out of the will of the elders, which the child eventually grows up to be, for the sole purpose of pointlessly repeating the process in the future. It becomes much less like a vibrant and vivid person or people raising a new human being to embrace life, and more like robots gearing and tooling another for future self-replacement. Any venture out of set programming will result in dire consequences to be discerned in another discussion.⁵

I haven't bothered to go into issues such as there not being any kind of real source of intimacy for the child or other ways this affects its formative years because in the end, I think those points are really just derivatives of everything said here. And while I will state again that I don't think what the Brazen Teacher suggests is wrong per say, I will say that I disagree with it. I do not believe the Village Parent can work or is an answer to the problem of new parents facing hardships. As implied in the last paragraph, the tribes of New Guinea and Africa have specific ideals, values, practices and beliefs for the child. They have a specific envisioned being they want that child to be, for the sole purpose of that child one day teaching their own child to be the same thing, so that the cycle continues to roll........albeit with no real direction. The village may coax the biological parent's responsibility, but will the child be raised right?

Notes:
*For the sake of the argument, the rest of this post will not refer to a literal village, but rather any kind of geographical community or group.
1) Yes, I will call the child "it". It is hypothetical and has no gender. So shut-up.
2) In all cases, the parent deserves each and every moment of rude-awakening, ball-busting hardship in parenting that God wills. As a matter of fact, I pray for the experience to be downright traumatizing. Why? Because the worst kind of parents are the ones who likes to sugar-coat life to keep themselves happy instead of addressing problems like they're supposed to.
3) The article just mentions New Guinea and Africa. I wrote all the other places.
4) Meaning in this generation, both of those things have become something people could just do in their spare time and not really take that seriously.
5) Now, I'm not saying that isn't possible for someone to be traditional and pursue rational self-interest at the same time. I'm sure it's done often. But even more often, [today's] culture clashes with tradition. I will also venture forth to say that environments of this form are what produce school shootings, but I digress.

Porn: This is not Invasion of the Body Snatchers

2009-07-06T11:37:00.000-04:00

So, recently, in my life, there have appeared a string¹of attacks on that most profuse film genre, known to you and me as pornography. A guest pastor at my church spoke a sermon on how it is an epidemic. Of how sex is a majestic and awesome thing, but only when had in the right context. He pointed to passages and symbols in the Bible of how sex symbolized a holy union. A holy act. Elsewhere, a blogger (who is not Christian) had written about how she was disgusted by porn. Disgusted by the fact that it was so accessible on the internet despite the fact that the sites ask if the user is of age². She blamed porn addiction and the appeal to sex involving vomiting and crapping and pissing³ and probably World War 3,4 and 12 all on porn. I think the public consensus is that I, as a Christian, am supposed to just wholesale agree with all of this. But that principle, just like the beliefs listed above, ventures into weakness and stupidity. It's porn, not Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

There's no alien seed or hypnosis or secret brain-altering message in porn that forces people to continue to watch it and send its film makers money⁴. People do that themselves. You're not going to turn into a genital-crazed fiend if you pass by a flyer or a poster in the street displaying a 3/4 naked woman or man. You give that attention to it yourself. The outrage and stomping piles of DVDs and videotapes⁵ in the street all comes from you. Any kind of support or attention or addiction porn gets is all in the people.

First, I disagree with the notion of imposing on someone's free will. If people want to go make and star in porn, we must let them. We can inform them that it's not very productive or moral, but it is ultimately still their decision. Priests or idiot conservatives or whoever going to shut down studios in the San Fernando Valley or wherever they make porn will only give cast and crew members an even more vigorous drive to produce films somewhere else, and will give the public a greater interest in what all the hype is about. Ultimately, one must find what they're doing wrong within themselves, not because someone else is repeatedly beating their moral values over their heads.

Secondly, interest in the......unconventional things porn portrays does not wholly define the "degradation" of humanity. This belief would stem from the basic belief that there is only one or a few ways that people should enjoy themselves. Technically, (preferably) after a couple becomes married, they can do whatever they feel. There is no on-the-book, official way for intercourse. I'm not saying that people should go into the psychotic⁶ or exhibitionist, but there is some media of a sexual nature that may actually produce interest or drive or "spice" in the couple's sensual life.

And last, addiction to porn is not the pornographer's fault, unless you can prove the existence of the elements I listed in the second paragraph above. Everyone is different: has different reactions to different things, experiences things and views things differently. I was having a talk with the security guard at the store I work at, who is a staunch Christian, and he was telling me that sexuality is ruining man. He was saying that it was sinful and destructive to the Kingdom of Heaven when a woman appears dressed in the amount of clothes that would probably equal someone else's washrag, because it tempts the man. Now, these things are bad, but the fault of the man's temptation doesn't fall into the woman's lap. That connection is made willfully by the man himself. It is his own task to defeat those thoughts and urges, not to say to himself it's ok for them to be there because he's a man and he's going to do it when these situations arise. Personally, and then ultimately, my attention is not kept to something that is not intellectually or emotionally in-depth in some form or fashion. I believe it is man's fault for not having this general standard; the addicted person fault for not giving themselves this viewpoint or visual range.

Porn may be highly immoral, but it is not to be blamed for any sexual deviancy on society's part. We let it into our households and let it stay on our televisions. The parents themselves hold the responsibility and risk of letting children's curiosity carry them when they don't educate them or keep a sharp watch over their own child's life⁷. In the presence of a truly elite and progressive society, porn's exposure would be reduced to some far off nook or cranny of the world. But who's fault is it that this society is not [truly] elite and progressive?

Notes:
1) By string I mean two people have talked about it.
2) All you have to do is say, you're 21 and they'll let you in.
3) This purportedly shows how degraded today's humans are.
4) Why people are doing this when you can get plenty of it for free on the internet is beyond me. Perhaps there is some sort of nobility in paying the studios for their "work". But I digress......and also don't endorse.
5) These things still exist?
6) Whatever that means.
7) The world does not bend to your family's life. It shouldn't ignore it, but it shouldn't bend either.

"Gran Torino"

2009-06-30T12:43:00.000-04:00

So, here, Clint bring us a modern, more dramatic version of "Dirty Harry". My assumptions of this intent are evidenced a bit by the fact that there was a long advertisement for the "Dirty Harry" collection, meaning all 5 parts (I thought there was only one movie!) on DVD prior to the film starting. When I first seen the trailer for this, I thought it looked to be a bit weak, sloppy and self-indulgent, especially for Mr. Eastwood. After watching it, I found all three of these traits to be present, but generally it was very good film. Racist, so I thought, but very good.

Walt Kowalski¹ (Eastwood) is a recently widowed Korean War veteran living in a Michigan suburb. He dreads the day-to-day interaction with his cold and distant family of sons trying to rush him to a funeral home and granddaughters waiting to steal his stuff when he dies. But things start to change when his life crosses path with the lives of a Hmong family (from which country it is never stated) next door when he stops their boy, Thao, from trying to steal his Gran Torino in the name of gang initiation. From then on, the bitter, gruff and grizzly voiced Kowalski² finds his peaceful life of upkeeping his house and sitting on the porch with his dog more and more interrupted, but his connection with the Hmong family more and more strengthened.

The story ended up being a lot more in-depth and substantial than I expected it to be. I guess, the action hero in his retired life would be the proper theme to labeled this with. Eastwood's character still has that "make-my-day.....punk" energy, but now he'll only put a fresh hole in your head after he cleans his gutters, sweeps the porch, mows the lawn and fixes a neighbor's sink. A man constantly trying to find purpose for himself, big or small, in his day and age which takes place after a larger purpose for himself has incinerated to ashes and blown away in the wind³. All of this came across with great clarity and grabbed my sympathies immediately.

However, I think, when it comes to filming stories about foreign Asians, Eastwood cannot bring himself to see them as.....you know.....actual human beings or characters⁴. I did not see "Letters To Iwo Jima" but I was reading somewhere how his filming of the Japanese side of WW II in the story was a bit unfair and bias. In "Gran Torino", besides his character being a "lovable racist", there's no particular bias or anything but the Hmong characters are severely under-developed. It could be the lack of experience amongst the two main Hmong youths, Sue and Thao (this is the first time both actors, Bee Vang and Ahney Her, appeared in a film professionally), but it seemed to me like Eastwood was the only one following an actual script. The actors had no scenic rhythm, often repeated the same lines over and over, stumbled over each other in performance and had no real characteristics. Sue's intelligence peaked out a little bit, but Thao was a sloppy character altogether. In one scene he's afraid to speak up after being repeatedly insulted, in another he's taking it upon himself to touch things that aren't his, in another he's making demands and treating elderly people like they're fellow teenagers. In addition to this, there was about zero sympathy for his character. Yes, we know he did not have any direction in his life prior to meeting Kowalski, but he was nothing. Didn't like to play sports or read or write or....just.....didn't have anything going for him. Like he was some sort of..........Hmong stand-in instead of an actual person.

Generally, the movie was really good, though I would not say it was Eastwood's best. The whole duration of the movie (which is also the same amount of time Kowalski's face is on camera), it seemed to me that Eastwood just wanted to prove to the world that a sprinkle of take-no-sh** gunslinger still existed in his soul. The entire cast just lived in his shadow, and nothing even seemed to be of any real importance unless he was involved. A little self-indulgent if you ask me, but still worth watching.

Notes:
1) -sky, makes me think of Buchinsky (Charles Bronson) for some reason.
2) Right. Never seen Eastwood play this role before. Never.
3) "Dust in the wiiiiiiind, all we are is dust in the wiiiiind" - Kansas - "Dust In The Wind" (1977)
4) Well......I mean.....he is Conservative.....but I digress.....

Seriously Joking. Just kidding, but for real........

2009-06-29T11:08:00.000-04:00

Hello. I'm the Clandestine Samurai. You may have seen me in such films as the Oscar^Ⓡ Award winning masterpiece "The Curious Sword of Benjamin Samurai", the slapstick comedy "Dude, Where's my Blade?" or the action-packed thriller "Brokeback Mountain 2: Breakin' Backs with a Vengeance, Bitch!". Studies have shown that, in today's society, a very large amount of witty and graphic jokes go clean over the heads of a large portion of the young and old. Great pieces of irony, sarcasm and satire are delivered with great rhythm and tone, but unfortunately do not touch the funny bone of most of this population and symbolically go speeding to a crash landing right on the cutting floor. However, studio execs have paid me $3000 and a Ziploc bag of Nicaraguan Brown¹ to appear in this instructional blog post and tell you a little bit about joke structure and mentality. So please, sit back, be enlightened, and aid our mission to reduce the abortions of fresh snarky joke babies.

No, but seriously. It's a bit of a let down, disappointment and question of general intelligence when I hear someone or myself be sarcastic in everyday life and it gets lost on whatever audience is present. I'm not saying they have to laugh, but there is a sharp absence of evidence that shows that the person or people understood that a joke was just told. At the same time, or, on the other side of the coin, there are people who express things that are absurd or insanely stupid by default, but take themselves very seriously. My guess is that people who are exposed to the latter situation train themselves to be sensitive to people's various personalities, and so mistake sarcasm for someone being serious. But both situations are funny. Confused? Bored? Genocidal? Let me give you an example:

Picture a woman sitting somewhere: a park bench, a bus stop, the throne of 18th century Japan. Now picture a man approaching said woman and saying "Girl, you look so good that I want to start a magazine just to put your face on every issue, and then be my only subscriber!" or "Girl, you must be a potent seed, because you make the tree grow in my forest reaaaaaal quick." or, "Girl, you could be the violent video game that makes me shoot up my high school anyday!" Now, this man could be quite serious or he could be playing around. We don't know his intent. But we do know that in both cases, it is perfectly ok to laugh.

When things are this exaggerated, you must automatically turn off the serious switch. You have to have the I.Q. of a glass of Jim Jones' Kool-Aid² to think a serious conversation can start like this. I mean, a serious convo can start from anything, but you cannot consider yourself attempting to start one with those lines. The man can be very serious when saying these things, but then you'd have to find comical the fact that he thinks living beings other than badly written aliens from any given Star Trek episode actually talk like this to each other prior to engaging each other socially.

So, I guess the point here is, when exaggeration is present, it can be considered funny. As a few skillfully literary artists³ have illustrated, sometimes comedy even appears in the tragic and devastating. But then the comedy is in the fact that someone else thinks they are logical in their own exaggeration. So, take this bit of wisdom with you for start of your next day or even now. Look at the people around you. Examine the ironies and paradoxes, the strange and bizarre, the so-empty-it's-absurd, and remember, you have permission to laugh.

Surgeon General's Warning: This is unless, of course, someone is telling you they are going to kill themselves or are about to do a suicide bombing or something, then you help or seek help. Double unless they're telling you they're about to do this because they ran out of staples or pens or they lost an important "Halo 3" tournament, then you can definitely laugh. But make sure it's short and you seek help right afterwards.

Notes:
1) A type of marijuana I totally just made up. Feel free to replace with: Panama Red, White Widow, Lumpy Bullet, Cyclopian Green or Nashville Dirt.
2) Jim Jones - the leader of the "People's Temple", an organization in the 1950's in Guyana (South America) infamously known for performing a mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Over 900 members killed themselves.
3) I want to say Shakespeare, but no particular work comes to mind. Chuck Palahniuk is certainly a master of this, though.

Back on the Business

2009-06-23T11:31:00.000-04:00

Here I am. There we are. Thus we go.

Alright, so, over the years of having to clean up behind the completely ridiculous messes of infant-minded managers, in addition to doing the work they have some sort of problem putting their own hands in (regardless of the fact that they're so pressed about things getting done when I'm not there), I've noticed something about the customers. They think there's some sort of link between morality and luxury. Like they are one in the same or something.

I get the usual ~~pointless~~ rote responses from people who look at the prices of some of our merchandise: "Don't you guys know this is a recession?" "Rich, white folk probably shop here." "This duvet cover is beautiful, but it's way too much." "Did you know that lighters were invented before matches?" But the one response that truly shows the product of being raised to shoot Cristal¹up their veins and study for Harvard mid-terms by doing lines of China White in their friends' dorms is: "This isn't fair. This is supposed to be cheaper."

Really? So, you're own greed and imaginary knowledge of what our company's money is like told you this? You think this duvet cover is supposed to be cheaper because you.....just...think so? I mean, besides the business not really giving a crap what YOU think you should pay for it, why not just ask for it to be free? If you're going to make up a price, why make a price at all? Because you think we still have to make money on the sale? You don't even know how much we paid for it prior to selling it to you...........

