this ain't livin'

Flippant Flingings | 21Mar07

Quick thinking ladies at a bar foil a date rape attempt. Awesome!

McDonalds is riled at the OED for their definition of a “McJob.” Good luck with that, guys.

A community in Tennessee is upset because they cannot own guns…uh, guys, I live on an entire Island where firearms are banned. Deal with it. Or move if your neighborhood is so damn unsafe.

Speaking of guns, is it just me, or is New Orleans descending into chaos? Citizens are getting handguns and carrying them on the streets because they feel unsafe.

American soldiers are fleeing to Canada. Not in large numbers, granted, but are we beginning to see parallels with another recent war?

Western doctors are working with traditional healers in Africa to consider alternative health care solutions.

Union Busting for Dummies, out in hospitals near you.

Time to Surrender | 21Mar07

The Scarab and I wandered around the Island during the sunset yesterday, reminding me of my tradition of evening walks with Cap’n Boysenberry, who is away in the South. For a moment, all of the cares and chaos of the last three weeks disappeared, and I was simply myself, strolling in the gathering dusk and investigating the world around me. The sunset was stellar, rich bands of yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue looming over the City, with the spike of the TransAmerica Pyramid seeming to pierce the heavens. I felt at ease and momentarily happy in my freshly patched pants while we peered up into the olive trees and looked into the campus of the fire training school before racing off to evade a man with a coffee cup.

We walked a few feet apart, hands bundled into our coats against the gathering chill, and talked about nothing terribly important, just to hear ourselves speak. The Scarab and I have never been practiced at the companionable silence.

Walking along Avenue N, we noticed a hole where there hadn’t been one before, and we stopped to peer into it with a flashlight. The dimly illuminated space inside had blankets and other sundries, suggesting that it was being used as a squat, and the sprawling building looked relatively virginal inside. The dingy white exterior with the faded blue shutters reminded me of Greece, and I felt sad for a moment, walking under the olives.

As we rounded the corner, I noticed a white truck, and I moved to the side of the road to allow it to pass. It did not pass, but stopped, and the man inside must have said something, because the Scarab turned, and so did I, and a tall older man who reminded me of a heron was strolling towards us. Something about his controlled, even gait put me on edge, and I instinctively pulled my hands from the pockets of my loose sweatshirt and kept them low, palms facing the man, while I halfway turned, so that he could only see my profile.

He had Navy issue plates and desert issue camouflage, and he stopped about two feet away from us.

“What are you guys doing,” he said, in a low, measured voice.

“Oh, we’re out walking,” the Scarab said.

“You aren’t going in any buildings, are you?”

“Oh, no. There was just a hole, so I had to look.”

“You guys have flashlights…”

“Oh,” I interjected, “we’re way too fat to fit in there.”

He visibly relaxed, as did we, and the Scarab put his hand out to introduce himself, as did I.

His hand was cool and dry, and his handshake assertive. I could tell that he was taking our measure, as indeed were we.

“What are you guys working at out here?”

“Er…we live here,” I said.

“What house?”

The Scarab and I said our house numbers simultaneously.

“What street?”

The Scarab spoke alone this time, and the man nodded.

“We’re just out for our evening perambulation, you know,” I said. “Checking out the state of the world. Seeing what there is to be seen.” I swept my arms to the blazing sunset behind us. “Watching the sunset.”

“Well then,” he said. “You take care now.”

“You too,” we echoed, and we stood silently facing his truck while he walked back and drove away.

Occupation of Washington | 20Mar07

A platoon of Iraq Veterans Against the War occupied crucial parts of Washington, DC, yesterday. They performed routine safety patrols, rounded up potential insurgents, stopped and questioned suspicious characters, and were even briefly detained by law enforcement themselves. This is the sort of direct action I can get behind: disruptive, in your face, organized, focused, and effective. I wish that all protests could have this calculated, intense impact on people, rather than being unfocused chaotic alienating hordes.

