Stalking the Obvious

I am a Bright

2005-08-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

You probably know this about me already, but I don't believe in astrology or voodoo. Or in past lives, ghosts or Santa Claus. Or God.

If you're the same way, you've probably noticed our worldview isn't very popular right now. Policy decisions are being made under the assumption that everyone believes in something, and those who don't are amoral and irrelevant. People are dying in wars over religion. So-called psychics are preying on the bereaved for profit. Every major newspaper runs a column wherein someone uses the alignment of stars to predict the future. Hardly a nuance of our lives can be found free of the scars of supernaturalism.

The line between fact and wishful thinking is barely sharper than it was centuries ago. While the scientific method has provided us with immeasurable riches in information, humanity continues to pick and choose the bits we want to redeem for answers.

There's a movement out there to fight this. I've mentioned it before, but I think a reminder every year or so is probably appropriate. Please, please check out the Brights if you have any interest in helping this situation.

It's not a club. It's not a group with membership. It's simply a loose collection of individuals who have chosen to label themselves "Brights" as part of their larger effort to help the way we're perceived in the world.

I think the word "renaissance" is beautiful. What about you?

Screams in the Ignorant Darkness

2005-04-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

There are few things less interesting to read right now than one more piece about the pope. One of those things is a rant about excessive media coverage the papacy is getting. Still, here we go, because many people are saying that while this election shouldn't concern them, they realize the far-reaching effects of the papacy on world politics, yet I haven't seen them follow that up with the obvious question that raises: What the fuck is wrong with us?

A group of superstitious people has elected a superstitious man to lead them through the modern world, not in spite of his obsessive and irrational dedication to superstitions, but because of them. Instead of being marginalized and ridiculed, this group maintains much of the power it's had since it was calling heresy on those who dared suggest the Earth rotates around the sun.

For some reason, we focused our attention, our media, our cameras, and our discussions on the color of the smoke they sent out of their ancient building. We used our technology to beam their primitive smoke signals around the world in realtime. It's as if they were daring us to write them off by showcasing their obsolescence and rigorous adherence to tradition in the face of better methods and better ideas.

Sure, the colored smoke is a tradition, something that lets them feel connected to their predecessors. I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with embracing tradition. What I'm suggesting is that this particular tradition is a great example of how religions are clinging to the comforts of the past, and keeping the world from moving forward.

You see, the colored smoke was chosen as the most effective way to get a message from a sequestered group to the outside world, without risking other information leaking out, or influence sneaking in. Modern technology provides a variety of more effective and more reliable ways to do this, and the smoke could easily continue alongside anything else. Military drill teams still toss around 1903 Springfield rifles, but nobody is suggesting we continue to fight wars with them.

Still, a group that would accept a new communications medium would be a group that would be open to allowing the use of condoms to help cut into the AIDS epidemic in Africa. They'd consider contraception as an effective way to reduce the number of abortions performed. They'd allow their believers to listen to modern biology as it screams answers about the origin of life into the ignorant darkness. Obviously, this isn't that group.

Much of the world is so infatuated with faith, so eager to embrace easy answers without question, that they've turned their minds over to the vestigial institutions of our dim past. The rest of us are so afraid of controversy that we sit idly back, and smile at them as they play pretend about gods, angels and brimstone.

I'd like to suggest it's about time for us to stand up and push the Vatican and the other capitols of today's religions to take their place in the history books next to the Pyramids, the Parthenon and the Maya temples. Theocracy never wanes without a fight.

This is a fight of reason, of words, of ideas. There is no blood, there is no risk, so why aren't we fighting?

The Great 43rd Avenue Seam

2005-04-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

Since Google added satellite images to their mapping service, I haven't been able to get enough of scrolling around and playing voyeur-from-space. It's pretty easy to notice where two satellite images have been stitched together, but it's usually due to a change in lighting, not a problem with alignment.

...but here we have 43rd Avenue in West Phoenix. I think this may be one of the more conspicuous seams on Google Maps.

It's the piece shown on the left of both of those links that seems to be the problem. I've followed the seam all the way around, and it seems that this one square just didn't quite fit in.

After a little more searching, I found that the Loop 101/Loop 202 interchange was passed through an automated image stitching program that couldn't really handle what it was given. Automatic stiching also caused some craziness over at Sky Harbor airport, where you can see some ghost planes and other weirdness.

Has anyone else discovered any particularly egregious misalignments?

Liberty Terri

2005-03-23T23:20:00.000-08:00

I generally don't lend my services to the GOP, but what have the Democrats done for me lately?

An Open Letter to Karl Rove:

Mr. Rove,

You or one of your colleagues recently drafted a memo to Republicans in the Senate laying out the potential political gains in exploiting Terri Schiavo, our nation's favorite persistently vegetative stateswoman. Well, sir, I have a proposal for you to take this to the next level.

I come to you not out of support of your cause, but out of a great respect for your evil genius. You're accomplishing with Terri what the left couldn't with Christopher Reeve, and he was a movie star. Your party certainly recognizes the power a movie star wields over the voting public. Still, the Democrats slow-played the crippled Superman card, and barely managed to squeeze a tiny amount of public opinion out of his lifeless corpse. Stem-cell research? Who even knows what that means anymore? Not me, sir.

My idea for taking this exploitation from petty to epic is as follows: We should offer Terri up as a replacement for the Liberty Bell. The bell itself has been effectively ignored for the last 20 years. I think the last time I heard it mentioned was the third grade. Clearly, it's become obsolete, but it has some charm that we can replicate with the much more modern and GOP-friendly "Liberty Terri," as we'll christen her during the unveiling of her plexiglas viewing chamber in Philadelphia, where she can live the rest of her unnatural life, turning food sludge into waste we can portion out and sell as souvenirs.

You see, the Liberty Bell is cracked, and that's part of its mystique. Americans, as a general rule, are terrified of perfection. Flaws make us swoon. Terri, with a brain that lacks any identifiable consciousness, thought, or awareness, will fill in quite nicely for a bell that can't ring.

Liberty Terri can completely replace the bell in American iconography. She may be a little harder for grade-schoolers to draw in class, but the fact that she's human means some lucky kid can play her in the patriotic school plays put on across this great nation. Every 4th of July sale at car dealerships across the country will use a little clip art Terri face in their ads, subliminally reenforcing the idea that Democrats hate America. Unlike the flag, which has been co-opted by every bastard there is, you bastards will have sole ownership of this one for at least a few decades.

Now, what to do with the bell? Well, you have a bit of a PR problem over in Iraq. Imagine this sound bite playing on Fox News a few hundred times a day for a month: "Iraq isn't liberated? Tell that to the Liberty Bell and the fine men protecting it from suicide bombers in Baghdad."

I urge you to act on this quickly.

Kris

An Introduction

2005-02-16T00:51:00.000-08:00

So this is my first post directly to this blog -- the backdated entries were filtered out of my Live Journal and copied here. I thought it would be nice to break the writing I think is meaningful away from the casual stuff.

So here's a handful of my favorite posts to give you an idea of what I'm all about.

Learning the Police State

2005-02-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

People don't like being oppressed, as a general rule. In order for people to accept overbearing authority, you really need to convince them it's a good idea. Thankfully, we send our kids to government-run schools for about a dozen years of their lives.

A recent study shows that a third of high school students think the First Amendment is excessive in its protection of free speech rights. Seventy-five percent think flag burning is illegal. If three-quarters of the next generation's leaders already think it's illegal, it almost ensures that will one day be the case.

This isn't a case of government propaganda being disseminated in schools -- if it were, the consequences would be manageable. This is fundamental problem with the way authority is used in an educational setting. We have a system which academically rewards information-regurgitating drones, socially rewards conformists, and punishes free-thinkers. Hysteria about the shootings at Columbine, the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the war on drugs has injected especially draconian rules into a system already wilting in the shadow of the iron fist.

School was for me a lesson that the world is not right, that everything -- even our most important institutions -- could be flawed. I learned that a system which imposes control on a group invariably drifts towards the convenience of power, unless protested. I was shocked to learn that the majority of those controlled in such a situation will unflinchingly embrace the control if a reward is dangled in front of them. In school, this reward was the promise of a career that only comes with a college degree, which requires enthusiastic participation in even the most ridiculous aspects of the system.

A former coworker of mine told me that his son got on his teacher's bad side by pointing out that it was now commonly known that photons of light do exert force on an object, contrary to what was being taught in class. I once asked a junior high teacher of mine about a problem in the text book that I thought might have the wrong answer, since applying the lesson learned in class that day would have given a different one. Her answer to me was, "whatever is in the answer key is the right answer," without the slightest discussion about the principles involved. It turns out that the answer in the key was the one I knew was right, but had it not been, it would have been right enough for her.

I can think of dozens of other instances of consensus-over-truth in my school experience. It's not the bad information that makes this such a disaster, it's the way in which any information -- good or bad -- is secondary to the ritual of school and the indoctrination of authoritarianism.

After the Columbine shooting, kids were singled out for things that could without hyperbole be called thought crimes. Many students have received varying degrees of punishment for brining toy guns to school, some of them inch-long guns an action figure might carry. How an injected-molded plastic sliver roughly resembling a gun could injure anyone or disrupt class is mind-boggling, but it doesn't matter. The rules say you can't bring a gun or a replica of one to school, and the rules are not to be questioned.

This week, a first grader received two days of in-school detention for filling a plastic bag she found with dirt and clovers and giving it to a friend as a gift. Her teacher thought it looked like a bag of marijuana, so the iron fist came down on her, a six-year-old girl. The girl had to be told what marijuana was, and why she was bad for simulating it. Disgusting. My little girl will sometimes take a piece of paper and wrap up household objects to give to me as gifts. This is exactly the same behavior. The girl is a victim of an overzealous system. Her view of authority and justice has been permanently distorted.

Kids don't think flag burning is illegal because teachers are telling them that, they think it's illegal because they're learning that one should never cause a disruption, that the status quo is sacred, and that above everything else, authority should never be questioned.

Dogma

2005-02-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

It's Ayn Rand's birthday. Libertarianism, free-market capitalism, and atheism -- what's not to like about Objectivism? Well, I think I've got that figured out now: dogmatic egoism. Ayn Rand's Objectivism demands that it be swallowed whole and defines its principles as moral and everything else as immoral. I'm amazed to see such unapologetic dogmatism within an atheist philosophy.

At the core of Objectivism is the idea that everyone should strive to better themselves while rejecting altruism. This makes Objectivism very appealing to selfish people looking to rationalize away their guilt, or to even feel morally superior because of their egoism. I'll admit I've found similar comfort in capitalism and libertarianism, so I can definitely relate to the appeal. However, to reject altruism is to ignore or deny the benefits to society that altruism has provided in the past.

Take the Civil Rights movement as an example. While a society made up exclusively of Objectivists would have never created the mess of inequality, segregation and oppression in our country's past, egoism would not have solved the problem either. Booker T. Washington (and some other black leaders) recommended that black citizens should strive first to better themselves and not risk their own well being and social status by protesting segregation. This thinking is right in line with Objectivist egoism. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others believed it was better to risk or outright sacrifice their own quality of life for the benefit of future generations. This is altruism, and Objectivism dogmatically rejects it.

I guess I'm far too much of a utilitarian to accept a worldview that could consider altruism immoral.

As a side note, I would suspect that a disproportionately high number of Objectivists have no children. To look into the eyes of a child and not immediately reject pure egoism is a callousness that I can't comprehend.

Today's State of the Union address was depressing. I spent half of it being annoyed by promises to "protect the sanctity of marriage" and other things that Christian dogma demands. I've been putting up with that for four years, so I expected it. What's really bumming me out is that the partisan split over Social Security is drowning out any and all rational discussions about the merits of privatization. Rational discourse once again loses to party dogma. Democrats must oppose what Republicans support and the political process is nothing but a sporting event.

It's also Dee Dee's birthday, my Dad's birthday, and Groundhog Day. Unfortunately, I can't relate dogma to any of these events.

