Lee's Life

I had an itch and didn't scratch it.

2010-12-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

I sat with the Yokoji Zen Mountain Center Long Beach group on Saturday morning, and it was good. The reason it was good, besides the sangha aspect, is mainly that once or twice I had really intense itches develop, and I noticed them developing, and didn't scratch them, and then I noticed that they had gone away.

This isn't the same thing as being intensely irritated or angry at something and noticing that irritation or anger, and not lashing out and saying something hurtful or rude or reactionary or counterproductive, and frankly, that's something I'd like to get better at. I'd like to notice my anger and not become anger, not become angry. I think that's something that may become easier as time goes on. I feel optimistic about it because here, a few steps down the path of my journey, I noticed an itch, and didn't become itchy, and didn't scratch it, and experienced what I knew -- whether you scratch the itch or not, it will eventually go away.

This reminds me of a story I read but cannot locate now, that goes like this:

A monk set about raising a huge sum of money for a temple or something, and started by begging for money, and a nobleman came by, and the monk explained how he needed a huge amount of gold, and explained why, and the nobleman refused, and the monk followed him, and reiterated how he needed this huge sum, and begged, and the nobleman refused, and the monk kept following him and begging, reiterating how he needed this huge amount of money, until the nobleman finally grew so irritated he threw a single penny at the monk. The monk became excited and exultant and joyful and happily bowed low and thanked the nobleman, who became confused. he asked the monk why he was so happy when he needed this huge sum, and had only gotten a single penny, and begrudgingly at that. The monk replied that he had been despairing of being able to raise such a huge sum, but now he had seen that he was able to raise even a single penny, he knew that in time, he'd surely be able to raise the whole sum and achieve his goal.

So it is with itches. Physical itches can be overcome? Why, so can emotional and mental itches of irritation, anger, distraction. I just have to keep sitting, and eventually, I will acheive it.

Since I can't Smoke, I Sit.

2010-11-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

I quit smoking just over 16 years ago. When I smoked, I was a smoker. I identified as a smoker, and I enjoyed smoking. I smoked at least two packs a day. I smoked while showering. I smoked while riding my bike. I loved it. At the time I quit, I had a little baby daughter, and the reason I stopped smoking was besides smoking over two packs a day, I would also be drinking ten cups of coffee or so a day, and my heart was doing things like skipping beats. And it was making me lightheaded and faint. And I was afraid of fainting while driving my daughter to daycare, so I quit. I had the help of nicotine patches, and it worked. I didn't quit because it would kill me, or that the second-hand smoke would injure, or anything like that, although I knew these things to be true. For me, it was the prospect of fainting and killing my daughter in a car crash that motivated me to put down my beloved Zippo lighter and my cigarettes and pipes and quit.

One thing that I didn't realize at the time, but which I have realized many times since, is that when I smoked, I wasn't just smoking. When I was at work, at least, when I smoked, I did other things at the same time. I practiced deep breathing and relaxation. I contemplated. I enjoyed the weather outside (I remember smoking in Denver once, outside in 0F weather, bright blue sky, snowcovered ground. If not for smoking, I'd be inside the building, working.) I met new people and shared with them free of expectation of judgment-- when you are a smoker and someone asks for a light or a cigarette, you tend to give without question, having been in that position of need yourself at some time.

Anyway. It's not really smoking as an intrinsic thing that let me do things like deep breathing, and notice the weather, and meet new people and be generous to them, and allow them to be generous towards me. But it made doing all these things easier.

Since I started doing zazen in my tentative, rank amateur way, I have had some moments where it reminded me of when I smoked-- all the ancillary things that I had as side-benefits. I take time to breathe and tend to breathe more deeply when just sitting. I find myself a tiny bit more aware of what's happening around me, as the sounds of the world, the light, the smells, reach me more clearly when I sit. And I find myself more awake to other people and being compassionate when I sit.

I also notice all my negative anger and resentments and counterproductive procrastination issues, but I already wrote about that. Today is a positive post. In a way, my anger and resentments and negative emotions and behaviors have become clear enough to me, and are affecting me now like my fainting was affecting me 16 years ago. Then, I put down the cigarettes, and now I started sitting. I hope it works. I need something like nicotine patches of zazen to keep me sitting.

Mindfulness can be a Pain

2010-11-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

I think it's a universal phenomenon after someone starts any sort of new practice-- things start out breezy and wonderful, and then they get difficult.

When someone becomes a Born-Again Christian, for instance, it's an act of faith, but then it's immediately followed by a lot of Works -- living life differently and starting a bunch of new behaviors, and stopping old behaviors. It's common that new believers have all sorts of difficulties manifest themselves. Christians explain this by talking about the Devil not paying any mind to you when you are doomed to Hell, but when you rebuke the Devil and accept Jesus, then you are in Play, and the Devil is going to fight you. It's viewed as a good thing, because again, Satan wouldn't be paying you any mind and making your life difficult and tempting you if you hadn't thrown off his yoke and taken on the yoke of Christ instead.

When I practiced SGI/Nichiren Buddhism, they used a metaphor of turning on a faucet for the first time in a long time -- there's going to be a bunch of old junk in the pipes, and you turn the faucet on, and all this old junk comes out of the faucet. It's a natural result of turning on the faucet, and so rather than getting upset, you should be happy. It's proof things are starting to flow through the pipe. Right now, it's gross and smelly, but the cool and clean water you want is coming down the pipes. Just be patient.

Anyway. I seem to have a bunch of junk in my pipes or something. I have been tired after a full night's sleep, being more ADD than usual, and feeling more stressed than usual, and finding myself in funks for no good reason. I think it's partially because being Mindful more often means more noticing of how I am distracted or engaged in negative thinking. Then I'll distract myself from this noticing and then catch myself doing this. Etc. And there's a lot of negative emotions that come up for no reason. Noticing there's no reason is a good thing, but still. It's all stuff that makes it more challenging to be mindful enough to sit. I still need to develop a routine to practice every day, because my ADD-tendency makes me avoid this sort of discomfort rather than just sit with it.

It's a good day.

2010-11-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

It's Monday.

This weekend was really nice -- my daughter was down and it's always good to have her around, and we met her boyfriend, and we went to an Argentine night fundraiser at The Infinite, and danced the Tango. And yesterday we saw Lana's cousin and her husband and daughter, who is on that cusp between baby and toddler, and how can you go wrong playing with a baby?

It was raining when I woke up, but a fine mist of a rain-- tiny, tiny drops, like it was sprayed from an atomizer, all side-lit by the sun rising in the cloud free East. It was pretty and pleasant to walk through when I took Baby out.

My coworker has been out for months after surgery and has been working from home, and today she came in to the office, and is starting to work here again. This is a big deal, since most days I'm alone, and I have a hard time working alone for too many days at a time. We work together online and over the phone, but being together in person is a much different experience. So that's good.

And we went for an early lunch, which worked out well, since I hadn't eaten breakfast. And my boss paid. Which is awesome. :)

So it's a good beginning to the week. And tonight is Zazen at The Infinite. Just as having my coworker back in the same place as me is a powerful thing, it's easier practicing Zazen with other people in the same place. It works this way for me with things like marathons... when I walk alone, I feel I am at my limit when I am walking a pace that's one or two minutes slower than my marathon pace. When I am doing a marathon, I end up going faster. This is even true in marathons like Catalina, where there were stretches after 15 miles or so when I was the only person in sight on long stretches... just doing something with 800 other people made my pace much faster. Likewise, I've found when I am sitting at home, it is a lot harder to sit for 15 minutes alone than it is to sit for 25 or 30 minutes with the group. There's such motivation that comes from the energy of the group, and also, not wanting to come off as horrible at sitting still in the eyes of other people. I am competitive in weird ways, so I am motivated to sit still and keep my back straighter much more in the group. It's very silly, but there it is.

Work Practice.

2010-11-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Having an ADD Brainstyle makes it challenging for me to do tedious clerical things. And part of my job involves doing tedious clerical things.

Starting to do Zazen over the past four weeks has made me a little bit more aware during the time I am not sitting, and I notice my getting distracted a bit more easily. But it's really hard to get my mind back on my work when there's no mind required as much as doggedly sitting there and comparing the contents of one Excel cell with the contents of another Excel cell and copying things from one sheet to another, all the while wishing I knew enough about macros and VBA programming to somehow automate the process.

I have read suggestions of just committing 15 minutes to projects you are procrastinating about, or which you hate... just commit to 15 minutes, and then, if you want, you can stop and go on to something else. Just give it 15 minutes. And since I have been sitting at home for a modest 15 minutes at a time, I decided to use the same timer, and slap the experiment with a 'Workzen' label, and just do the same thing I'd do with work as I did when sitting down. Do the work, while focusing on my breathing and staying present. It works. And after 15 minutes, I get up, walk around, then sit down, and try another 15 minutes. It makes it more fun.

Except that here I am blogging about how much it works, instead of actually doing it. This is a problem I have found myself having about the big picture of taking baby steps in doing a Zen practice. Rather than being content to practice, I have to read about it, find out more about the lineage associated with the people I am sitting with and want to learn from, discover controversies, etc. Hopefully this excitability will calm down and I can just practice more and do study when I should be studying.

Off to do 15 minutes of work practice.

DST will soon be over. Thank goodness.

2010-11-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

It has been so hard for me to get up in the mornings and get to sleep at night. I am looking forward to Sunday, when we set our clocks back and regain that precious hour stolen from us last Spring.

It feels like this eagerness for DST to be gone is coming from the bones and sinews of my body as much as from my mind. My body is feeling out of alignment with the world, and needs to snap back into alignment, and perhaps going back to standard time will accomplish that.

Zazen and the Cricket

2010-10-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the Saturday zazen for the first time. There were twenty of so people, and it was good, aside from me forgetting to turn off my cellphone and having it go off, full volume, with the old-fashioned-phone ring, about a minute into the first sitting session. That was pretty mortifying. So I had to turn that off, and sit back down and calm down...

Each of times we started zazen, we'd be quiet for a couple minutes, and then a cricket in the room would start chirping and keep it up for a few minutes. It was as if it had been waiting for the silence. Perhaps it associated the silence with safety. Or perhaps it knew that only in the silence could its chirping be heard by other crickets. And now I think about it, perhaps it was there the whole time, but I couldn't hear it when everyone was settling down.

If it had started chirping 15 minutes into zazen, I'd be seeing it as a reminder to be present, pulling us back to the present, or that guy with the stick giving us a whack. But as it was, chirping within a minute or two of us starting to sit, I just saw it as a cricket chirping.

I am sure there's a deep meaning in the cricket speaking in the silence. But I don't know what it is.

After zazen, the leader of our group today, Chigen, talked about a koan from the Book of Equanimity, Case 20, where Master Jizo met Hogan, and asked Hogan where was going, and Hogan said he was on pilgrimage aimlessly. Jizo asked him why he was on pilgrimage, and Hogan said I don't know. Jizo said not knowing is most intimate, and Hogan experienced some awakening. Chigen talked about the importance of not knowing, being open to not knowing, and the practice of being there with your discomfort in not knowing. And we had a good discussion about it.

So there was a cricket today, and it chirped, and I don't know why this feels worthy of me retelling, but there you go. There is intimacy in not knowing. Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

Circles and Cycles

2010-10-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

I forget I have this blog. Then I remember.

The biggest thing since the last time I posted anything is that Lana and I are Expecting. We are basically on the cusp of the Second Trimester. Lana is dealing with all the physical and emotional changes admirably, and the biggest day-to-day issue is her nausea, which we are hoping will subside now she's in the 2nd trimester, and changing dietary urges. Many things she usually loves to eat just don't taste good any more, and so we are trying new things, preparing things differently, that sort of thing. Our baby-to-be is about the size of half-a-banana. Which is just as well, because Lana has been eating plenty of those, plain and in shakes.

For me, it's an interesting time, because Marian is now 17, a senior in high school, and living with her mom most of the time. When she graduates in June, we'll be there with a one-month old, and there will be pictures of Marian with her cap and gown and diploma, holding her newborn sister or brother. I am not sure which part makes me tear up more -- our newborn child part, or my precious Marian being a high school graduate and going off to make a life for herself.

So we are having a very 21st Century wedding next August, complete with a baby that will be three months old. One of the things that I have to do for the wedding is arrange the Officiant aspect. This has been a stumbling block for me, because I am a religious and spiritual person, but I can never seem to get straight WHICH religuous tradition, or blend of traditions. So having to choose something, and soon, has put me in a mindset of questioning and pondering. I have been floating around rather aimlessly, not doing Jewish practices, not doing much of anything.

Thankfully, Chrissy Cox of The Infinite happened to send me an event invite on Facebook for Zen Meditation a few weeks ago. I have loved the idea of the Infinite and wanted to take a class there, but nothing was any good. Hoops? Yoga? Belly Dance? Um, no. But Zen Meditation? Zazen? You just sit? Oh, I can totally do that. And I got the invite on a stressful Monday, and something deep inside reached up and embraced this thing, and I went that night. What was even better was the fact that I got in a shouting and cursing exchange with a driver who was honking at me for daring to take the lane on Pine, as I rode to The Infinite. Then there was the three-car fender-bender that happened outside The Infinite during the second period of Zazen. All this conflict and collision and anger. And all there was for me to do was sit.

I used to practice the SGI/Nichiren Shoshu form of Buddhism, and a lot of it really resonated with me, and I internalized a lot of it, even though that particular practice was definitely not for me. But I kept interested in Buddhism, and loved the work of Thich Nhat Hanh that I read, Peace is Every Step and The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching. Developing a practice of Mindfulness, of using things like phones ringing and red lights to bring oneself back to the present... this stuff is very powerful for me. It is simple, and very difficult, but even doing it a bit here and there has palpable benefits.

The practice of Zazen is similar. It really works for me in groups. I have NEVER been around other people and been quiet and still for such long periods before. It is hard to do -- one evening I got panicky and stressed about not knowing how much longer we would have to sit, and it was really neat that I was able to sit there and breathe, and do something that Thich Nhat Hanh suggested when you have emotions you experience as negative come into your awareness.I recognized the anxiety and called to it "hello, old friend! I remember you" and I welcomed it into me and held it and soothed it. I didn't judge it as inappropriate and declare it unwelcome. I just held it as I sat there, and I marveled that I was actually sitting still, not moving, while I had a freakout, and that by embracing my feeling, I was no longer experiencing it the same way. Part of me was still anxious and eager to move, and part of me was observing, and consoling my anxious part.