Whatever. That's all here and there. My point is, for all of you that walk into stores and ask to pay for headphones or bedsheets or food or books some price that you think you should pay: please take your delusions and selfishness somewhere else. Preferably in front of a speeding truck.

All that's happening is your greed is competing with the company's, and neither one is greater or more sympathetic. A business does not care about you being able to pay your cell phone bill, keep gas in your car, keep your daughter in Catholic school AND be able to match the lilacs on your curtains with your blanket. The world does not bend to your lifestyle problems. Nor should it in the least bit.² In return, if you do not like the numbers you encounter in your shopping experience, you should a) take your business elsewhere. It would be the company's fault for the loss from ridiculous prices. Or b) go straight to the underground sweatshop in China or India or whichever country the President of the business threw his dart at on the map on the bulletin board, and get your stuff straight from the manufacturer. The goal of the company is never to make things easier for you to buy, it's to get as many Federal Reserve Notes out of you as possible. It considers itself trying to survive in the Recession just as much as you do. At the same time, it is completely pointless to sell things to you if the company does not profit from it. There is no such thing as "If you give me this for half off, I'll buy it." or "Here's a deal! I'll definitely buy this for $150, instead of $2,500." or "Did you know Mark Wahlberg was supposed to be on the plane that flew into the World Trade?" These questions are just stupid. If you see something you like but don't like the price being charged, find it for cheaper somewhere else. If you don't, purchase or do without.

Notes:
1)Cristal - A expensive champagne made popular in Hip-Hop music in the 1990's. Rappers usually mentioned being able to buy bottles of it "in da club" in their songs to show that they had a lot of money.
2)Respect it? Yes, definitely. Go out of their way to cater to it? Go suck an egg.

Descending from the Mountain

2009-06-22T15:20:00.000-04:00

Alright people, I'm coming back.
I've been going to a string of people's events without time to read or write, in addition to having writer's block anyway.
But lo! I have ideas for two new posts about subjects that need addressing. A third if I count a film review that I was supposed to do a long time ago.
Hopefully I'll have more ideas in the midst of writing those two. I will get back to reading your blogs.
And since this is my 100th post, I will have to erase it and put something much more substantial in the future. I shall returneth!!

Time is your enemy and friend

2009-06-10T08:10:00.000-04:00

Ok, so once again, some sort of attempt at an ordered life has fallen to the wayside and I feel a little oppressed and useless from the fact that I am currently going nowhere with myself. Need some sort of simple schedule for progress. For some reason I've started thinking of "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind*. Bloody Hell.

I'm not sure if I'm on anyone's RSS Feed, but if I am, you may or may not have noticed that two blog posts appeared there but are not here anymore. I had posted twice, both on subjects negatively involving someone from my church: one about what I thought was a fruitless idea to attend to the homeless, and one about still believing in gender roles. But I felt a bit guilty and rift-causing by writing them, even when telling myself that they were objective issues like any other. So they were deleted. Not really sure how this is important to any of you.

I was also compelled to post them because I haven't been at blogger in long time. Mornings that I'd usually spend writing something here, I've been using to attend to the novel. But I guess I'm just posting here to say that I will try to make time. Try to make time to read everyone's blogs and to post regardless of whether I actually have something to write about or not. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take Pelham 123 to get to work.

*"I want something else, to get me through this, Semi-Charmed kind of life, baby, baby"

Noting The Day*

2009-05-24T08:44:00.000-04:00

*This was originally titled "You Are The Resurrection", in reference to another blogger's post title, but I realized the title had nothing to do with anything.

5-22-2009:
Ah yes...........today was quite notable for me, although I'm not sure I can pinpoint why. So here, I began to "journalize". Today at the job, we (some of the employees) were subjected to a particularly malodorousness coming from the basement, where people eat and rest. It appears the water fountain down there began issuing forth this nauseating smell. Over the past few weeks it had been mysteriously clogging up more and more rapidly as people used it; less and less of the water was actually making it down the drain. But today, the drain vomited up flakes of grime and dirt onto the stainless steel basin. Of course, I figured some Draino was in order, but someone else told me about changing the filter, and someone else said something about something else, so I'm not sure how that tidbit was solved.

Tonight, I met some friends for a purposeful dinner on the upper west of Manhattan. A friend was supposed to throw a rooftop party with musicians and comedians and all kinds of theatrics. I'm not a party or a late night person, so I wasn't going. But because I did not (and two others couldn't) pick up the sound guy and his equipment for the party, my friend cancelled it altogether. He felt sullen about this, so we had a dinner get together to pick him back up. But the part that interested me was the trip there. My mother took the car to Conneticut, so I took the train to the East Side of Manh. and walked.

Now, talking to friends from church, virtually all of whom have moved here from some rural area or a farm or small town, made me feel ashamed. They've come with an objective view of the city, and so, took some time to study and know a lot of the areas and parts. Which places of Queens or Manhattan are cheap/expensive to live in. Where goods Japanese or Indian or BBQ restaurants in Brooklyn are. All kinds of stuff. I, master book/video game/movie/hermit guy, never cared about any of this until recently. My old friends would always talk about going to dance at this club, or hop around these 20 bars at forsaken hours of the night, and I hated both of those activities^{1, see notes below}.
In my defense: it's good to explore and get to know things geographically, but telling someone to explore certain parts of New York City is like telling someone to explore Compton². Unless you have a purpose for being there, it would be much more sensible to just be aware of the place. Example:

I'm on the east side of Manhattan and the restaurant was on the west, on 109th street. I had plenty of time to kill after work before meeting them, so I figured I'd just take the train down to 109th and walk across. Getting off the stop, I came up out of the station......where the Projects³ sat and greeted me with a nice, bright figuratively mocking smile. Groups of guys in red⁴ playing basketball. Others selling copies of bootleg DVDs and incense on the street. The typical resident sitting outside their apt. window with a cigarette and Bacchata⁵ or Hip-Hop blaring out. Another group of people playing dice on the handball court wall. East Harlem. I went up to 109th and began walking.

One avenue had bodegas, liquor stores and check-cashing places abound, of course. At some point, I came across a church building that looked like nothing more than a generous backyard doghouse, replete with boney, skeletal folk wearing haggard faces, sitting on the stoop and watching the world spin. However, the total of 2 avenues being crossed, I was immediately hit with towering, crisp, clean buildings behind a street semi-full of running clean-air, hybrid buses and a bustling park⁶. I've always been aware of this geographical lopside, but it never ceases to amaze.

So, I get to the restaurant an hour early. Luckily, it had a bar where I could sit and kill both time and my liver⁷. I began talking to some Yankees fan who was throwing back his own glasses of Bud and we began talking about Pacquiao, a recently famous boxer from the Phillipines who is "considered God in his country". We talked about the YMCA (where he works) and about how they've begun taking kids to the library to read books and only go on one trip every two weeks, due to the hail of lawsuits from parents⁸ whose kids have been hurt on various past trips to places that have actually heard of the word "fun". Hmph.

I shook his hand and left to join my own party. Friends arrived. Food was had. Cheering up was done. I went home and hit the Moleskine to jot notes. Quite the day.

Notes
1) It might also have something to do with the fact that I hate people. Yes, I said "hate". What? You wanna fight?
2) A suburb in Southern California, notoriously plagued with gang warfare and drugs.
3) Housing Project–(noun): a publicly built and operated housing development, usually intended for low- or moderate-income tenants, senior citizens, etc. These usually also have the items listed in 2).
4) I suspect these were the Bloods, but I could be stereotyping.
5) A genre of Hispanic music.
6) gen⋅tri⋅fi⋅ca⋅tion [jen-truh-fi-key-shuhn]–noun: the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.
7) Kill two birds with one.......glass of rum? Efficient.
8) Read: lawsuits from dirtbrained knuckleheads. You don't want your children to get hurt from life? Tie them to a chair next to the water heater and only feed them every 6 hours. Actually, don't feed them.

Shadow Of The Day

2009-05-18T17:25:00.000-04:00

Bollocks. New day, different dynamics.

Waiting for a cab, a nice man handed me the obligatory "WatchTower" booklet. As I took it, I wanted to peruse through it because it made me think of this cutaway joke in this one episode of "Family Guy". Peter was a Jehovah's Witness. He went to someone's house and when the man answered and Peter asked him something along the lines of "Would you like to hear about the word of the Lord?", the man said "Ok, sure." Peter, who is used to the door slamming in his face, was at a complete loss for words......so he just described the plot line for "Quantum Leap" and put Christ as the main character. There was also another joke where the evil monkey that haunts Chris became a Witness, but I digress.

The cab driver arrives, a loud, frail man with a salt and pepper moustache and sunken in cheeks. He asks where I'm going and I tell him the address of my job. We began to drive. "Do you work there?" is what he starts with before he launches into having gone through 3 ex-wives, him furnishing "yet another" apartment, and him telling his last wife to "just give him the 19" T.V. that they use the least and she can have the rest". I get out at my job and pay him. As he drives off, I curse my faulty memory for making me leave "Watchtower" in the car.

Subtly interesting day. I'm not sure if I've written about this here before, but about three weeks back, the woman at my job who was a complete nuisance (to put it without vulgarity) was fired. She called another co-worker at my job a "stupid black woman". So, I've pretty much been working the sales floor myself. But one day last week, the nuisance came back to pick up her check. I stood by in my section and listened as she argued with the manager that she got paid less than she was supposed to, because, in her mind, she was supposed to be paid for a week after she was fired that she did not work. Perhaps, she made the bed in her house and, since it was any ole' work, any ole' person should pay her? Perhaps she has three imaginary friends like Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind" who told that she should just be magically paid for no reason? I don't know, but at the end of her fussing I heard "I'm so sick of this (didn't hear).......that's why I'm glad I don't work here anymore." And she stormed out, purportedly murmuring to herself that she could beat up the manager anytime, anyplace. Bloody Hell.

A day in the life.

"Star Trek"

2009-05-15T07:17:00.000-04:00

Magnificent. Excellent. All films henceforth will live in its shadows. No, I'm not a Trekkie.

Directed by J.J. Abrams, who helmed "Mission: Impossible 3" and "Alias" (the T.V. show), "Star Trek" is the story of a young James T. Kirk and Spock as they first board the USS Enterprise and battle against a from-the-future vengeful Romulan (alien species) named Nero. The narrative revolves around Kirk's and Spock's histories, dilemmas, personalities and finally, the beginning of their friendship.

James T. Kirk is portrayed by actor Chris Pine, who before this starred in nothing I'd remember because he seemed like a completely new face to me. Apparently he's been in a cornball Lindsay Lohan project amongst other children or teen based movies before this. At any rate, his performance was more than enough to bear the weight of main character status as well as filling in William Shatner's shoes. He was definitely funny, charming and rebellious, channeling Kirk's future spirit but not making fun of Shatner at the same time. Spock is portrayed by Zachary Quinto, who was formerly a serial killing villain on the megahit show "Heroes". His performance was also riveting, although he did not stand out as much as Pine did. Whether this is due to Spock's inherent flat and soulless nature or the way that Quinto chose to portray the character is up to the viewer. Other notable roles include Karl Urban's "Leonard McCoy", the paranoid and constantly frustrated doctor Kirk befriends, and Eric Bana's "Nero", the vindictive Romulan. I think he was a bit overshadowed by the rest of the cast, although he did effective come across as a heartless and bloodthirsty threat in character.

I guess the quality of scriptwriting would be up for debate by viewers and critics alike. I thought that it was brilliant, although a friend of mine believed it to be horrible. According to him, the plot pretty much progressed on a string of unlikely coincidences (Kirk ending up on Delta Vega and meeting with another important character afterwards, Spock timewarping to the moment the USS Enterprise takes its maiden voyage, the fate of the planet Romulus, etc.) Except the Delta Vega meeting, I didn't notice any of these things. The story, especially Spock back(forward?) story and the idea of the mining ship and red matter, as well as the cast's acting, pretty much held my attention throughout. I also enjoyed the history of all the sayings and quirks the Star Trek enterprise is known for ("Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a physicist!", "Live long and prosper."), as well as the Vulcan neck pinch, the invention of teleportation during warp speed and Uhura's first name. I have to warn you though, if I remember correctly, Kirk does not say "Beam me up, Scotty".

Pretty short, straightforward review here. I, for the life of me, cannot find a problem in the film to nitpick on. So........go see it if you haven't.

Light In The Murk

2009-05-04T17:21:00.000-04:00

I'm going to write about something I was thinking about last night. Usually, because of its heavier religious tone than my normal posts, I'd put it into the journal instead of here. And this, in addition, is not because of any shame of being Christian at all, but for fear of alienating readers (which in itself I'm ashamed of fearing). Reading it back, it seems to have some corny, melodramatic parts, but such is the nature of the content itself. I've come to the conclusion that it's plain English and not anything that you need a particular viewpoint to understand. The only crowd that I write for is the intelligent one.

In last night's church service, instead of a sermon we had a panel discussion between three members about our church community and what we can do to outreach to the people in that neighborhood (when I say outreach, I mean make a positive difference with food or awareness or one of those things). To open up the discussion, a woman who used to be an actress and was a member from the church's first opening came up to tell her story. It was probably one of the most fascinating talks I've heard at that church thus far, listening to her talk about the conscience and listening for a voice of light to bring you up out of the darkness of self-doubt and pity and absence of rational pride. The disillusionment of your life being perfect and happy after you accept Christ.

This woman, she used to be a cutter. She tried to kill herself once. She went to the doctor at some point, to discover that she is bipolar along with some mental disorder. At 19, she began drinking heavily. Under the influence, she got into a car accident and tried to drive away from it, only to run smack into a pole a few minutes later. She was hospitalized, arrested and jailed for a few days. She came out and went to rehab for her alcoholism and her mind………and then went right back to drinking.

On Easter service at my church a few weeks back, she was supposed to show up and say something to the audience before our sermon. But the night before, a friend invited her out for a few drinks at a bar and she accepted the invitation. They went. She binged for 9 hours. I didn't even know it was humanly possible to drink that much, not to mention how much money she probably spent that night. But I digress. The usual occurred: someone volunteered to put her in a cab from the bar to her house. Someone called one of her roommates so they could tell the cab driver where she lived, since she herself was nowhere near able to put forth this information. All the buildings she passed by just look like various blurs, and she was too busy with vomiting on herself anyway. She got home. Her friends undressed her and washed her. She cried. They said they loved her. All she could think was "I'm a failure." But she said she could hear Christ say "I still love you. Come back."