A Movement Dissolves

2005-01-11T02:01:00.000-08:00

In Los Angeles right now, it's raining. Forgive me if this sounds pessimistic. It's unrelenting and unrefreshing. Arizona rain was invigorating, like a shower -- quick, powerful and cleansing. This is like walking around in wet socks, which is a comparison I'm quite comfortable making, having done so on too many occasions lately.

Four months ago, I felt alive. I felt a rebirth of youth activism and political power all around me. I'll admit that I didn't buy completely into the sincerity of the movement and often hedged my emotional investment by openly questioning the earnestness and commitment of those cheerleading the anybody-but-Bush team. Still, the fact that so many people could be made to care made me feel alive. Standing in the rain today, I felt dead.

I expected the scenesters to drop off. I knew the bongo revolutionaries wouldn't have much to add once the demonstrations ceased. However, I had faith in the movement. Ideas don't die. Mass consciousness wanes, but ideas don't fucking die.

Looking back, I can't see the ideas anymore. I still know why I was involved. I still know why I cared. I still care. But I don't know why you cared. Maybe it was fun to be a part of something. Maybe the weather was just perfect to stand outside and protest, but the rain is coming down now and the movement is more cardboard than stone.

Someone came to my door selling magazine subscriptions this Summer. She saw the Kerry campaign sign in my window and complemented me on it. She told me she hates President Bush, and that she's going to college for a career in education. I asked her about No Child Left Behind, thinking that it must be her pet issue, but she had never even heard the phrase. This is why we lost. We didn't have a message. It was all theater.

In the months after the election, it's become plainly clear that this wasn't about a fight for civil liberties, opposition to authoritarianism, rebellion against theocracy, rejection of jingoism, a call for rational and nuanced leadership or the fists-and-screams fight to ensure that every human is treated as his humanity dictates he should be. No, this was about image.

We hid behind our so-called dissent like they hid behind their so-called patriotism. Fists and flags waved in the air, neither representing anything but the aesthetic of long-dead movements. We raised our voices, but we weren't saying anything. We weren't listening, either. We'd boo their guy while we cheered ours for saying the same thing. We didn't even notice when they said drastically different things, because those things weren't interesting. The military vehicles in which pampered Yale asses were planted about 40 years ago got more mindshare than any meaningful debate about policy.

The exception to this, of course, was the issue of whether or not a man marrying a man can unwind the carefully woven fabric of society and plunge us all into a world of depravity. Once again the nation we all know as "the greatest country on Earth" proved itself to be more apt to embrace hate and fear than to demand understanding, civility and equality. The propensity of the American public to rally behind intolerance and bigotry was so clear that the Bush campaign made it the cornerstone of their reelection campaign, and it was frequently cited as the deciding factor in the election.

The rain in Los Angeles will stop eventually, and without any help from people. That's the nature of weather, but if political climate is to be affected, people must step up to embrace and present ideas in such a way that they tower above style, trends and rhetoric.

No E-Meters in Jesusland

2004-12-05T01:23:00.000-08:00

In the days after the election, a map circulated around the internet showing the red states labeled "Jesusland", with the blue states merged north into the United States of Canada. The implication is that these states that John Kerry won are on some intellectual high ground, and the others are subject to crazy religious beliefs, and all of this is predicated on the assertion that a state that went 55% Kerry is fundamentally different than one that went 55% Bush.

Well, I've moved from a red state to a blue state, and yeah, it's a little different. What Californians call "a parking lot", we always called "a parking space or two." They use the phrase "strip mall of generic chain stores" to describe what I've always referred to as "the whole entire world as I know it." Still, that's about the extent of the differences, despite everyone insisting that I must have trouble adjusting to how fast it is here. (Driving 15MPH on the freeway for an hour to spend 20 minutes fighting over a parking spot, and then another 30 minutes throwing elbows to buy a loaf of bread does not make for fast living.)

Sure, Arizona had more megachurches than record stores, but California is the international capitol of Scientology -- and nobody is rioting in the streets about it. I'm not one for destruction or violence, but if anything were to fill me with the kind of rage that would put me at the wick end of a molitov cocktail, it's bullshit like that being spewed nonstop on every street I walk down. A state that so openly welcomes Scientology is certainly not the enlightened utopia of progress and critical thought that they feel the blue on the electoral map indicates. And hey, it's not just Scientology. Don't forget the Moonies, the Krishnas, and the fuckwits who say "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." Jim Jones, Charles Manson and Heaven's Gate all managed to find a fertile environment for their spirituality here, and I'm having trouble seeing how any of this is better than the brainwashing that happens in Jesusland.

It's impossible to live in Los Angeles and not have to deal with Scientologists on a somewhat regular basis. The teeming masses of zombies they've recruited stand on the streets trying to reel in more hapless victims. One of their preferred tactics is to offer a free "stress test" on the spot. They don't introduce themselves as Scientologists, they don't mention that the testing is done on an e-meter, and they probably wouldn't recognize the phrase galvanic skin response, which is what they're actually measuring. As much as I'm curious about their sales pitch after the "stress test", I can't bring myself to be seen on an e-meter, so I'm not sure at what point they explain how much money it's going to cost to get rid of all of your engrams.

Since it's Christmas shopping season, they were outside of the Macy's by my local post office earlier this week. When I was on my way out, one of their recruitment zombies tried to corral me over to the e-meter. "Actually," I said, "I make my own poison kool-aid at home, so I don't think I'll be needing your services. Thanks, though." He responded with, "Oh yeah? Did you think of that yourself?" The guy in the cult questioned my ability to think for myself. "So this is life in a blue state," I thought, "I can feel the progress."

So to all of my California friends: If you're thinking of visiting the rest of the country, rest assured that you'll never see an e-meter in Jesusland.

An Open Letter to Tyler Chase Harper

2004-11-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Tyler,

I recently read about your run-in with the powers that be at your school about an offensive message on your t-shirt. Yours is only the latest in a long string of t-shirt censorship at public schools. I follow these stories pretty closely. A few years ago, a student wearing a Korn t-shirt was suspended from his high school in Michigan. I was pretty pissed about that. Then there was the story about a shirt with the word "vegan" getting a kid suspended in Utah because the school has a no-tolerance policy on gangs. You see, some straight edge kids are vegan, and some straight edge kids are violent, so according to the school, all vegans are members of a violent gang. This one was hard to get angry about -- in the same way that it's hard to be mad at the man who yells at his penis on the subway: sometimes people are a lost cause and you just have to clean up after they shit themselves.

Alas, this should be about you. This is your fifteen minutes, brave warrior of free speech. You proudly, and in the face of the conservative oppressors, wore shirt bravely questioning the tyranny of ... homosexuality. Yes, in the noble tradition of Martin Luther King Jr, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Boston Tea Party -- well, maybe not them; that whole tea party thing sounds a little fruity -- you stood up for the rights of your people and against their brutal oppression under the iron fist of the gay majority. You inspire me to think that one day those of us born with the heterosexual handicap may be free to marry the opposite gender, or to teach in public schools.

Your bravery has given me the courage to admit something. I too am straight. Yes, it's taken me years to come to terms with it, and I'm always praying that one day there will be a cure for this horrible affliction, but for right now, it's who I am. The trouble is that some people can't accept me. I'm afraid to show any affection to my girlfriend in public for fear that someone will see me and follow me down a dark alley to beat me up. I read stories like that in the papers every day. "Just another breeder dead," my family laughs. I don't think I'll ever have the courage to come out to them. It pains me to say this, but they're so tolerant and rational.

So, you backwards, homophobic prick, I salute you! Your ignorant, anachronistic hate-mongering is a shining beacon to everyone who strives for a new renaissance, an enlightenment that may lead to a world wherein discrimination and hate based on two-thousand-year-old myths are welcomed into our public schools; a world where words like 'equality' and 'tolerance' exist only as vestiges of our past; a world where 'science' is relegated to the history books.

Never stop fighting the good fight, you hateful little zealot!

P.S. - Some news stories are indicating that you prefer to go by your middle name, Chase. I just wanted to give you a little heads-up that Chase is about the queerest name I've ever heard. You might not want to have people calling you that around Jesus.

Opposite World

2004-11-22T02:20:00.000-08:00

Tony Blair may be impeached for gross misconduct related to the Iraq war. George W. Bush got re-elected. The Atlantic ocean is a window to Opposite World.

I should go look and see if I can catch a glimpse of skinny people reading books and spending their spare time contributing to society instead of bitching about it. I wonder what Opposite-World me is out doing right now instead of typing bullshit into his computer. I bet he's doing charity work or research biology. In fact, I'm going to have a beer. The people of Opposite World deserve no less.

Four More Years (Of Dissent)

2004-11-03T22:46:00.000-08:00

So here we are, looking down the barrel of the Holy Bible, King James Edition. We've got this thing pointed in our collective face for the next four years, so let's at least scream about it a little, okay?

Biblical conservatism won yesterday. It wasn't even close, and we don't have anyone to blame. Nobody stole this election, and turnout was higher than any other election since 1968. The election was fair, and complaints about the outcome are silly. The mandate is here: Americans want to live in the fucking dark ages of fairy tales and boogiemen. George W. Bush decided our enemy was "the Axis of Evil," and we decided to beat them at their own game: theocracy.

This isn't just about the Presidency, this is about Americans coming together to say they want to be governed by a centuries-old collection of parables and mythology. Eleven states voted to prevent people of the same gender from marrying, because they insist some bearded man in the sky cares where the holy fuck you stick your penis. Conservative Republicans won election after election. On the whole, the more conservative a candidate was, the more votes he received.

Yesterday, Jerry Falwell's God proved to be the most powerful figure in American politics, and I couldn't be more disappointed. In allowing religion to be the primary motivating factor in policy decisions, we're in the company of Iran, Syria, and Lybia. As common as it is for us to deride European nations these days, we seem to be doing everything we can do to emulate a 16th-century European utopia of church rule, imperialistic shows of military might, and social intolerance.

We can't pin this on the religious zealots. They're not the new variable in this equation, they're a constant, they've always been here. In order for knowledge, equality and liberty to flourish, we needn't silence the delusional minority, we need only stop pretending that their fairy-tale delusions are noble. We have to stop acting like faith is anything but a logic flaw. Far too many of us are acting as apologists for religion these days. We love our religious parents, grandparents and friends, and we allow them to be manipulated to fear and hate the enemies of the church because we don't want to offend their beliefs.

We're saying things like, "sure, it's a lot of bullshit, but it helps them get through tough times." If it was all gospel music and hand-clapping, that would be fine. Their leaders -- Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Benny Hinn and Paul Crouch, to name a few -- have repeatedly been exposed as frauds. Still, the checks keep coming. Religion in America is a powerful profit industry, and your religious friends and family members are being milked for all they're worth.

Worse, some aren't content with money. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson want power. They share a political agenda, one of authoritarianism and bigotry. The same systems established to fleece the religious masses are being used to recruit them for political power. The Christian Coalition is one of the most powerful political organizations in the country, because they can threaten their subjects with eternal damnation. This is enough to make me sick, and I vow to fight it. I hope you're with me.

George W. Bush is a symptom of this disease, he didn't cause it. We lost because we weren't fighting the right thing. The fight against theocracy over the next four years may be as important as any political movement in the history of this country.

Conservative Punks

2004-10-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

This is my post in a thread at MoFi about conservatism in the punk scene.

Rebellion is a core value in punk culture, and that's why you see conservative punks, despite the fact that conservatism and rebellion are on the surface mutually exclusive.

I'm voting for John Kerry in this election, but when I watched the final debate on a TV at work with all of the LA Democrats giving him a free pass on his every answer, even when he said something they had just minutes ago heckled Bush for saying, the punk in me wanted to throw their hypocrisy in their faces. When the anti-war protests started, I was so fucking pissed at all of the "I'll protest anything" bandwagoneers that I wanted to make a big sign that said "bongos are not an instrument of protest" and crash the party. The idea of protesting protesters gives me punk goosebumps.