Anyway. It's an ongoing thing. I try to practice alone every couple days and just sit for 15 minutes, and sometimes it seems to help, and sometimes it's all I can do to sit there. But I keep coming back to it, and it feels good.

The group that teaches the classes at The Infinite is from the Yokoji-Zen Mountain Center, which is affiliated with the Soto Zen lineage. For some reason, I feel drawn to this group and Soto Zen, so I am planning to learn more and practice more with them and see what happens.

And to bring it back to the wedding, I'm thinking maybe we could have a Zen officiant. Not sure. We'll see. But I have to make up my mind pretty soon. :)

Bike Ride to Shakti Shala Yoga Festival

2010-08-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

The point of my posting this flyer, which I made, isn't the upcoming bike ride. It's the flyer itself. This is the second flyer I've made using a fun combination of doing things by hand, and then scanning into the Mac and then color it in my old free version of Corel Draw that came with the Wacom tablet I got years ago.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

2010-08-09T14:39:00.001-07:00

Leaving aside the thematic and lyrical threads that go from song to song, one of the things that makes me listen to this recording over and over are what to me HAVE to be conscious musical references to other artists' songs. Win Butler said it was like a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young, but I am hearing a lot of other artists here...

Reviewers have noted a big early 80s influence here, but on tracks like "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), there's a piano opening like "Come On Eileen", the feel of Regine's singing is very Debbie Harry, then there's the synthesizer bit that's very much like something out of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and an ending that echoes the end of Gabriel's "On The Air."

"Month of May" has a sound that's pure Bowie -- it starts out like a Heathen-style song, where Bowie revisted his Ziggy style of writing and playing, and ends up with a total Outside/Earthling vibe. This is perhaps the song where I've found the most listeners and reviewers posting similar observations to mine.

One song where it seems to be just me, at least just me writing anything, is "Deep Blue." This is a pure Kinks song in feel, which makes sense because its subject ties in so well with so many Kinks songs that idealize a bygone England that is irretrievably gone.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

lastreetsblog fun-- delighting in being quoted, because I am superficial.

2010-03-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

I have, in the past couple weeks, begun to comment on la.streetsblog.org. This is partly because there is no lb.streetsblog.org and I am lazy. Why not basically appropriate the la.streetsblog.org for my own nefarious lb uses? And there are lots of Long Beach people on there, anyway. It's not like Long Beach isn't part of the LA scene.

Today, I was criticising a poster who talked about how dangerous the streets were, and expressed my amusement at how so many bike advocates are invested in the idea that the streets are inherently unsafe for bikes. People like this advocate for infrastructure, but I said:

“At some point, protected bike lanes end, sharrows end, bike lane paint ends. And people have to ride on the street. The horrible, bonecrushing, bloody streets of certain death.”

Which Damien, the editor of la.streetsblog.org, immediately put up in the 'word on the street section.' And he immediately appropriated it in HIS comment he posted to the thread, saying "... were literally getting killed out there, on the horrible, bone crushing, bloody streets of certain death and our elected leaders and government bureaucracy only seems to care when a big stink is made."

Anyway. Perhaps the streets of LA ARE "horrible, bone crushing, bloody streets of certain death." I have only ridden on them at night, in the rain, and that one time I rode to my dad's around LAX. Perhaps I don't know the truth about the deadly streets of LA.

I do, after all, live and ride in the LBC.

Testing Google Maps Bicycle Directions

2010-03-16T14:37:00.001-07:00

I have spent a few minutes testing Google Maps directions for bicycles. What it's doing in my area seems to be the following.

1) Whenever possible, use a separated bike path
2) When that's not possible, use a bike lane
3) When that's not possible, use a street

which results in directions that pretty much follow the way I tend to do things for really big trips that are primarily N/S -- for those trips, it routes me up the San Gabriel or LA River bike paths, and this is what I'd do. I am not afraid of riding on the street, but the LA and SG River trails are like bike freeways. You can ride on them full-speed for as long as you can handle with hardly any traffic. Why ride in the street and deal with traffic when you don't have to?

But E/W gets more interesting. For instance, if I do directions from my mom's place in Huntington Beach to my home, it is exactly how I'd do it (Garfield to Seapoint to PCH to 2nd) until it gets to Belmont Shore. Then, seeing that there's a segregated bike path along the beach, it sends me down that way, rather than up a perfectly quiet street like 1st or 2nd. That adds real distance to my trip where it really makes little sense.

It would be helpful if it let you decide how agressive it should be on choosing separated paths vs bike lanes vs surface streets, so people could get maps more geared towards their preference and comfort level.

That being said, this is a new tool, and it works pretty well already. As they get feedback and tune things up, it should prove to be a really useful tool.

Portland

2010-03-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

Why Portland rocks, in a somewhat large nutshell:

I went to Powell's City of Books and went to the Cycling section. They had several copies of Forester's Effective Cycling, one used. They had several copies of Mapes' Pedaling Revolution. They had several copies of tons of books about bicycle repair and about commuting by bike, all the various bike sports figures, bike touring memoirs, etc. And they had copies of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac.

I am old-fashioned. I could have gotten these books from Powell's online. Or from anyone online, really. But I was stubborn. I went all over Long Beach trying to find Forester and Mapes. I went to places in LA, Phoenix. Whereever I happened to be. Nope. Now, Santa Cruz was close. There were tons of bike books at Logos, but not Forester or Mapes.

The fact that Powell's has these books says, first, that Powell's is awesome. But also it reflects that there is a real cycling culture in Portland, with numerous people reading books about cycling.

I could have figured this out by the racks outside of Powell's, made to look like various famous books involving bicycling, and crammed full with various pretty bikes, but that would have been lazy.

Anyway, so now I have my Mapes and Forester books, and can go back to Long Beach happy.

Advocacy Irritations and being 'full of sh*t'

2010-03-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

The Long Beach Cyclists Book Group is currently reading chapters from Cycling and Society (2007), by Paul Rosen, Peter Cox, and David Horton. One of the chapters we haven't reviewed yet is Chapter 4, "Hell is Other Cyclists." This cute riff on Sartre's "L'enfer, c'est les autres" has been on my mind recently, as I become more knowledgeable about bike advocacy and more irritated by some of its practitioners.

I will write more about this later, as I can't figure out exactly how to write about it now, beyond saying that damn, advocacy people can drive me up a wall...

UPDATE:

The funny thing is I wrote this BEFORE Umberto Brayj told me I was full of 'sh*t' for saying something he didn't agree with in an lastreetsblog comment.

And the disheartening thing is that first, I hadn't posted to lastreetsblog before, that I can think of. And second, that Umberto, or whatever his name is, started the Bike Kitchen and Flying Pigeon store in Lincoln Heights.

The worst thing is that I seriously had been fantasizing about getting a Flying Pigeon from his store. At this point, I doubt I'll set foot in his store, let alone buy anything from the guy.

And this perfectly illustrates my point about Hell is Other Cyclists. In this case, a pretty famous guy in the LA scene, who has done a LOT of good and is doing a lot of good, but this is the way he chooses to respond to someone he doesn't agree with, someone he has never met. Not cool. Not encouraging.

Perhaps I am just ignorant and full of 'sh*t.' But I think we can be advocates for cycling in general, and our positions in particular, without calling each other names when we disagree.

Ortolan and Being There

2010-02-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

This is a comment I made at The Path Less Pedaled... In D is for Displacement, Russ was talking about how he and Laura are pursuing their dream of riding the country, yet often, while actually spending the day pedalling, they aren't really present in the moment and with the aching and fatigue, but have displaced their thinking into other places... they aren't really present in their dream riding. And I remembered a This American Life piece where one of the conclusions was that we were not really capable of being present in the moment all the time...

This reminds me of the Ortolan story on This American Life (it’s on episode 343) where writer Michael Paterniti describes eating Ortolan (where you eat the entire bird, which has been drowned in cognac, while holding a napkin over your head).

This is from his written account in Esquire:

“Here’s what I taste: Yes, quidbits of meat and organs; the succulent, tiny strands of flesh between the ribs and tail. I put inside myself the last flowered bit of air and Armagnac in its lungs, the body of rainwater and berries. In there, too, is the ocean and Africa and the dip and plunge in a high wind. And the heart that bursts between my teeth. It takes time. I’m forced to chew and chew again and again, for what seems like three days. And what happens after chewing for this long–as the mouth full of taste buds and glands does its work—is that I fall into a trance. I don’t taste anything anymore, cease to exist as anything but taste itself.
And that’s where I want to stay–but then can’t because the sweetness of the bird is turning slightly bitter and the bones have announced themselves. When I think about forcing them down my throat, a wave of nausea passes through me. And that’s when, with great difficulty, I swallow everything.”

On the This American Life segment, he talks about how hard it is to eat regular meals after this (my transcription):

Michael Paterniti: it takes a lot of energy and concentration when you really taste a meal. it takes concentration, and silence…

Ira Glass: it’s almost as if you are saying if we were really awake to what the world was giving us in a given meal, it would be hard to eat the meal every single time.

Paterniti: Yeah, I think we would, I feel we would age really quickly.

Glass: But you’re saying that we have to deaden ourselves in order to live.

Paterniti: I think we do; I don’t think we make enough time to eat, and if we haven’t made enough time to eat, then it’s better not to taste what we are eating. It’s easier.

So yeah. I think it’s just part of our biology that, in order to be totally present at any one time, we have to be totally displaced, mostly NOT there, most of the rest of the time.

Focus on Riding, not Bicycle

2010-02-18T17:11:00.000-08:00

This is basically my response to this piece on the Bike Portland blog... Bernadette posted a link on the Long Beach Cyclists page...

My personal goal is to help usher in the day when Long Beach is truly the most bike-friendly city in the USA and folks in Portland read the longbeachcyclists.com blog for inspiration. And one area where I hope we can take a different path is with what I think is a misplaced focus — where the focus is on the bicycle itself, rather than on the things you can do on ANY bicycle.

Portland seems to have stalled at around 10 % ‘bike mode share.’ I’ve seen Portland folks speculate that there’s a certain percentage of residents who look at cycling as a legitimate mode of transport, and that percentage is apparently around 10%. Right now, the Portland bloggers speculate, pretty much all the folks who WANT to cycle ARE cycling. If Portland wants to get their percentages significantly higher, they have to do things that will convince people to take another look at cycling and give it a try.

One way to ensure that this DOESN’T happen is to make people think that they need to spend thousands of dollars on their bicycles. While Marion’s article references others who found affordable solutions, when SHE elects to spend $700, it sends a strong signal — this is the optimal solution, and refurbishing a used bike or modifying a more affordable bike are less optimal solutions.

Now, I GET that yes, $700 is a GOOD DEAL for a bike that’s fully equipped, and that will last and last, and that will be passed down to the younger kids, and still have resale value at the end. But most Americans won’t spend that much on their OWN bike, let alone their kid’s bike.

And the other issue is the crazy idea that you NEED a bike with tons of features to ride around town. Marion wants a rack, fenders, hub generator, and lots of other features so her kid can get around the city. But while there are cool reasons why all these features are good for city riding, NONE of them is required. By spending too much effort and energy finding the perfect bike for city commuting, you necessarily send the message that city commuting is a specialized activity requiring specialized equipment that you can’t just attempt on any old bike. That’s not the way to significant bike mode share.

I think we need to be careful to de-emphasize the differences between different kinds of bikes in favor of embracing ANY bike as a perfectly good tool to do most tasks. Just get your bike, whichever kind it is, however much you spent on it, and get on it, and ride! Whichever city’s citizens take that message to heart is the city that gets a truly significant percentage of its commuters on bikes.

Crane Suzu Bicycle Bell

2010-01-19T15:42:00.001-08:00

I had to get one. I really did.

I had gotten an Incredibell for the loaner bike from my sister, but that one was made for a handlebar with a smaller circumfrence. When I got my new-to-me bike, I discovered that the Incredibell's bracket was too small to fit on my bike's Nitto handlebars. So I simply had to get a new bell.

Had to? Sure. It's the law. Seriously.

Signaling Device Required (10.48.080) No person shall operate a bicycle upon a sidewalk unless it is equipped with a bell, horn or other device capable of giving a signal audible for a distance of at least one hundred feet, except that a bicycle shall not be equipped with, nor shall any person use upon a bicycle, any siren or whistle. (Ord. C-6322 § 2, 1986).

Now, I don't ride on the sidewalk, except that I'm not sure what counts... for instance... the bike path that goes from Belmont Shore downtown along the beach... is that sidewalk? I think it technically may count as sidewalk, and so there you go. Or what about the LA River and San Gabriel Valley River trails? Sidewalk? Or not? Whatever. The law gives me an excuse.

So I got a Crane Suzu brass bell. My bike is mostly black, chrome/silver/lime green. The brass doesn't fit the color scheme. But it shouldn't. It is a gorgeous bell, and the tone is so perfect, and such sustain. It's awesome.

Practical Cycling -- Bike-Friendly Supermarkets

2010-01-14T11:01:00.000-08:00

One of the obstacles to more people cycling is really simple -- there aren't places to secure your bike. The city of Long Beach has installed hundreds of bike racks all over the city, and it open to putting up more where there's an identified need from businesses or cyclists. But this only works where a bike rack or two on the street does the trick, which is usually when we're dealing with smaller storefront businesses.

But the biggest non-work-commute trips that people make in their cars, the one that is usually well less than 2 miles each way, the one that could easily be made by bike, aren't trips to cafes and vintage clothing stores and other little storefronts served by bike racks the city can put out. The biggest trips are grocery store visits. And grocery store parking isn't a need that's best met by the city putting up racks on the sidewalk -- the grocery store is usually situated far away from the street. Bike parking needs to be in the form of racks or something similar that are close to the front doors of the supermarket. And the supermarket has to put them up and maintain them.

I am doing a survey of supermarkets in my area of Long Beach, looking for bike parking. Does the supermarket have racks? How many spaces? Does that seem to meet the need during busy hours? The idea is to get a feel for what the average supermarket is doing, first, and then to encourage supermarkets to put down more bike parking.

So far, I've seen some interesting things. Most supermarkets have racks, but often the racks are placed off to the dark, poorly lit side of the storefront, far from the doors. This is important because if the area isn't well-lit, people wont' feel as safe parking there leaving their bike there. And some supermarkets with no racks seem oblivious to how many people bike to the store.