It would be highly effective to be walking down the street and suddenly see a cluster of people in military uniforms appear, wrestle someone to the ground, and “abuse” them while battering them with questions. Or to wonder why strange people in military uniforms are moving briskly about, giving you orders. To see them stopping cars and shouting at the occupants. I think that this direct action probably brought the war home to a lot of people who have not thought about it in the sense of an occupation. The individuals who participated in the direct action are all veterans of the war, and therefore in a unique position to show people what it’s really like in Iraq. I wish I could have been there to talk to them!

Many of them are also members of Courage to Resist, an advocacy organization for conscientious objectors. Appeal for Redress is another organization of military members against the war. For civilians who didn’t already know this: there is widespread anti-war sentiment among American troops, many of whom are calling for immediate withdrawal, questioning the legality of the war, and refusing to serve.

The conventional security forces in DC must have been mighty grumpy about the whole thing…and I have to admire the guts of the Marine recruiter who was still hitting the streets during the action. Several roundups of suspected insurgents occurred right next to the recruiting office, which I’m sure cannot have made the recruiters too happy. The military is about being in “the few, the proud, the brave,” after all, not harassing innocent civilians who are minding their own business.

Street theatre goes straight to the heart.

[Iraq Veterans Against the War]

Trembling Teratoma | 20Mar07

Global rivers are facing a major crisis thanks to poor water management, pollution, dams, climate change, and shipping. Rivers are cool. We probably should not allow this to happen.

According to the Ethicurean, the Superfund laws may be amended to exclude animal manure. This is bad news, and Dairy Queen explains why.

Gee, it must be nice to have rich parents. No. Seriously. My class and generation are being priced out of real estate, but apparently that is not breaking news: parents who can afford to buy homes for their kids are. Great for the kids; not so great for the rest of us.

Did you know that over 2,000 people have been killed in southern Thailand in the last three years?

Ah ha, this is why MUNI was all kinds of messed up yesterday. Hey guys, how about instead of lying in the street, you actually do something productive, like making a groundbreaking grass roots political advertisement?

Shocking news: the US military is dangerously under equipped. Quick, let’s invade Iran! That’ll fix it!

For once, AskMen has some sound advice! How to be a gentleman should be widely distributed to all genders, since I think all of us could stand to be more gentlemanly.

Rapid Jasmine | 19Mar07

Latin American workers send home more money than their nations receive in aid. Over $62 billion, apparently.

Whatever is the new black of communication, apparently.

When MUNI attacks! No. Seriously. That would be a shitty thing to watch. I take that train all the time.

AIDS is a serious problem in Afghanistan…and one which is being largely ignored.

Andrew Sullivan shares his thoughts on Ann Coulter’s “faggot” comment.

Four Years | 19Mar07

These are the times that try men’s souls. Over 3,000 men and women have died in the Iraq war, which was commemorated by massive protests all over the world this weekend. You know what I always say…if you don’t like something, carry a sign about it!

Four years ago today, I had a television for a very brief period. I was living in the alley house then, and I remember the mood…restless, distraught, strange. Things seemed to move in little rushes and starts, the government was laying the ground work to invade Iraq, and it was all we talked about, everywhere we went. I had just started a new job, just moved back to Fort Bragg, actually, and I wasn’t sure what was going on in my world. Cap’n Raspberry was more or less living with me then, and I remember we got home and cooked something, I don’t recall what, and then we curled up on my bed with a huge cluster of friends to watch our country drop bombs over Baghdad.

We talked about the first gulf war, about seeing the oil fires burning, and the tracers of bombs and bullets. Televised warfare. About sand, and oil, and what is right. Or what is wrong. The whole scene felt very unreal to me, and I kind of felt like I was watching someone else watching the war. Like maybe I had stumbled into a very realistic film, and I wondered idly when the end credits would start to roll, because I kind of needed to pee.

I was sandwiched between Sofa and someone else, I remember, maybe the Scarab, and at one point I gesticulated wildly and managed to knock my own glasses off and into Sofa’s lap. More and more people kept arriving, everyone speaking in quiet, hushed voices, and watching the same footage on television, over and over again. Every channel. We drank gallons of tea while staring meekly at the television, and I wondered about people in other countries, other times, watching their country wage war. I wonder if everyone feels the same way while watching their military drop bombs on people, or if the strange emotion I was feeling was just me. I remember being able to catalog every weapon I saw in the news footage. I remember that no one went home, or slept, that night.