Punk, at its best, is about making people rethink what they thought they knew. From music, to fasion ("A safety pin is fashionable? Why the hell am I spending money on jewelry when I can get it basically free?") to politics, to religion, to punk itself.

Punk is full of political zombies stumbling around thinking that Jello Biafra should be president, and that would make the world a utopia. Okay, I love Jello as much as the next guy, and the Kennedys definitely helped to shape my worldview and open my eyes to politics and social issues, but it's not fucking dogma. Question everything, second-guess everybody, and never accept anybody's authority.

If punk can be boiled down to anything, it's a movement against dogma. When left-liberalism becomes the dogma, punks have the inclination -- and one might even say the responsibility -- to rebel against it. If that doesn't seem intuitive, then you're missing the point of punk.

Standing on stage and preaching to the choir is not punk rock. Every show, every stage, every forum of any kind, is your opportunity to get in someone's face and make them think about something.

Maybe "Nanny-State Punks Fuck Off" isn't as catchy as the original, but you get the idea.

The thing that irks me is that conservative punks aren't starting their own anti-liberal movement, they're just accepting an existing mainstream ideology. That's a pretty fucking cheap way to do it, if you ask me. Chickenshit conformists, just like their parents.

Corporate Head for Business

2004-10-09T22:43:00.000-07:00

In Los Angeles, developers must contribute one percent of the cost of new buildings to a fund for public works of art. The plaza at 7th Street and Figueroa in Los Angeles is decorated by a project called "Poet's Walk," which its development funded. Kathy Lucoff, the art consultant hired to decide on the type of works and the artists, decided to have artists collaborate with poets and create small, human-scale works which could be discovered while walking around the plaza.

The project really works. This is the plaza I eat lunch at, and I pass through it to and from work every day. It's great to look down and see a snippet of a poem, or something that looks too quirky to have been part of a corporate development. Explore, and you realize you're surrounded by works of art.

The piece that first struck me is called "Corporate Head," by Terry Allen. It's a literal take on a man's whole head being in the corporate business world, only his body left outside. The following poem is engraved on a plaque in the floor directly behind the sculpture.

They said I had a head for business.
They said to get ahead I had to lose my head.
They said be concrete & I became concrete.
They said go, my son, multiply, divide, conquer.
I did my best.

I absolutely love that this piece was funded by the same institution it challenges.

There is another piece, "Once There Was a Forest" which is similarly subversive. Large bollards are the most distinct element of the street corner, and this piece subverts their shape to make a statement about ecological conservation. What the developers have intended as benches get double-duty as representations of the stumps of trees that would be standing if this area was undeveloped.

More information:

Scott Robinson

2004-09-10T02:13:00.000-07:00

Quite often when I'm going about my daily life, I instinctively compose bits of journal entries in my head. I do this almost obsessively, and it gets to the point where the inside of my skull sounds like an episode of The Wonder Years.

Two or three days ago, I was getting some sort of snack from my fridge when I remembered I had just bought peaches. Sure, peaches are damn tasty, and lately I'm trying to eat as many of them as possible to try to experience whatever transcendent peach-eating epiphany Marty described a few weeks ago, but why, for fuck's sake, does that require internal monologue? I shit you not, it went something like this:

I took a step back out of the kitchen as the refrigerator door closed. Suddenly I remembered them: the peaches. Furry and juicy, my tongue begged to explore them, like little fruit vaginas. Instantly enraptured by the siren song of these nectarines-with-fuzz, I did an about-face just in time to feel the cool rush of air on my face from the closing of the door. In one fluid movement, I swung the door back open with one hand and yanked the fruit drawer open with the other. Peaches, something-something-something, will be mine.

So that's about how absurd it is up where my brain lives. It's almost a satisfying way to keep myself company, until I realize I'm waxing Doogie Howser about a guy who holds the world record for being struck by lightning.

I think of lighting man and I realize that Vinnie [backspace-backspace-backspace] that everyone needs something to define them in life. Sure, sometimes it's rock stardom or Sultan-of-Brunei-dom, but just as often, we find ourselves becoming the human lighting rod or the dipshit climbing through my window.

Not many of those ideas ever really make it into my journal, even when I sit down and make an effort to formalize them. This is a good thing, trust me. Had I not given up halfway, at least a handful of people would have read the abomination tentatively titled "My Baggage Miracle" and including the god-awful line, "when my bag crested the top of the baggage carousel, I knew everything was going to be just fine." Those people would have questioned why they even bothered learning to read in the first place, critical nose-picking moments of their youth tragically wasted.

The best entries, the ones I'm not ashamed of writing, usually start with me trying to write about something unrelated and end with me missing any memory of what I had in mind in the first place. Things are looking up for this entry, since I'm looking at a subject line that reads "Scott Robinson." It's best if neither of us tries to imagine what this entry almost was.

As I typed out the journal entry that would serve not only to define me as a writer, but to galvanize a growing movement of tangent-embracing writers who are determined to rise up against the tyranny of good planning and cohesive thought --as I typed out that entry, I knew. I knew that one would be special.

Dichotomies Rot Brains

2004-08-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

I flipped the image of Kerry. Don't worry, he's not one of those people...

I love politics. I'm that guy who turned 18 and was more excited about voting than buying porn, though it's all too clear and sad which I've done more of. I get excited about just about every damn Supreme Court ruling. I read the election guides that come in the mail cover-to-cover like it's some fucking magical tome from angels or something. I get really excited about propositions. Election day is like a holiday to me, but I'm about to give the fuck up and hide under a rock until December.

The insightful reader will recognize that politics have sort of replaced sports in my life. If the insightful reader were to say that to me, however, I might just throw something at the insightful reader. Politics are so conceptually different from sports. Politics is about picking something you believe in, something you think will make a positive difference in the world. Choosing your political "team" should be something you do by reading, contemplating, asking questions, studying history, and keeping an open mind. Candidates need voters and advocates, not cheerleaders, and not fanatics.

This election isn't about the politics and ideology of Kerry and those of Bush. No, it's much simpler than that. It's about the Red Sox and the Rangers. Actually, baseball may even be too highbrow -- it's more like boxing, or better yet: pro wrestling. If political discourse has really become so mindless that you can read that last sentence without calling me stupid, something has gone terribly wrong.

Political conventions no longer serve their original purpose -- find anyone who watched the Democrat's convention this year and ask them if they can tell you what a delegate is, or what they do. The primaries determine everything now, so the conventions have become pep rallies. Take a look at them -- they're one step away from face paint and foam hands.

America is -- and I'm not sure if this applies anywhere else -- a strongly divided nation. We don't understand shades of gray, and we know that the other guy is wrong because we're right. Coke families and Pepsi families. Ford men and Chevy men. Democrats and those filthy, stinking fascist world-destroying Republicans. I assure you that you will never be getting a refill of your Bud Light (you're no pansy Miller drinker, are you?) and overhear "I like Bush's rhetoric about smaller government, but it seems more than a little hypocritical coming from the guy that created the largest bureaucracy in our nation's history." No, you'll hear "Bush is an idiot and a liar" or "how could anyone vote for a fag like Kerry?"

The masses aren't mumbling about policy, they're screaming about who they can't stand. This weekend, I wrote a little tool to analyze people's online journals to try to guess who they would be most likely to vote for. I expected people to tell me it was wrong, but it surprised me that the phrase of choice is "guessed me totally wrong." Totally wrong? There's only two goddamned options; How can it be anything but plain wrong? Also, note that it guessed "me" totally wrong, not "my vote." Having a different political opinion isn't "we looked at the same facts and came to different conclusions", it's "I'm one of these, and you're one of those." I mean, c'mon, I clearly have a star on my belly -- you're not calling me one of those other Sneetches, are you?

I would love to blame the Rush Limbaugh / Bill O'Reilly / Michael Moore clones out there, but it's not their fault. They're popular because we have such a voracious appetite for this watered down black-and-white nuance-free political cheerleading. We're not stupid because they're on TV, they're on TV because we're stupid.

Half of the nation is upset (rightly, in my opinion) about the Bush administration's handling of the last four years. The Patriot act is stomping on civil rights, an open effort was made to subvert Constitutional protections by holding terror suspects in Cuba and Iraq, the nation went to war on bad intelligence, we were mislead about connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda, "No Child Left Behind" is a disaster, there was an attempt to amend the constitution to fit some religious dogma, stem cell research has been crippled, the list goes on... So what does this upset half decide to do? Pick someone who supports almost every single one of those policies, just less adamantly. Why? Because he can win.

Politics aren't about winning or losing anymore. They're about making the other team lose. It's like rooting against the Yankees after your team's been eliminated from the playoffs, just because they're those motherfucking Yankees. Just as much careful thought and political soul-searching goes into rooting against them as goes into rooting against the Republicans.

So here's the sick punchline: I'm voting for Kerry because I think it's important that Bush loses. Don't call me a hypocrite just yet; The Democrats aren't my "team." I have no allegiance to them. From the day Kerry is inaugurated, I will be studying everything he does. If he slips up, I'll be right there with his most vocal critics. If we all did that, kept vigilant in our pursuit of good representation in office, we wouldn't be stuck with this 'lesser of two evils' voting predicament we've had as long as I can remember.

An Open Letter to Social Conservatives

2004-07-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Hello social conservatives of America,

Reports are starting to surface that you're a little peeved with the Bush administration lately. Apparently, the campaign is trying to court the moderate vote, and is leaving you feeling a little neglected.

Yes, Bush could have been more outspoken on the days leading up to the gay marriage amendment vote. He could have been on Fox News warning about Sodom and Gomorra and all of that nutty stuff that makes you feel righteous and tingly inside. He could have publicly called for the ouster of any Republican party members who didn't vote for it. He could have chastised John McCain for being so vocally opposed to it. But instead, he kept his mouth shut so he wouldn't offend the moderates. This must have been really upsetting to you.

And it's true that the Republican National Convention isn't letting your favorite people -- the Pat Robertson / Jerry Falwell brigade -- get up and speak. Instead, you're going to be forced to try to stomach the message of moderation and inclusiveness that so sickens you. Even that traitor McCain is going to be speaking... but not David Duke or Rick Santorum? What gives? I can understand your outrage.

So you're rumbling. You're rattling a lot of cages, and beating on minori-- er, I'm sorry -- beating on drums. You're trying to convince the Bush-Cheney campaign that they've strayed too far towards the middle, and need to come back out by the poplar trees so they don't lose your vote.

Well, I hate to break this to you, but you're a pawn. You've been manipulated, and you're right where they want you. Ol' Dubya sucked your nutsack for the last 3 years, and they know you're not going anywhere. In fact, the more noise you arch-conservatives make, the more you make this religious lunatic look appealing to the moderates. What's the worst they have to worry about? Are you going to jump ship and vote for someone that would allow the states to make their own decisions about two guys assfucking on their honeymoon and its contribution to the downfall of society? Hell no, you're not.

Don't get me wrong, you'll get the occasional bone thrown to you between now and November. It won't be in the form of any sort of policy, it'll be that hollow, jingoist rhetoric that -- if sung with a twang and a steel guitar -- could top the country music charts any day of the week. This is their way of keeping you from getting any nutty ideas about throwing a vote away on Pat Buchanan. ("What's that? 'God bless the U-S of A'? Aww, who we kidding, Barbara? We's a red-blooded Dubya fam'ly, by God.")

Come hell, or rock music, you're voting for Bush. They know that, and they're done with you until after November. You've had a good run, and you've gotten things accomplished that even your saint-to-be Ronald Reagan didn't have the balls to try. (Oh yeah, it's a shame that one of those things -- the ban on stem-cell research -- might have prevented the development of a treatment for the disease that took his life. Irony is the spice of life, no?)