The Superior market on Long Beach Blvd and 10th has no racks, but when I went there a couple nights ago, around 6pm, I counted 6 bikes parked there... they were secured to the shopping cart corral, because that was the only secure piece of thick metal available. The supermarket had recognized this was happening, because they had posted a sign outside in English in the corral area, saying no bike parking. But they hadn't figured out that they needed to provide a bike rack.

And the Ralphs at 4th, which I go to at least weekly via bike, HAS racks, but only space for four bikes. One of the spaces is unusable because the metal is bent together, so it prevents getting bike tires in. And during busy hours after work, there are more than 4 bikes at a time parked there. Plus, the rack is by the door the market closes when it's late. So if you visit Ralphs late at night, you are securing your bike on the side of the store that isn't getting as much foot traffic and is darker... it doesn't feel as safe as the other side. In fact, I've seen people just park their bikes without securing them by the door that IS used at night, rather than secure them by the locked door side.

And Trader Joes at 2nd and PCH - no bike racks. I can't believe it, and I must be wrong and need to go slowly through the whole area and see if I missed them, but I tend to avoid TJs now when on bike and actually go to Whole Foods across the street, because, although they are too expensive and irritating, they HAVE A PLACE TO LOCK BIKES.

Anyway. It's a silly, small thing, in a way, but it's really interesting, and I hope to get info that I can then use to get supermarkets to think of cyclists and do things to accomodate them.

Road Rage Driver sentencing

2010-01-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

Story in the LA Times about the sentencing of the doctor who slammed his brakes in front of those cyclists last year.

You can read the whole bunch if you want, but the comments that bothered me the most are those from people who relate their being inconvenienced, basically, by cyclists. The law is that people are supposed to share the road, but many people seem to think that they have a right to drive the speed limit or greater at all times, and that a cyclist in front of them making them slow down is inconsiderate at best, and violating the law at worst. There are calls for cyclists to stay in the bike lanes (which is getting to be like a ghetto) when the streets don't have bike lanes to begin with. So the writers are implicitly saying cyclists don't have the right to be on the streets without bike lanes.

Anyway. I think all the anger and frustration with cyclists isn't really anything to do with cyclists at all. I think it has to do with people being impatient because they overschedule themselves and are always running behind, and thus sensitive to every single perceived obstacle to their progress. So this is the comment I submitted:

Some of the most offensive comments on here are from people who THINK they are being reasonable. Several people recount their own stories of being forced to [gasp] slow down [shudder] because of bicyclists in front of them.

You know, it isn't your personal road, people. You have to share it. You may have conveniently forgotten, but you have had to slow down for other cars many times each week. You have had to slow down for pedestrians. And yes, you have had to slow down for cyclists. And yet you come here and seriously argue that because you have been delayed due to cyclists, that somehow this is a mitigating factor that somehow excuses attempted murder.

The real problem here is not the cyclist. The real problem is all of you who feel indignant that you are being impeded by cyclists and slow drivers and pedestrians.

Why don't get your damn schedule in order, and leave with enough time to make it to your destination without speeding and rushing around? That way you won't be driven into paroxysms of rage when you find yourself unable to drive as recklessly as you are accustomed.
If you can't manage that, then get a driver, take the bus, or [gasp] get on a bike. Just do something so that you don't have such idiotic anger at the prospect of having to share the road.
Posted by: Yoshiyahu Jan 8, 2010 3:22:29 PM

It's something I am very aware of, now that I don't drive. Sometimes the train is late. But I never stress, because there's no way my work or my family is going to be mad at me for the train being late. It's out of my hands. But when I was driving to work, there was always the feeling that I could make good time, or take shortcuts, or so something to cut the commute time, and all my hard work in being a sneaky and speedy driver could be ruined if I was stuck behind a cyclist. Not that I've ever been stuck behind a cyclist on my freeway commutes, but yeah. I am probably adding years to my life expectancy by taking the train and shedding all the stress from driving and feeling rushed.

Bicycling Questions

2010-01-06T15:21:00.001-08:00

As I cycle about more, and encounter more bike culture stuff, and think about things more from a cycling perspective, I have questions. Some aren't easily answered. Such as:

1) What's a good way to carry home your drycleaning via your bicycle?

2) Are Ghost Bikes a good idea? Do they do more good than harm?

I can opine on 2. It's the sort of question where I can see both sides. But 1? I have no clue. And I have drycleaning I need to pickup. I can walk it home, but that seems almost as much a copout as driving it home. Driving is easiest. I have the rear hook and hand-hold thingies to put freshly pressed clothes on. Walking is ok, except the wire hangers cut into the hands after a while (it's not that long of a walk, really, but shhh). I want to learn how to carry home drycleaning on a bike, but it's not something my opinion-oriented mind can resolve. Anything practical seems beyond my abilities.

Midnight Ridazz All City Toy Ride Recap

2009-12-29T12:32:00.000-08:00

Before I did the Toy Ride I wrote about my preparations. I never wrote about how the ride went. So I'll do that today.

First, the basic skeleton of the trip: I got a late start, making sure I had all my raingear, etc, and forgot to buy a toy. So I had to stop at Rite-Aid, which had a line. Then I hustled downtown to meet the contingent from Long Beach. I was late, but luckily I got to Long Beach Blvd and Broadway right when they were headed up Long Beach Blvd. We basically went all the way up LB Blvd to Santa Fe, to something or other, to Olvera St. Then we met the hundreds of other riders and rode around downtown, and then to the party in this lot around 4th St east of the river in this industrial area. I left before midnight to ensure I'd get the train on time.

The main theme of the trip: Lee brings up the Rear. I was riding the bike my sister had been loaning me, a 2003 Gary Fisher Napa, which is a perfectly good bike, but it has these kind of knobby tires (Hutchinson Acrobat) and it's not a bike meant for speed as set up. This became apparent as I quickly fell behind and had a hard time keeping up. Partly, this was because I just wasn't used to riding fast, at night, in the rain, with raincoat on, on LB Blvd. (Afterwards, I'd figure out it was due to the bike, but at the time, I figured it was cuz I was a wuss). Anyway, I'd catch up to the rest of the folks at rest stops, and John was nice enough to hang back with me for a while, and then Alan had the bright idea to have me go ahead with him so we got a headstart on the rest of the pack while they waited from the Downey contingent to meet up with them at Firestone and LB Blvd. We pulled pretty far ahead of the group, as it turns out, because of some delays on the part of the Downey folks, but we gave up all our lead when Alan got a flat. Watching Alan fix his flat was instructional, as I had no experience in such things.

Weather: On the ride up, it would stop raining, then sprinkle, most of the time. There were some downpours, but it wasn't continuously heavy rain. This was irritating. I had a poncho sort of shell but didn't want to have it on if I didn't need it. Plus, I had a cold, so I was feeling hot the whole time. So I didn't have on my rain gear the ride up, and didn't really need it that much. Once we all left Olvera street, then it started to really pour. By then, I had on my rain jacket, but I was having so much fun in the huge gaggle of cyclists, ringing our bells and running reds as a huge group while guys blocked cross traffic, that there was no way I'd be stopping to put on my rain pants. So my pants got soaked, and my helmet, so well-ventilated, allowed my head to get superwet. Plus, my glasses would get thoroughly covered in raindrops, and I'd have to keep wiping them off, and then they even got fogged up. Riding downtown in a huge throng of cyclists and not being able to see that well? Oh, it was exciting.

Interesting sights and sounds: On LB Blvd we passed a couple groups of working women in very skimpy dresses who were plying their trade in the rain. They appeared confused when we went by. A bit later, when we were around Vernon, we had some awful smells that are par for that area... then the weirdest thing happened. Suddenly we had the smell of the yummiest coffee replace the rendering plant/whatever smell, and up ahead appeared a coffee shop in the middle of the industrial area. Should have stopped. That was neat. And when we all rode around downtown, it was exhilarating being part of the huge group -- cars honked at us in a good way, people partying at nightclubs leaned out of the windows to wave and whistle and cheer us on... it was exciting to be a part of hundreds of bikes all lit up and tons of us ringing our bells....

Party: At the party, being soaked detracted from my willingness to mingle and meet new people.Here you can see a photo with Alan in the foreground, and me scowling in background, wet, confused, and anxious to get back to the train. The party went on all night, and folks who like to party seemed to be having a great time.

I wasn't too sure of where the nearest Blue Line station was, so I left the party early and biked downtown to 7th and Metro, then went to the Denny's on 8th and Fig and got a t0-go coffee and hit the facilities. Then I went to the Pico station and got the next train, which came after ten minutes or so. The next stop, Alan happens to pop into my car, which was funny, so we spent the ride home getting to know each other a bit.

The folks at the East LA Women's Shelter ended up getting a huge amount of toys, and that was the purpose, after all. The toys I donated: Mr Potato Head and an art set.

This is the spoke card that the Long Beach riders got (I think designed by Leslie). Everyone got the LA Midnight Ridazz spoke card as well. I am not one to put spoke cards on my bike, but I will keep those cards forever -- they are as important to me as my marathon medals, marking an important milestone in my cycling life, and hopefully the first of many fun rides.

Invariable Comments on Cycling stories.

2009-12-22T22:52:00.000-08:00

This is the comment I got into the latimes.com on a bicycling editorial.

All comments on anything bicycle related boil down to three:

1) Cars are evil. They are the Problem. Traffic congestion is good cuz people will stop riding cars. Peak oil is good cuz people will stop riding cars. The sooner we are forced to stop being gasaholics, the better. Oh, come soon, Lord King Messiah Peak Oil!

2) It's not about cars vs bikes, folks. It's about walking, cycling, and using public transit when it makes sense, and using cars when it makes sense -- since most trips are only a couple miles, why not use bikes instead? Bike kids to school. Bike to work. Or bike to the train or bus. Bike to the grocery store. It saves gas. It saves money. It saves gym membership fees. It makes you happier. It is fun. I mean, they make cool bike racks with BUILT-IN bottle openers, folks... Hurrah for bikes!

3) You know who rides the most bikes? The Pinko Commies in CHINA, that's who! After that, the SOCIALISTS in Europe! Barack HUSSEIN Obama wants to take your RIGHT to a car away from you and make you ride stupid bikes! And after they take away our bikes, they take away our GUNS!

Since I made this comment, I have realized that my list isn't complete. The ones I have more of less mark the ends and middle of the continuum of comments, but there are at least a couple consistently made that I can summarize right now as a) cycling is too dangerous -- there are too many crazy drivers out there who are inconsiderate and inattentive and b) cycling is too dangerous -- there are too many crazy cyclists who are inconsiderate and inattentive.

Anyway. I'll have to work on it. It's fun, because you really do seem to get at least one comment from each of these categories whenever you have an article about bicycles online.

Before Midnight Ridazz All-City Toy Ride

2009-12-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

So in an hour, I'll head out to Lincoln Park to meet up with the other riders heading up to LA for the Toy Ride -- everyone brings an unwrapped toy that ends up donated to the East LA Women's Shelter. It's a 21 mile ride, and they are going to do it via streets (instead of via the RIOLA bike path). It should be a lot of fun, but I wonder how many people will be doing the ride. Once we get there, we'll ride around downtown to Olvera St, and then there's a huge party that goes on all night. I am going to be catching the Blue Line back home (the last one leaves around 1250am) but yeah. Party people will be partying all night long. Real midnight ridazz are like that. I am just going along to soak up their glow.

I am Prepared. These are the things I got today.

Extra tube for my bike.
Tire irons.
First Aid kit.
Rain Jacket with Hood and Rain Pants (in case it really, really, really rains heavy)
Xmas lights (battery powered).
Planet Bike Blinky 3x mounted on my helmet.

The blinky officially makes me way, way, too lit up, but basically, the idea is that if I get hit by a car with all the lights I have, there's no way in hell anyone can say they didn't see me. So now, illumination-wise, I have

1) Planet Bike Beamer Headlight mounted on handlebars, steady
2) Knog Skink 4 led headlight mounted to the head tube, flashing
3)Trek Bar End red lights
4) Planet Bike Blinky 3x mounted to rear rack
5) Planet Bike Blinky 3x mounted to helmet

and this doesn't count the string of xmas lights. Again, the idea is both visibility and a bar to allegations of comparative liability in the even of a mishap. Not that my being way too lit up is necessarily going to stop allegations of fault -- when I handled auto claims, I had people who hit parked trucks allege the parked truck was somehow at fault. But yeah.

So now I realize that while I was buying all this stuff for me to ride the toy down to LA, I forgot to buy a toy. I'm smart like that. So I'm off to get a toy.

Compton Creek Tour

2009-12-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

This was a perfect Sunday -- I slept in till 9am, then had coffee and breakfast with Lana, then she went to poi and yoga class, and I biked to the Blue Line and met up with a bunch of other Long Beach Cyclists, for the Compton Creek ride.

We took the Blue Line to the 103rd St Kenneth Hahn station, and got there early enough so that a few of us went over to the Watts Towers for a few minutes. I hadn't visited the Towers in 20 years and it was neat to see the detail and beauty again.

Then we started our ride -- Alex Kenefick, with the LA and San Gabriel River Watershed Council, among other things, was the tour guide for our motley group of 19 cyclists.

We saw the different ways the Compton Creek was 'channelized' in different areas, learned about all the different authorities that had control over various parts of the creek -- County of LA, City of Compton, Army Corp of Engineers, how each entity had its own priorities and objectives with regard to the creek and river, and how that made planning and improving things challenging. We heard about some neat projects in the works to improve access to the Creek and create greenspace.

We spent most of the time riding along the Compton Creek on the bike path, and most of the time, we were the only ones on the bike paths. There were a lot of interesting situations where the bike path would stop at a major street, and there'd be no way to bike across the street, raised island, busy traffic, etc, and you could see how these problems would make using the bike path unappealing for people.

For lunch we stopped at Cliff's Texas Style, "Home of the Original 22" CliffHanger Burrito." 4 of us split a 22", and it was really, really good. Cliff himself, a really nice guy, very gracious and classy and funny, came out and sat with us, and we talked for a bit. It was a great lunch, really good food.