She is now in a mental health program and rehab, working to get better and deal with her illnesses. I think that she as a person will be much better for it though, because she knows Christ will help her cope with everything that's there, and doesn't expect Him to "delete" it all.

I think……a certain kind of Christian uses Christ as an illusion to keep themselves happy. A run-to, in order to not address the uglier aspects of life. The drinking. The smoking. Sexual addictions. Suicidal tendencies. Crack and ecstasy. Attention from men/women. Money. Perhaps even murderous tendencies. They keep an image, an impression of the person of Christ in their minds in order to sweep all of these things under the figurative rug. But I think what Christ actually does is quite the opposite. I think that part of the purpose of accepting Christ into your life is so that you'd be able to face all of these things head on. To see what's being expressed in these actions and to reconcile them in something better, healthier.

My Own Summer (Shove It)

2009-05-02T08:11:00.000-04:00

Title to an old alternative song by Deftones.
It's been a long time. I shouldn't have left you…….without a blog post to step to.¹

Summer is a comin'. This means good dining outside with white tables of champagne and Italian dishes. Preferably at a place with a backyard and not on the public sidewalk, where cars'll be coughing out black fumes and people on cell phones will accidently flick their cigarette stubs into my plate. This also usually means heavier bar circulation with friends (not that heavy). I will try to get to more concerts this year, preferably of the mosh-pit, crowd-surfing, head-thrashing kind (perhaps Killswitch Engage will play this year, although Paramore live would be great). More book and poetry launches. And all of this done while trying to save up for the bigger goals in life. I figure I'll stop monetarily supporting all the unnecessary habits, like eating, buying clothes or carfare, cell phone.²

I also really have to start drilling into the novels. Writing them I mean…..which reminds me. I watched an episode of a show last night called "Flashpoint", with Amy Jo Johnson, who used to be the Pink Power Ranger, and Enrico Colantoni who was on "Just Shoot Me!" and "Veronica Mars". The episode, called "Perfect Storm", was about a bullied kid who decides to bring a gun to school to make the bullies pay. The SRU (Strategic Response Unit) has to storm in there, look for the kid and defuse the situation before things get bloody. You know, I have yet to see any creative media capture the high school shooting theme right. In this episode, the bullies were cheesy and stereotyped (I guess, for the purposes of getting the point across in a short time). Simple strategic fighting back would've gotten these idiots off of the main antagonist. There was no real oppressive feel for him to result to grabbing the gun (although in the show's defense, the kid never did any severe damage to the student body). I will attempt to fix this though……….fix the high school shooting story, not the damage to the student body.

Reference to an old hip-hop lyric by Rakim.
I'm sure there are people who will not realize I'm being sarcastic.

Signs…….signs……..

2009-04-20T17:43:00.000-04:00

Signs, like the Mel Gibson movie.

Walking from an alternate train station on Sunday, due to my normally express train going local that day, I walked past a gated dirt hill leading down to what is probably one of the most contaminated rivers on this Earth. But anyway, I walked past it and seen this hanging behind the gate:

Whatever, normal piece of corrugated cardboard.

Later on in the afternoon of that workday, a half Jewish, half-Puerto Rican woman came in and was interested in a particular piece of furniture. She liked the wood (I forget what kind), the shiny coat that our workshop guy put on it, and it's Asian handmade look. She would basically just use the drawer in the front foyer to deposit her keys and things in when she came in the door of her home. A quick, decorative depository. However, one thing repelled her a bit. The drawer had this on the bottom of it:

I, at first, stumbled a little bit at the fact that this sat in a warehouse ran by a practicing Orthodox Jewish man. But remembering context, I explained that the drawer was made in and imported from China. Buddhists and Hindus had extensive use of this symbol as a good thing in their religion before before Fascists took it and perverted it in their campaign. In addition, the symbol was at the bottom of the drawer, and carved in above it was a huge Yin/Yang circle that should've offset the "bad energy" that had been culturally placed in the symbol you see here.

She bought it. The symbol is below mid-shin level, so she figured that no one would really notice it anyway. If they do, she'll quickly give them a more detailed explanation of its history than the one I put above.

Life: The Irony.

Prayer of the Refugee/Opium of the People

2009-04-16T08:10:00.000-04:00

Couldn't decide which title to steal, so I put both.

Parental Advisory: Explicit Content

Wondering about my two managers. One is from Afghanistan, with experience in watching relatives and close friends be destroyed the tanks and copters of Communists Russians during the Cold War (see "Charlie Wilson's War"). In present day, he is quite forgetful and afraid of confrontation of any sort. In order to get out of it, he often does stupid things like ignore protocol or give merchandise away virtually free. The other manager either embraced or just simply live in a country of Communism (Czechoslovakia). After coming here in the midst of married life, she's had to grapple with Breast Cancer. Is often short-sighted in her managerial administration, which leads her to doing infamously dumb things. Often, if she doesn't see something happen in front of her eyes, it doesn't exist at all. Is their respective histories or current personalities the reason why they don't get along? Was thinking about this while washing my hands, and having to be subjected to hearing the bowel movements of two construction workers and a stock guy. I think one was cursed with Montezuma's revenge.

It wasn't really a busy day yesterday, and that struck up fears of a fresh wave of ~~employee~~ budget cuts happening again. I do not feel secure in this position, but I'm glad I still have it for the time being. After a morbid day's work. I came home and borrowed the car to get Wendy's food. I came back home and watch an episode of "Law and Order", about white people who were taking small children from Haiti and using them as slaves. While dipping chicken nuggets in cheese sauce, I found it, for some reason, quite difficult to fathom the idea of slave trafficking Haitians under the administration of an African president. People say the world is a beautiful place because God made it. That would make the Earth a lovely planet, but the world is nothing short of rat's bile.

Anthem Of Our Dying Day

2009-04-14T18:42:00.000-04:00

This title being the name of a song by one of my favorite emo bands.

Bollocks, mate. Another day, another ~~dollar~~ expression. Woke up this morning and went into the bathroom, only to find that the maintenance department for our buildings shut the water off. I held my toothbrush under the faucet and turn the knob, just so the faucet could clear its throat and cough out a lukewarm drop before turning silent. Looked in the mirror, and felt compelled to kick myself for forgetting that I read a notice saying this will happen two days ago and said to myself "alright, shower Monday night". But Monday night, after driving home from a fun social gathering with people from my church, I threw myself into the bed whilst watching "Tim and Eric's Awesome Show. Great Job!" and just told myself I'd shower in the morning. Bollocks.

Going without water for a few hours felt like life came to a complete halt. Couldn't wash the dishes. Mom couldn't do her laundry. Had to go to the bathroom, but remembered that the toilet wouldn't flush, and even if it did, how would I wash my hands? Washing before starting the day has become such an instilled habit that I could not fathom a thing to do without using water first. After asking myself why maintenance didn't shut the water off at midnight last night and just do their business then, I started to think about the many people who have to live without water everyday. Right here in New York City. In third-world countries. On planets in other solar systems with creatures who probably brush their nostrils with mercury. They live. Not in remotely desirable conditions, but they live. I imagine……if they were to see me whining about not being able to shower for a few hours, they'd want put my head where JFK's upper back was on November 22^nd.

World's still spinning. Investors still investing. Bosses still being bossy. Squirrels still in pursuit of a tangible nut stash. Obama's still nubbing away at the mile-high stack of global problems.

Theaters are still being flooded with comic book films, completely damaging the novelty of them. "Watchmen", the unfilmable story, was recently released (although it was good). A sequel to the Punisher before that (which I will pass judgement on although I haven't seen it, that film should have been aborted as soon as it was brought up as an idea in the studio board room). Another Hulk film before that, and Iron Man. Samuel L. Jackson has just signed a deal to do 9, count it, 9 Marvel Universe films as the character Nick Fury. I love comic books and films, but Hollywood is viciously murdering the excitement for them. Ack……

Still looking for new work in an economic atmosphere that severely lacks it, despite the fact that huge pockets of money are just sitting and collecting dust in various parts of the country. Of the globe. I still have hope. Not hope that I'll find a job, but hope that I'll be alright in general. I hope and pray for everyone that change will come. The Revolution will not be televised!........well, actually, with everything from Brad Pitt's toilet visits to a low-budget reality series about old people being hit by speeding ambulances^{note below}, nothing goes without being televised at some point.

Bollocks.

^note:This content was completely imagined and made up by the author of this post, although evidence exists that shows that people are stupid enough to both film and be entertained by both of these things.

Welcome Home

2009-04-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

The title being yet another song that's on my mind as I write this (the Coheed and Cambria one, not the Metallica one). A murky day is staring at me through the window. I'm here at the usual journaling spot, in front of the flat screen monitor with a steaming cup of lemon tea. I still have a response letter to my Southern friend, and guitar playing to practice, and blogs to read. But I'm thinking about the fact that I have to move.

-I came home one day, and my mother started to nag to me about the fact that I drunk up all of the tea and didn't tell her.
-I tried explaining that there was no logical reason for me to tell her all the tea was gone. I bought the box of tea, and after it finished, I would've simply gotten around (at some point) to buying a new box of tea.
-She rambled on about there always having been tea in the house as long as I've lived there. And at that point, I was yelling at her, so she told me not to raise my voice at her.
-I said I was yelling because she never listens to me. Ever since I was young, she's never listened (See "The Good, The Bad and The Anxious" for explanation of this feeling).
-She said she was listening and then she said if I raise my voice at her again, I'll be looking for a new place to live.
-I said it would probably be better if I was homeless. At least they (the homeless) know how to listen.
-She said if you feel that way, then you got 6 months to find another place to live.

We've talked and gotten over all of this………..but I think I should still move.

In no kind of relation to what I've just mentioned, I read a newspaper article yesterday, handed to me by a co-worker, stating that new Afghan law says that Shiite (Islamic) men now are permitted to ask demand sex from their wives every 4 days. If the wife does not submit, the man is allowed to take it from her. In order to attempt to cater to the obviously oppressed gender, the law also states that a woman is also allowed to demand sex from her husband every 4 months. I thought, this is entirely too monstrous to be real. If the Islamic nation was seeking to invite people to their religion, they should perhaps think about hiring a new Public Relations team.

In other events sought after to keep my mind off of the fact that my ideal self is nowhere close to being realized, I think that Latin American authors are the new move. This is author that I'm currently reading, Roberto Bolaño, is a master of the narrative. I am currently reading "The Savage Detectives", which is a sprawling work about two poets named Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, seeking another well-known but under-published poet named Ceserea Tinajero (I think I spelled that right). The story is told in excerpts, like daily interviews or journal entries, from the viewpoints of many characters in the novel. Very accessible and interesting read. I can only attempt to mimic his writing style here.

Earth To Bella

2009-03-29T08:30:00.000-04:00

The title of this post has nothing to do with anything. I just figured I'd give it a reference to something else as Pixies often does. It's the song that's on my mind at the current time.

Ah.....going through some things, but, to Hell with it all. Here are some objects that are on my mind.

I've always wanted to address this before, but never did. It seems to me (thus, I'm assuming), that a lot of you other bloggers must think that I only comment on your blogs when I have a new post to direct you back to myself. It also seems like some of you others do the same. But I try not to present this as the case. Nowadays, with other things I'm trying to do, the time that I have to read your blogs is the same time that I have to write one. But I will work on setting a time to read and a time to write. Although with what's going on now, I may be homeless soon...........
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I was watching T.V. the other day, in particular, the Skittles commercial with the guy that gets a bodily Transplant from the Mexican man, and the Oreo commercial where a small Chinese girl on one train imitates the small Caucasian girl across the tracks on another train. It occurred to me that many pieces of media and advertising are still using foreign people as foreign objects. Or it appeared to me to be this way anyway, as the foreign characters had no personalities, much less lines of dialogue in the ads.
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Fast forward. Sitting on the train a couple of days back, I was trying to read some research for a story. Two other Hispanic guys were talking on my right, another man was silent on my left, and across the aisle in her own seat was a young Hispanic girl listening to what looked like an iPhone from the back. Surrounding all of us was glossy rectangular ads who proselytizations ranged from online college classes in your spare time to an African-American book that proposed to answer the question "Do Men 'Get Played' When Women 'Get Paid'?"

At any rate, a young Black guy was standing up at the double doors to get off the train as it eased itself to a stop. When the doors opened, he stood there for a little while and then looked at the girl's iPhone as she held it out to go to another track. But right before the doors closed, the young guy snatched the iPhone out of the girl's hand and ran off the train.

The guy on my left hopped up and ran to the doors, putting his foot in between them before they were about to close. He asked the girl in Spanish if she wanted him to pursue the guy and she replied in Spanish "no, no, it's ok". She kind of grinned to me and herself and shook her head. The other guy sat down and they spoke a little bit more. Then that was that.

Getting off my stop, a hundred things fired off through my head about the situation, but I've decided to save it all for a short story. Other than those, I didn't really have any other objective opinions about the event, but I felt I had to put the experience some place.

The Good, The Bad, and the Anxious

2009-03-20T11:32:00.000-04:00

Yo, yo, yo, live from da Boogie Down B-R-O-N-X, it's ya boy boy, C-Sammy Sam, in da house!!! Feel me! Keepin' it real fo dose bustas!!!!...................Nah, I'm just kidding.

But could you imagine? Having to wake up everyday being that person? I mean…..could you think of a better reason to take a few cyanide pills?

At any rate, I've been hit with a most angering piece of reality the other day, and I filed it under a current running theme in my life: Anxiety. Prepare yourself, this post is super long.

The other day, driving to meet someone at a small indie Japanese café in very south Manhattan, I was listening one of 6 preset stations in my mother's car (Hot 97, Z100, 107.5), all tuned to Hip-hop/R&B/Pop inclinations, with the occasional side genre thrown in there somewhere. With that said, about a good 80% of the songs that were played was stuff that I've heard at least 10 million times, was extremely uninteresting, old, or all three, which would lead said songs into the category of offensive. So, to find release from the pop-conformist assault on my cranium, I turned to 92.3 for a good dose of heavy metal, alternative and punk. But lo and behold!

At first, my speakers started to tremble with bass, and I heard some subtle techno bleeps over a slow paced beat. I figured it was new material from alt-rock industrial one-man band Nine Inch Nails, but no…………it was southern rapper T.I.!! I don't find much wrong with T.I. (although what played was an old, heavily repeated song ("Whatever You Like"), but what the hell is he doing here?!??? My question was answered with an audio montage that followed the end of the song: "this is 92.3 now! Playing 10,000 songs in a row, commercial free!"* It was at this point that I was ready to turn the highway I was driving on into the scene from "the Matrix Reloaded".