So keep being roused, you loveable, bigoted, backwards-assed, rabble, you. Dance for the puppet-master. Come November, you'll get all of the 17th-century social policy your stocks and gallows can handle. I've even heard that if Bush carries Florida, he'll let you burn a witch.

Amazing Odds

2004-07-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

It really is amazing that Christians have stumbled across the One True Faith, when there have been so many similar attempts. I mean, we have ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians who all made up very similar tales to the Christians, but who were obviously wrong. Then we have the Jews and Muslims who haven't even figured out they're wrong yet. Then we have so many nutty Eastern philosiphies like Buddhism and Hinduism that are just laughable.

It's so great that the Christians just happened to have the one religious text that was right, when all of the others were just stories. I mean, what the hell are the odds of that? Jesus Christ, that's amazing. I wonder what God thought about people during all of those centuries before we invented religion, and then all of those centuries where we had it all wrong. He must have been so pissed.

Thank God nobody stops to think of how improbable it is that Christianity could be right, and every other religion that has ever existed, or will ever exist, is wrong. If they did, and started thinking "rationally", Christianity would go the way of Greek Mythology, and the world would forever lose the one religion that had all the answers. That, I'm sure, would irrate God to an end so infinite only He could contemplate his irritation.

What's even more amazing is that the vast majority of Christians are born into their faith. They don't even have to pour over the Koran, the Torah, the teachings of Buddha, or any other religious text to decide which is right. They're simply born into a family who already believes the right thing. Amazing. I guess this is why all of the hispanic people of the world really owe a debt of gratitude to Spanish Conquistadors who slaughtered their ancestors in the name of spreading Christianity. Without this bloodshed (I think the phrase "crimson baptism" casts it in the positive light it deserves), the hispanic people of the world might continue to believe the mythologies of the Maya, Inca, Aztec or whatever ignorant people, and thus be doomed to eternal damnation.

Mixed Blessing

2004-07-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

On one hand, I love that being politically active is "cool." I've always been pretty vocal about how it's important for younger people to get out and vote, demonstrate, or just be aware. On the other hand, I'm annoyed that people are just going along with a movement that they haven't really given a lot of thought to.

A girl about my age was selling magazines door-to-door, and started talking politics to me because of the John Kerry campaign sign I have in my front window. She told me how much she hates Bush and supports Kerry, but didn't really mention any reasons why. I didn't really care to ask. Then, I found out she was going to College to be a teacher, so I asked what she thought about No Child Left Behind, figuring that was why she was so Anti-Bush. Nope, she had never heard the phrase.

Now, I have a second set of eyes, just behind my conventional brown ones, just for occasions like this. Since they don't have to be able to see, they're built differently than regular eyes. They're much heaver, and it takes more effort to roll them. In fact, it takes every bit of effort and contempt I have to get them going, but when they do roll, it's most satisfying. They make this noise like that big stone that chases Indiana Jones, but you can only hear it if you press your ear up against my skull.

Today, I ran into this. It's a post to the AZJournal community encouraging people to call Senators McCain and Kyl and tell them we hope they don't vote for the proposed amendment that would ban gay marriage. All well and good, but the plea includes this statement: Never before has our Constitution been amended to take away anyone's rights.

I listed the 18th and 22nd Amendments as evidence to the contrary. I can excuse someone for not knowing about the 22nd, but fucking Prohibition? How can you not know about Prohibition? Maybe it's because people are getting their education from people who can't be bothered to read enough of the newspaper to know about a national controversy of education policy.

The Lady at Staples

2004-07-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

I was at Staples to have some final new hire paperwork faxed in for the new job when I saw this lady being really impatient and rude with the guy that worked in the copy center. It was my golden opportunity to finally live out a fantasy I've had for about eight years: To fuck a copy machine while everyone is distracted. Er, wait... What? ... What?

No, the fantasy is to tell a customer like that exactly how stupid they're being. It's pent-up aggression from when I worked at an office supply store myself, and had to just bend over and take it when customers acted like that. Here's what I should have said:

"You know, this is a copy center in a motherfucking Staples. I know you think you're fighting some noble battle against the tyranny and oppression of a retail world that has wronged you, but -- and I'll say this slowly so you can understand it -- you can go somewhere else. In fact, there's a goddamned OfficeMax right across the street that offers exactly the same services. On top of that, we're less than a mile from a Kinko's. This guy, who is only trying to do his job to the best of his abilities and please dumb fucks like you, has every moral right to ask you to go away and never come back into his store. I may not have the moral right to do this, but I'm compelled to ask that you go to hell."

Instead, I missed out on that orgasmic release, the verbal equivalent of the way you fuck your girlfriend when she says she wants you to be rough. You know... you act angry, but really you're just enjoying yourself and loving the moment.

See, now I'm not sure if that's about telling her off, or if I'm back on fucking the copy machine.

Crossing Over

2004-07-07T21:20:00.000-07:00

When I first heard of John Edwards during the democratic primary, my initial thought was "that nutball from TV that talks to dead people?" No, I was assured -- this is a senator from North Carolina.

But wait...

"I have to tell you right now – I didn't plan to talk about this – right now I feel her [Jennifer], I feel her presence [...] [Jennifer's] inside me and she's talking to you. ... And this is what she says to you. She says, 'I don't ask for your pity. What I ask for is your strength. And I don't ask for your sympathy, but I do ask for your courage.'"

Are those the words of television-medium-turned-punchline John Edward, or courtroom-medium-turned-VP-candidate John Edwards? Tragically, the latter. He forgot to add, "...but I do ask for your courage, and a $6.5 million malpractice award, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence that anything could have been done to prevent my condition."

There's a lot to be said about a scumbag who preys on doctors who are doing their legitimate best to provide good care to their patients, but what I really take issue with is this motherfucker saying he can use ESP to talk to a 5-year-old with cerebral palsy -- and saying it with a straight face -- in a court of law.

And this is the guy being chosen to beat the administration that claims to talk to Jesus? What the hell is going on here? Is the homeless lady I saw in Hollywood this weekend arguing with the sky next in line for a national election? If Wesley Willis weren't dead, I bet somebody could really impress the idiots in this country by making him Secretary of Defense.

America: There's Always Somewhere Worse

2004-06-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

My shirt store gets the occasional email from someone that disagrees with me. I'm totally fine with that, but I do like to reply to defend my position, or at least help to clarify it to someone that misunderstands. I liked the response I came up with here, so I wanted to share it:

When did al Quaeda sign the Geneva Convention? Are beheadings allowed by the terms of the Geneva convention? Isn't "public parading" (such as TV) of prisoners prohibited by the Geneva Convention?

You're absolutely right. Come to think of it, I don't think anyone arrested in recent memory signed the US Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. I think it's about time we dispensed with habeas corpus when dealing with them.

In fact, since I didn't have anything to do with the adoption of the 4th Amendment, I think I'm going to call the police and tell them they should come break down my door and search for some contraband, despite the fact that they don't have probable cause.

I think we are doing a far better job of upholding conventions that al Qaeda is.

We're also doing a better job upholding human rights than China.

I think once all the hippies stop trying to make America a world leader in humane treatment of criminals and suspects, we can finally adopt the slogan it seems everyone wants:

"America: There's Always Someone Worse"

This new policy of "not-quite-as-bad-as-someone-else" will really inspire the kind of patriotism that warms my heart. How can you resist tearing up when you hear the national anthem of the nation that isn't quite the worst in any particular category?

I mean, even if we have little reason to hold these people captive, other than unfounded suspicion, they probably know a terrorist, right? And since the terrorists are committing atrocities, we have every right to treat these probably-friends-of-terrorists almost-but-not-quite as bad as the terrorists treat our guys.

I think Gandhi said it best: "An eye for an eye -- Hey, at least the other guy is blind."

Justice William J. Brennan said this in 1982:

"The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting."

What an idiot. Thomas Jefferson, too -- he's the one that wrote, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

What folly. It's pretty clear that human rights are not implicit, but rather dispensed explicitly by treaty to other signers of that treaty.

My Father's Day Revelation

2004-06-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

My family isn't really that close in a traditional sense. We tend to avoid any of the uncomfortable situations that most families force themselves into. We all dread spending time together, but once we actually all get together, we have a great time.

On Father's Day, I called my dad to invite him out to dinner, but he already had plans to go to a baseball game. This isn't at all surprising to me; holidays bear little significance aside from the tiny print on the calendar. He said he was going to call me when he got home and we could maybe go then. At about 6:00, I got a call from him saying he wasn't going to be able to go anywhere because he wanted to stick around my grandfather, who lives next door, because he had passed out for about five hours while my dad was at the game. I knew he wouldn't insist I rush over there, that's just not how my family works -- A few years ago, my grandfather had a massive heart valve failure and came within minutes of dying, but I didn't find out until months afterwards, despite living less than 20 miles away.

I decided to go visit him at home, and thought this was a great excuse to break through the mental block that's been keeping me away from my grandparents. I took Zoe over, and my dad filled me in on what had happened before we went next door. Apparently, he had mixed up his medication and confused a pill he should be taking with others he had stopped taking. He started to hallucinate and passed out. My aunt is a nurse, so she was able to keep an eye on him while he slept. It's a scary thing to happen to a man so near the end of his life, but we were able to laugh and joke about the details of the story. I guess a psychologist would say that we use humor as a coping mechanism, but we just insist that everything is potentially funny.

When he was coming to, Grandpa looked over at my aunt, and said "I know who you are," then looked over at my Grandma in her wheelchair, and said "And I know who she is... But who's she?" My aunt asked if the other lady was sitting at the computer desk, and he said she was in a wheelchair, too. She was wheeled over to a different spot, and he realized he was seeing double, then said very matter-of-factly, "There's two Grandmas," and passed back out. He didn't say, "Oh, I'm seeing double," because, really, this was a much funnier line. That's how my family works.

Passive-aggression is apparently not a skill I have learned, but rather something I have been genetically bestowed with. The only downer to visiting with my grandparents is the little comments they make about me not visiting frequently enough, though the way they do it tends to make me smile. (About Zoe: "She's uncomfortable around strangers, and I'm definitely a stranger." -- So much communicated, so much nuance, so few words... and this woman is on the verge of senility.)

Through the course of discussing Zoe's shyness, my aunt started to tell stories about how it runs in the family, stories I had never heard, and never would have guessed. Apparently, as kids they'd be terrified to give notes to adults, would hide behind the couch when the doorbell rang, and the phone... the horrible, horrible, phone.

A little background here before I go on: My dad has never, even once, exhibited a single bit of shyness around me. He has never acknowledged my shyness with empathy, support or, for that matter, condemnation. It's as if shyness was not a valid state of mind. To hear these stories about him shattered my perception of him, but instantly rebuilt it in a completely different way.

I called him on it right away: "All of those times I was dying inside at the thought of some trivial social interaction, all of those times you refused to acknowledge my horror, all of those times you could have said 'I know how you feel,' you were trying not to validate my social anxiety? You completely changed your persona to be this confident, outgoing person to whom shyness was completely alien so that my own shyness and social anxiety wouldn't have anything to fuel it?" He confessed.

Later that night, we went on to have a long, goofy conversation about how terrifying certain social situations are. I was relating to my dad on a level I never thought I would. Seeing that he was the scared little boy I've always thought of myself as showed me that maybe I'm not so unfit to be a father, or a man.

So it's this collective fear of people and awkward social situations that keeps us away from each other, but it's also one of the things that binds us so closely when we're together.

The Cold War is Over

2004-06-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

Since Ronald Reagan was the only thing keeping my hope of a peaceful end to the cold war with the garage roaches alive, and he now isn't alive, I've launched a preemptive attack.

Really, my beef is with the ants. They've been disappearing for a few days, then showing up by the handful in the bathroom, and repeating this cycle for a week or so. Finally deciding to do something about it, we went to the hardware store to get some ant bait. Since we had already decided to attack the ants, we figured we might as well just go ahead and attack the roaches. Reagan is dead, long live Bush!