When we weren't on the Creek itself, we were riding through neighborhoods, and got to see a lot of neat stuff. I think one of the best parts of the whole bike ride was when we were riding down one residential street in Compton, and this little boy happened to be bringing his bike down his driveway to the street, "Oh, Wow!" he said as we all rode down the street waving, ringing our bells... and we rode through Richland Farms, an Equestrian neighborhood in Compton. I never knew this area existed, and it was so cool... horse properties with tons of people out riding their horses down the streets, some houses with roosters and chickens out front. And when you ride you get all the sights and sounds you miss in a car -- and the smells, too.

After the tour of the creek was officially ended, when we got to the point where the creek hit the LA River, near the Del Amo Blue Line station, those of us from Long Beach rode down the LA River trail back home. A Mariachi band was playing at a house along the river, a few hundred feet from us, and we stopped and listened to them play. When the song was over, we cheered them, they waved to us... that sort of stuff happened the whole time. That was something I wasn't expecting -- just a lot of neat little interactions with folks in their neighborhoods in a way you just wouldn't have happen if you were driving by.

It was a great day with great people.

Political Temperment test

2009-11-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

www.moral-politics.com

I am a registered Green, but I do not see myself as extremist. I am a very moderate, pragmatic person by nature. After taking this test and looking at results for other countries, I realized -- due to having an English mother, and spending time growing up in England and New Zealand, my idea of the appropriate role of government is very much mainstream English/European. I feel leftist compared to most Americans, but compared to Europeans, I'm a centrist.

You see the difference between US and Europeans especially with healthcare debate silliness. American conservatives are horrified at the idea of Socialized Medicine, but European conservatives like it just fine - some political commenter I forget pointed out that you don't hear European or Canadian conservatives complaining about their health systems and demanding a system more like America's.

Anyway. I have Billy Bragg's version of 'The Internationale' here somewhere...

Bicyling

2009-11-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

The current trial of Dr Christopher Thompson has people thinking and writing about bicycling rules and safety, with lots of articles popping up recently in places like Slate and the LA Times. And today, USA Today columnist Chris Woodyard takes on Long Beach's Sharrows on 2nd St, showing everyone who actually knows the area that he is clueless about the whole thing. And last week he did a column generally critical of bicyclists on the roads. And from the comments, it's clear that many people just hate bicyclists -- either they hate the $5000-road-bike-and-Spandex crowd that takes over the roads on the weekends. Or they hate the beat-up-old-Huffy-from-a-yardsale users who either can't afford a car or can't drive a car because they got a DUI and lost their license. Or they haven't got as far as noticing who rides what kind of bike -- all they know is that bicycles are on the roads and making them have to pay attention to the road, and brake and change lanes and other unreasonable things.

So it is an interesting time to start bicycling regularly. I just started a month ago, bicycling 1.5 miles from home to the Long Beach Bikestation, where I valet park my bike (for FREE) and then catch the Blue Line light rail to downtown LA. I have gotten a Bell helmet from Target that fits really well, And I have bought a rear rack, lights, bell and helmet mirror from Bikestation, and have figured out how to hang my backpack and grocery bags, like panniers, from my rear rack. I'm a bicycling fool, I am. With my 1.5 miles to and from the Bikestation, and my little rides to Ralphs and Fresh & Easy.

This isn't really the first time I have used a bicycle as transportation. For a time, I rode my bike 6 miles each way from home to Cal State Fullerton, and then another 4-6 miles to my jobs at the library or Disneyland, then 3-5 miles or so back home. I did this until my dad got an old pickup as a second car and we didn't have to do it any more, unless my sister was using the pickup.

At the time, I was just doing it because it beat the bus, and I had no car. But today, it's a little different. Rather than living in the middle of a suburb built for cars, I am living in Long Beach, with stores and entertainment within easy walking and biking distance. It's actually simpler to ride the bike than drive the car. It's more fun. And I drive my car for work, if I have to travel, or when I drive my daughter to her mom's and do some shopping. That ends up being once or twice a week I'm in the car. Other than that, I don't use it. Which reminds me-- I have to tell my insurance agent so I can get a break on my car insurance.

And another benefit of being in Long Beach is how there's a real bicycling community. There are lots of folks getting around on bikes, there are bike rides and events for bikes (like the 50 mile full-moon ride tonight that I am not doing, although I want to) and a city with a serious desire to make the city more bike-friendly and the dollars to do it. And there are lots of committed activists and enthusiasts to learn from and listen to.

Anyway. Bicycling. Good.

Uh, oh. I forgot to love my virus into leaving.

2009-10-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

And here it is, weeks later, still lingering, still giving me headaches and dizzyness and body aches and a general sense of being off and ill. I should have been doing my creative visualization I talked about, sitting down and nurturing my poor viral visitors into confidence and self-esteem so they could, like mature viruses, leave the nest and strike out on their own.

But I forgot. And the virii have apparently stayed on and make me feel icky.

Or it's not virii at all, but an infection. I need to figure out the answer, because the ways you creatively visualize with virii and bacteria are totally different. A lot of the stuff you try with virii, the bacteria will have none of. I am very much against visualizing violence against a virus or cancer. But bacteria? All they understand is violence.

Oh, of course, I don't mean all bacteria. Some of my best friends are bacteria. You know, the kind you get in Activia and Yakult. Those are good bacteria, helpful bacteria, pleasant and peaceful. Not the shiftless, evil, no-good, rock throwing, bomb-belt-wearing bacteria I inveigh against here.

If I have a bacterial infection, I'll proclaim, in my best Inquisitor voice, "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoset." And then I'll destroy them all. Just like the end of Apocalypse Now. But in my body. Ouch!

Sure, the good bacteria will die, too. But I can always buy more Activia and Yakult and repopulate the good. So it's OK.

Gandhi = Evil

2009-10-28T14:32:00.001-07:00

When Obama got the Nobel Prize, and people pointed out Gandhi didn't get one, I was thinking "Well, of course that sleazy hypocrite never got one!"

This article is a good briefing on why Gandhi, in my opinion, is about the worst person in the world we should be emulating today.

Why is Albom crap? Or: It's a Wonderful Life Sucks. Ikiru is Awesome.

2009-10-27T15:37:00.001-07:00

I know Mitch Albom is awful, awful, awful. And it's not merely because he's sentimental. Rather, he's mawkish. Not sweet, but treacle... not simple, but simplistic. And he does it on purpose, writing books easily digested by 4th graders.

According to an article online, his favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life. Which made me think.

What makes It's a Wonderful Life suck, and makes Ikiru one of the best movies of all time? To me, Ikiru and It's a Wonderful Life take on the same issues, but Ikiru does so with honesty and integrity.

But there's much more to it, and it comes down to small differences and huge ones and it's all too much to think about right now.

When I can rewatch both movies and think about it, I'll have the best blog entry ever, and I'll be able to explain it so well that not only will I make sense, but people will even put the Albom books down and pick up something good instead, something that may be sweet, but even more important, is nourishing.

Fighting this Cold.

2009-10-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

I am Fighting my Cold.

It's one of the things required of patients. (At least in the West -- we'll ignore Ayurveda's totally different take on sickness cuz it's too rational and unfun.) We must be in the right mindset to fight our illnesses. We fight our diseases. It makes a difference. Are you going to roll over and let that disease kick your wimpy ass? Or are you going to learn to defend yourself?

When Sally gets cancer, we reassure ourselves that Sally will be ok -- after all, she's a fighter. Meaning that she'll what? Well, that she'll do what everyone else will do. She'll dutifully go for her treatments. She'll take her vitamins. But beyond that, she'll adopt a hostility toward her disease. She'll think of her cancer cells as illegal aliens, as Nazis, as BHO himself if need be, and she'll creatively visualize the most horrific violence being perpetrated against the evil Cancer cells. Because the Cancer is definitely attacking her. And Sally is not going to take it. She's fighting back. She's going to beat it.

I have never been much for fighting. I may have blogged years ago about my way of thinking... I want to have people creatively visualize their cancers as themselves, basically. After all, cancer is when the cells refuse to die. The cancer cells are having trouble letting go and facing their mortality, just like we are having trouble. So if cancer patients visualize holding their little scared cancer cells in their arms and rocking them, comforting them, telling them it'll be ok, helping their cancer cells transition from this plane to whatever awaits beyond the veil. Surely that will work just as well as imagining hatred and violence and destruction.

So that's what I should do with my cold.... it lingers, and then my body aches come back, and clearly the virus(es) in my body are not ready to go. They clearly are enjoying being here on this world, in my body. And why wouldn't they? The weather is beautiful. I have a beautiful family, and great coworkers. The virus has been living vicariously through me the last couple weeks, and is enjoying my life too much. So I have to hold my cold virus close, rock it, whisper to it, tell it that there's a whole world out there to explore, loads of wonderful hosts within which they can explore the world.

myspace and Decemberists

2007-01-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

i've been blogging on myspace. yeah. and here. a verse from a Decemberists song with an amazingly creative use of fontanelle. Damn.

My crane wife arrived at my door in the moonlight
All star bright and tongue-tied I took her in
We were married and bells rang sweet for our wedding
And our bedding was ready when we fell in

The sound of the keening bell
To see its pain erect
Soft as fontanelle
The feathers and the thread
And all I ever meant to do was to keep you
My crane wife
My crane wife
My crane wife

Myspace Mania & Self-Portrait Photo

2006-12-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

Lee's Myspace! If you get here, please go there and req an add. I need all the friends I can get.

I wanted to take photos yesterday and my daughter was having none of it so I took myself. This actually turned out well as far as the cropping and tone and sharpening goes, i think. It's perhaps a teeny bit oversharpened but to me looks like what I get in the mirror. My eyes are hazel and can change from more brown to more green, as here. Course, you can't do this with photos of other people, of course... no woman would allow you to have this much accuracy in the skin and pores and hairs... and I'm not shaving over vacation, so there.

Happy New Year to all.

Gringo

2006-12-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

I took this photo a month ago but it's still worth posting now because, well, because it's so damn cool. This is Gringo, my girlfriend's sister's family cat.

Hamas -- a Delightful Oddity

2006-12-19T10:27:00.000-08:00

Arabs love to say that they aren't anti-Semites, since they, too, are Semites. And perhaps they have a point, because there are certain similarities between Arabs and Jews that bring home our shared ancestry. For example, Chutzpah.

You have to love the PA Prime Minister, Ismael Haniyeh. He now proclaims that while Hamas and the Palestinians remain dedicated to wiping Israel of the face of the map, they are willing to offer an extended 20 year truce if Israel returns to 1967 borders. Such an offer! Allow Hamas to grow unchecked, developing better weapons, perhaps obtain nukes, ensure each family has huge families, all sorts of preparation, so that on the first day of the 21st year, they can overrun Israel and demolish the state. Oh, yeah.

And of course, although no European country would accept such a bizarre and outdated sort of truce, the Europeans will be shoving each other aside for the opportunity to exhort Israel to take the deal.

I have to work on being more positive, but if I pay attention to the news it's just not happening.

Chanukah Shopping Day Off!

2006-12-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

Here is out Chanukkiah with its candles anxiously waiting. Burn, baby, burn! It is chanting in its high-pitched metal voice! It's bothering me so much that I am going to have to leave now and run errands. The first thing I'll do is go to the Fairfax district and see if I can get an oil chanukkiah and some gifts, then buying food for Shabbat and the rest.... it's going to be a great weekend.

Last night I had an odd experience. My sister had a wrap party for the movie she just produced and starred in at a karaoke bar in Burbank. It was weird seeing her in her movie-producing mode with all the producers, directors, editors, etc etc, all excited and eager and animatedly sharing info and their ideas and projects in development. These people are mostly still trying to make it big but I could tell they were also happy to be living their dreams. It was a reminder of the wonderful power of Hollywood and the opportunities it gives to millions of people to make their creative mark on the world. It was cool.

I gotta go!

Barak HUSSEIN Obama

2006-12-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

I love how Republicans are already desperate enough that they are getting the word out that Hussein is Obama's middle name. Now, some have implied that Obama thinks his middle name is a liability because he doesn't have his middle name written anywhere on his senate stuff and other records, but then again, lots of people have middle names and don't use them. I don't think I've every done anything other than use my middle initial, and that's not because I'm trying to hide my middle name.

I think that if Barak Obama runs, that's it. He wins. And this is the reason why. Historically, people would be racist on skin color alone. Today, I don't think it's so much the skin color as the 'blackness' of one's attitude and bearing about which people who are reactive about such things feel negatively. And Barak Obama is able to pass for white in the demeanor department. Now, people who historically may have been resistant to black folks are itching to prove that they aren't racist. 50 years ago otherwise decent folks would straight-out declare their racism as a matter of common sense. No more. Only extremists are racist in the old way. Most folks who are scared/disgusted by black hip-hop culture long to prove to everyone including themselves that it's not the race. Me, for instance -- I hate hiphop but can quickly wheel out music from blacks or prominently featuring them to prove I'm not racist -- Stew/The Negro Problem, TV on the Radio, Bloc Party, Common, Blackalicious, Hendrix, of course -- and many other white folks are like me, I think. We don't go round thinking of things in race terms but find ourselves not digging current black culture and feel obliged to defend ourselves. What better way to prove that you are jiggy wid it than casting your vote for Obama?

Even the most conservative folks love to have black people they can support -- Colin Powell, Alan Keyes, TD Jakes. And Barak Obama doesn't have to win their votes anyway - he just has to win enough moderate votes to pair with the Democratic base. And he'll get those votes. Put someone like McCain against him and McCain loses the same way Dole did. Nice guy, let's keep him in the Senate, just too old and played, whereas our guy is the Future. Put someone like Guiliani, and he loses -- it's populist speechmaker against populist speechmaker, and Guiliani isn't really good at that stuff -- he's still running off of the fact that he happened to be around at 9-11. Put a real conservative against Obama like Frist and Frist loses -- the country doesn't want a conservative ideologue -- they want someone who will bring the country together. A conservative can try that language but it won't fly. Obama can do it convincingly. Bush won the first time on this sort of positive platform and beat Gore's petulant smug act. Obama can talk to us and not talk at us like Gore was prone to do.

I need to get my Obama 08 bumper sticker. Not to put on my bumper, mind you -- in LA only tacky people have bumper stickers on their bumpers -- but maybe i'll tape it to the inside of my rear window facing out.

The insane things you do for money.