People wonder why there are violent revolutions in poor countries, insurrections, civil wars, high school shootings and the like: it's all because voices are not heard and respected! I mean, don't confuse the segue I just put: the simple cancelling of a radio show is no reason to start blowing up cars and taking radio station staff members hostage. I was just exaggerating because that's how I express myself. But in larger and more serious situations, making any medium solely represent the popular idiocy and not the various taste in expression that actually exists is precisely the kind of situation that creates severe anxiety, which creates severe revolt.

Another anxious situation:
I am currently dating hanging out with a woman I met a little while back, and she is a pleasant being. A college counselor for high school students that lives in Queens, she is a generally uplifting and hopeful person who is focused on power in society and educating the lower class and respect for civil rights which is the way everyone should be, or dead!. Inevitably, over the course of our trips to the movies (see "Watchmen" below this post) and dinners at various places, our interactions turned into debates on the validity of being pro-black (which I am most certainly not, as this ideology goes directly against being progressive). In explaining "reality" to me (since I'm apparently naïve for not dwelling in the way things are instead of the way things should be), she gave me a bunch of blanket statements and stereotypes: Indian families prefer their daughters with white people instead of blacks. If a black woman dresses down (scarf on her head and t-shirt and sweats, things of that nature), white people will think she's some bum from the projects, all races think light-skinned are better than dark-skinned people. The usual.

But here's the anxiety: in first trying to explain that all of this was old news, and then trying to explain that by dwelling on these things she began to believe in them herself and based her own life on them, everything I said was just turned into one of her blanket beliefs in her mind and churned back out into something she thought I said:

Woman: The system fails lower-class citizens and exploits them. Capitalism is terrible.
Me: First of all, there's different kinds of capitalism. There's regulated and free market. There's a difference. Now, yes, I know that they're exploited, but are you saying that none of the American poor have had opportunities to pull themselves back up?
Woman: Oh, so now the poor is poor because of their own fault?? That's messed up, Samurai.
Me: That's not what I said at all. I know the poor is oppressed by the system and of course I'm all for programs and things to help them out and reach out to them, but you can't tell me that all of them were never given access to education or introduced to any social programs that could've helped them out, and they turned their back on those because they didn't like school or being surrounded by people of other races or some other silly reason. I mean, give me an example of exploitation.
Woman: What do you mean? Having to live hand-to-mouth everyday with jobs that barely pay their rent, having to feed their children with that same job.
Me: Those are living conditions. I said to give me a detailed example of exploitation. A direct employer to employee one.
Woman: You need to come to my job and see what I see. These people are poor. The libraries that they have have outdated books. People work all hours of the day and don't get paid anything. That's exploitation.

After that I gave up. That was as close to a logical answer that I was going to get. If she thought about it, she would've answered that privatized companies exploit people by paying below minimum wage and sometimes not paying employees for days in the week. But anyway, the point is that the details in everything I said was destroyed and filed into whatever viewpoint she had stored for her usage, making it very difficult. Ah well.

I would speak on A.ssholes
I.nstilled in G.reed, but they've pretty much already been covered in national media.

*That's funny. They said that it was commercial free, but every song they played was commercial (for a pop audience).

"Watchmen"

2009-03-12T08:21:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I will admit that I liked "Watchmen". But, not in a I-don't-understand-what-people-would-find-wrong-with-this sense. I can only speak from my experience of having read the graphic novel a little bit of time before the film was released. The film was an almost-exact carbon copy of the graphic novel...of course with some minor changes and bunching together of scenes to get to the point (like the assassination attempt on Ozymandias, and the missing explanation of Rorshach's mask, and the ending).

My theory is: people at least minutely steeped in the comics world will understand what author Alan Moore through director Zack Snyder (Moore said that he hated the fact that they put his work in Snyder's hands and will never watch the movie himself. I completely understand. "300" was horrible) is trying to portray in "Watchmen" immediately: taking the mythological images of superheroes and placing them in the real world with a very in-depth and gripping narrative. On the other hand, people who have confined their minds to the "real" world and expect to only see things they're familiar with will see the film talk about the Vietnam War, the Cold War, Nixon, and other things, and then see these silly people with colorful costumes showing up with their ridiculous personal problems and intense gore and blood all over the place and wonder what the hell is going on. A co-worker at my job took her kids and husband to see the movie because she thought it was some sort of children's story akin to "The Incredibles". After explaining that the film was very much for adults, she went to see it with her family anyway ("my kids watch violence at home all the time, so why not?"). Of course she didn't like it, which I think stems from the fact that she barely knew what the hell was going on (one of those people that can only attach herself to the simple things in life).

I'm a fanboy, so of course I enjoyed the fact that "Watchmen" was just like its literary counterpart. I thought the acting was superb on all counts. What I find additionally interesting is that, everyone from the people who have just seen the film to those who have just read the comic find Rorshach as the most interesting character. I agree, and I think that Jackie Earle Haley translated him on to the big screen perfectly. The opening montage was probably the best part of the whole film. I enjoyed the martial arts that Snyder worked into the story. The graphic novel hardly has any action of that kind in it, but bringing a story about superheroes into film would also breed some expectation for fighting in the public's eye (unless the film is advertised otherwise). However, the computer graphics in many parts of the movie were downright awful. Especially notable were the scenes that took place in Antartica and views of New York City from above during the ending, which looked like the director had a 10-year-old designing it.

So, overall, I'm not going to just up and recommend the film to everyone, but I'll say that you should read about it and a little of it's history and rapport with it's pre-established fanbase prior to viewing. It's not a typical story, and I'm not really sure that Snyder did a good job of introducing it to newcomers. I will definitely recommend that everyone purchase and read the graphic novel though, especially if you're a literary person. You can read my take on this here.

Proselytizing.

2009-03-10T14:33:00.000-04:00

In the last few sermons, the pastor at my church spoke on this subject (particularly concerning the Pharisees) and I've thought about it myself.

Christians are currently, in the secular eye, most known for their proselytizing. Most likely because their version of it usually entails telling people about extremely severe (read: fiery, painful, eternally damning) consequences for not attending that particular service, or giving money to this particular church. But the truth is.........everyone proselytizes! I guess, it's only considered proselytizing when Christians do it.

Just earlier today, a simple walk to the bank and barber shop alone introduced me to huge ads for things from allergy pills to "Watchmen" to technical colleges to whatever is Mercedes' or Hyundai's new attempt at an environmentally friendly vehicle is. At said barber shop, whilst having the black wool shaved off my scalp, about 5 different companies with probably 5 different unsaid agendas assaulted me with requests to buy their product or donate money in the matter of a 6-minute break in between viewings of "The View". I could probably fill up enough pages to make a book with the amount of envelopes I get in the mail asking me to donate to the Dalai Lama, or the Wildlife this-and-that, or this political magazine, or this movement.

Now, surely, I don't mean to inspire distrust or say that all of these people are just out to take your money. In my ideal self, I'd faithfully give money and time to all of the justified movements and organizations in the world, but I'd probably have to tap into Dunkin' Donuts' earnings through a weekly night shift at one of their locations in order to afford this. All beside the point, though.

All kinds of organizations, movements, franchises, companies and conglomerates try to push themselves on the public everyday. I wouldn't say that they shouldn't do this; some products are good for society (medicine, health insurance, books, iPod) and should be made known that they are available in stores. But there's a difference between making yourself known and shoving yourself down the public's throat. Which brings me back to the Christians.

I wouldn't dispute the perceptions that some sorts of Christians are known for forcing their views on you. I'm mainly talking about the Jehovah's Witnesses (you want a true dream vacation land with rich green trees and flowing meadows and white people that respect you even if you're Mexican? Take this pamphlet and save yourself! Then tell others to follow you.) and the Mormons (you are to JOIN GOD'S ARMY. You are to REPENT. You are to dress like a used car salesman and hit the streets for recruitment into the Holy Military! I want 30,000 new members by the end of this month. Huuuahhhh!!!). But a stronger, intelligent and more discerning mind would not let these people destroy the validity of the Word itself.

I'm not trying to convert or force anyone here into my "brand" of Christianity (although I may be indirectly proselytizing by criticizing other Christian groups), but I do think that people should take the time out to examine the principles and imagery and ways of Christianity before judging it, and not just resolving yourself to silly stereotypes ("they're just feeding you lies!", "they're trying to take your money!", "The preacher probably has a couple of little boys in his office closet somewhere...."). Furthermore, a quick note of what and what's not a good church or movement or whatever is that: a bad organization would expect you to completely throw your own life away to completely join whatever they're trying to affirm, while a good organization will take pride in who you are as an individual and show you how to make your own life better.

Just-a babblin'....

2009-02-24T21:32:00.000-05:00

Originally, I was going to type two posts here, one about the newspaper cartoon by the Post that heavily implies a violent racist statement on Obama, and about a You-tubed interview Bill O'Reilly did with knucklehead, tasteless rapper Cam'ron and the make-pretend-I'm-mature Roc-a-fella CEO executive Dame Dash. But what I had say about both of those things now seem ancient, dated, and not really worth writing about. Especially since the interview was three years ago and the cartoon is pretty well talked about.

Ah well, just posting here because I haven't done it in a while. Lately I haven't had the energy to hit the blog. Have just been.....lagging around. No good. Today I was set to write, but got caught up in a marathon of "Leverage" (great show! I love comedy caper thingys........like "Burn Notice" and the "Ocean's" series).

At any rate, I keep forgetting that you're supposed to write, even when you have nothing to write about. I keep encouraging others to do this because I know that I'll still read it, but I've gotten so used to not writing without having a point that there is serious apprehension in my fingers whenever I come to blogger.com. unless, at least, something is thought out. Ah well.

Oop........"Leverage" is coming back on.

Hangman: H_ _ _ t_ _ a_ _* [Amended]

2009-02-16T13:23:00.000-05:00

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." (Luke 12:15)

[Elisha], a friend from church, had pains in her mouth and went to the local privitized dentist to find out what's going on with the gummy-gum-gums. The dentist examined her teeth and told her that she had to have her wisdom teeth pulled out. If she does not, the infection in the back of her teeth will continue to grow. Working for 4-1-1 (or is it 3-1-1?), which is a staple municipal service in all of America, I just assumed that she had h_ _ _ t_ _ a_ _ coverage that would just require to pay a co-pay fee. Nope. So the dentist charges her something upwards of $1,000.

Nice.

[Elisha], like about 2/3 else of the world, does not just have $1000 just lying around. I doubt she even comes across 1000 pennies at that many intervals in her life. Time (I think a week) passes by. Antibiotics and starvation (hurts to move her mouth for chewing) are involved. Luckily, a friend of her mother is a dentist. Being, of course, that they're friends and all and such, he says [Elisha] can come into the office sometime: he'll have a look-see and he'll see what he can do about pricing. So, she goes. He looks.

He says he can't do the surgery then and there, but he generously pulls out one tooth and [Elisha] feels like there's progress being made. She goes home, thinking the problem is solved and her wisdom teeth will be fixed in no time. She returns to the dentist's office, and he tells her that it will cost her $400 per tooth pulled (she needs three). Meanwhile, she's growing a gangrene Apocalypse in her mouth and no dentist has even bothered to tell her what will happen if the infection stays. Hell, I doubt either of them took this into any consideration themselves.

So, after G.P.O.S.'s** attempt to get himself some business by abusing her faith in him fails, [Elisha] decides to just go to the doctor and have them take it out for about $30 each..............which, if I'm not mistaken, she also cannot afford.

Hmmm.....funny. I was just reading a chapter in Master Liberal's book about how Americans hate paying so much taxes. We pay almost just as much taxes to the government as France does. [The average French family pays 22% out of their income while the average American family pays 19%. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a handful of French(wo)men who complain about being taxed that much.] Me? I have no problem with the idea of paying taxes. See, here's the thing.........France has:

Free schooling from community colleges to the most elite universities.
Free doctor visits and medical.
Free dental.
Unlimited FULL PAY sick days at the job.
Mandatory 30 days FULL PAY vacation.

As you can probably imagine, the French are generally healthier than Americans are. Hell, at this point, the poorest watering hole of Malaysians are probably healthier then Americans are.

Like I said, I have no problem with the idea of paying taxes. I know they're supposed to go to the infrastructure that makes daily life easier for me. But to what [are these taxes being contributed]? Here in Freedomland, I pay taxes out of my check, and then have to pay fees on top of taxes, and then have to pay taxes in addition to those fees. The Disturbed One is currently and constantly getting street-gang jumped by illness, and she can't even afford too many doctor visits although she works more hours in one week than the total amount of time it takes to grow an old fir tree.

Of course, people that make $100,000 and up pay [less than us, because after that amount of income, you don't have to pay Social Security tax at all] . Because the golden conservative logic is that the more money you have, the less you should pay. But if you're poor, you should be the carrier of every burden, the face of all failures, and the debtee of all debts.

What's also funny is that, right-wing pundits and the sheep who don't question things for themselves are always criticizing socialism. And every time I come across one of these criticisms, I also come across a country who is flourishing because of it's heavily socialized institutions.

*reference to an old word puzzle game
**Greedy Piece Of S&!#

Blah.

2009-02-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

Bollocks. I had definitely planned to travel this summer, but in the last couple of weeks, my pockets have been hemorrhaging money into various things. Still in the midst of plotting out these novels and teaching myself math.

I am tired and at a loss for words.

That is all.

Humility

2009-02-09T16:42:00.000-05:00

"I've opened up my eyes, seen the world for what it is, and tears rain down from the sky"

Great song by a band I'm just discovering. What I especially like about this song is the extravagant, fantastical imagery the lead singer uses to describe how world leaders will massively feed their own bloodthirst to prove their way of life is bigger and better than everyone elses.

Speaking of greed, I had to take a moment the other day to remind myself that there is a world much larger than myself going on, and that my hopes are misplaced. A couple of months ago at my job, a salesperson was fired because (I'm told) they didn't make enough money for the store. Ever since that happened, I've been working harder to get some more customers sales under my belt. Usually, I ask customers if they need help finding bed sheets or quilts, and if they do, I help. If they don't and say they just want to wander for a bit, I respect their wishes. But I work with a woman who is extremely short-sighted mentally, so if she doesn't physically see me next to a customer, she will assume it's hers for the taking (even after she sees me tell them that I will be their salesperson). And I end up having to stalk customers in order to keep her away because half the time they won't remember or care that they're suppose to direct their questions to one salesperson. The whole lot of them are raging "toad face frumps"*.