So I've read that there are two types of ant: Those that want sugary sweet stuff, and those that want protein -- the atkins ants. Hedging our bet, we got both types of bait. The protein bait is your standard crazy-angled black dome of death, but the sugar one looks almost exactly like one of those cheese snacks with the crackers and the little red stick. This is probably not good with a 3-year-old cheese fiend in the house, so the bathroom is staying locked at all times.

The ants went apeshit for the protein bait. There are now a zillion little ants lining up to get a piece of that delicious, deadly, peanut-butter-smelling whatever-the-fuck. Since so many ants came in to fight for time in the dome of death, a few maverick ants tagged along. These guys aren't content with following scent trails, they want the adventure of the wild, untamed area that isn't right against the wall. Some of these brave adventurers must have found the sugary baits, because it seems an equal amount of apeshit is being gone for them.

The problem with the sugary baits is that they're too deadly. Whatever is in them seems to kill on contact. No matter how many dead ants are piled up at the entrance to that thing, more keep going in. It's even more macabre because the clear plastic allows us to view their feeding-frenzy-turned-mass-grave. The bathroom is one creepy damn place right now.

The roach baits I used in my preemptive attack on Roacheslovakia are very similar black domes of death. There isn't much creativity in the pest control product design world, I suppose. I'm pretty confident that this attack will decapitate roach leadership, and the rest of them will retreat and not try to counter-attack. I didn't even see a single roach in the garage when I placed the baits, so I'm willing to announce it right now: Mission Accomplished. I'm definitely going to let my guard down and occupy the garage now that it's liberated. I can't see how that can possibly go wrong.

The Daunting Assortment of Grays

2004-06-02T01:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I could just wrap myself in an American flag, or an anarchist flag, or my $75 replica of the Shroud of Turin from the Bible gift shop. I want to crawl into a womb of simple answers and black-and-white ideology. I want to see the world free of grays and halftones like everyone else seems to.

Our country needs stability in the oil supply. / No blood for oil.

I want to stand up at a political convention and shout my approval of someone who I so wholeheartedly believe in that I see his or her opponent as less than human. I want to believe that "they" are destroying society, or that "we" have the answers to save it.

Bomb them all. / Food not bombs.

How noble and important I would feel if I could just believe that something as absurd as "the best country on Earth" actually exists, and that I live in it. How easy it would be to think instead that my country was entirely void of nobility, justice, or equality, and to devote my life to destroying it.

Love it or leave it. / Tear the whole fucking thing down.

In any job I've ever had, or any work I've ever done, the hardest task is to take something broken and try to fix it. It's much easier to leave it alone and convince everyone else that it's fine, or to scrap it and build a new one from scratch. Analyzing flaws and coming up with a plan to fix them, while preserving everything that works is hard.

It would be even easier not to give a fuck, sit back on the couch, watch some reality TV, have myself a Big Mac and a beer and leave the thinking to some other jerk.

Ultimately, the easiest thing to do would be to believe that none of this matters, that there is some kind of god living somewhere in the sky who will take me upstairs to his funhouse when I die. I could put up with a complex word of shades of gray, content in the knowledge that one day I won't have to deal with them. Hell, I wouldn't have to deal even with black and white, just an eternity of white. That is, if I was born into the right religion, which suggests the futility of that whole religion thing, but there I go thinking again...

Roaming Band of Ants

2004-05-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

There is a roaming, nomadic band of ants that has decided to wander into my house. I didn't think this was possible, but the evidence is clear.

Two days ago, I sat on the couch to put my shoes on. I happened to see something crawling near my foot. I looked closer. Ant. I had a huge ant problem in an old apartment, so my mind went into ant-panic mode. I started to scan what was, a few seconds ago, as far as I was concerned, just a plain tile floor. One by one I started seeing more and more ants.

It's always like that with ants. You never look down and immediately realize there are hundreds of them. It always starts with a single ant. You're sitting in the lawn when you casually notice one. You wonder what one ant would be doing all alone, so you start looking around for more. Then you slowly start to realize that they're scattered everywhere, and what you thought was grass was instead millions of blades of ants stacked on top of each other as part of some ant prayer ritual you will never hope to understand. The shoes you thought were a good deal at some trendy mall shop turn out to be comprised entirely of ants. You look at them, they look at you, and they scatter, leaving you barefoot. Your cell phone rings, and your friend is telling you how she just realized she can lift hundreds of times her own body weight.

So, back to the couch. I end up spotting about ten ants, and figure they've crawled in the back door, since we keep the dog food right outside, and it occasionally attracts ants. I moved the dog food, and figured the problem would go away. Since there was no trail, just a chaotic band of randomly wandering ants, I figured they'd just disperse and die from lack of sustenance, or be eaten by the aardvark that sometimes breaks in to watch Cops on Tivo.

Yesterday, I was in the bathroom getting ready for work when I had the same experience. One ant, then more and more seemed to materialize out of the tile floor. Roughly the same number as the day before. Again, no ant trail. This has to be the same group from the living room. I'm fairly confident about this, but I wouldn't swear to it under oath. In fact, I'd probably be discounted as a witness because, you know, they "all look the same to me."

It's quite a trek, in ant scale, from the living room to the bathroom. I give them credit for sticking together without any formalized ant society. They have no queen, no scent trails, and no houses of parliament. I would have figured that at some point they'd have broken up into smaller factions, with one of them saying, "We walked right past the dog food because you had divine inspiration that greater wealth awaits Inside. Well, here we are Inside, and I don't see any wealth -- just more damn tile. Where's your God now, Gregory?!"

I haven't seen them today, but here's my greatest fear: They're training the roaches that live in the garage. The roaches and I have been in a cold war for a while now. Our mutual fear has lead them not to enter the house, and me not to make any attempts to kill them. I fear that once I attack, they'll recognize the garage as a hostile environment, and make plans for breaching the perimeter. The ants know the way in, and the roaches know how to survive forever as a disorganized gang. If they ever combine forces, a bleak and terrifying future awaits.

Operation Rainbow

2004-05-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Aren't rainbows inspiring?

Twenty-four Palestinians have already died in Tel Sultan during an operation dubbed "Operation Rainbow" by the Israeli army.

- BBC News

Why does Israel get a free pass? This is tyranny. This is oppression. This is inhumane, and it's nothing new.

Israel has shown a blatant disregard for human rights that has done nothing but intensify in the last few years. Their policies towards Palestine are disgusting.

And for some reason, we keep giving them the benefit of the doubt. They're fighting suicide bombers, we say. Again, it's that "us" vs. "them" mentality. Since some Palestinians are suicide bombers, they're all complicit, is that the idea? This type of action can only hurt the cause of peace, because it reinforces "us" vs. "them" in the minds of would-be suicide bombers. That type of mentality leads to more suicide bombings, not of government officials responsible for the policies, but of any Israeli citizen they have the opportunity to bomb.

I don't have a solution. I don't have the answers. I do, however, know that the path to peace isn't painted with the blood of innocent people on either side. Israel, committing human rights violations in its official capacity, should be held accountable. Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorist networks, acting independently, should be independently punished. Collective punishment of all Palestinian citizens shouldn't be tolerated.

U.S. and "Them"

2004-05-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

I don't want to see the video of Nick Berg being killed. I don't need to see it to appreciate its brutality, and the pain it caused. Even the stills are disturbing. I saw Daniel Pearl's head being held up in that video, and it affected me for weeks. It may have changed me permanently.

I spent a good part of yesterday thinking about the picture of Nick Berg's dad sitting on the ground crying when he found out the specifics of his son's brutal decapitation. That's the suffering that really affects me the most. As a parent...

...

...it's a feeling of sympathy and understanding that defies my desire to communicate it.

I always assumed, maybe wrongly, that Daniel Pearl was killed swiftly before he was decapitated. Now that it's been established that human beings really do have the capacity to slowly saw a man's head off while he screams in anguish, I'm forced to reexamine that assumption. I don't want to, but it's inevitable. The brutality and callousness of people seems to be limitless.

The people who killed Nick Berg claim they were acting in retaliation for the abuse of the Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. I guess that's how it works. Two wrongs. Us and them. Good and evil.

I'm hearing the same thing in my country. One of my coworkers made a comment about having no sympathy for those abused at Abu Ghraib. They drag people through the streets. They beat and torture.

Well who the fuck are "they" anymore? Are the detainees at Abu Ghraib terrorists? To Americans, they are.

The problem is that, according to a Red Cross report, 70 to 90 percent of the detainees are guilty of nothing except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and having been considered suspicious by somebody. This statistic, they say, comes from the coalition intelligence officers themselves. Us and them. Which are they?

Was Nick Berg an American who abused Iraqi detainees? To Abu Al-Zarqawi, he was. He was their "them," and "they" humiliate and torture their prisoners, so this is "justice."

This is the problem with racism, nationalism, jingoism, and dichotomous reasoning. Everyone is either "us" or "them." And we can be as motherfucking inhuman to "them" as we goddamned please.

Bushtopia 2005

2004-04-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

We have to accept that it's a possibility:

January 20th, 2005

George W. Bush, our 42nd President, is re-inaugurated. This is not the continuation of an era. This is the start of something much different. For the last four years, the country was lead by a man seeking reelection. His political career was on the line, and he was only taking calculated risks. The next four years will see what this man really wants to do, his ego the only thing on the line when the approval rating sinks.

How many kids are going to die in Syria? North Korea? Will he even bother lying about motives this time? Will I be drafted? Will you?

John Ashcroft's war on pornography is kicking into high gear. He's started with late night cable, and the pay-per-view in motels, but the dirty tape hidden in your closet, behind your bedroom TV, or in your underwear drawer is next. Porn studios will be raided. Nobody will rush to their defense. They're a safe target. "Pornographic" music is next. The Dead Kennedys trial of 1986 will seem tangibly familiar as the scene is repeated.

The war on drugs keeps going, unabated. A push for tougher mandatory sentencing ensures prisons continue bursting at the seams with otherwise law-abiding pot smokers. Once they're released, their careers will have been ruined by their criminal record, their home lives will be shattered. An army of unemployed ex-cons is created out of decent Americans.

Voices of dissent are singled out as threats to national security. The owners of political criticism websites will be arrested for coordinating terrorist organizations. Civil rights are trampled by the jackboots of those rushing to round up people who "threaten liberty."

The education system is focusing on ensuring that all students are able to regurgitate enough information to pass federally-mandated tests. A day in the life of a student revolves around memorization and test preparation. Open-ended discussion, free-form research, and creative curriculum are stifled to make more time for test cramming. There's no escape for anyone as the schools race towards mindless test-taking: No child is left behind, so no child gets ahead.

American policies of unilateralism and apathy towards global cooperation grow the animosity towards our nation that Europe and the Middle East are already feeling. It's a short time before we offend Asia. George W. Bush has free reign to lead America into a position as the world's undisputed bully. Trade, tourism and diplomacy wilt as America is smothered in international contempt.

The President now has four more years to stack the federal courts with fundamentalist Christian zealots more concerned with the text of the Bible than that of the Constitution. The separation of church and state becomes a dangerous atheist myth.

The "hydrogen economy" is handed, by way of subsidy and regulation, to the American oil industry, the President's old associates. The environmental impact of hydrogen production is downplayed in favor of the spectacular news that our cars are only dripping water. Coal, our most environmentally devastating source of energy, is protected by the hydrogen car smokescreen. Lobbyists in the coal and oil-cum-hydrogen industries are pleased. Lots of campaign contributions work their way towards the election of Dick Cheney or Jeb Bush in 2008.

If this becomes a reality, will you keep fighting? Will you have the stamina to stand up and vocally oppose this administration every month, every hour that it stays in power? If John Kerry isn't our president in 2005, will his campaign have been your last stand?

Leadership and Eloquence

2004-04-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

The president is inarticulate. I can't figure out why this drives me so insane. Maybe I'm an elitist, or maybe I just think bad policy is easy to swallow when it's wrapped in beautiful rhetoric. Either way, every time I hear the president speak, especially unscripted, I feel for the collective intelligence of the American public as it gets verbally kicked in the balls.