2006-12-07T14:57:00.000-08:00

Notice how many people are ill recently? Seems everyone has the cold or the flu. I only had a couple days of fever and I seem now to be getting better but last night and today I've had a KILLER headache. Not a migraine, but sinus-y pressure. So last night I went to bed with a headache, and though I slept fine, this morning I woke up with a headache.

And then I drove 120 miles to a meeting with a headache. And then I presented at the meeting. And then I drove 120 miles back. Since I was driving along the 5 Freeway from San Diego, I spent some of the time driving along the coast. The freeway goes through the Camp Pendleton Marine base, which is mostly hills and scrub the Marines train on. So I often see military aircraft and vehicles when I go by. Today was all helicopters -- little helicopters hovering over the beach, big helicopters making wide circles... like my military knowledge? You then go by the San Onofre nuclear plant, which is always fun, because of the cameo it plays in The Naked Gun.. Did I mention I still had my headache? And now, a couple hours later, still have the headache. Woo hoo. It's a good one. And tomorrow I fly to the Bay Area for a meeting and then back. Sinus problems + plane == Pain. All to make my customers happy.

I'm Sick/Lionel Richie is Huge in the Middle East

2006-12-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

When I got up this morning I thought I was feeling much better, and I guess I am. Not much bodyache, no fever, no dripping. But when I am seated here at my desk and trying to work I realize I am still off... my balance is easily messed with and my stuffy head is affecting my sense of balance, and I am coughing a lot more than I was conscious of at home. It must be irritating for those around me.

But enough about me. Lionel Richie. That's big news. There's a guy who is coming out with an article apparently entitled "Lionel of Arabia." I heard about it on the NPR news this morning. As this article from earlier this year says,Lionel Richie is huge in the Middle East... it's very funny. People love him there. He partially attributes it to his looks -- he could pass for any one of the many peoples in the region. The guy told a story about when Lionel Richie was at a resort in Sardinia, I think -- he had one couple come up to him and gush how they got married to "Truly" and as they were doing this, another couple came up to him and noticed the first couple and there was an awkward pause as they looked at each other, and then the second couple started to gush how they got married to "Truly" and then out came the wedding photos, etc... turns out that one couple was Israeli, the other Lebanese, and they were both government officials and had been at that resort for years and years and always stayed on opposite ends to keep away from each other... but what did they have in common to reach across the chasm of apprehension? Lionel Richie, of course. So cool. And when the US bombing of Baghdad started, people started playing "All Night Long" in the streets. Anyway.

Wordie!

2006-12-03T23:01:00.000-08:00

OK, this is something that has to be a sign of nerdiness, but I love Wordie!. very cool idea. just make lists of words. What words, why -- that's all up to you. It's fun to see what words other people have. You get a feel for people and the kinds of words they list. And some lists are really neat -- here is a list of words used in Decemberists songs! Anyway. If you don't think this is interesting, you are definitely not a nerd.

I am feeling better but still sick and now I must sleep.

Bodum!

2006-12-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

i took this photo of my Bodum Assam thermal mug. It's hand-blown and has two layers, see? That way the inside is hot and the outside stays cool. Or visa versa. And check out how you can see all the glory of my kind-of-capuccino? Or is this a latte? Well, you can see for yourself!

Home Sick

2006-12-01T09:57:00.003-08:00

But that's ok. I've just discovered expertvillage.com.

So far, I've learned

1. How to build and play a Theramin.
2. How to build a straw bale house.
3. How to tell the differences between wildcat and coyote tracks.

This website kicks ass. I can actually use the tracking information, too, as there are often this sort of tracks after a rain when I hike the local trails.

I'm learning stuff from expertvillage.com, but that's not why I feel like I'm in college again. That's because of Rabbi Joe in Jerusalem's NP3 podcast. which is well over an hour a week on each Torah portion. I am learning a lot and also managing to keep up each week and read each portion. Past five years I've always petered out, read for a few weeks, forgotten, so this year I'm keeping up better. Not reading the Haftorah each week, but hey. Small steps. So it's like I'm taking a class because I listen to Rabbi Joe each week, read the material, think about it, and then post my observations and thoughts. Then, because so far, few people are posting, Rabbi Joe responds to what I put. It's cool, but I hope that soon there will be too many people commenting and it's too popular, beacuse people would get a lot out of it.

This week's portion, Va-Yetzei, is chock full of stuff we deal with in modern life and rabbis use it to talk about how we have to deal with the messiness off the world -- people like Laban that are going to cheat and swindle and try to take advantage, and we have to act like Jacob and have dignity and do our best anyway. Jacob has struggled all his life in one way or another and now he must have to struggls to keep up with the demands of starting a people and keeping all these women happy while raising mostly boys and selectively breeding sheep. Chaotic stuff! And I can't get around thinking that Jacob would be seen by the average American guy as the luckiest guy ever. He is married to two women and he's always having sex with them because they are always trying to have kids. And the moment they stop, they are offering up their handmaidens for him to have sex with so they'll have kids. But once you get past the sex, you see that Jacob has to be one tired guy. He's having relationships with four women. Even if it's the most patriarchal of relationships, there's still an awful lot going on, plus all the inevitable jealousies and competition and having to guard against what happened to his grandmother Sarah and her issues with Hagar... anyway. I've read this stuff before but never thought about it enough to get inside their heads a bit.

What if....

2006-11-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

...we lived in a Christian nation?

It's funny that right-wingers claim that the US was established as a Christian nation and that we have a lot of "G-d Bless the USA" sentiments and the like, but when it comes to thinking and behavior that Christians would identify as Christian thought and behavior, most people aren't doing it. Just check this story out from CNN ... a woman has a Christmas wreath in the shape of a Peace sign and her Association is telling her to take it down -- a few people see it as bashing the war effort in Iraq, in which their kids are serving.

Of course, the Jesus encountered in the gospels didn't make any statements against war, but the story says angels pronounced "Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards Men" when he was born. One of Jesus' names is "The Prince of Peace." While the Peace sign was created by the anti-nuke movement, it's moved into general usage where most users don't attach lefty sentiments to it at all. So it's fitting to use it in order to express how Jesus = Peace on Earth, surely? Apparently not in SW Colorado. This area has one of the highest-concentrations of Evangelicals in the country, and we know we have right-wing Christians involved as there are claims that the Peace sign is Satanic -- who but a Christian believer will label anything Satanic? Anyway. It's weird. Honestly, I think that this nation is Christianist, if that's a word, but not Christian. The US has the trappings but not the soul. Except the Mennonites and Amish and Quakers, perhaps.

Car Issues and Hashem

2006-11-21T11:54:00.000-08:00

So. I have had a tire with a slow leak and the leak got faster. I was going to have just that tire fixed, but then I realize, I'm traveling to San Jose for Thansgiving via my car with my daughter and girlfriend in the car -- I need to have my car roadworthy! I need to get this tire fixed but what about the others? What about the oil? Brakes? Nothing terrible but I need maintenance! SO I take the car to a service place near the train station and they are doing all the necessary work. Thank goodness I took it in because they found some other issues that would have been big hassles on the trip if I hadn't fixed things. The guy running the shop is really nice, a lay "Assemblies of God" minister with a son who's also a minister and he's really nice. Anyway. I feel lucky that the slow leak was bad enough I noticed -- otherwise I'd have not thought about this stuff at all and I could have ended up with any number of problems, so that's definitely counts as G-d helping me. Don't get me wrong, this sort of thing happens every second of every day, but most of the time it's too subtle for us to notice the way that G-d is helping us and giving us challenges. Anyway.

My Chemical Romance? Who Knew?

2006-11-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

So, my brother the professional musician had mentioned My Chemical Romance before but I wasn't paying attention. So when he did it again in this raving tone that I don't often hear from him about bands that get mTV play, I thought I'd check them out to be polite.

Bizarre. The lead singer witnessed the Eleventh of September attacks in NY where he was a cartoonist. And as a result he decided to do something productive with his life.

So he went and joined the Peace Corp? Uh, no. He volunteered to read to shut-ins? Nope. He started a rock group.

Ok, fine. So the good causes are missing a bright-eyed young volunteer. But the world has a band that's made one kick ass album, The Black Parade. I think as a 41 year-old I may technically be forbidden to listen to this, but until They come to stop me I'll enjoy it.

Matisyahu's "Youth" says "Youth is the Engine of the World" and this is doubtless true. The energy of Youth drives things for good or for ill. Recently I think it's for huge Good, as surveys of the young are showing such compassion and concern for each other and the world that researchers have labeled these kids the "We" generation. But it's very sad that the particular youths in My Chemical Romance have made a great album that, like other great albums is obsessed. But unlike most rock, with Death. And it's sad that post 9-11, it's perfectly understandable.

We have a gorgeously conceived and realized piece of work that captures the anxious place that the world is at the early stages of this War of Terror. Fewer people are dying in wars than ever before, but we are feeling more unsafe, more aware of the transience of this existence, it seems. It's more on the surface. We used to have music that rocked like this obsessed with getting really slutty girls to have sex with you. Perhaps in the 70s many of the people singing about drunken sex were doing so to get away from the anxiouness from death. But now we're not even able to do that as a culture.

Sure, sex is there in hip hop, but honestly, it doesn't even feel real. It's too tied to the business of pornography and strip joints. The guys do it to demonstrate absolute power over the women. But hip-hop's women do it for the money. And the guys don't care as long as the woman is on her knees so that it there's at least the appearance of domination for his friends to see.

Anyway. For a wonderful album that will make you feel sad and worry about how best to live your life as you slide inexorably towards the gaping maw of Death... My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade.

Powells -- Proof of G-d's Existence?

2006-10-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Powell's Books is the most insanely cool bookstore in the world. Portland has many neat things to recommend it as a city to visit but the number one reason for me is Powells. The City of Books. Takes up a whole building. It's in sections and they actually have a fold-out map to the bookstore. Pretty darn cool. All the new books are arranged alongside the used books so often you can choose betweeen new and used of the same book, which is very cool. And they have a coffeeshop in one corner. But you can't get to it directly. You have to discover the entrance by walking through the whole store so it's like a secret.

If I could live anywhere in the United States it would be Portland. You have lots of historical buildings and new shiny scrapers in a manageable city gorgeously laid out right next to a river with drawbridges and all sorts of other neat stuff. People walk all over. People ride bikes all over. Everyone is cooler in Portland. In Portland people are just fucking cool. In Portland everyone's reading and drinking and there are tons of great microbrews. It rains a lot. It's so damn green it's like your RGB balance is off.

And they have the best bookstore in the world. Seriously. I am not sure that there is an afterlife, but Powell's is all the proof I need that there is a G-d. When I am enclosed in its warm, full, and enfolding stacks, I feel like I am in Olam Habba. Seriously.

Gut Shabbos to you.

Hartford trip Photos

2006-10-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

I'm too lazy to put them here. Go see them here.

There are Limits

2006-10-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Ok. Went to D-Land last Friday. Stuff is decorated for Halloween. Including the Haunted Mansion.

Huh?

Isn't that like trying to tart up a prostitute? Isn't the Haunted Mansion, by its very nature, more than Halloween-y enough?

Well, of course it is. Perhaps if you think about D-land's mania for beating the crap out of every cross-selling opportunity, it will start to make more sense. And so the Haunted Mansion is being used as a giant 3-dimensional billboard to advertise a movie. Their movie The Haunted Mansion was a flop. So which movie? The Nightmare before Christmas. Very odd. Kind of cute. But it's contrived and fake and such a stretch. It just didn't feel right. The regular Haunted Mansion was spookier and scarier. The folks at D-Land must have immediately been confronted by someone on the planning team raising the simple objection that uh, the Haunted Mansion, the essence of Halloween, does not need to be decorated. It IS Halloween already. And everyone else saw a boundary to be crossed and decided they had to go for it, that some was good, but more would be better.

I think the same sort of unnatural stretching is being used in the new movie The Short Bus. Rather than just have explicit sex in pornographic movies, the makers of this film (including the actors - the movie was kind of a collaborative/collective thing) decided to make a movie that had explicit sex but was a real movie with a real story and themes. It's getting mixed reviews, more good than bad. Of course, many mainstream reviewers are just not going to see the movie. No serious religious reviewers (except pagans, perhaps) will see the movie. And those who DO see the movie and write for papers like the Village Voice, LA Weekly, etc, all the Alternative press, will be under pressure to praise the movie, because we live in a world where a movie like this is, merely because it transgresses all sorts of boundaries, deemed Art.

(And we all know that today, we are too intelligent to think that Art can be Bad. It's all Subjective. And so it's all Good. So the same movie without explicit sex? That can be judged on its merits, but toss in explicit sex? That's Good merely because it makes some people uncomfortable. No effort, of course, can be made into investigating whether the uncomfortable people have a legitimate critique, because their critique is Just Their Opinion. All opinions besides positive ones are Just Their Opinion.)

Anyway. Haven't seen the movie. But sex in movies, real or faked, is problematic --

Most of the time, as appears to be the case in this movie, not really necessary to tell the story, and thus gratuitous. Stories of love and lust have been told for what, a hundred years in film? Hundreds of years in books? And there are thousands of great books dealing with these issues perfectly well without explicit sex.

But sometimes, sex is necessary to tell the story. Unfortunately, that sex is generally transgressive and abusive and so very hard to watch, and probably damaging to whoever sees it. The best example of this is Irreversible, the 2004 French film that had a nine-minute, brutal anal-rape scene, among other terrible things. But the violence and transgression and horror of this protracted, real-time violation is a central part of the movie and not at all gratuitous. The movie, thematically, is all about the permanent damage done by all sorts of terrible things. Similarly, another French film, Baise-moi, that came out a couple years earlier, deals thematically with violence towards and marginalization of women by having its female characters spend the movie having sex and killing men. Similarly, there is nothing gratuitous about the sex or violence in Monster.

Perhaps I am arguing that all happy sex that ends well is gratuitous, and I think that's a perfectly valid argument. For instance, some scenes in movies take place in bathrooms. Do we need to show streams of urine leaping from privates to urinal or bowl? Do we need to hear the shit plopping into the water, the farts echoing from the walls? Course not. We get the idea. We know what a bathroom involves. And there are boundaries that are not violated if one is wise. We are still reeling from the idiocy of the Baby-boomer generation deciding that boundaries were bad because they stopped movement past a point. But sometimes, there need to be boundaries. We do not see a problem with guardrails on curves or staying to one side of the yellow lines when driving. We understand the need for walls and roofs. We don't think it's necessary to poke our heads into a jet engine simply because we're told not to. Often, the boundaries of society are much more important for us, and yet because the consequences of violating the boundaries are not immediately apparent, people think the boundaries archaic, sexist, prudish, reactive.