But anyway, the last couple of weeks I've been cutthroat competing with her everyday to sell the most merchandise. I've been staying on the selling floor every minute, practically loitering in people's faces until they've bought stuff and even immorally returning the favor of helping her customers when she wasn't there. But during the last two sale events, she's out sold me. For every duvet cover or sheet set I'd sell, she'd sell two of each or a sheet set in addition to some other purchase. There's a whole bunch of other elements involved in sales that go into an explanation of this, such as the customer's mentalities and personalities, how she speaks to them and how I speak to them. At any rate, I'd become angry with God and ask why He's doing this. I respect people spaces and guide them. I make sure people knew exactly what they were buying and were fully satisfied with the purchase (all sales are final). But her aggressive and sloppy ways have been recently winning over. Didn't He know I was on the path to the Wayside of the Jobless (or so I was paranoid enough to think)?

I then asked (or perhaps He asked me), who am I to determine the way things should and shouldn't be? Why should money be drawn to me just because I feel that that's where it belongs? The world is much bigger than the Samurai. And so, with this peace of mind, I've gone back to working and helping whoever I can. Wherever I go, humility, ethics and Christ shall help me make the best of things.

Drugs, Gangs and Numbers

2009-02-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

I originally came to talk about the recent criticism against Obama due to two members of his cabinet, Tom Daschle (Secretary of Health and Human Services) and Nancy Killefer (Chief Performance Officer) messing up on their taxes and bowing out to keep Obama's team from looking bad. I will simply say this: he's our president but he is still a person, he is not God.

At any rate, I came across a vid on CNN.com by Lou Dobbs, a news anchor whose stance against illegal immigrants is slowly evolving into xenophobia, on how gang violence and gang memberships are rising in America. Here's the 4-minute vid if you have the time and comp. programs to look at it yourself.

In summary, the lack of watch and law enforcement on open borders into and coming from Mexico has resulted in the spread of gang activity and violent drug cartel operations amongst the U.S. There is now an elevated level of danger in this, as a lot of trained retired military personnel with access to sensitive firearms also flee to Mexico to participate in the drug trade. The federal government has plenty of anti-gang programs in states near the borders and are active in them, but as long as that border remains open, crime will continue to spread. Note, however, how they choose to relay this information to you:

"1,000,000 people belong to more than 20,000 gangs."
"36 shooting or stabbing deaths this year."
"80% of crime in Los Angeles gang related."
"Gang Membership has soared 25% since 2005."
"More than 195 U.S. cities are now the site of operation by Mexican Drug Cartel."

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Easy for people to remember and recite to their friends, right? They also easily make the American mind turn these people into statistics. If you've watched the video, you will note that they talk about the Mexicans in nothing but imperialistic terms (they are taking over!!!). I don't suppose it becomes important to know why or in what atmospheric conditions people join these gangs, so that we'd be understanding and have a chance at reversing the psychology of someone may want to join. They also don't talk about other choices we could suggest. Nope.

Just numbers. And the Drug Cartel are taking over. And we must stop them. And.........is it just me or does this all sound more like a video game than a video game does?

Forgive

2009-02-03T15:54:00.000-05:00

Quite the interesting sermon in Last Sunday's service of my church. I mean, all of the sermons there are interesting, insightful and spirit-guiding. But this one was especially personal for me. The pastor (I don't like the titles "priest" or "preacher", they've gotten bad reputations. Much like the word "liberal" [but I definitely still use that]) spoke on Anger. Yes, with a capitol 'A', Anger. As you've probably noticed from previous posts, anger is not some annoying trait that flares up against inconsiderate idiots who destructively take their own space in packed subway cars on the train ride home, or yellow cab drivers in Manhattan who seem to think life is just one huge line of stunts in a big-budget Hollywood film. It is an existential part of me. One that is expressed in everything I do, even when I'm not conscious of it. I believe, this is because anger is one of the only personality traits I've become acquainted and identify with.

The pastor said that we live in an angry culture, and often, we walk around with bitterness in our hearts. This could be from abusive relationships, or sexual abuse, dumb politicians or any kind of thing. The downside of walking around with this in our hearts is that we end up poisoning the communities we live in: our families, groups at the job, social groups, etc. We like to think that the anger directed at one particular thing just stays connected to that, but it shows up in everything we do. This damages our spirits and our connection to Him. I'm probably more guilty of this than anything, which I'm always blaming on the people I'm surrounded with now and some high school years of the Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold/Seung-Hui Cho kind. So how do we fix this? Forgive.

Forgive those who have trepassed against you and break the chains that attach you to the past. Or else, you become a slave to your own bitterness. This, in many situations, is much, much easier said than done. But if you're serious about evoking life and love, this must be done.

What's the subconscious trying to tell me?

2009-01-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

Please tell me. I'm taking a quick break from the severe moralizing that I do to jot something down here. It's another dream I had (the first written one being here). I would want comments on this more than anything else, only because it's completely objective and other spins on it would be interesting.

Parental Advisory: This dream is Rated R for Graphic Violence and Disturbing Images

I'm somehow floating over the bathroom, I guess, as a ghost. I will call it "the" bathroom although I have no idea where I was or whose house I was in. The extreme despair/guilt that I'm about to describe myself feeling may indicate that it was mine.

At any rate, a small, friendly kitten is in the bathtub, hunched together near the drain, eyes wide open and hissing to the outside of the tub where a light brown dog is. The dog jumps in and they fight for two seconds. This whole thing is generally a blur, but at some point the dog sinks his teeth into the kitten's body. The next thing I know, the dog has jumped back out of the tub, pacing around as if he's just looking for a spot to sit down and pass the day in, and the kitten has become a loose collection of some intestines, a piece of his backbone sticking out, one of his feet turned inward towards what used to be his body, the tail mysteriously gone and his semi-disconnected head showing a face of lowered eyes and an agape mouth, as if he was using his last bit of energy to howl for help.

Now.....I love cats. I love dogs. I love pretty much all animals except poisonous ones and skunks. I also love those dishes best served cold and could care less about natural selection. So, at this point, after I've become a full, embodied person and have landed on the bathrug in front of the sink, it's just a matter of deciding whether I'm going to use a black, iron pan or a sledgehammer to knock the dog's skull back through his rib cage and out of his ass. But this is secondary. I kneel next to the bathtub and look, and my heart is heavier than two Lincoln Navigators piled on top of each other with 5 passengers in them each, all of which weigh over 450 lbs. I cannot, for the life of me, believe that I let this happen. My throat has a knot in it, my stomach is quivering, and my face is soaked with warm tears and mucus, but this is all drowned out from me repeatedly saying "what....what the....awww, come....." and looking all over the place. Even breathing becomes something of a task and the amount of guilt and grief I feel is a limit that only a certain supernatural being can carry without definitely committing suicide.

Now for some reason, my subconscious switches to the image of dawn. The sun is just peeking up over some hillside forest, the tiny delineations of shine poking away at a looming steel grey morning. I think, since this picture came up, my conscious brain decided to tell me that I was in a cabin in a clearing on the side of a mountain.

There's notably thin smoke billowing from the chimney, although I don't remember any lit fireplaces. I do however, remember that I now look like Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films) dressed like Paul Bunyan. I know it's me because my consciousness is within this body (I think, therefore I......am?). There is also another cat.

At the point that I come into the dream, the ~~cat~~ kitten has already been gravely injured. It appears that a ravenous claw has torn through its body and it's bleeding profusely. He's/She's laying on it's side, calling to me to pay attention to the traumatizing affliction, and I come over with a towel and wrap the kitten up in it, putting pressure on the wound. Standing there, breathing warm, misty breath into the chilly air of the dark, unlit cabin with the kitten resting on my arm and the feeling that death is inevitable for it, I pick up my sawed-off shotgun and head outside resolutely. Of course, the gun is not for the kitten.

See, I noted the point at which I came into the narrative of the dream because for some reason I already knew that this blemish-to-other-humans/moral tragedy of the kitten was committed by none other than a pack of wolves......who were circling and still waiting for something or other when I stepped outside. I look at them, and they, tongues hanging, corners of their eyes curled up in malevolent intent and staring with hungry countenances, studied me. I stood for a moment, went back inside to gently place the kitten on the suede couch, and returned to the circle of predators.

Now.....I love cats. I love dogs. I love pretty much all animals except poisonous ones and skunks. I also love those dishes best served cold and could care less about natural selection. So, at this point, I walk to the center of their circle and say something along these lines to them. I throw forth the double barrel of my firearm, making sure that fresh, explosive shells full of buck are in each one of them. I cock it back into place, and I remember saying "You gotta pay." Time for attack.

For some reason, I'm now a boxer dressed precisely as Mr. Stallone was during his character's training in what was probably the only good film he's ever done.

Timing.
The wolves are quickening their pace around me.
When one leaps, I have to pugilistically assault the mid-section.
When it leaps.
I got my fists up, doing my own sidesteps and preparing myself.
Streams of warm, wispy breath shooting in lines out of my nostril, spanish bull style.
One begins coming towards me.
It runs.
Then leaps!

I sidestep right on time and deliver a right-hook to the ribcage that Ali himself would be proud to call me son for. The wolf tumbles on the floor and rolls, wiggling itself around furiously to regain footing. Whilst looking at him, a wolf decides to run up from behind and assault me. No sweat. I turn on my pivot foot and deliver a sweet roundhouse kick to his neck. Another comes. As it jumps on me, I grab his paws, place my foot on his stomach and roll backwards on the ground, leg throwing him right down the hillside. When I get up from the ground I'm Robbie Coltrane/Paul Bunyan again, replete with sawed-off shotgun.

The wolves are now scrambling all over the place, but my intuition tells me that there is one that is planning to run right past me, into my cabin and right to that suede couch for a quick snack. It's one that's sitting across from me, prepping itself to make the dash as soon as I turn around. But how will it run when..........BANG! The explosion of the buck echoes all up and down the mountain, causing a flock of crows to fly out of a nearby fir trees and a deer licking at a pond somewhere to look up.

I don't kill him, but I definitely put one arm out of service. The rest of the pack have scattered away.

As I slowly walk over to him with my amiable sawed-off rested upon my shoulder, I kneel down and look him, laying on his side and flopping his hanging-by-a-bone paw around in pain, whining and looking at me with sad eyes of regret. "I don't care how you guys work around here...." is what I remember saying, before I woke up and immediately began to type this post.

The Samurai meditates on The Inauguration.

2009-01-20T06:31:00.000-05:00

Today is Inauguration Day for our new United States President. We are officially letting in a breath of fresh air and kicking that heathenous, mud-brained, pus-filled boil of a human named George W. Bush to the curb. To tell you the truth though, I'm a bit nervous.

An estimated 2 million people (the most ever for an American Inauguration) have left their homes days before today to travel to Washington D.C. for their seats on the west side of the National Mall (left pic), that long park from the Washington Monument to the United States Capitol. They're excited, anxious, inspired and hopeful: the "Promised Land" that Martin Luther King. Jr hath seen from the mountaintop when the Lord gave him that vision in 1968 is further realizing itself through a (relatively) young, humble, and sagacious Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama. This is a greater good that even Martians have teleported real-time satellite images to their extreme hi-def monitors to witness. But I am nervous.

Yes, a black man, the first black man in history, is officially becoming President today. But I daresay that I don't want to put too much stock into this particular moment, not after that attempt by the two white Supremacists last October. I didn't vote for him just for the image of an African backside being planted in the seat of the Oval Office, I voted for him because of the promises and principles he said he would embrace while he was there. With that said, after a small period of rest from the debates and cabinet assembly and Abraham Lincoln references, he needs to hit the ground running, as Lyndon B. Johnson did when he first went into office after Kennedy was taken. As soon as he does plant his ass in that seat: assault the economic depression; stop this 80-million-dollar-a-month business to the Iraqis and make a decision on Pakistan; fuel, widen and renew the education system; give more power to socially responsible stockholders of corporations and strengthen unions; give carbon emission watch companies federal status (there may have been a raise in attention to the environment, but in popular media, I feel like people still think this is just tree-hugger agenda crap); and naturally, Health Care in the economic perspective has to be taken care of. And for Chrissakes man, someone do something about this Darfur crap!

But anyway, he needs to hit the ground running, because major change like this brings in major reactions. White Supremacists, regular ole' Republicans, and those old Blacks who cannot process the idea of a slave now being master are probably foaming at the mouth and burning Crosses all over the place while thinking up schematics to assassinate Obama. And before this can happen, disillusioning and corrupting the most respectful and moral of hearts in the process, Obama needs to work on/instill the Change he said he had for us. Before it's too late.

Patience Problems and The Final Solution

2009-01-12T16:56:00.000-05:00

As we last left off, I picked up and began reading "Last of the Mohicans", which I had defended reading to a co-worker who recommended that I put that down and instead read a Robert Ludlum work, "The Matarese Circle". Unfortunately, not only did I need to resume reading a few books for research, but there were other contemporary novels that I was much more eager to read as well as me not really being in the mood for classic romanticism. I'm up to my upstairs neighbor's neck in books that I want to attack right now, but I have hard time believing that reading 15 books at once will get me any progress. Reading has to share my time with other things. Patience! I'm always eager to read the book version of films before they come out in theaters. Not because I want to compare the two, but because I'm usually that eager to get to know the story. But anyway, now I'm reading "The Final Solution" by Michael Chabon.

I had been reading about this author before and his stories sounded like they would be interesting. He is perhaps most famous for two of his works: "Wonder Boys", which was a 1995 novel and a 2000 film starring Michael Douglas and Katie Holmes-Cruise-Alien-Hubbard, was about a college professor's quirky and complex journey to finish a 2,611 fiction manuscript as a follow up to his previous hit novel. Chabon's other hit was called "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay", a New York Times Bestseller which many have called one of the key literary feats of 2000 as well as being nominated for PEN award. It's about the lives of Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, a Jewish artist and a Jewish writer respectively, through the beginning, middle and end of World War II. It's one of those books that's named after the sentence "From the author of" on every single work that Chabon follows up with, until you are convinced to stop beating around the bush and just go pick it up to see what the artful hype is about.

However, "The Final Solution" is a more low-key, measly 166-page novella about an old man who decides to help a little boy, a German-Jewish refugee, find his missing parrot. The true identity of the old man is never said in plain words, but it is heavily hinted that it's indeed Sherlock Holmes. The title of the book references both Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "The Final Problem" and the plan of Nazi Germans to commit genocide against European Jews. This definitely grabbed my attention more than anything else, if only because I love the character and a film about him by Guy Ritchie starring Robert Downey Jr. and (I think a miscast) Jude Law is coming out this November.