I remember at first that the Cap’n and I would read the paper every day on the deck, with the sobering headlines that seemed to be suggesting that we were going nowhere fast. We used to sit in these perilous Czechoslovakian folding chairs that my dad bought in the 1960s, probably when he was evading Vietnam, and we would drink Lapsong Soochong and write in our journals and eat scones, crumbs falling on crackling newspaper. Those chairs are somewhere in storage in Fort Bragg now. I kind of want them back. I remember reading a lot of Nikos Kazantzakis and Joseph Heller and drinking chai in the coffeehouse. My father and I would sit on his back porch drinking lychee tea and watching his garden grow, talking about “the war,” and I felt like a clockwork toy. I remember drawing a map of Iraq on a napkin so that I could show someone where Fallujah was, and I remember my first friend dying in Iraq, the strange sense of numbness that I felt when his father called me.

“Ah, yes,” I said. Well, I guess this means I can keep his copy of “The Good War,” I thought.

And then I kind of stopped reading the front page of the paper. I would glance at another drab vista of sand and dead bodies and then I would turn to the “California” section and read the letters to the editor. I did not know what else to do.

When the second friend died, I realized that a state of numbness was just the only way to handle the situation, and that this is how wars drag on, because we all get fatigued. We care so much that we cannot care any longer. This, my friends, is the beginning of the end, the news reels of tired refugees, the helpless retreat in the face of information that we cannot process any longer.

I just finished rereading Generation Kill, one of the earlier books to come out of the war. Evan Wright was a journalist embedded with First Recon, and it’s about his experiences with them—First Recon was essentially the tip of the spear invading Iraq, and was often cut off from the rest of the military while they forged ahead. Although Wright seems to be trying too hard in some places, the book does have a brutal honesty which I appreciate. A sense of forbidding clarity. The book filled me with an intense sadness that I cannot completely describe.

What are we doing, and when are we going to stop?

Quivering Kumquats | 18Mar07

Toxic dust at Hunter’s Point has people riled. The developer has a “code of silence.” All the more reason to keep development off the Island, I say!

Pricless cultural artifacts have been returned to Afghanistan, following removal for safekeeping.

Women returning from combat face some serious issues. Will the government rise to the occasion?

Members of the 31st medical group are no longer allowed to smoke in uniform. Sets a bad example. And makes them stinky.

Interesting Slate article about infant mortality. Pregnant readers and readers with infants: sorry, don’t read this, please move along. Thank you.

There has been a lot of talk about the “surge,” but what does it mean for civilians?

City of God | 18Mar07

Puff and I watched City of God tonight.

It is an astonishingly good film. I realize it’s all trendy for middle class white people to watch movies about the sufferings of other nations and feel guilty, but…you should watch it. I have a certain affinity for Brazil, probably from reading too much Jorge Amado, and it was neat to see what life in the favelas could be like, rather than just reading it. It’s also interesting that most of the actors were not professionals…indeed, many of them were portraying film versions of their life selves.

The cinematography…was amazing. I know that I’m supposed to tell you about how the film moved me and made me think about how awful child soldiers and poverty and drugs are, but I could not stop marveling at the lighting, angles, and style. For all of the grittiness it portrays, the movie is incredibly beautiful. Things revealed themselves, opening up like flowers and then closing, and it was wonderful to see. The cinematography alone would have captivated me. Some of the angles were really creative and interesting, a far cry from the very conventional American films I watch. Even the “edgy” ones seem to use the same stock camera angles. Also some awesome use of lighting, and of color. The film felt very rich and saturated.

The film was also very dialogue driven, and I wish that I knew Brazilian Portuguese, because I feel as though I missed a lot. The characters were constantly interacting, laying text over one another, shading things with layers of meaning. I kept catching occasional words or phrases and wanting to know more, and I feel like there were a lot of cultural references that went over my head, especially around religion.