Well, off to work.

And Good Shabbos to all.

The Easiest Mitzvah for Me

2006-09-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

.... is Bikkur Cholim, visiting the sick.

My coworker is in hospital and I saw her last night. It's hard for me to do most mitzvahs but for some reason, perhaps because when I was a child, I wasn't allowed in.

I remember going to visit my great-grandmother in a nursing home. They didn't allow children in there so she waved to me from a window. I never saw her other than that that I can remember. And of course when my mom gave birth to my brother and I was eight I couldn't go in and my dad showed my sister and I my mom's window and we waved to the window.

My dad was in the hospital when I was in high school and I visited him, of course. Then my friend Richard got a brain tumor and I visited him in hospital before he died. It's just an easy thing that seems to me like such a no-brainer. I mean, you get credit for just showing up. How hard is that? For me, it's easy, and I like it. I like the fact that by simply showing up I can make someone feel better. I like taking my daughter and teaching her this mitzvah. I can do it better, but I can do it. And for whatever reason, others can't-- it's too hard for them because they HATE hospitals. I like them, even though they are lonely places. But it's easy to make them happy and comfortable, all you need is visitors. Anyway. tons of mitzvahs I can't do, don't do, don't even know about. Visiting the Sick? I'm making good progress on this one. Especially that it's this week. I am not mature enough not to want to make G-d happy. Look! I'm doing a mitzvah!

Speaking of G-d, I feel like the couple in Ushpizin. Right when I was worrying about how I was going to come up with the money to pay for my daughter's 8th grade trip to DC and New York, lo and behold, I get a settlement on this class-action lawsuit I had with an old employer... many times more money than I need.

I remember a year or so ago I was in a gas station and this guy came in and started talking to another guy in line and basically started 'witnessing' not to proselytize but to share. He was just out of jail, newly clean and sober, trying to find a job, struggling, and was talking about the good things that had happened to him. He said something along the lines of "If He's taking care of me like this when I haven't even got all my shit together, can you imagine what my life's gonna be like when I'm really together and walking with Him?" It was the most sincere expression of gratitude to G-d I've ever heard and I think of that now. G-d is showering me with gifts and love and assistance and I'm so weak and wimpy in my attention to G-d and what G-d needs me to do in this world. Can you imagine what my life will be like when I really get going? (Don't tell me about the increased challenges that come along with increased practice and discipline... shhh).

So, anyway, when I got the check I immediately got out my prayerbook and called my girlfriend to have her say a blessing with me, and we said "Baruch ata Hashem, hatov v'hamaytiv" - Blessed is G-d who is Good and who Creates Good. And then she tells me that just when SHE was worrying about how she was going to pay her taxes and other expenses this month, today SHE got an unexpected check in the mail that more than covered things.

Now, on one level I think we are probably the weakest little baby souls because G-d has made our lives so easy, but I'm very glad to have such a doting Father to overlook our failings and help us and shower us with love and help.

Today I am a Data Entry Clerk Idiot

2006-09-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

and I hate it and honestly, it's my own damn fault.

I had a spreadsheet with 10,000 lines of addresses. And for reasons too complicated to go into, I was supposed to have 800 rows interspersed throughout with UNKNOWN for street and city. And, well, I had them as UNKNOWN for street but the city wasn't UNKNOWN. If I had caught this when it was still in a spreadsheet, it would have been a minute to correct. But now it's on a mainframe database that's really, really archaic. And honestly, there's probably some really neat way I could program a subroutine in FOCUS to start at the bottommost row of data, count up x spaces and replace the existing text at position 70 with the string "UNKNOWN" and do it again and again until we get to row 1, but to learn how to do this in FOCUS would take longer than it will to just manually go through the dataset and hit CTL-V over and over once my cursor is over the appropriate place. And because our mainframe is so archaic it takes SO long to transfer from the mainframe to your PC, and to re-upload the data requires you to break it into smaller chunks... anyway. And let me tell you, I am at line 2669 of 10024, and boy, am I bored. I hate this junk. though having it done is pretty satisfying. I gotta get back to it.

Smoooooooooooooooth Jazz

2006-09-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

I'm in a hotel room in Phoenix, just got here. I got a container of Hershey's Kisses from the management (heck, yeah, that's going to make me stay here from now on)... and now I'm typing while the Kisses melt in my mouth and the radio plays the local "Smooth Jazz" format station, 95.5, The Coyote. Along with the a/c, it's helping me to stay as cool as possible. It was jarring getting outside and feeling how hot it was at 8:30pm... 90-something. That's normal Phoenix, I guess, but it's always an adjustment.

The new year is turning out so well. And I had a headache on the plane but I prayed a bunch for help with it and I just realized it's gone. Thanks, G-d. I have spent a couple days in the hospital-- visiting others and helping others, not as a patient... this old guy in his late, late 80s is having heart issues. He was holding court with all of us gathered around, wonderful cogent and clever, making jokes and smiling, and he told us about how a nurse had been rushed in the morning, telling him she couldn't help him, she had other patients to see. They got mad at each other, and after a while, he said he realized that it wasn't going to help either of them to be mad, so next time she came in, he said "Let's start over. I want us to be friends." And she was very touched and now they are indeed friends.

This was on Rosh Hashanah, by the way... I hope he's out of hospital well before Yom Kippur. Anyway. I gotta sleep.

Beautiful Portland, OR

2006-09-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Is so very pretty this evening, with low-clouds everywhere except at the horizon, where the sun is happily sliding rays of light through whatever holes in the clouds in can find. Very Pretty. And, of course, Portland's endless trees and green, and the gorgeously wet and river-y Willamette River are both so unlike Southern California and so like New Zealand, where I spent formative years of my childhood... although I lived in Auckland, which is on an isthmus and not near a river at all, but hey. Close enough.

Unfortunately, I have to leave tomorrow right after the meeting so I can fly back home early enough to make Rosh Hashanah dinner, or I'd stop by what should be Portland's #1 tourist destination -- Powell's Books.

Anyway. I'm off to dinner with my coworkers.

L'Shana Tovah etc etc etc

2006-09-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'd have said the rest if I knew it and I don't feel like looking it up cuz that would be cheating. Happy New Year, may you be Inscribed for a wonderful 5767 with all sorts of good things.

For me, I am taking the advice of aish.com in an email they sent about not trying to do everything all at once. For the New Year, make one resolution that you can keep. They used the acryonym S.M.A.R.T. --

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-Based

and it obviously involves not just making the right resolution for one area of your life that needs improvement but figuring out the WAY in which you phrase and keep the resolution to ensure that it's doable.

I know that I want to focus on scheduling and that's it for this year. Many of my personal and work issues are all related to ADD and scheduling/procrastinating/etc challenges. But as far as how to attack the issue for the coming year in a way that's specific, measurable, etc etc? No idea.

And of course I have a flight in a few hours and I have to leave for that. And any emphasis on scheduling highlights the importance of my Palm organizer and mine is a couple years old and having issues with the power connector -- the connection is loose so sometimes it doesn't charge. SO I need a new Palm... which I can't adfdford. ARGHH.

What problems to have! Our lives are so easy. :)

Dead Yucca

2006-09-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

I saw this while hiking and knew it would make a good black-and-white photo. I may not have succeeded in making a good black-and-white photo but I hope you see the potential. :)

Canisters

2006-09-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

Messing around at night in the kitchen.
So anyway. The canisters are a deep psychological symbol of our varying personae and how they hold emotions and paradigms, and... oh, never mind. They are just pretty canisters.

It's almost Rosh Hashanah. Every year I am surprised. How can I be surprised by an event that's every year? Perhaps because I am never in tune with the Hebrew calendar and the High Holy Days move about? Nah. I'm just disorganized.

CNN and the Cruel and Lazy Failure of Professionalism and Decency.

2006-09-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

CNN is rehashing the Eleventh of September, 2001 by showing reporting from five years ago minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow, thus proving that CNN has learned nothing from September 11th. This is Evil on many ways. Primary among them --

Lazy

CNN doesn't have to do any sort of meaningful analysis of the events five years ago and really, really dig into the issues of security, freedom, and loss that are of vital importance, because they can just redo the footage from five years ago. Saves money on reporting, editing, etc. Cost-cutting laziness.

Unprofessional

This is much different than CNN offering archived newsfootage to review online or the LA Times offering old issues in its archives. Because it's real time, its only possible effect is to place viewers in the exact same place they were five years ago, stunned and in shock. And to put people in the same place they were five years ago, for a supposedly major news organization, is a major abdication of professionalism. This is not what news organizations are supposed to do. Otherwise CNN can just show us footage of robberies and murders and car crashes all the time and call it news.

Cruelty

Is the most important thing about the attacks of the Eleventh of September the physical way in which they happened? Is this how we think of events that effect us? Do the families of people who have suffered assaults or rapes spend each anniversary going through each second of the assault, the cruelty, the pure evil inflicted upon them? I should hope fucking not. But this is what CNN is perpetrating. Let's re-traumatize everyone. Let's pretend that going into minute detail about the mechanics of the terrorist attacks somehow qualifies as news. Bastards.

The relatives who read the names of their loved ones every year are not doing it so we can remember the particular horrific way in which they died, surely. The legacy of the almost three-thousand people that lost their lives on September the Eleventh is not the way in which they died, and if we make it about the way in which they died, we may as well give up and hand out the burkas. If we are to have the strength as a country to survive and keep the ideals of America then the almost three-thousand souls who perished on September 11th have to be remembered not for the way in which they died but in the way in which they lived, their work and family life, their values. Spend all day each year with in-depth interviews of their widows and parents and orphans remembering their personalities, their characters, their foibles. Honor the people who died. Don't fetishize the way in which they died.

Camera Junk -- 50mm f 1:1.7 lens!

2006-09-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

Got my dream lens for only $35 last weekend. It's a manual-focus 50mm lens with 1:1.7 aperture. So I can get really shallow DOF and nice bokeh and other junk that photographers talk about.

First, it can let it lots of light allowing me to get better shots in darker conditions.

But let me tell you, manual focusing can be a pain, especially when the aperture is wide open on the 1.7 side and I have the shallow DOF I crave. A tiny movement of the focusing ring or a tiny movement back by the camera and things go out of the tiny sliver that's in focus. But I'm getting used to it with practice, seeing through the viewfinder enough to sense that the desired area is in focus.

But I can also 'stop down' the lens and get down to F22, at which point the aperture is a tiny hole, a lot less light gets in the camera, and everything ends up in focus and sharp. So it's also good for landscape junk.

Anyway, I gotta go get a subway to a train to my car to the doc, so...

Betty Boop

2006-08-31T11:04:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we went to Universal Studios, to which I'd never been. It's no Disneyland, I tell you. For that matter, it's no Knott's Berry Farm. I guess the problem is that those theme parks basically work to take you away from the real world into alternate realities, whereas Universal Studios takes you from the real world into, yes, the alternate reality of TV, but in a way that makes it feel like you are in an endless commercial. Part of Disney's marketing magic is that the average visitor doesn't feel that way, even though every single inch of Disneyland acts to advertise all things Disney... I guess Universal Studios is just not that good at what they try to do? The one great thing about it is that they have the lines all covered with tarps and they have mistmaking machines and fans all over the place so you don't get too hot in line. Very clever as far as that goes.

Anyway, they had lots of Betty Boop merchandise and that made for a good shot.

What's Going On? and Kohelet

2006-08-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is one serious album. Listening to it this morning put me in a contemplative mood. The album is reminiscent of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) in that Gaye sings about problems of oppression and inequality but in a way that makes these things universal problems, existential problems. So as the author of Kohelet explores all the things of life that are supposed to give one pleasure and make one happy, Gaye echoes the inevitable frustration in "Flyin' High (in the friendly skies)"

Flying high in the friendly sky
Without ever leaving the ground
And I ain't seen nothing but trouble baby
Nobody really understands, no no
And I go to the place where the good feelin' awaits me
Selfdestruction in my hand
Oh Lord, so stupid minded
Oh and I go crazy when I can't find it
Well I know I'm hooked my friend
To the boy who makes slaves out of men.
And oh beleive me
Flying high in a friendly sky
Oh baby, flyin' high

When Gaye sings this song, it is after "What's Going On" and "What's Happening Brother" and we understand just why he'd be turning to drugs. The fact that he's aware that it's a dead-end that will not bring him the peace he seeks magnifies the sorrow. In the same way, the author of Kohelet's story is all the more powerful by his trying to get happiness from every earthly pleasure imaginable in his time and still ending up with happiness escaping him. But later on, several times during the album Gaye praises G-d, as the author of Kohelet does. Our lives may not make any sense, we are destroying each other and the world, but I still have faith in G-d. There's a meaning to this, even if we can't see it. Our job is, in the end, to praise G-d.

My favorite part of Kohelet is the last chapter (12). It's some of the best poetry of all time. This is the translation from Chabad.org --

1. And remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of evil come, and years arrive, about which you will say, "I have no desire in them."
2. Before the sun, the light, the moon, and the stars darken, and the clouds return after the rain.
3. On the day that the keepers of the house tremble, and the mighty men are seized by cramps, and the grinders cease since they have become few, and those who look out of the windows become darkened.
4. And the doors shall be shut in the street when the sound of the mill is low, and one shall rise at the voice of a bird, and all the songstresses shall be brought low.
5. Also from the high places they will fear, and terrors on the road, and the almond tree will blossom, and the grasshopper will drag itself along, and sexual desire will fail, for man goes to his everlasting home, and the mourners go about in the street.
6. Before the silver cord snaps, and the golden fountain is shattered, and the pitcher breaks at the fountain, and the wheel falls shattered into the pit.
7. And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God, Who gave it.
8. "Vanity of vanities," said Koheleth; "all is vanity."
9. And more [than this], Koheleth was wise, he also taught knowledge to the people; he listened and sought out, he established many proverbs.
10. Koheleth sought to find words of delight and properly recorded words of truth.
11. The words of the wise are like goads, and like well-fastened nails with large heads, given from one shepherd.
12. And more than they, my son, beware; making many books has no end, and studying much is a weariness of the flesh.
13. The end of the matter, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the entire man.
14. For every deed God will bring to judgment-for every hidden thing, whether good or bad.