In the few pages I've read, it's pretty good. Chabon is not an accessible author, as he peppers every sentence with about 2-3 words that you'd probably have to look up in the dictionary or take a few moments to define within the context of the sentence, but he's done his job in immediately interesting me in who this boy and his parrot is.

As always, I'm up to my neck in books that I'd like to finish and films I'd like to watch (films that haven't been released yet). Such books as:
-"Hannibal Rising" by Thomas Harris, a prequel to the main three Hannibal Lecter novels
-"Live and Let Die" by Ian Fleming
-"The Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov
-the last two Harry Potter books (I was pissed at the end of the 5th one)
-"Twilight" which I'm not hyped or excited for but want to read to see what's grabbing everyone.
-"Pygmy" by Chuck Palahniuk, one of my favorite authors.

Some films that look great are:
-"9", the gothic stop animation/CGI film
-of course "Sherlock Holmes", as I've already mentioned
-"Public Enemies", the Great Depression-Era gangster film by Michael Mann (Collateral) with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale
-"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", the fantasy film by Terry Gilliam starring Christopher Plummer and partly Heath Ledger before he passed away, but now features as replacements Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. My curiousity is very arrested by this film: the story of a 1,000 year old theater troupe leader who, after making a deal with the devil, has the ability to show people their own imaginations through a magical mirror.
-I suppose many think "Watchmen" should be on this list. I think that film will suck, as I am not a fan of Zack Snyder's work and I don't really see a way to squeeze this graphic novel into a film. But I am curious.

Bollocks. Here's my resolution for 9002*, this will truly be the year of Progress!
*done on purpose.

Clandestinely brazen, and Brazenly clandestine.*

2009-01-07T19:37:00.000-05:00

*A reference to a fellow blogger.

A popular belief among the more..........economically focused of us earthlings is that it is much better to teach your children only the "useful" stuff. But then the question comes up: Useful to what? To who? To the leading capitalists in those sheeny, glass-cased high rises who just want other people to keep the monetary faucet running into the bathtub that is their offshore bank account? Useful to society? To the planet? To your cat? People almost never say. But it is assumed and expected of you to think the first suggestion. And coming to the answer to that question would provide the answer for the secondary one: what's the "useful" stuff?

Well, why only teach them the useful stuff? Well, surely you'd want your son/daughter/transsexual to grow up and become a computer programmer. Or work for a Fortune 500 (nowadays these things come from the ground up and are made by our generation so often that I'm tempted to call it some new form of a grassroots movement. YouTube? MySpace? Girls Gone Wild? Google? Gosh......). Perhaps you'd want them to be an engineer of some sort. Is the dream of being a fireman or astronaut or garbage pick-up outdated? I don't know, but my point is that parents feel safer knowing their kid is going to ground that's already tread. This way they can direct some of the cash flow into their own direction so that said transsexual could help his/her/its parents with the mortgage and gas bills. They could secure a home for his/her/itself so that he/s/i can support their (adopted? surrogately mothered?) child or children. And this will go on for years and years to come as the parents teach their kids to do the same thing in the future...........effectively making a whole branching family of people whose lives mean essentially nothing.

No, no, no, no. Now wait a minute......yes, yes, and I agree. A person's career is not the only place they can make a difference. No, of course not. No....yes, I know, not everyone has to go out and pursue being meaningful to the world. No, its not necessary. Yes, everyone has meaning. Yes, I as a Christian am supposed to believe that. Now shut the **** up so I can talk.

The reason I bought this up is because I was reading a blog post about how the blogger (who is an art teacher and a most spiritual woman, whether she considers herself this or not) had once, in her travels to one of her school's offices, had come across an old quiz, one of the questions of which was "Name Three Metamorphic Rocks"^{note below}. She postulated the point that students were sure to forget these things when they graduate, as well as it being a pretty useless fact in today's world. I mean, I don't know anyone who could use that knowledge. And I'm hard-pressed to find any use for it in my own life. But does that mean it's useless? Noooooooooooooo. Should we stop teaching it to our kids? Noooooooooooooo. Should we only teach our kids the fields (or tidbits) of knowledge that are making money in the world today? Nooooooooooooo.

We should be teaching our kids the knowledge which could end up having them make a difference in the world of tomorrow. This, just in case you did not guess, is ALL knowledge. Well, the most that we can teach them anyway. And being the person of the political and cultural type that I am, I will go ahead and say that the arts and crafts top all of this, but this is another discussion altogether.

There is no way to know what piece of knowledge may inspire what thought that brings about what great conquering feat of nature or massive status of world peace. Alright, that may have been too much, my point is that you never know what the future holds. So, you cannot predetermine what is the right bit of knowledge to teach a child and what isn't. Just because certain fields are making money way over everything else doesn't mean that we should only teach our children these things. That is a surefire way to turn everyone into brainless sheep who will encounter a massive era of suicide from the sharp despair of trying to deal with a shifted and changed world in their future. We should teach our children the basic fields of knowledge, the sciences, the maths, the languages, the histories, the arts, the phys eds, and make them as detailed-but-broad we possibly can. The more subjects that are taken seriously in an infrastructual institution (including showing detailed pathways to careers when you can), the more students and kids that put their faith in the system. And this all (which is included in arts and crafts teaching) is compounded with the notion that kids should take facts and apply their own rational perspectives.

I mean, let's say your kid wants to study the sciences. Would you rather they work their way into helping to make nuclear arms because that's where the money is? Or would you rather them work fervently on some obscure science that ends up having the cure for a closing Ozone Layer or has the ingredients for a cheap, renewable and non-carbon emitting gas?

^noteGneiss, slate and quartzite. There is also skarn, phyllite and marble.

Reality: the crappier perspective

2008-12-31T19:50:00.000-05:00

I seen the commercial for a reality show called "Doctors" the other day. I think, in the episode that I seen the ad for, someone was getting beauty surgery of some sort for their face. This came right after seeing the news reporter say that store chains such as Macy's, I think Bergdorf's, and some others were closing down due to weak returns in holiday spending. I mean, even as I sit here, there's a ticker under the running episode of CSI saying that on my cable service, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV, VH1, Spike and some other channels will be cut from the air. There is a number they show that I can call to help put a stop to this. It doesn't say that it has something to do with the recession, but I'm pretty sure it does. But this is not that much here or there.

I'm now reading on Wikipedia that the premise for the reality talk show "The Doctors" was that there would be discussion of medical and health issues amongst professionals in various medical fields, and people would ask these pros questions that they were too embarassed to ask their own doctor. Yes, because if I have a humiliating problem, I'd much rather ask strangers on national television than my own familiar doctor in the privacy of his office. Makes perfect sense.

This show is at least one of the more wholesome ones in its intent, but I was wondering if some people really think that reality shows are some substantial way to disseminate information to the public? Do they, the fans and the networks, think that there is some sort of visual nutrition going on in the interaction between viewer and the reality show? Or perhaps, that since the people, inevitable arguments stemming from overblown temperaments, and wastes of footage showing people just sitting there talking about garbage is real, it's entertaining?

People are obviously interested in this eye trash, but I seriously don't hope they think there's something redeeming happening whilst watching it. Maybe some content would be adequately and most accurately shown in the reality show format, but for the most part it is just the product of lazy producers and cheap studios who have found a way to entertain the mass asses without the costs and anxiety of hiring creative writers. Some college student is trying to make it to the NBA? Slap a camera on him and follow him around. A housewife in the Hamptons has the I.Q. of astroturf? Let's let the world be amused by how insipid she is! A washed-up actor is fighting his addiction to bestiality and vicodin? Let us hungry studio execs cash in on his despair and suicidal tendencies!

When I was much younger, I was very much into MTV's "The Real World" and wanted to go on there to be in the house and be surrounded by the delectable women they always cast. I always said that I'd pretty much stay in the background and would avoid the constant bickering and arguing that erupted on there regardless of social context. And then I found out that they purposely cast people who fight with each other. So, not long afterwards I stopped watching it forever. But the background manipulation of the shows isn't a major rejection point for me, it's the lack of anything even remotely substantial in all of it.

Cold Coffee/War, Native Americans and Robert Ludlum

2008-12-22T22:19:00.000-05:00

Parental Advisory: Written while drunk.
Holidays a-comin'. Gifts a-givin'. Egg nog a-drinkin'. Credit card companies a-owin'.

On a complete, and I mean starkly contrasted, subject, I found out an interesting tidbit about my manager the other day. As it turns out, when he was younger, he was held prisoner by communist Russians during the Cold War. How did this come up, you probably didn't ask? Simple. I was on the verge of finishing "Watchmen", which graphic novel I recommend everyone in two to three worlds to read because Alan Moore is one of the greatest writers of all time (it's the only graphic novel of Time Magazine's 100 greatest novels ever), and one of the primary plot elements in the story is the Cold War. America and Russia are on the verge of playing chicken sh** against each other with nuclear missiles and millions of people's lives while the story plays out. So, being the curious and information-hungry person that I am, I asked my co-worker and intellectual salon participant [Fred] a bit about the Cold War, and he told me to ask my manager because he has first hand experience.

I was told that my manager explained that, whilst he was in his prison cell, Communist guards gave him cold coffee. So, in order to warm it up, he cut open electrical wires and warmed his coffee with electricity. I never got a chance to ask him how this process was performed, but there you have it. Warming your coffee with electrical wiring. For some reason, everytime I think of this, I imagine the coffee tasting "pewter-y". Yes....pewter. The color that street lamps put out. The color of corrugated metal. Pewter. I don't know. I can taste pewter, or I remember a taste and imagine that that's what the color pewter would taste like. But I digress. In the future I must ask him about his early life. I'm sure he has stories upon stories.

In other news, apparently my co-worker [Ron], the carpet salesman who works upstairs, is a big-budget espionage novel fan. Big-budget like the works of Robert Ludlum, Ted Bell, probably Ian Fleming and the like. If you've read the post I wrote long ago, you'd see that I like the book and film franchise "The Bourne Identity" a lot, but I cannot get into the international, clean-cut, women-magnetic spy thingy. A super-stunning woman who is completely willing to do whatever the protagonist wants everytime out of sheer sexual throb for him, super intelligent bad guys that he outsmarts everytime, no wear or tear on his chiseled face and perfect abs even though they age and experience realistically traumatic events; I can't continue to read this stuff on a regular basis. Give me abstract, intelligent and possibly moral stories about underdogs or the cultured and bright dregs of society. Give me Chuck Palahniuk, Paul Auster, (now) Alan Moore, Agatha Christie and some other authors of the like.

But anyway, almost everytime I see this guy, he reminds me that I should pick up and read "The Matarese Circle", another novel by Ludlum. I'm, of course, completely willing to try it out, but I must first finish "Last of the Mohicans". I told him this, and he told me that I should dump that crap and head straight for Ludlum first thing. Now, everytime he comes around, I (jokingly) call him a racist for expecting me to throw away a narrative about a Native American tribe for some militaristic white writer who was quite well off financially from cashing in on the the adventurous, international, well-trained American modern warrior. Not happening. Of course, "Last of the Mohicans" itself was written by a white guy and is titled contrary to the fact that there are plenty of Mohicans living today, but, in the toss up of half-truth, I'd rather go where attention to the subject makes some sort of slight difference.

Just babbling.

2008-12-13T08:19:00.000-05:00

The people in the upper crust of the business I work for have their sniper rifles cocked and ready, loaded with pink slips and aiming at various people to fire. So, there's supposedly pressure on us lower employee folk to step our game up and somehow magically make tons of money pour into our registers from all the customer purchases, although there's no customers. People are hardly shopping anymore because they don't have jobs. And so the stores start letting go of people. I'm not up in the upper crust, so I don't know how money is being handled, but with the guy I work for, I'm pretty sure he cuts jobs to save his profit and not to pay bills. But, do many companies or the rich ever think to take the little bit of money they have and start re-opening jobs so that people would have money to shop? Nope. Of course, that question and answer gets a lot more complex than what I've typed.

Meanwhile, my co-worker [Laura] has now earned the full brunt of my dignified anger and will now be reported everytime she does something stupid. I've never had the energy or drive to pursue this campaign against her before; as she is always doing stupid stuff like talking to my customers fully knowing that they are my customers or telling me to pick up or clean stuff that she can do herself, although she's not my boss, and I ignore it. But I'm sure she honestly believes she's my boss, because she believes she knows everything. Her own experience is the only, and I literally mean the only thing she knows, and she believes that what she knows is absolute law. She has the inability to learn or think of anything else. So, with this said, a good, solid majority of the employees in all three stores of this company believe she is mentally disabled (yes, we've all had problems with her). To then ask whether her behavior is her own fault or not is quite another post.

Me and some managers and her had a meeting, with the manager [Howard] basically saying that he doesn't want us arguing on the selling floor anymore, and that if there's a problem, to report it to him. He says if there is problem, try to talk it out first with each other. And while this is quite the diplomatic notion, it shows that he is massively ignorant and unexperienced with attempting to talk things out with this idiot. Me and the other manager, [Daniella] have already attempted this multiple times, and multiple times the idiot just keeps talking over us or just works to shove her viewpoint down our throats. Furthermore, even though he says he knows this, he fails to seriously consider that she has been the center of arguments with many employees that have erupted ever since she started working here. In this meeting, I have two days off where she works alone and she has two days off where I work alone. The pair of days are back to back. I have off Monday and Tuesday. But in this meeting, she said that she would appreciate if I left the floor clean when I was done with it, so that when she came in on Monday and Tuesday, it'd be in sellable condition. She "has that respect for me. It's simple." Mon and Tues is after Sunday. On Sunday, we're both working. So how am I the only one that leaves the selling floor crappy? Sounds like she's just trying to get me in trouble, to put me in front of the sniper rifle. And I may go there, but not without letting Human Resources have a piece of my mind.

I say to The Disturbed One in text message:

Me: I'm GODDAMN REPORTING THIS BITCH! Sent: 12:39

I explain, and then say:
Me: She's gone or I am. Sent: 12:41
Me: I'm attacking full force. Sent: 12:41
Disturbed One, The: Dag samurai. Sent: 12:42

We converse about whether it is wiser to stay and deal with these unbearably oppressive conditions everyday in order to be able to pay bills and eat. Or to leave this and pursue bigger and better things, even in economic conditions such as these. I say, yes, you pay bills and eat, but your life also has the value of a small pile of cigarette ash. If not to strive for rational happiness, if not even to strive for something simple like a better job (which could just as easily mean working the same position somewhere else, or another job with the same pay), what is the point of living? I'm afraid the Disturbed One believes in shifting life around the main goal of sustaining yourself. I believe in shifting your sustenance in order to better pursue a better life. This is an age old battle that never has a solidified resolution. Ah well.