An interesting glimpse of live in the favelas, told in a beautiful and unapologetic way. I didn’t feel like the film dramatized the horror of poverty, or was supposed to make people feel stricken with guilt about the lives that they live. It was simply a quiet study in contrasts: this is the life some people live. This is the life other people live. There is a scene much later in the film where the main character is visiting someone, and I was amazed by her highly modernized, really nice apartment: it looked like a house in San Francisco, in a nice district. The main character grew up in a mud house with no electricity or running water…and yet the houses in the film are only minutes away from each other.

Although the movie was about Brazil, it made me think about parallels in American society, the favelas of Hunter’s Point and Richmond compared to the nice apartments of Noe Valley. The wars that people fight in the streets, and the people who get caught up in them.

[City of God]

Raw Rebel | 17Mar07

I had a big glass of the white stuff last night. Pure, unfiltered. It tasted like lawbreaking. Which is funny, because it’s not technically illegal in California. You can pick it up in select grocery stores, or fresh from the source.

It all came about because Peaches and I went to Elephant Pharmacy so that she could pick some things up. Elephant is a pretty cool place…they have lots of natural, organic, tasty stuff. And…I noticed that they sell raw milk. I couldn’t resist buying a bottle of it, and as soon as I got home, I cracked the top on my bottle of Claravale Diary whole raw milk. Puff looked askance at me, taken in by corporate dairy rhetoric about the “dangers” of raw milk.

I poured myself a small glass, and started sipping.

Because it’s March, I suppose it would be classified as winter milk. The milk certainly didn’t have the grassy, floral flavor that it will attain later in the summer, but it did taste more fresh. Richer, as well, thanks to the cream on top. There were faint hints of hay, and the milk had the full bodied, fresh from the cow feeling that I remember from my childhood. It tasted like…milk.

What’s the deal with raw milk?

I grew up drinking it, thanks to having ready access to milk producing animals like goats, sheep, and horses. Raw milk is exactly what it sounds like: fresh milk from healthy animals, delivered directly from the udder to the bottle to you. Raw milk is not pasteurized, meaning that it has not been flash cooked, removing a lot of essential nutrients along with the risk for potential bacterial infection. It also is not homogenized, so the milk has all of its component parts, and, yes, the cream rises to the top. Because that’s what happens with normal milk. Nothing is added to raw milk, and nothing is taken away. The milk is often organic, and it comes from a conscientiously run dairy with clean, healthy cows. Dairies that sell raw milk are also subject to stringent USDA inspection to protect consumers, which is something I am ok with: milk is kind of a petri dish for bacteria, and can pose a serious risk if not handled with care.

Raw milk, and the debate over it have also been in the news a lot lately. An indicator of how popular it is becoming, how concerned conventional dairy is, and how the USDA/FDA are fretting.

My stance on raw milk is that it is delicious, superior to conventional milk, and should be made readily available. Nothing beats raw milk for flavor and nutrition. States which have banned raw milk should reconsider their bans, because people are going to seek it out anyway, and potentially put themselves at higher risk. Coat hanger abortions…back alley raw milk sales. Legalization opens the doors to regulation, which I think is a good thing in this instance. Consumers can make an educated decision about whether or not they want to drink it on their own…they do not need a nanny state to tell them what to do.

I’m hoping that the frequency of occurrence of raw milk in the news will intrigue consumers. Perhaps some will even go out and try it, or try to learn more about it. And perhaps, someday soon, there will be a raw revolution. Pasteurized milk will become the lesser known substance, while the rest of us cavort in green fields with unicorns, hoisting glasses of foamy, fresh, cool raw milk aloft to the heavens.

[raw milk]

Slippery Eel | 17Mar07

Chlorine bombs in Iraq. Mission accomplished!

A mass recall of pet food linked with kidney failure. Here’s information at the manufacturer’s website.

Middle school is rough for teachers, too, not just kids.

When books kill. Well…actually, when insanity kills. But books fed the fire.

Manhole cover art. Neato!

Students walkout to protest the removal of their principal.