All Things Considered is doing a multi-part series of recorded statements on the war in Iraq from public figures. The first, Wesley Clark's, was insightful, well-spoken and directly attacks specific mistakes made by the Bush Administration, and explains the consequences of those mistakes, without ranting. It was direct and concise, and was based on a career military experience. It shows an understanding of political nuance, but clearly defines an alternate strategy to handling this situation in Iraq. I'm still a little disappointed that John Kerry, who has yet to make a speech that I can describe with any of the same adjectives, is the Democratic candidate in this election.

The second, by John McCain, was among the most eloquent speeches I've heard from any politician in my lifetime. In explaining how we should stay dedicated to democratizing Iraq, he doesn't try to hide the fact that war is brutal and disturbing. He, as I feel everyone who ever supports an act of war should, acknowledges its horror and status as a last resort. An excerpt:

"For the first time in a long time, Americans with no experience of war, with no loved ones in harm's way, are beginning to understand the eternal, unchanging nature of war: It's a miserable business. The lives of the nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted, economy is damaged. Strategic interests are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. All wars are awful. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought, nor the cause for which it serves, can glorify it. Over 600 Americans have died in Iraq. I feel many more will follow. And yet our safety, which our soldiers fight to protect, requires that their mission succeed. The consequences of failure of in Iraq are catastrophic, the consequences of success immense."

He goes on to say, "We must rely on our soldier's extraordinary courage, true in all its terrible beauty and given in love, and they must rely on us, their political leaders and countrymen, to keep our nerve so their courage and sacrifice will not be given in vain." It's such a powerful statement that, coming from the president, would do much to ease political tensions in this country and the world.

I think that's why I'm so upset with the president. There is more to running the country, and leading the world's only super power, than just directing policy. It's also a position of diplomacy. Part of the president's job is to get Americans behind him, and the world behind us. This president has done none of that, despite his bullshit campaign promise of being a "uniter, not a divider." Never has the political polarization of this nation been so clear to me.

I was an advocate of removing Saddam from power. I didn't think he was a threat to the U.S., I didn't think he was supporting al Qaeda, and I didn't think it would do much for the security of the United States. I did, however, recognize the suffering of his people under a tyrannical regime. Thomas Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants." I was appalled that the international community would allow anyone who used chemical weapons to kill 5000 of his own citizens (in Halabja, 1998) to stay in power. I believed in letting Iraq dictate its own liberty and democracy once they were freed from tyranny. What happened in early 2003 disgusts me. The president alienated the international community, acted unilaterally, misled the American public, forbid pictures of flag-draped coffins returning to America, and further turned Arab and international sentiment against us. His administration lashed out against those opposing the war, calling them unpatriotic and implied that they were complicit with terrorists. He has created an atmosphere of fear and hate not seen since the Cold War. He has turned me from a silent supporter of the war into a vocal protester.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can make the argument that it was a shame that Al Gore didn't win in the 2000 presidential election. Even more obvious to me, it's a tragedy that John McCain lost to George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries.

Did I Unwittingly Become a "Liberal?"

2004-04-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I posted a letter, supposedly from the future. The introduction text said, "I get some weird mail sometimes, but this was about the weirdest." I expected that since letters obviously don't come from the future, everyone would assume I wrote it myself.

After the first few comments, I realized that people were under the impression that it really did come to me randomly, and since this was a much more interesting idea, I decided not to correct anyone. The comments started coming in, and then I ended up with this one:

"its just mail from another disgruntled liberal."

Since I was the one that wrote the letter, he's talking about me. Okay, sure... I'm disgruntled. The letter is my venting frustration on our sometimes puritanical, sometimes ignorant, and often superstitious society. Most of what I was so mad about was conservatism, and the neoconservative movement, but does that make me a liberal? If I hate the Yankees, am I automatically a Redsox fan?

Liberal? I voted for Harry Brown in 2000!

The letter in question mentioned it was silly to attack Howard Stern. Liberals hate Howard Stern, as far as I've always known. Did his criticism of George W. Bush lead the great hive mind of the left to suddenly realize he's not really a racist, sexist homophobe? Hell, they could have just asked me, I've known that for years.

This isn't just a personal thing. I think it goes a long way to ruin productive discourse in this country when everyone gets lumped into an ideology as soon as they say something in line with a party's platform. It does even more harm when people do it to themselves. Once you've picked a team and you're more concerned with beating the other team, you've given up being a critical thinker. It's easy, because there's no longer any need to analyze an issue, all of your thinking is done for you. "Stop big government! End farm subsid-- Oh wait, we're supposed to support them? Okay. Don't let those liberal bastards take away farm subsidies!"

A Strange Letter

2004-04-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

I get some weird mail sometimes, but this was about the weirdest:

Dear Sir,

First, I must say I'm sorry to hear about your death. Well, you obviously haven't died yet. Just suffice it to say that you will die, and for that I'm sorry. I don't mean to start things out on such a creepy tone, it's just strange writing to a dead person. Again, it's obvious that you're not dead as you're reading this.

I'm writing this letter and sending it a couple of decades into the past. I'm not sending it to try to convince you to go out and make some dumb change that will have far-reaching consequences in my time, so don't get any ideas. The world has turned out pretty well, and I don't want you mucking it up. It may seem like I shouldn't have told you about your death if I didn't want you making an effort to change things, but I figure even you are smart enough to know you'd die eventually anyway. And hell, I can't imagine you were out forgetting to try not to die before you got this letter.

Also, you're not receiving this letter because you're of any historical significance, nor are you even someone I knew or even knew of by reputation. I'm not saying you weren't a decent enough person (sorry, aren't a decent enough person... I'm having trouble with tenses), it's just that I haven't the slightest idea who you are.

Yesterday, I was sitting at my kitchen table, reading my newspaper, when I stumbled on one of those retrospectives of the 21st Century. (That phrase, "21st Century," probably still has that special ring to you, like it represents some magical utopian future, doesn't it?) I knew of all of the events in this retrospective, having been born about the time you'll receive this letter. (It would have been nice and poetic if you could get this letter on the day I was born, but that sort of precision isn't possible. Even if it was, how the hell would I know if you check your mailbox every day? Sorry, I'm getting off on a tangent.)

Okay, I really should just get on with it. I started thinking about some of the crazier things that were happening around the time you'll be receiving this letter, and I started to get angry. I brought it up with my parents. They're a little older than you. They just shrug everything off and say, "it was a different time." A different time? So fucking what? I brought it up with a few other people their age and I kept getting the same answers. It's as if your time, your today, your "right now" as you read this letter, was granted some special "be the dumbest fucks ever" pass.

I got pretty frustrated looking for someone to vent at, but everyone was doing their best to distance themselves from that time. It was a largely unsatisfying exercise, so when I happened to be looking at your obituary in today's paper, I had an idea. By sending a letter to you, John Q. Backthen, I could get all of this off of my chest and direct it all at someone who is actually living the moment. I know I'm wasting precious time that you could be spending trying to get the theory of evolution out of the classroom or some such backwards nonsense, so I'll just get into it.

#1 - How exactly did you think gay people getting married was going to end the world? Seriously, did you think that straight people the world over would just throw their hands up in the air, say "fuck it," and get a quickie divorce? Or were you expecting the sky to open up and whatever crazy god you happened to believe in would reach down and start haphazardly smashing people with his god-sized palm?

#2 - Was seeing a breast during the Super Bowl really that much of a scandal, or is this just one of those urban legends? I have read many times that it ignited a nationwide controversy, but nobody I've ever met has admitted to being offended. They don't even mention living in such a repressed society that seeing a woman's nipple would have even been noteworthy. Too bad you can't send me a reply, I'd really like to settle this argument I've been having with my friend. He says you were all a bunch of puritans in public, but would ashamedly sneak into strip clubs or pornography shops under the cover of night, and never speak of it openly. I say there's no way human beings can be that duplicitous without being mentally ill.

#3 - You read about prohibition of alcohol in school, right? How in the living fuck did you not realize the War on Drugs was the same damn thing?

#4 - Okay, I'll give you one freebie for electing the second George Bush. He was the son of a president, and maybe back when you were alive people were still thinking that monarchy was a good idea. But after seeing what he did in his first term, how did you ever even take his second campaign seriously? I know you had newspapers back then.

#5 - Speaking of the second President Bush, every time I see video of him talking about nook-yoo-ler war, I wonder how any of you dumb bastards got anything accomplished without being able to pronounce words.

#6 - Do you realize the communications department at my college is called "The Howard Stern School of Communications"?

#7 - You're wasting your time worshiping people that won't matter in a few years. Part of that 21st Century retrospective was a list of the notable celebrities by year, and I just wanted to let you know that this was the first time I had heard the following names: Paris Hilton, Al Franken, Bill O'Reilly, Clay Aiken, Dr. Phil.

#8 - We have medical practitioners that specialize in the long-term health problems of the Atkins diet. I can't believe the person reading this letter can probably look around and see someone who is intentionally choosing to eat like that. The funniest part to me is that these people think they're doing something healthy! Even my parents laugh about this one.

#9 - Fuck fuck fuck fuckidy fuck. Are you freaking out yet? Does that word summon demons in your religion? I can't believe you're so uptight about it.

#10 - Didn't it occur to you that putting a microwave transceiver up to your head fifty times a goddamned day might be doing something to your brains? Hey, maybe that's why you're all a bunch of idiots.

Thank you for letting me get all of that out. I suppose you probably won't even read this far, from what I know about the reading habits of people from your time. If you did read this far, then I hope your nightly goat sacrifice to your god brings you good fortune, or whatever it is you people believe in.

- A Concerned Stranger

If It Was a Cleaning, Why Do I Feel So Dirty?

2004-03-23T11:11:00.000-08:00

I had this idea for one of those long journal entries nobody really reads. I had a lot of stuff to cover about going to the dentist for the first time in way too long, but I'm stuck on what happened today at my second appointment, a cleaning.

The dentist, a woman in her 30's or 40's with one of those mystery accents that could be from just about anywhere, initially asks me if I was missing school for this. Okay, I look young. I can accept that. I say I work, and start to joke about a 7 am appointment being torture for me. She notices my birthday was last week, and asks how old I am now. I say 24. She's shocked. Not surprised, shocked. She digs into my mouth with all manner of scraping, poking tools. She keeps telling me how good a job I've done brushing, which I initially take as a sincere compliment, but after a while start to recognize as the way I talk to Zoe about picking up her toys or not shitting herself. I start to understand that she's decided to just forget that I'm 24 and go back with her gut instinct.

I start to get comfortable with thinking of myself as a teenager again. In fact, she makes a few comments about "teenagers" in a way that implies "teenagers like you." I find it easier to assume the role she's cast me in, than to be offended. Right about this time, she plants her breast on my face. This isn't incidental contact, this is full-on boob smothering. Here I am, 24 years old, being child molested. I always avoid eye contact with anybody, it's part of my charm (or pathos, depending on your perspective), but this gives it a little extra precedence in my mind. She continues tit-humping my face for 20 more minutes, constantly reminding me what a good brusher I am. At the end of the appointment, she gives me a toothbrush and, I shit you not, a tube of kids' toothpaste. There was a huge stack of regular toothpaste right next to it, so it wasn't a supply issue. She explains that kids tend to prefer the flavor, so it was no accident. Up until this point, I had assumed she thought I was about 18, or maybe as young as 16. But kids' toothpaste!? I'm saying 10 years old is absolutely the oldest anyone can be to accept kids' toothpaste without being offended. A grown woman trying to get with an older teenager is kinda hot, in that MILF-y sort of way, but putting your rack on a 10-year-old's face is just sick. This woman should be locked up.

I have an appointment for an orthodontist consultation next month at the same office. It's a male doctor this time, so we'll see what he decides to put on my face.