Amsterdammit!

2008-12-09T17:41:00.000-05:00

I’ve seen on “Attack of the Show” today that Amsterdam, as of last Saturday, is officially starting a plan to close down some cafes and brothels over a 10 year period. In order to clean the image of Amsterdam up a little bit, they want to move the weed cafes and brothels to city centers. This is nice in a moral perspective, except tourism is a huge part of Amsterdam and the cafes and brothels were THE ONLY REASONS PEOPLE EVEN WANTED TO GO OVER THERE!

That and Japan were the two countries I’d have liked to visit. Yes, for the cafes and…..well, for the sake of prudence, I won’t speak on the other asset, although I’m sure you can draw somewhat accurate conclusions (I’m a terrible bastard, I know).

As I’ve said, the image that Amsterdam has now is what was bringing in the tourist money. The things that have city planner Lodewijk Asscher worried is that these places also attract many members of organized crime and are near schools. In 10 years time, they better develop something that will replace the cafes and brothels in terms of income. Perhaps they could somehow get their hands on top cars designers and start exporting. Or have a few programmers and developers start a software company over there, particularly in video games (that industry hasn’t been touched at all through the last 6-7 years. As a matter of fact, it’s flourishing now more than ever). Perhaps lower the taxes and build a few soundstage studios so that big budget film directors can pay to make their blockbusters there more often. I don’t know.

I didn’t even realize Organized Crime was really a problem like that in Amsterdam. You never really hear about it being so. As far as the marijuana goes, the guy on T.V. said that marijuana prohibition is quite the problem causer. It’s expensive and it victimizes responsible adults. I don’t know about the victimizing adults thing, but I can’t say I’ve heard or remember any terrible things happening as a result of smoking weed, aside from laziness and loss of purpose. Nothing a smack in the face and a boot out the house until you’ve come back hired somewhere can’t fix. He says introducing marijuana as a taxed, regulated and controlled substance commodity would be the way to go. I guess. I don’t see what’s wrong with this, although he’d have to bring up cold, hard scientific evidence against those who solely believe it’s a gateway drug.

"Hancock"

2008-12-08T21:48:00.000-05:00

If you were to look on the listings for the credits; the names of the people who were the cast and crew for the film, you'd see Peter Berg (The Kingdom, The Rundown) listed as the director and particular names for the writers of the film. But I think the writers' names were put as a way to legitimize the film; it appears evident to me that it was really written by Peter Berg's 9-year-old-son as an English paper for his Junior High School class.

I had this conversation/argument with my mother and cannot repeat the content of it here for fear of spoiling the film for you, but it basically concerned the realism of the story, an element which was obviously never part of the plan, or was but was then taken out. This does not cater to those who don't take any superhero or fantasy story seriously because it concerns made-up fantastical elements (people flying, aliens, superhuman powers, etc.) Those people simply can't think outside of the box and miss the whole point of fiction. This concerned the point that if you are going to put forth said fantastical elements, you have to explain logically how these elements react to and are effected by the world as we know it.

Sometimes, all it takes is a simple explanation. Ex: Peter Parker was bit by a radioactive spider. We don't know what would really happen to someone who was bit by one (we don't know what's in the radiation), and it's safe to assume they won't get powers if they were bit, but that area of reality is vague and uncertain enough for writers to fill it with their own mythology. The point is, he was bit by a radioactive spider, and his biologics reacted through giving him the abilities of a spider and that explains why he has his powers. You'd be hard-pressed to find this simple explanation in "Hancock". You be hard-pressed to find an explanation period.

In spite of the film having CGI the quality of which me and The Disturbed One could've simply made with Adobe Photoshop and HTML, besides certain scenes being rushed and ruined in the process, besides having a temporary villain that was completely worthless to the film as a whole (the film really focused on the three main characters.....or tried to anyway), it was fun watching Will Smith's character Hancock. He had a certain charm in the constant scrunching up of his mouth, his complete sloppiness and alcoholism, and his interaction with Ray Embrey (played by Jason Bateman) and sometimes with Mary Embrey (Charlize Theron). But this is about all I can say for what good elements the film had.

Who is truly the freak?

2008-12-03T09:20:00.000-05:00

I watched a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode the other day where they investigated the murder of a young man who was extremely hairy. Hair on the face, knuckles, chest, legs, thighs, everywhere. When they autopsied him, they found he was shot with a silver bullet. You can guess what impression this was supposed to give. At any rate, they investigate and find that the victim has a twin sister. They visit the house he lived in, look around for clues and find a hidden room in the house, hidden behind a door that looks like one of the living room walls. Inside they find the sister, Allison Ludford, who was suffering from the same rare genetic disorder as her brother, hypertrichosis (extreme hair growth)(note below). In everyday living, she flees to this room when her brother brings over visitors or when unexpected ones come over, and basically stays in there and does not venture into the outside world for fear of the way society will treat her. But here's the part of the investigation that stayed in my mind.................

They start to look into where these youth's parents are. Allison said that her mother was dead. This is what her brother told her. The CSI officers begin tracking the parents down for themselves. The father does not turn up, I think he had ran away to be in another marriage after his newborn infants appeared hideous to him in birth. They do find the mother however, living just fine in another part of Las Vegas (where the show takes place). Wil Grissom (head CSI officer) and the mother talk, and the mother explains that, when Allison was young, the mother tried to keep Allison locked up inside the house so that she wouldn't be embarrassed by "having a freak for a daughter" in public. Allison wanted to go outside anyway, and the mother didn't like that. So, one day, the mother packed up her things and ran off, leaving the children in the house to fend for themselves. She later called the brother and told him to tell Allison that her mom died in a car accident, so that Allison wouldn't come looking for her. As the mother explained all this to Grissom, I judged her intensely.

Now, as you may already know, I'm not a fan of children, regardless whether they're hairy or model status, but my mind went back and forth on this as a moral issue. I thought, this woman threw her child away because she didn't look normal and therefore wouldn't have a "normal" life amongst her neighbors and the empty, decrepit criticisms of a society who has a standard for something that's out of people's control. Who is truly the freak here? But then again, to live under those circumstances, amongst such ignorance and sh**-mindedness would be pretty difficult. I tried to put myself in the mother's shoes. But this is your child that you chose to bring into the world and provide with unconditional love (well, in this mother's case, it was not unconditional at all, nor was it love), why should it matter if it will be difficult or not? Responsibilities like child-rearing cannot should not be simply ditched because they're "too hard". And ditched, furthermore, by telling your daughter, who is already suffering at the hands of superficial critics, that the one of the two people that she could truly say she's attached to, is dead? This (hypothetically: making pretend this was a real person) occurred to the mother to say because it was a reflection of her own heart: her own daughter was already dead to her, so she reversed the situation in reality.

I'd be more likely to attend to and take care of this child than most other children. It's this kind of child that requires more love than some polished brat who could float flawlessly amongst society's public fabric. Of course, things could get tough and confusing in this choice of path, and the real difficulties set in. Being a parent means passing down to your children those morals and core beliefs (you believe) are needed to get through in the world and enjoy life. And although I don't know everything, I'd try to teach Allison, as I raised her, to adhere to doing the right things as best I could.

I can't be there for her during the times when other kids would make fun of her in school and embarass and shun her. I won't know what to say when Allison kicks some other boy or girl in the teeth because she's angry from being called names and ostracized and I completely understand why she lost her temper. I won't be a good example for her when I throw someone else's parent or teacher or principle out of a 10-story window for disrespecting my child or allowing that disrespect to happen. I won't want to hurt her when I accidently scream at her in rage after she asks me for something or wants me to hold her because I'm confused and tired from having to defend her from the public constantly. When a bunch of hell-sent jackals beat her up, pull some cruel prank or attempt to kill her, how can I be a good parent after going to jail because I've turned into The Punisher? Our lives would be a bit tougher than most others, but I would stay by her side.

I was going to put who killed her brother and why here, but I don't think it's really that relevant and I don't want spoil anything, even for the small chance that you'll come across that episode and watch it even though you're not a fan of the show. My point was, being a parent to that child would be super tough, extremely tough, but after making the decision to bear the child, how relevant is the difficulty of being her parent anyway? Even in dealing with my child having a mental disorder, which I will fully admit would be especially hard for me to deal with, I realize that I would have to train myself to take care of them accordingly and try my best not to treat them condescendingly. The bottom line is, that child would need love just like any other would. More love actually. It's these children we should be running to, not running away from.

(note) Although I have to admit, I did ask myself as to why Allison simply didn't just shave on the regular basis. But I remembered that people with much smaller amounts of hair are usually too lazy to even shave that on a normal basis. How can I expect her to constantly shave her whole body?

Mariposa's Meme

2008-12-02T10:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, I was, like, totally, tagged in this meme by Mariposa, and I, like, totally, promised her I would do it on my own blog. So, like, totally, here it is and stuff and crap and stuff. Totally.

Here are the rules...
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Random thingy-things
1) I would like to know why the world has never seen Eminem's teeth.
2) I could spend hours at a time watching Pop-Up Video on VH1.
3) I spend weekend nights, sitting on a bamboo mat, cleaning and repolishing my sacred blade (have you forgotten that I am a samurai?).
4) My lifelong dream has been to travel to Japan. And Amsterdam. Then I'm finished with the world.
5) I'm fully aware that the CSI series is written by knucklehead, caveman conservatives who think the police should rule the world, but I watch it anyway.
6) When eating pizza, I take off the crust and sop it in the grease on the slice itself and eat that first, then eat the cheese-and-tomato sauce combination.

Who is tagged for this post: anyone who reads. All of you.....meme.....meme away to yonder bliss!

Bah.

2008-12-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

"Together we made it! We made it even though we had our backs up against the wall!" 10 pts. if you can tell me which song this is from.

Ah, fresh from crossing the finishing line in NaNoWriMo, I am much more rejuvenated to attend to my blog and your blogs. With that said, I must also confront the excuses as to why I had stopped tending to these respective blogs as much as I did before.

For one, when I want to post something on my blog I usually try to have it as structured as I can before approaching the keyboard. The blog is about the dynamics of life, and since this entails just writing about whatever occurs to me to write, I thought that it was important to have some structural order in the ideas I put forth, so that these dynamics in their individuals natures and relations could be comprehensible by whoever takes the time to read. The thing is, I'd come up with stuff but wouldn't post it because I didn't feel that it was expression ready. I'd put the thoughts down in my special Ernest Hemingway/Bruce Chatwin/caught-by-Barnes-and-Noble-marketing-to-wannabe-writers notebook and never get around to organizing them, whether it be from laziness or that tiresome/repulsive feeling you get from being too blog-involved for periods of time. However, I think NaNoWriMo has taught me that it'd be better if I were a bit more loose with writing. A bit more, not completely.

For two, NaNo started on November 1st. And after that point, everytime I came, with piping hot mug of coffee, to my keyboard, I'd consider writing these things I had planned for the blog but then say to myself "I could be using this time to add words to my novel", and I'd just go and do that instead. I'd kick myself for missing out on reading you guys' blogs, but could only rarely find time to do so in between writing the novel, going to work, then coming home and struggling to keep from slicing my wrists after remembering that I have to go back into that stupid job the next day.

But alas, NaNo is done and I'm back here with a new mug of caffeine, refreshed, renewed, still depressed, and still without having seen "Quantum of Solace" or read "Twilight". Although, I will get to that book after finishing "V For Vendetta" and "Watchmen" (only because he is one of the GREATEST writers of all time. Those who prefer Frank Miller should throw themselves off the edge of the Earth, which Miller probably still believes is flat). At any rate, I will write the things I had planned on writing, like, a month ago, and then normal blog service will resume.

Be well in your travels, and Thank You For Smoking.

Think opportunity

2008-11-19T07:55:00.000-05:00

Driving in the car with my mother the other day to work, I was telling her about how I hate my job because I work with two dumb f--ks, one of which is a co-worker and the other is a manager. I was explaining that the co-worker has SpongeBob mentality and I'm constantly getting into arguments with her from having to attempt to disprove to her that she is no way, shape, fashion or form over me. She likes to think so because she goes around rearranging beds and shelves of merchandise (which is the visual manager's job, not hers) and she will stalk you if you're a prospective customer. Even after telling her to go away. The manager is retarded because she only understands things that happen before her own eyes. So, if I'm not in front of her face working for a long time, then I've "disappeared". If I'm using my phone to calculate a discounted price (because all the calculators have disappeared, as usual) and singing, then in her stupidly assuming, short-sighted brain, I'm "talking on the phone". They're retarded.

But I digress. I was telling my mother that I was fed up with my job to the point that I was ready to quit without having a backup job to fall on, and she started giving me the same glib that everyone gives: "times are hard out here. Thousands of people have lost their jobs. What are you going to do after you quit?"
I say look for another job. She continues on about how that wouldn't be a wise decision. So I'm forced to put up with idiots and their inconsideration just because I'd have a hard time finding another job?

I think this is a terrible mentality we give ourselves. Yes, the economy is bad. Yes, jobs are being cut. But, instead of dwelling on those, why don't we all start talking about the opportunities that are still available? If someone you know wants to quit, instead of saying "it's going to be hard finding jobs.", why don't you make suggestions? "Well, online, I've seen X post open, and X place was hiring for X job." Let's start circulating the little bit of opportunities that are still there, and perhaps we can still feel productive and pursue better (not necessarily ideal) labor for ourselves.

"Israel needs a voice"

2008-11-08T07:22:00.000-05:00

This particular post will not be as orderly as I usually try to make them. I wrote it in the order I received the information, as there was no real rhyme or reason I could make of all this. I leave it to you, whom I'm sure will know more about the subject than me. And yes, the Jew to the right is indeed Al Pacino.
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Coming from the bathroom near my store's office, I overheard the President of the Company talking with other people, next to all of whom were traditional religious Jews^{Note below} and the one Honduran woman who is the President's secretary. As soon as they got settled at the 10-chair cherry wood table in his office, I overheard particular fragments of opinion from the President, including: "90% of the Jews voted for Obama. 90%!" I think there were some words that proceded, and then I heard "We're destroying our own..." I will not jump and say these two fragments are connected, but his tone of voice did not suggest that he was happy about this percentage of votes toward our new Commander-In-Chief (=D Yes we can!).