Focus

2006-08-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

The human mind/soul/brain/whatever likes puns. Craves them. Orients our lives around puns and goofy metaphors and symbols. G-d is in there, of course. Speaks to us through these things. The most basic review of your life and circumstances would probably reveal a lot. For me, the one currently in play is focus. Previous cameras (except for an SLR I owned in the late 80s and hardly ever used because film/developing was too expensive for me) were either fixed-lens or automatic. I had no control. The camera did it. And my life was the same way. Outside forces seemed to dictate to what I paid attention and how. Now I get a digital SLR camera with the ability to manually focus again. And at the same time, I become aware that I have what Lynn Weiss PhD calls an ADD "brainstyle." And every day is a constant struggle to establish and maintain focus on work and personal stuff. Coincidence? Yeah, right. I gotta focus on work.

But first, Reb Yonassan Gershom is doing Holocaust reincarnation counseling sessions again... he's a Satmar rabbi who has written books about reincarnation and other stuff, very colorful guy, and this is serious stuff. Many Jews don't know that the idea of reincarnation is pretty normative Jewish belief, although the Jewish version doesn't involve starting out as a slug and going up or down species as you get holier/more profane. The idea is that each soul has an objective on earth, something that it is on earth to do and to perfect. If that soul cannot complete its objective, it has to come back again until it does. So something like the Holocaust would stop people from being able to acheive their goals in one lifetime. There are many people who have apparently dreams or other 'residues' that would indicate being in the Holocaust -- little kids not ever exposed to Holocaust stuff who have very specific dreams that are hard to dismiss as anything other than Holocaust images, etc...

Tangential to this but something I have to mention each time I think of it: there's a famous story of the Chazon Ish, a great, great rabbi. who would stand up in respect whenever a child with a mental disability would come into his presence. His students were baffled. He explained that the way that souls acheive their tasks in life, perfect whatever needs perfecting, is through observing G-d's commandments. But these children could not observe all G-d's commandments. Since G-d woulnd't ever send a soul into this world to do a job it couldn't do, these 'retarded' children were thus clearly not here to perfect themselves by observing commandments -- their souls were already perfect, or so close to perfected that they only needed to do one or two things, thus they didn't need all the abilities that most people would need. These perfect holy souls were here in order to help others. Thus the rabbi stood up in deep respect.

Ok. NOW I gotta focus.

Shallow and Deep

2006-08-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. -- Oscar Wilde

This quote has resonated with me for years and I'm not sure why.

Hold Wilde's qwuote in your mind while contemplating the Jewish truth that G-d created the world because G-d wanted to make Himself a Dwelling in the Lower Realms, and it is our job to transform the world into this dwellingplace. "The foundation and root of the entire Torah," as is stated by Rabbi Zalman in the Tanya, "is to raise and exalt the soul over the body." Our job is not to escape the physical. Our job is to sanctify the material world. The way we do this is through mitzvot, and all mitzvot involve material stuff.

If you take the idea that the mystery in life is in the visible and think about our job being to take the material and sanctify it, well, it kind of goes together. Kind of. Anyhoo. Back to work.

Night Flower Photos

2006-08-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

OK. One of the fun things about having a camera that has ISO 1600 and 3200 is that I can take photos at night and they kind of work out. The light ends up weird and it's kind of cool, I think...

I had another trip to Oakland yesterday and tried to catch up today, but didn't make much headway. So many things to say, but I am becoming a Mystic and have to retain the knowledge, make it Secret, so I can charge acolytes to share.

Dog and Flashlight

2006-08-18T23:39:00.000-07:00

Poor doggie is very sick but always dignified.

Flashlight fun with a thirty second exposure.

Oakland...

2006-08-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

So I'm at an Embassy Suites hotel this evening after flying up here to do a presentation tomorrow. Tired. Gotta practice before sleep, though. An hour ago I had great things to type. My mind was alive. Then I watched some TV and ate some chips and now I am as brainless as a fire hydrant.

Oh. World Trade Center

2006-08-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

We saw this movie. It was good. It's worth seeing. I felt a bit ripped off after reading an article in Slate about how the movie wasn't true to life in a couple respects that are just dumb. There's a guy who was a paramedic until he got sidelined with alcoholism who was part of the rescue in the movie, but in real life, he was an even bigger part. The rescues took a lot longer than the movie made it seem and were much more precarious.

And a pet peeve of mine -- there were two marines in the movie; they both just showed up and ignored that no one was supposed to be on the 'pile' and just searched for people, finding the two cops trapped. In the movie, they are both white. In reality, one was white, one was black. Why mess with that fact? Irritating.

My new Pentax K100D and one sick dog

2006-08-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

Well, this is my new camera. I went to the big camera store, Samy's, and talked to the guy behind the Nikon counter, and told him I was considering the Nikon D50 and the Pentax K100D and after hearing what I wanted to do with the camera he said get the K100D -- it's got built-in shake reduction, and that helps with getting low-light photos, which is something I know I'll want to do -- I hate doing photos at gatherings with flash... anyhoo. So that's my birthday present and I got it early and woo hoo! It's a trip to be able to manually focus when I want to. I have to learn a lot but it's great so far.

Unfortunately, it's a mixed thing, because at the same time, my girlfriend's dog is sick with cancer and his health is deteriorating. It becomes hard because at some point we'll have to have him put down but it's hard to know when... sometimes he seems ready to die and then he'll be all excited and chipper for his walk and then he has a terrible time because his prostate is involved and he always thinks he has to go, and then he can't tell when he is actually going, so he's always making messes, etc, etc... so for the past year or so it's been weighing on us and he's getting worse and worse. Poor dog. The rabbis say that animals besides humans don't have souls basically because they are incapable of acting against their nature... it's like the whole soul thing is only necessary to give people the ability to have free will, and so dogs are like Angels and trees and planets -- they are purely of G-d and go back into G-d in totality when it's time. But still, he certainly seems to have a personality and communicates stuff with his big brown eyes. Anyway. I'll miss him.

Work is very busy, but I am doing better at focusing today. I am typing here as an official break and everything. So there.

Surprises

2006-08-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

So, my girlfriend's birthday was yesterday and we had a surprise party for her Monday night. The party was at the outside patio of The Buffalo Club, a restaurant so exclusive that it's not listed in the phon book, and from the outside it looks like a bar and it's on an otherwise industrial street. Very nice food. Everyone had a great time.

I could post photos of the people there but they'd mean nothing to you, except for the famous people, and I can't post theirphotos because then people will be bugging me to bug them to get them jobs or movie parts or autographs. So here is a nice shot of the lanterns. Now it's my birthday week coming up. Hah.

ADD and Where to Place Attention

2006-08-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

ok. Listen. I have ADD. But I didn't really know it till this year. And I am getting treatment, learning tricks to help me deal with the problems I've had my whole life with organization, planning, etc, etc... and now I can see the ADD-ness of the entire world. Like right now, I am sitting here engrossed in typing this instead of doing important work. And we see the same thing in the world. Really important issues are not dealt with. People are distracted from serious problems to endlessly obsess over Mel Gibson's DUI rant. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby080706.php3 is a good article about this. When we have a guy go into a Seattle Jewish center and shoot lots of people and we have Mel say some rude things, which gets focused on? Of course.

That being said, I can't stop myself from being on the same wrong track here. Why must we continually crumble at the slightest provocation by our evil inclinations? Why do we have to jump on people when they are down? Mel Gibson needs people's prayers and patience. He knows that he will have to deal with this for his whole life. Let him up off the ground. Let him keep his dignity. Engage him in meaningful dialogue. Don't kick him and spit in his face. Because it's one thing to spout a bunch of hate when drunk. It's another to be sober, clear of mind, and be mean and evil and spiteful to the drunk sinner who has already messed their life up.
Who are these people who pretend to have no sin? Who are these people who turn their backs on Jewish and Christian tradition and spread gossip and talk evil about someone when they weren't even there? How do these people expect to escape the harshest judgement possible if they show such harsh judgement to others?

At core, I think it's a problem of people placing attention in the wrong place -- we are distracted by looking at others' failings when we need to be focusing ON OUR OWN. And boy, do I have a lot.

I gotta work.

Nikon D50 w/ 50mm/f1.8 lens?

2006-08-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, it's camera shopping time soon. My girlfriend is buying me a decent dSLR camera, and I'm pretty sure I'm getting a Nikon D50, after reading tons of reviews.

I knew I wanted to go with Nikon or Canon. The two biggest SLR makers with entry-level to professional cameras and tons of lenses, so that I could start now and over time, build up equipment that I can still use. Doesn't appear the same with other SLR makers. And I went with Nikon over Canon because of two things. First, it seems like the cheapest Nikon lenses (all I can afford right now) are better than the cheapest Canon lenses. Second, the cheapest Nikon camera, the D50, has more features than the Rebel XT 350, the cheapest Canon. And it has better lowlight functionality, which is where I'll use a lot.

Course, anyone out there happening to read this who knows otherwise and/or wants to offer advice, please feel free. :) I have a couple weeks before buying, so hurry up.

Whole lot of Shaking Going On

2006-07-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

(the photo is from my phone. Sucks, I know, but hey. It's easier to get photos to my work computer from my cellphone than from my regular camera.)

Downtown LA has a lot of construction going on. My building has construction projects on two sides and lots more down the street. There's a lot of really big booms as foundation holes are dug/sunk and steel girders placed into position, that sort of thing. In the downtown of a city that's high on the terrorist list it's rather disconcerting.

The other thing that sometimes happens is that there won't be a bang, just low frequency rumbling. Just like when an earthquake starts. That's fun. We haven't had an earthquake of any importance since 1994, but the whole Katrina thing, and how so many people were unprepared, has me really cautious. I have a pretty extensive earthquake kit at my desk. Everyone is supposed to have this stuff at home and work and in the car but hardly anyone does... I have a couple gallons of water, canned food and snack bars, flashlight, batteries, windup radio, change of clothing, backpack, first aid kit, wipes, etc etc... all I can say is hurry up, earthquake, before all this food expires and I have to buy more.

The good part is that a lot of the construction is in the "new urbanism" vein where businesses are on the ground floor with residences above. Next door later this year/early next we'll have a Ralphs supermarket. This will be a godsend for me, because I am terrible at organizing lunch and there's no markets around, so it's either cheap junk or expensive good food. And if there's an earthquake it'll be easy to get there and loot for supplies.

Lucky Trader

2006-07-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

I like this photo. It's not clear at all-- it's shot through a sea-spray covered ferry window. But I like The Lucky Trader and how she looks here... mysterious, misty, kind of impressionistic, very Red.

Paul

2006-07-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

So, I wanted to reply to Stacey's comment here because Paul as a subject is deserving of more space and exposure.

I don't have a problem with Paul as some have, saying he was a closet homosexual with other issues that he focused on, thus warping the early church and its focus.

My problem is really with Christians, not Paul. He wrote his letters, people saved them. It's not his fault that he's been made into a false god. And he has. Most Christian strains, especially Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist strains, choose to focus on Paul's letters to the exclusion of Jesus and his teachings, and not just Paul, but all the letter-writers. Sure, most Protestant friends of mine have the "Red letter" bibles with the words of Jesus in red to stress how much more important those words are than anything else, but in real life, Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity is more about Paul and the other letter writers than about Jesus.

We see this in the whole faith vs works argument. It's plain from a thorough and fair reading of Jesus that he was all about the work. He was a man of action. SELL your stuff, FOLLOW me, you'll have treasure in heaven. When I was hungry, did you FEED me? WHen I was in hospital, did you VISIT me? Whatever you DO to the least of them you DO to me. His parables are all about ACTION. It is clear that he is interested in what you DO. Even John's latecoming gospel, when read in context, can clearly be seen in this context of action. But Christianity splits into Catholic/Protestant over an obsessive debate over what Paul wrote in some letters about faith vs works, and Jesus is left standing there, ignored.

Or the idea of not being "unequally yoked." Jesus hung out with everyone, didn't judge people but loved them, and the only people we know he got MAD at were observant priests. But because Paul wrote in one letter about being unequally yoked, it's a major Christian preoccupation. When one person gets religion, often, ironically, they leave their longtime mate because of the unequally yoked thing (I am now sober, they still drink and dont' believe like I do), ignoring Jesus saying that people marry for life...

For another example, take the idea prevalent in Evangelical/Fundamentalist churches that the Man is the Head of the Household and that women should be subservient to their husbands. Now, this is a constantly popular and important issue, and to get support for it, people turn to Scripture. But they don't turn to Jesus, because there's nothing Jesus said on the matter to justify the position. So they turn to Peter. To Paul. To Timothy especially (and Timothy is plainly a terrible reader of Bereshit).

Same with many doctrinal issues. The proofs come from the Letters, not from the Gospels. So we have a religion that claims to follow Jesus but follows his disciples much more closely. If Christianity were built on the Beatitudes and the other red-letter stuff of the gospels, Christianity would be a much different religion.

Anyway. It's all so interesting, I could go on and on, showing you tract after tract where pretty much everything referenced is Letters and not redletter Jesus stuff, but you get the idea.

IDF, Gaza... Oh, Never Mind

2006-07-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

I can't even talk about it. Went to Israelisms, read this:

"News Flash: Mother, 4 children killed in IDF strike; IDF cuts Gaza in half.

Discuss..... "

posted by one Adrienne.

Well, that got me going.

[I]t's rather funny. I can imagine her on June 6, 1944: "73,000 American troops Invade French Beach. Hundreds of French Civilians Dead and Wounded. Discuss."

Or July 4, 1976: "Israel Violates Uganda Airspace and Sovereignity. 20 Ugandans, several Arabs and Germans killed. Discuss."

If any other country but Israel had this happening, we'd see none of the restraint, none of the care that Israel is exhibiting. We know full well that the United States and Britain show none of the care that Israel does as far as avoiding 'collateral damage.' I doubt Adrienne really cares, though. Dead Arabs are just an opportunity for more Jew-bashing. Despicable.

Civilians in Gaza keep dying because the motherf*cking terrorists purposely hide like the piece of sh*t cowards they are amidst civilians. And from these positions they lob grenades, direct bombings, and hold captive soldiers, those soldiers lucky enough not to be wholesale murdered.