Can Bush Save Punk Rock?

2004-03-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

I grew up punk in the Clinton years. The music I fell in love with was influenced by 12 years of Reagan and Bush. It was passionate: political and angry. Every year saw this passion wane. Every new year's releases grew more and more irreverent or, worse still, irrelevant.

The Dead Kennedys' Chickenshit Conformist features the lyric, "Will the metalheads finally learn something, or will the punks throw away their education?" I think it was pretty clear that in the 90's, the latter was the case. I guess I like Green Day, but so far they haven't inspired me to actually buy anything they've ever put out. It's hard to even acknowledge the bands that followed in their path. It's not just the mainstream bands in that era, either. I divested my stock in NOFX when I got sick of their silly frat punk. The Suicide Machines actually got more political with their second album, Battle Hymns, but released their self-titled third album from the depths of commercial punk hell. Look at a Fat, Lookout or Epitaph comp released between 1995 and 2000, and I challenge you to find more than a handful of politically-aware songs.

I'm not saying the Clinton years were a punk rock utopia with nothing to complain about, but they didn't inspire the resentment and rage of Reagan. Calling your band "Clinton Youth" would have probably just confused people. By the time punk broke through to the mainstream, it was almost completely washed clean of the politics that made it more than just music to me. There were some exceptions, and thank fucking god for Propagandhi, but a lot of the "political" bands of the 90's were just parroting what Jello Biafra had said. It was at its best formulaic, and at its worst completely ignorant.

So here we are, 4 years into the second President Bush. All is not well. People are pissed, and punk rock is starting to reflect it again. Even NOFX, the patron saints of short songs about silly shit, have put out The War on Errorism, which directly attacks Bush. Fat Mike put together PunkVoter.com, which will hopefully raise political awareness in the punk scene. I have no idea whether this trend will continue, or if everyone will mellow out and again.

I guess I've learned that vapid punk rock is actually something I should hope for, since it's a sign that those in power aren't screwing things up that badly. Yeah, I said it, Blink-182 is a sign of political progress. And yeah, it makes me sick, too.

Exorcising The Spectre of CleanTV

2004-02-24T22:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, okay, okay, I know it's pretty silly, but I have this deep desire to write these epic journal entries, and lately I've had trouble thinking of anything that would top the CleanTV letters. I've been sitting here trying to conceptualize the perfect final email to send so I can get on with my life. I think the comedy well has been tapped, but I really wanted to explain in very serious terms to this guy why he deserves to be the object of ridicule.

I also wanted to give him an opportunity to respond, because I am honestly fascinated with how a "scientist" such as himself can embrace the idea of a sexuality being immoral. I wanted to hear how he can look at conservatives in Afghanistan declaring female singers on television a moral outrage, and not be shocked into realizing he's no better than them.

I also want an opportunity to ask an unwaveringly religious person how he can possibly, in this century, believe that there are demons, lakes of fire, angels, souls, and deities who have ostensibly fallen asleep for the last two thousand years, when the only evidence supporting all of it is the lack of definitive disproof. I hear people say they believe in a particular god because nobody can disprove it. They never have a good reason for why they believe in the god they do, despite the fact they they can't disprove the other gods.

Just once, just fucking once, I want to hear someone say, "You know what? I was born into a family that believes in this particular set of things, and I'm going to continue believing them because I'm scared of the alternative. Questioning these beliefs would require a lot of effort, a good deal of introspection, and that process itself frankly scares me. So fragile are my beliefs that I won't even allow myself to think critically about them, even for the sake of refining them. Furthermore, I'm going to equate my beliefs with some sort of higher 'good,' and everyone who challenges them with some sort of insidious 'evil.' I'm going to do all of this for a perfectly logical reason: It makes me feel better about myself, and that's all that matters to me." I can respect that sort of answer because it shows rational thought.

Maybe once theists and other 'spiritual' people acknowledge that they are choosing comfort over truth (or rather, the open-minded pursuit of truth), they can stop imposing their fairy-tale-inspired morality on others. Without the distraction of a "culture war," would we have more time to spend improving the quality of life for everyone?

I'm not saying there aren't ethical questions posed by as we move forward. Human cloning, abortion, and genetic engineering come quickly to mind as issues we need to address. What I'm hoping is that some day we'll be able to address these things with clear minds unencumbered by bullshit concepts like "ensoulment."

So instead of trying to compose a letter that would result in this sort of conversation with Mr. DeVore, I'm writing to myself in my journal. I'm writing to myself because it seems less futile than writing to him. I know he'd just dismiss me as some poor, misguided soul, lost in the world without the knowledge of his god. He might send me a heartfelt letter trying to lead me to "salvation." He might instead treat me as the enemy, and try to engage in a war of words. Either way, it wouldn't do anything to show him that his god is no less laughable than Zeus, Ra, The Great Spirit, Vishnu, or David Koresh.

Hopefully this gets CleanTV out of my system so I can start posting about other things.

CleanTV: The Infiltration

2004-02-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

So in my last entry, I wrote a letter to CleanTV's generic information email address, making smartass comments about their terrible grammar. CleanTV is a website run by Steven DeVore, who thinks that society is being ruined by Janet Jackson's filthy nipple and other atrocities. His site will allow visitors to send buttloads of email to the advertisers of programs he deems objectionable. The idea is to ruin television for those of us that think Scott Thompson is funny.

I received a response from the founder, Steven DeVore himself. I had expected that the sarcasm in my email would be patently obvious. Who takes comments about burning witches at the stake seriously? And, more importantly, once we identify those persons who take them seriously, how can we not exploit them for our own amusement?

In the response, Mr. DeVore asks for my assistance in helping him to proofread his summaries. He has 10+ years of college education, and I'm a high school dropout. How my dumb ass can be of any assistance really boggles the mind, but it is an opportunity to infiltrate CleanTV.

I really don't have patience to do a handful of summaries legitimately, and then to slowly start working subversive messages into them. This would surely be more effective, but fuck it. I'm going to gamble it all on one summary. I think I pushed the envelope a little too far to be taken seriously a couple of times, but we'll see.


> Actually I wrote the summaries. They are in a "shorthand" format and
> need to be edited. Would you like to volunteer to do that? Your help
> would be appreciated.

Mr. DeVore,

I'd be glad to edit these summaries for you!  I don't have the luxury
of living in Utah, so I won't be able to produce my own.  Attached is
my rewrite of your summary of the Conan O'Brien show.  As I was
correcting the grammar, it donned on me that some people might not
actually be offended by some of the events you describe, so I made it
a point to include a detailed explanation of why these things are
offensive.

Just as your site is a great resource for those who missed the filth on
television to catch up with it, I hope we can extend it to become a
resource for those who may not understand that what they're
watching is actually offensive to them.

---

Conan O'Brien (12:00 AM)

Conan jokes that a pair of boxer shorts worn by JFK sold at auction for
$5,000, as did a bra worn by Ted Kennedy.  This is offensive because God
dictated that certain clothes be worn by men, and others should be worn
by women.  Also, it is offensive to mention the names of undergarments
on television, as it leads to lewd thoughts.

Offensive language: "What the hell was that... (repeated)" and "You
cheap bastard."  This is offensive because hell, while mentioned in the
Bible repeatedly, is not to be discussed, unless it is used as a way to
scare children into obeying the church.  Also, a bastard is an
illegitimate child, and it is dangerous to remind impressionable viewers
that sex is biologically possible outside of wedlock.

In a comedy routine, Conan says that Max (the bandleader and drummer)
had witnessed his wife having sex with her boyfriend.  Max says it's
better to have a wife with a boyfriend than a boyfriend with a wife.
You should find this offensive because adultery is clearly defined as
a deadly sin in the Bible.  Also, witnessing a sex act is never to be
done, since the beautiful expression of love, using the anatomy blessed
upon us by God, is a filthy, filthy thing.  Max's implication that Conan
is homosexual is also offensive.

Guest actor Joaquin Phoenix says the "s-word" twice.  Although bleeped
out, this is a particularly offensive word for the process of defecation
(verb) and excrement (noun).  Whether it was used to literally mean
excrement, or whether it was used figuratively, as in "Such-and-such is
the s-word," you should train yourself to always think of excrement
so that you are properly offended.

Homosexual/Canadian comedian/actor Scott Thompson drips water on his
shirt and says, "now I can show off my nipple.  My nipple talks."
Besides the obvious offense of showing an openly homosexual man on
television, it features conversation about the male nipple.  The male
nipple does not have any sexual or biological functions of its own, but
is a reminder of the female nipple, which produces secretions and sexual
excitement, and is thus filthy.  In this same way, replacing "nipple" with
"bellybutton" would have been an offensive conversation, as the
bellybutton  conjures memories of the umbilical cord, which serves to
nurture babies.   All body parts associated with babies are offensive.

Wiping water off the table, Scott Thompson says "I love repetitive
movement."  This a reference to sex, which is God's way of having us
produce babies, and is offensive.

Scott Thompson says that a lot of his ex-boyfriends are journalists, and
makes comments about one of them being a "bottom."  This insight into
the language of homosexuals should be offensive to you because it serves
to establish that homosexuals might actually be people, with the capacity
to develop their own jargon.  If our children see this, they might also
start to think that homosexuals have feelings, emotions, and morals of
their own.

Thompson says he was accused of sexually harassing an actress for
touching her 'bong,' a Canadian term for what Americans call an 'ass.'
He explains that Canadians use the term 'ass' to refer to the rectum.
"It's not an ass in Canada unless, after you put your fingers in it,
they come out warm."  Steven DeVore notes that this is a reference to
homosexual sexual behavior.  The National Prostate Cancer Coalition
recommends that men 50 and up engage in homosexual sexual behavior
with their proctologists regularly after 50, but this should not be
discussed on television.

Local Advertisers: Bacardi Rum, KSL News, R-Rated Move "In The Cut,"
The GM Guy Jerry Seiner, KSL News, University of Utah, Henry Day Ford,
Nuttall & Brown Attorneys.

---

Your comments are welcome.

Your Brother in Christ,
Alex

CleanTV

2004-02-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

So I really should be writing about how I used a massive power tool to cut through my shoe, sock, and foot. Or how Ed and Brian are collectively the shit for helping me and Dana this weekend, but I'll save it.

This is more pressing: CleanTV

Apparently, Steven A. DeVore is upset with television for being such a smutfest and he's decided to do something about it. He's put together a website where you can see a breakdown of exactly what smut you missed, and to whom you should whine.

The picture on the left is Mr. DeVore. The picture on the right seems to prove that if you're a photo touch-up artist for the porn industry, there is still use for your skills once you find God. (Update: I found a larger copy of the one on the right, and it turns out it's a painting. Hah. I'm a chode. Anyway, it's interesting to note that I did find it on this page, very prominently displaying Michelangelo's David... Complete with penis. To nicely complete this tangent, the page referenced spells Michelangelo's name incorrectly.)

Despite having been put together by Steven (who, according to the website, spent 10 years at the Stanford University Neuropsychology Research Laboratory) and his son Stephen (who graduated from BYU), the website has the grammar of a sixth-grade book report. Maybe Stanford and BYU have English departments, maybe they don't.

Rather than just send a curt email saying "Gee, your grammar sucks, Godboy." I decided to use irony. Actual irony.


Greetings,

I wholeheartedly condone your hunting for the witches of indecency.  It is
up to us, and those who we can convince to think like us, to burn them at
the figurative stake of morality.

However, I think it's important that we first make sure we're actually
communicating in English (God's language!).  Your website, and I'm
sure this is somehow the fault of the raunch on TV, is riddled with
grammatical errors which make it difficult for us to get our message
across to the masses.  Here is just a handful of excerpts:

   In routine Conan says Max, the drummer’s wife, had sex in 
   front of Max with her boyfriend.

I'm sorry, is the drummer's wife named Max?