"5,000,000 Jewish-Americans in this country. 5,000,000, and we get blamed for everything. Everything!" Hmmm, don't really know what to say about this one. It made me think of Shylock The Jew for some reason. It's one of Shakespeares more memorable plays, and I think, proof that he had cultural messages in the undertone of his works. Also, see Othello.

"People think Israel's problem can be solved by sending them money [this coming from a hardcore businessman]. Money isn't the solution. Israel needs a voice." At this point, Israel is not something I've studied in-depth, although I'd love to start. For some reason, I was under the impression that, at this point in time, Palestine had either taken over Israel and was killing its people or had taken it siege. I remember something about a "two-state solution", and that's as far as my knowledge goes.

At any rate, my thing was, he sounded pretty bitter about Obama winning, but I think Obama is much more likely to give any country's people a voice than John McCain, who is about money but knows next to nothing about the economy (and has Phil Gramm as his economic advisor, who is so corrupt, Dante Alighieri would have to create a special level in Hell just for him). I am told that both McCain and Obama are allies of Israel, and with its democratic system and monarchy, it is starting to resemble a small piece of the United States (that explains McCain's interest in it).

I was working with a customer at my store (who will have another blog post of her own, as there was an argument between me and a retard co-worker and the customer had gotten involved) and, as she was trying to figure which matching ivory sofas to purchase and have delivered to her home, she mentioned that she was going back to Israel. Naturally, I asked her if it was ok to ask her some stuff about Israel and I told her what I overheard the President say.

She said she could see how some of them (the Jews) would vote for McCain (isn't there a stereotype that Jews are conniving hawks and all about their money? I think this is why I thought of Shylock the Jew), but McCain won't do any good for anyone. She then gave me the history of Israel and Palestine, how Israel defeated Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and some other states in war all by its itty bitty self, and how Arabs don't like the amount of land the Jews have, and she started explaining the argument over the Gaza Strip, which she told me is secular although it's over a piece of sacred land.

Bollocks, conflicts abound. Jews and Arabs. Arabs and Africans (Darfur). The Irish and The British (the Troubles). Iraqis and Iranians. Pakistanis and Indians. I've heard rumors of beef brewing between The Russians and The Americans.......again. Here in the United States, Puerto Ricans don't like Dominicans and vice versa. The Chinese don't like the Japanese and vice versa. In Compton and other parts of California, Mexicans don't like Blacks and vice versa. During 9/11, "Americans" didn't like "Middle Eastern" people. During the whole past, present and future, no one likes white people (Bush/McCain Americans). Or black people (the stereotyped versions of them). Or Mexicans (same). Or Jews (same). Why can't we all just get along????!??

^Note I've never understood how people would say they're Jewish racially until someone finally answered my question.
I mean, one who is Japanese means they have the blood and makeup of a people who have biologically adapted to living in Japan.
One who is Kenyan means they have the blood and makeup of a people who have biologically adapted to living in Kenya.
One who is Jewish has the makeup of a people who have biologically adapted to living in __________??

[I am told the answer is Judea].

Also, another quick note: One who is American means they have the blood and makeup of a people who have biologically adapted to living in America. There can't be any more than a tiny fraction of the people who qualify through this definition left. None of the American Presidents qualify for it, yet you can only be "American" to run for president. Go figure.

Jenny's Book Meme

2008-11-06T21:04:00.000-05:00

Ok, I totally promised Jenny Bah that I'd do this book meme after she tagged me with it, but I've been lazy with it, as well as tired and tied up with nanowrimo and job hunting and crying because I'm worthless. So here it goes.

Here are the rules: Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal/blog along with these instructions. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST. Tag five other people to do the same.

Here's what I picked: " 'Go away, little girl,' shouted the D.H.C. angrily. 'Go away, little boy! Can't you see that his fordship's busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else.'
'Suffer little children,' said the Controller.

Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, the Conveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimetres an hour. In the red darkness glinted innumerable rubies."

"Brave New World" by Alduous Huxley.

For this meme I would like to tag: everyone who reads it.

YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-11-04T23:16:00.000-05:00

WOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!

BARACK WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Culture is the cure

2008-11-01T07:46:00.000-04:00

In our little intellectual "salon" (French word) of semi-pundits that include [Fred] and the new guy, [Lawrence], we have at work, we were discussing the recent assassination attempt on Barack Obama by two young pieces of s**t.

A couple of white supremacists in Tennessee, Daniel Cowort, 21, and Paul Schlesselman, 18, drew out a plan to kill a total of 103 people: they would first kill 88 African-Americans, as "88" is the code for "Heil Hitler". They would then behead 14 more, 14 being the number of words in the slogan "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The final kill would've then been Obama at a Democratic National Convention.

I'm sure, in court, they will run behind the First and Second Amendment, although they were arrested for illegal firearms possession and intent to steal guns from a dealer. The First Amendment being because they were not caught in attempt but just with drawn-out plans.

[Fred] suggested that the government just kill off their leaders and then begin to work on the members individually. And while an enraged, violent version of myself says this is a truly delightful and efficient thought, the morals in me say that this will not work. Besides not always being able to identify who does and does not hold terrible beliefs, killing them will only strength the divide between races. And there are worthless idiots out there who will sympathize with the supremacists' deaths and continue to carry the torch themselves. Perhaps with even sharper conviction.

I began to think that what would really be ideal is for these guys to change ("Yes We Can!" =D). I am fully aware that white supremacists groups have been around for ages, and that for every person that wises up and leaves, some other impetant cur who is angry that they got jumped by a group of black people when they were younger will join (because, of course, there are no Chinese or Japanese or Spanish or Dominican or Indian or Middle Eastern or Russian or British or Italian people who have done death-penalty worthy acts). But I personally feel better about seeing these people be enlightened, looking back on the things they did or/and said and, after months of deep depression and quite possibly suicidal tendencies from the megaton load of guilt (the necessary process through which they must proceed), begin to be understanding and sympathetic for other cultures and races. Begin to recognize people by their personality, adherence to morals and their human rights. Of course, keeping them alive after they've committed atrocious racist hate crimes runs the risk of them just rejoining the White Supremacist movement later on. And hoping Mr. Cowort and Mr. Schlesselman to redeem themselves in the light of rational society may just allow them to better carry out their plan another time. This all gets complex.

Intellect was high during the old days, around the 19th century and before. But in those times, people read or watched plays for entertainment. So, a much higher I.Q. average was more of a side effect then a goal. Then again, the words 'intellect' and 'culture' are very much linked. If European nations were truly cultured or the forefront of civilization (which we'd now have to argue the meaning of), slavery of Africans and the near genocide of Native Americans would not have been. But this is another tirade altogether.

My point is, W.E.B DuBois spoke of having a nation led by a team of elite intellectuals (today's American governments never embody this, and if you think McCain and Palin does, you should be putting your head in an open car door and slamming away), but I think we should all be much more rational on a basic level. I mean, I personally believe that there should be a national mob mentality against people like the two listed above. Against all white supremacists. But there isn't, and I think that's because people don't realize how truly destructive this kind of mentality is. I don't think that people realize it and are just indifferent; if one grasped all the kinds of harm white supremacy does in the short and long run, they would be affected.

I'm beginning to sound like a lousy Repub in telling you what you should and shouldn't feel, so I will stop. But a truly enlightened generation (like the one Obama is working to have =D), would not withstand these sorts of things, nor would there be even half the proliferation of such plans as there are now.

Is a corrupt hero still a hero?

2008-10-27T13:37:00.000-04:00

Larry Davis was an African American South Bronx resident and drug dealer who was made famous 1) for his shootout with and unharmed escape from New York City detectives and the Emergency Service Unit (like S.W.A.T. but with more much abilities), 2) for his acquittal of charges in court afterwards. Was he a hero?

The year 1986: He had been suspected of dealing drugs for years and the killing 7 people, 4 of which were other drug dealers. On the night of November 19th, the cops listed above had busted into some adjoining project apartments where Larry was present with two of his sisters, a sister's husband, two of his children and two others. At this point, the truth becomes fuzzy. Davis' daughter, his lawyer Williams Kunstler, and a few other accounts say that the police busted into Davis' sister's apartment without a warrant and started firing heavy artillery first after Davis had screamed out "Don't shoot! My babies are back there!". In defense and retaliation, he fired back at them. According to the cops who were there as well as some alternative accounts, Larry Davis peeked a sawed-off shotgun and a semi-automatic pistol around the corner he was hiding behind and opened up fire on the cops first, who were performing this raid with a signed warrant from the judge. In the midst of this firefight, he used a child as a shield against the oncoming hail of bullets.

Either way, he shot six cops: one in the mouth, another in the throat, another in the forehead. In the midst of the firefight, he proceeded into the adjoining apartment and made his way out of the window, where he landed into a backyard and escaped.

For a week or so, the police held a manhunt for Larry Davis, until a tip finally led them to his real location in some project apartment building in the Bronx where his sister lived. After taking a random family hostage and making sure that live reporters were there to witness the event so that the police wouldn't murder him in cold-blood, Davis' surrendered his firearm, let the family go and turned himself into the police. As cops handcuffed him and led him to the squad car, people leaned out of their windows and stood on nearby sidewalks chanting "Lar-ry! Lar-ry! Lar-ry!", proud of his rebellious acts.

Why would I question if he was a hero? Why would the police murder him in cold blood? Why were the onlookers proud?

You see, I had mentioned Larry Davis was selling drugs.........but at some point, he was recruited by the cops to sell for them. He admitted in the following trials that, at some point, he was going to go public with his connections to the cops. This puts a new spin on the context of the first raid: perhaps they were really in bursting in there to kill him and shut him up. So, perhaps they did fire first. Other cops say that these the alleged officers were not involved in any illegal activity. But it is a well-circulated belief that there is a tight-knit "brotherhood" amongst policemen. They will often clean up after each other's horrific and immoral acts. Especially in the atmosphere of 1980's New York City, South Bronx, a place known for it's poverty, gang activity, and sharp racial tension poor minorities and a majority-white police force. A restlessness had grown in the people who were oppressed by racial prejudices, and Larry Davis' acts seemed to symbolize rebellion.

In court, Davis' was defended by Williams Kunstler, a civil rights attorney and socialist who was known for defending controversial clients such as Qubilah Shabazz (Malcolm X's daughter), Assata Shakur (Tupac Shakur's aunt) and the Chicago Seven. The prosecution charged him with all kinds of accounts from weapons possession to attempted murder. They presented many witness testimonies and pieces of evidence, but this all failed to push conviction. Kunstler, without a single piece of evidence, proved that the cops were trying to kill Davis' because of his drug dealings with them, and during the raid, he fired back at them in self-defense. The jury believed it, and he was acquitted.

Later on, however, he was found guilty on the charges of the murder of one of the drug dealers and was sentenced 25 to life. In February of this year, Larry Davis was stabbed to death in prison by fellow inmate Luis Rosado. The two had no connection prior to the fight, and it is believed that policemen paid Rosado to kill him.

So, Larry Davis is held as a hero in his neighborhood because he defeated the policemen's criminal trickery with his own criminal trickery. The hero context is that policemen in those times (and still some today) have committed ferocious, racist, criminal atrocities while "law-abiding" officials higher up turned a blind eye to it. Larry Davis committed atrocities against the cops and, with the wit of his lawyer, got the same blind eye turned on him.

Some accounts say that Davis was a reckless figure who tried to destroy anything that got in the way of his pecuniary path. So, he also committed atrocities against his own neighborhood citizens. Others, like his family and friends, say that he was a kind, caring person who did what he had to do in a suffering urban jungle in order to survive. This particular case stuck out to me because I know other people who would say that I, as a black person, am supposed to jump behind and support Davis' acts because he assaulted policemen and got away with it. Because in the minds of people who have experienced terrible, unjustified things from policemen and some who just like to talk and act like they did: all cops are corrupt.

Obviously, this isn't true. But it does still stand that corrupt cops exist. But the question here is: is corruption against the corrupt ok? Am I suppose to support someone who tried to stop immorality by endorsing heavy immorality in his own acts?

Different beginnings, same endings

2008-10-19T08:20:00.000-04:00

Interesting conversation a couple of days back with [Stacy], a waitress and cook at a Soul Food restaurant I go to for lunch sometimes. When I come there and choose between fish, macaroni and cheese and potato salad, or pancakes, eggs and the rest of what goes in a breakfast, we discuss things such as the ethics of drinking on the job, differences in Christian beliefs, ill-fated sexual adventures and other miscellaneous topics. Of course, recently the cloud of the current political climate has invaded the atmosphere and our discourse.

Somehow, we had gotten to talking about religious beliefs determining who can and can't be a country leader. [Stacy] could not vote for someone who was a Muslim or Atheist, her being a Christian herself. She couldn't really give me a reason why, other than telling me that it says "In God We Trust" on the dollar bill. The Muslims and Atheists aren't about what this country is about, the Muslims don't like us, and to quote her "I mean, where do Atheists think we come from anyway?" (when I told her the Big Bang theory, she sucked her teeth and walked away).

I don't think she's close-minded though. She was aware that this is her perspective and she was open to other kinds of reasoning. I think, when the word Muslim comes up, she thinks of the Hamas, Hezbollahs, Al-Qaedas and things of those sort. She can't help herself (as a result of fear and conservative media warp), and she acknowledges that there are also peaceful, conscious Muslims to be spoken for. I mean, there could be a million reasons why she has these beliefs.

As for me, these discussions make me see how loose I am with these sort of things, if only to counteract this rampant sharp judgement of people's character instead of sharp judgement of their adherence to morals. I could care less if a talking bottle of orange juice was running for presidential nomination. If its priorities were:

-cleaner air and doing what we can about climate change

-putting a stop to corporations outsourcing jobs

-improving education (as well as making it more accessible. Education is a moral obligation, not a privilege.)

-paying leading infrastructural leaders more (teachers, construction, social services, scientists, police, etc.) [of course, within reason on each individual case]

-a foreign policy of less nuclear weapons and a more co-habitual world instead of a barberic, completely competitive one

then it will be alright with me. What I was trying to say to her is that people of different cultures and beliefs can very well share the same values. It comes from first realizing that there is a world outside of yourself. Then realizing that you must take care of this world and help it thrive if you want it to help you...........................

I think it was pancakes, sausages and eggs that day. I was also drinking orange juice, which would probably explain why I thought about not minding it running for president.

Look at this crap

2008-10-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

Just take a gander at this quick 47 second clip. This is why many Repubs should be punched in the face.