   He claims, James Rumsfield had sex with him. He say’s that 
   Rumsfield’s a “bottom”—referring to gay terminology for the 
   “woman” in the relationship.

The comma after claims?  The apostrophe in says?  Honestly, I don't
think the evils of Satan's influence on TV programming are more
clearly illustrated than by their corruption of the grammatical skills of
decent, God-loving Christians like yourselves.

To be honest, I'm having great difficulty isolating specific grammatical
errors on this site.  It's not so much that there's a lack of them, but 
that there's so little that is correct that the errors run together in one
giant blob.  Imagine trying to proofread what your cat has typed by
walking across the keyboard, and you'll understand where I'm coming
from, fellow Christian.  This paragraph is a good example:

   One of Susan’s workers says he is invited to a party with 8 women – 
   thinking that the women will have sex with him. Joke about a golf 
   cart used by rock ban Guns and Roses used for a sexual “foursome.” 
   Co-worker asked eightsome man if he could if he could participate
   in the eightsome. “There’s only room for one rooster in this hen 
   house.” Response” “Go pluck yourself.”

It is up to us, the moral crusaders of the world, to ensure that our
message comes across loud and clear.  While I surely stand behind
your efforts to involve your children in your cause, I must voice my
opposition to putting your eight-year-old in front of the local NBC 
affiliate to summarize the profanity he sees.

(After re-reading the NBC summary, it occured to me that you might
not have had a young child type it up.  It could have also been typed
by a mentally impaired gentleman that works at your church.  Either
way, I think the profanity is too much for anyone more impressionable 
than an able-minded adult.)

Your Brother in Christ,
Alexavier Gale

The name I signed, Alexavier, is courtesy of the Utah Baby Namer. Dig around, there's plenty of fun names in there. "Vulva Mae" is my all-time favorite.

The Flags Made Me Nervous, Too

2004-01-25T15:21:00.000-08:00

Once in a while something is expressed so perfectly, and so represents what I feel that it gives me chills.

"During the New Hampshire primary, I got into a screaming fight with the candidate Gary Bauer. Okay, I screamed, he didn't. He had just whipped a little paperback copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution out of his pocket and said that anyone that doesn't believe in God doesn't believe in those documents because of the phrase, "endowed by their creator." I told him that, on the contrary, those documents for me have superceded God, that they are my bible. All of which is to say: look up the word suffrage in the dictionary. In mine, after noting the main meanings, the privelege of voting, the excercise of such a right, the third interpretation of suffrage is this: a short intercessory prayer. Isn't that beautiful and true? For what is voting if not a kind of prayer, and what are prayers if not declarations of hope and desire?

[...]

In the first day or two the flags were plastered everywhere, seeing them was heartening because seeing them indicated we were all in this together. The flags were purely emotional. Once we went to war, once the president announced we were going to retaliate against the evil-doers, then the flag once again represented what it usually represents: the government. I think that's when the flag started making me nervous. The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

[...]

But still, I longed for the morning that I could open the paper and the only people in it that would irk me would be dead suicide bombers and retreating totalitarians on the other side of the world, because that would be the morning I pulled that flag out of the recycling bin and taped it up in the window. And while I could shake my fists for sure at the terrorists on page one, varied domestic items could still make my stomach hurt. School prayer partisans taking advantage of the grief of children to circumvent the separation of church and state. The White House Press Secretary condemning a late night talk show host for making a questionable remark about the U.S. Military. The reminder is to all Americans that they need to watch whatt they say, watch what they do and that this is not a time for remarks like that."

-- Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

When I picked up this book, or rather "book," I expected to be amused by Sarah's wit and to be drawn in by her poetic story-telling, but I was surprised to find that her politics are much closer to mine than I had ever imagined. I knew she'd share my distrust of the religious right in power right now, but I wrongly assumed that this distrust would automatically extend itself to everything "American," as it does in so many of my friends. I've longed to hear echoes of my own personal love of the American democratic republic, the writings of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries, and other unabashedly "patriotic" things in the words of people who also spend their time pointing out the government's faults. From another perspective, it's a big relief to finally hear someone voice a belief in the system, without also having the baggage of flag-waving, God-fearing, conformity-mandating conservatism.

God Enraged by Kids Praying Poorly, Gets Revenge

2003-10-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

There's a report of a group of high school cross country runners being hit by a car while praying on the side of the road at CNN right now.

If God doesn't care enough to protect your life, he certainly doesn't care to help you run a four minute mile.

I'm fascinated by the psychology of faith. How can anyone reconcile something like this with their religious beliefs? Do you just have to assume that the kids were praying incorrectly? That they happened to be members of a church that God didn't recognize? For every Bible that "miraculously" stops a bullet, there's a story about people being killed while in church or praying, yet the faithful are convinced that all evidence points to a benevolent God toiling away for the good of his followers.

Granted, if you were a member of a contrary religion, you could use this as proof that your God was spiting the heretics. I guess we need to find out to which God these kids were praying and scratch him off the list of possibilities. We'll figure out the one true religion through the process of elimination.

It reminds me of another story I heard about a child raised as a snake handler, and whose parents were both killed handling snakes. The grandparents were in a custody battle of the kid. One set of grandparents had given up their religion and didn't want the kid handling snakes anymore. The other set remained devout snake handlers and wanted the child to continue being raised as one. The snakes killed their child and orphaned their grandchild, and this didn't make them question their beliefs.

Snooze in Peace

2003-08-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I threw this away. It's piece of junk, an 80's alarm clock, but it woke up me up in the morning (or tried its best to) from 2nd grade through high school. In the instant before the radio came on in the morning, it would make this strange sound like a pencil eraser being tapped on a hardcover textbook. This is actually a somewhat common sound to hear in school, and I would have a strange visceral startled sensation every time I'd hear it.

I played my first tapes in it: The Soundtracks to Cocktail and Back to the Future. It later played the Bobby McFerrin album with "Don't Worry Be Happy." By the time I got the New Kids on the Block, its tape playing duties had been taken over by an equally-80's boombox. That boombox got to play quite a few Beach Boys tapes, Boyz II Men's first tape, MC Hammer's first, Bobby Brown's first, and Vanilla Ice's first.

But alas, this isn't a story about a ghetto blaster or poor musical taste. This is a story about the device that was responsible for me not sleeping away my childhood.

On the top of the alarm, it was its most eccentric. There were only 3 buttons to control the tape: Stop, Play, Fast Forward. To rewind, you'd flip the tape over and fast forward. Ejecting was done manually by opening the tape door. The plastic cap of the fast forward button wasn't attached to the metal peg it rested on, so pressing stop would cause the cap to go bouncing around my headboard and be lost for a few days. I'm glad it was never permanently lost, and could be laid to rest with the rest of the clock. The same can not be said of the cap for the mode selector switch. This was lost sometime in late elementary school, and I would have to use the sharp metal shank to turn the radio off in the mornings.

On the front of the tape door, you can clearly see the radio bragging about the "Auto Stop" feature. Am I to understand that there were ever tape players that wouldn't stop when they hit then end? Would they rip the tape from the spools? Did you need to watch carefully and press stop to avoid destroying your precious Human League cassettes?

The snooze button wasn't really a button, but something that just had to sense your presence, like one of those lamps you just touch. Had it been harder to press, I might have had better attendance in school. I guess it's a long shot, but it's like that saying about the flapping butterfly wings that spawn a storm halfway across the globe.

The volume knob was insane. It turned 270 degrees from lowest setting to highest setting, but didn't work anything like you'd expect. As the knob was turned, it made this white noise sound as loud as the speaker possibly could. Brush the knob accidentally, and you'd get a quick blast of full-volume static. Static aside, the radio went from silent to full-blast in a 16th of a turn. Most of the movement in the knob was totally wasted. In order to find the right volume level, you'd need the steady hands of a safe cracker. One tiny nudge too far clockwise, and the radio was 2-3 times louder than you wanted. Try to turn it back, and it would be totally silent.

So that's it. Quite a ramble about an alarm clock, but I really needed to convey how hard it was for me to throw it away.

Supreme Court: "You can take your sodomy laws and shove them up your ass."

2003-06-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

So the Supreme Court sanely voted to overturn a previous decision upholding the constitutionality of sodomy laws in 1986. The case involved two gay men in Texas being charged with committing various acts, likely hot buttsex and/or polesmoking.

While I agree that laws of this nature violate the spirit of liberty on which this nation is founded, and I'm personally very happy the court decided how it did, I was intrigued by remarks made by Clarence Thomas, who dissented. Justice Thomas said that if he were a Texas legislator, he'd have voted to overturn the state's anti-sodomy law, calling it a waste of law enforcement resources. However, as a Supreme Court justice, he was voting to uphold the constitutionality of the law since he couldn't find anything in the constitution guaranteeing people's right to supernasty freaking in the orifice of their choosing. I think this subtlety is missed on many who casually follow Supreme Court cases and get upset when a decision is made to uphold a stupid law.

If Thomas really disagreed with the law itself, but voted to uphold it because he couldn't find a constitutional basis for abolishing it, I commend him.

I've yet to see anyone cite a part of the constitution that would definitely make certain sex acts -- say, my tonguing a clitoris -- protected. The 4th amendment is probably the knee-jerk response, as it deals with 'privacy,' and many claim this is a privacy issue. However, that amendment specifically protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and doesn't even include the word "privacy." The issue here is not rimjob cops busting into people's houses without a warrant. I personally gravitate towards the text "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but that's in the Declaration of Independence, and isn't so much relevant to the Supreme Court's decision-making.

So maybe 6 judges made the wrong call, 2 were incidentally correct while voting with their homophobia, and the sexual harasser had it right. Either way, anti-sodomy laws don't do any good for society; they only encourage stigmatizing gay people and the sexually adventurous. So I say woohoo and feel free to choose from the following list of Constitutionally protected acts against nature. I know which one I'll be doing first.

Fellatio
Cunnilingus
Anal Sex
Oral-Anal Sex (ETA, right?)
Homosexual Sex

Enjoy!

Pride, Shame and the Meatless Patty

2003-06-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

So I don't eat any meat, I don't eat any dairy, and I don't wear leather, wool or silk. I guess this makes me a vegan, but I shun the term. Hell, I'd probably have the term revoked if there was some crazy sanctioning body, since I gleefully use honey when I make beer.

Anyway, I'm not proud of this. I don't wear shirts that say "Vegan" or "Meat is murder." In fact, I make it a point to try to hide my diet from people. When someone asks me if I want cheese on something, I feign a moment of decision making, then politely decline. Mostly, I don't want to be in the cool kids club with the other vegetarians that think they're morally superior to everyone that eats meat.

I love meat, but I don't want to eat it. This confuses a lot of people, vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. The vegetarians wonder how I can like something so morally reprehensible (or vile, or unnatural, or whatever), everyone else wonders why I'd willingly give up something I like. I hate that "would it bother you if I ordered the veal?" is a rhetorical question, because I'd really like them to pay attention and believe me when I say it wouldn't.

I try to avoid the question of why I don't eat meat, because it's too hard to clearly communicate my thoughts through their misconceptions in passing conversation.

First, let's get past the assumptions people make about me when they find out about my diet. I'm not against killing for food. I think it is no more immoral for a human to kill a cow and eat it than it is for a lion to do the same. I don't think human biology leans more towards a vegan diet than otherwise, contrary to what much pro-vegetarian material says. I heard this morality and biology bullshit from vegetarians before.

Now with a clean slate, I can explain my stance. Institutionalized farming causes animals to suffer. Pain and anguish are biological adaptations that help motivate animals (humans included) to avoid disadvantageous situations. I have no idea if this suffering is at the same level (however you define a level of suffering) as a person's, but I know it exists. This suffering, no matter how important or relevant, can be avoided by not consuming animal products. Human biology, that of an adaptable omnivore, is flexible enough that a healthy vegan lifestyle is possible. If I needed to eat meat, I would. Since I don't, I choose to eliminate whatever suffering my diet may or may not have caused.