And what happens to the civilians in Gaza that are injured accidentally while Israel tries to rescue it's soldier before he is savagely murdered? They are often treated in Israeli hospitals. You know DAMN well that folks in Gaza are not treating Israelis with such decency and compassion.

Why can't people get it through their thick idiot skulls that while Israel may accidentally kill civilians while trying to go after terrorists, the terrorists main goal is to KILL INNOCENT CIVILIANS? Why the F*CK is this basic fact impossible for people to understand?

Oh, I remember. When the Israeli military is trying to stop terrorists from killing innocent Israelis and rescue its hostages and they accidentally kill civilians, this is an act of MURDEROUS IMPERIALIST APARTHEID NAZI TERROR.

And Israeli deaths? Oh, they are just not worth getting upset about. They _are_ Jews, you know -- aren't they like 3/5 of a person or something? Israeli deaths (JEWS and the Arabs and Christians who collaborate with them) are perfectly fine. When Israeli children and mothers are slaughtered, it's a LEGITIMATE ACT OF RESISTANCE.

Now can we go back to discussing the parade??

And Charley, this is me ON my medication...

And after reading this again, I think I actually UNDERstated things a bit. I wish I was back on Catalina with my woman.

26 Miles Across the Sea...

2006-07-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

So, to celebrate my g/f's 50th birthday I took her to Catalina Island. We had loads of fun but I was sick (still am) so didn't have as much fun as we would otherwise have had.) Here's a shot of where we stayed...

>

here's the private beach. reefs and big orange fish and stuff.

We would have kayaked and swam if not for my cold, but it was still fun. It's an hour by ferry, but the ferry is a highspeed jet catamaran thing that's really smooth and goes around 25 knots. I was almost sick on the way there, but managed to keep everything in. It's a really pretty island that's mostly undeveloped except for the town of Avalon. There are buffalo living on it from when a Western was made there in the 20s. Lots of sea movies of the thirties were filmed there. There are few roads and not much use for cars for most people so most people have golf carts as their transportation. And the condo I rented included a cart. Very cool. :)

Gaza

2006-06-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Right now Israel is going into Gaza to rescue a kidnapped soldier and Hamas is trying to draft something 'implicitly' recognizing Israel's right to exist rather than producing the kidnapped soldier. They are just not bright.

Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary --

"Once again, we can all recite from memory now: recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce terror, and abide by all past agreements. Those are the preconditions."

Not that hard, is it?

I used to be a lot more left-wing about Israel. Then I started paying attention. To both sides. Now I'm getting more and more right-wing on the issue of Israel and the Arabs. See? NOt even calling them Palestinians. And I think the White House press secretary is right on something. Odd.

A Cat, Low Light, and Catchlights

2006-06-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

My camera allowed me to take this photo as Tasha looked out into the late afternoon light. It works, I think, although it's really not in focus. Perhaps the cornea of her left eye is in focus but that's it. You can do this with a cat and it works ok, but when you take a photo like this of a person -- using macro mode -- you end up with noses way too large-looking and other unflattering things that most models don't like.

I have nothing else to say.

Two Wonderful Iranian movies

2006-06-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Perhaps because there were limitations on the kind of subject matter that Iranians could do in the late 90s, there are a couple wonderful, sweet but never sappy movies centered around children from this time period. There are no bad people in the movies, either. Both of these movies are in my Top Hundred Movies of All Time:

1) Badkonake Sefid (The White Balloon) 1995

This movie is not out on DVD yet. Boo! Find it on VHS and then dig out your VHS player, OK? The story is basically that the family has a goldfish pond and it's Iranian New Years and this apparently involves goldfish, so the girl wants to get a nice new one. So she is given a certain amount of money to buy a goldfish by her mom. She promptly drops it down the gutter and has to somehow get it. A boy with a white balloon somehow gets involved. Not a balloon with helium, like The Red Balloon, if I recall correctly. I think it's just a white balloon on a stick. Anyway. The whole story is the little girl losing her money and people trying her help her get her money and things going wrong and in the end, of course, everything ending up fine, but in a really, really magical way, and it's all taking place on a couple little narrow streets presumably in Tehran.

2)Bacheha-Ye aseman (Children of Heaven) 1997

Goldfish pond in this movie too, I think, but it's shoes at the center of this movie, not goldfish money. Father has trouble making ends meet. Boy is sent to pick up his sister's beat up old shoes from the cobbler who has repaired them. He does so, and then he puts them down for a second at the veggie seller's. A guy picking up trash picks up the bag the shoes are in, and then, a few seconds later, the boy sees the shoes are gone. Can't find them. The father can't buy more shoes. The kids are acutely aware of the pain they'd cause their dad were they to tell him, as he'd be shamed by his inability to afford new ones right away. SO they keep it a secret. The boy and girl share the boy's shoes. Again, there is seriously no simplistic plot crap you'd end up with in American movies. Everyone in the movie is basically good and kind and yet the plot and characters are a lot more realistic and not at all cliched or hackneyed.

Anyway. This is what happens when you go through Netflix looking for movies to add to your Queue.

It was a Movie Weekend

2006-06-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was a great movie. (See the Pledge link on the right side, please). Depressing, as most middle-of-the-road mostly ignorant folks won't see it, the right-wing deniers will just bash it, and folks like me who will see it but were already outraged at the current state of things. Seriously, see the movie. It's really important. The only people arguing against mankind causing global warming are corporate whores. You can't find reputable scientists arguing against it, but the news ends up giving these whores publicity because they want to appear "fair and balanced" and also, of course, because they like the corporate whores.

That's not being fair. I'm sorry, those of you who are Working Women. I don't mean to impugn your character by comparing you to Corporate lobbyists and the elected representatives who sell us out every day.

We also saw Match Point. Brilliant movie. Probably seems even better because you know it's a Woody Allen movie and it's not like most Woody Allen movies. Crimes and Misdemeanors covered similar ground, but was lighter. This is a tight, wonderfully acted, totally devastating movie that ends up putting the viewer in awkward places as far as judgement, honor, guilt, cheating, etc etc but does it in totally honest ways. Just see it.

And lastly, Guess Who. Which was fun and silly.

Oh. I almost forgot. We saw Cars. One of the better Pixar movies. It could have been a trite rehash of an old and tired movie template (know it all, egotistical superstar has his Fall from Grace and ends up in some backwater, miserable, hating life, wanting to get back to the Big City. And of course, ends up learning lessons about Life and what's really Important. But this movie handles it well, I think.

I have such things to say. Such interesting and intelligent things. But I'm working. Who would have thunk?

The Zoo Rabbi and Perek Shirah

2006-06-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

So it's Friday. Happy Friday. Shabbat Shalom.

I liked putting what I happened to be listening to in the Title and it worked for years and now I'm irritated by it. So at least for now it's whatever ends up being the main subject for the entry.

But I'll still put the music. Today it's Sigur Ros -- Saegklopur . These guys are from Iceland, I think, and make pretty music that is either in gibberish or Icelandic. Can't tell. When Bjork sings in Icelandic you can hear her annunciate all. These guys mumble in falsetto. Who knew such magic was possible?

You say you want to go on an African Safari, but you can't stomach the idea of eating all that trayfe? I have the solution for you! Rabbi Natan Slifkin, famous Zoo Rabbi of Israel (actually, I think he's the only Zoo Rabbi worldwide) has joined with a tour operator to create Kosher Safaris! Not only do you travel across Africa eating glatt kosher meals (which I wouldn't eat, since I'm vegetarian), but you have the pleasure of being in Rabbi Slifkin's company.

Slifkin is a true, true tzaddik, emphasizing the mitzvah of looking at the world with close attention, seeing the way things work, appreciating the miraculous nature of it all, and appreciating that G-d is the creator and source of it all. In fact, some of his books have gotten him into a huge controversy with more reactionary Orthodox rabbis because he shows how modern scientific discoveries, rather than somehow showing Torah to be wrong, merely help to further show the amazing nature of G-d's creation. The rabbis that think it's science vs Torah and scientific evidence showing the universe wasn't made in 6 days must be wrong and Torah says six literal days. Slifkin quotes long-respected rabbis who have offered 'minority' but respected opinions on the subject, such as rabbis who say that maybe the six days weren't literal(remember, the issue of how old the earth is doesn't impact on the mitzvot or halacha, so it's all opinion) and does it to help young people understand that science isn't the enemy of Torah but an aid to understanding the majesty of Torah. And he's pilloried for it.

Anyhoo. Even ignoring the controversy, he's a really cool young Rabbi.

One of the neat things he does is focus on Perek Shirah in his zoo tours and writing. Perek Shirah is a cool ancient Midrash that is basically a song sung by the planets, weather phenomenae, trees, animals, and birds. Each one is singing a particular verse from the Tanach. There's deep meaning in how each thing, plant, animal, etc gets matched to a particular verse. Some are obvious, like

The Palm is saying, 'The Righteous flourish like the palm tree; they grow like a cedar in Lebanon.'

But some just don't make obvious sense, so you need someone like Rabbi Slifkin to explain the connection. For example, he says that

"the agur, which is the crane, a large bird similar to a stork, sings, “Praise God with the lyre, make music for Him with the ten-stringed harp” (Psalms 33:2). Unlike other birds, cranes have terrible voices. But although they cannot sing musically, they clatter the mandible of their beaks together like maracas. They thereby allude to the theme of the verse, which speaks of praising God with musical instruments rather than song. The message is that we need not all be the same, but rather we all have our own unique talents and abilities which we should develop for serving God.

See how that works? Slifkin shows us that we cannot appreciate the text without studying the natural world! We have to observe these animals and think about them and learn their habits and everything about them to understand the source. After all, the Rabbis say that one who studies Perek Shirah is destined for the World to Come and all sorts of other benefits. And without knowing that this crane has no song, one doesn't understand the verse. One cannot simply study Torah all the time. One has to know Torah AND the natural world. That way you can get deeper insights into Torah. This is real study, the kind of study that can, if you apply its lessons, lead to a place in the World to Come.

Slifkin is also an expert on great complicated kosher slaughterer things like "are giraffes kosher? Where on the neck do you cut?" So check out Kosher Safaris for me. I don't have the money, but you rich people with lots of time, seriously. It'll be so much fun.

No Music -- iPod issues

2006-06-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

So, my iPod just decided today to stop playing after an hour and when I did a "warm reset" it decided to not see the music stored on it anymore, so it now is acting like it's empty. No biggie -- I'll just download everything back onto it tonight, but I hope it's not a harbinger of Issues.

Wait a minute. What am I talking about? I got the extended warranty on it for three years, I think. So if it's broken, I take it back to Best Buy and get a new one, minus some sort of depreciation, I think. So perhaps I should root for it to be suffering from major Issues? Although I was hoping to be able to wait till the long-rumored model that will be one big color touchscreen interface.

So the music industry is putting more pressure on Russia to shut down Allofmp3-- The problem is that Russia will eventually shut down Allofmp3, because the government will do whatever the industry wants, but the supposed free market really is being stymied, as usual, by corporations. The fact that Allofmp3.com is so successful shows that people are willing to pay for their music. The only problem is that people are willing to pay $1 an album if it's in electronic format, but not $1 a song. And as much as the industry suits don't like it, most of what they sell isn't worth much more. If they made albums $4 or $5 an album, I think you'd see music sales soar along with profits. People know that many things they download are disposable songs that aren't worth $1/song. That's why they won't pay $1/song. I belong to eMusic.com and pay $10 a month for 40 songs. That's 25 cents a song. That's reasonable, I think. That's why I've been a member of eMusic for years at that price/song.

Apple's iTunes is a nice format and nice software, but the prices at the iTunes Music Store are just stupid. At $10 an album you can get most of the same music in many times better quality, for the same price, in a real CD. iTunes touts their billion+ songs sold but it's a drop in the bucket. CDs still reign.

And you know what else? Even when you buy CDs you get BURNED. Sony, for instance, a company that was once great and is now quickly destroying itself, at least as far as music goes, has the evil "Dual Disc" format. Now, I saw the new Bruce Springsteen album at Starbucks and bought it. But "Dual Disc" won't play in a Mac because "Dual Disc" is not compliant with CD standards. And it's SOny. You know damn well it's on purpose. Why should I spend $16 to get shafted by Sony selling me a product that a perfectly good computer can't even read?

The bad-faith that Sony is practicing is insane, because it can't be helping them keep customers. I am NEVER going to buy a Dual Disc CD again from ANY label because I have no clue which CD it will play in and which it won't and I'm not willing to spend a day running around experimenting.

What's most bizarre is that by purchasing this CD legally I was subjected to more CRAP than the people who 'bought' it from allofmp3.com for a buck or just stole it from BitTorrent. Having a trouble-free listening experience shouldn't be harder for honest consumers than for thieves!

So I fired off angry letters to Starbucks, where I bought it, and Sony, and I complained about the format at Amazon.

And how will I end up hearing this CD? Well, I'll probably download it from allofmp3! I'll be able to listen to what I paid for. Imagine that. So you go, allofmp3! Sell your ten cents a song albums as long as you have breath! At least until I can get to you and download The Seeger Sessions.

David Bowie -- Neukoeln

2006-05-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

So, this weekend was one of the best Bat-Mitzvah celebrations ever. Six of us in a rental minivan, and I drove both ways (I can't be a passenger -- I get carsick too easily unless I am driving) the 6-7 hours there and back. Friday night dinner. Services. Saturday morning services. Nap. Saturday night big party. Live band, which is always appreciated and classy. The dinner was a simple solution to the problem of who-wants-what -- both steak and fish along with potatoes on one plate. I, the vegetarian, ate it all. I was hungry. Then Sunday brunch, then Sunday evening barbeque. Insane amounts of food.

And the batmitvah girl was the best. Of the fifteen or so I've been to bar/bats I've been to in the past five or so years, this girl (my g/f's niece) was definitely the most into it all. Of all the kids, this one is the most likely to keep learning and strongly identifying as Jewish because she's into it.

And now, back at work, trying to get stuff done. It's a wonderful day.

The Arcade Fire -- Vampire, Forest Fire

2006-05-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

So. Julia Butterfly Hill is one hot mama. She's a Sex Symbol for the 21st century. An earthy vegan treehugging sex symbol, of course, but still. She's right up there will Rachel Carson and Al Gore. Well, she's above Al Gore. But she's up there.

Don't know who she is? Piss off. Google her, lazybones.

Departure Lounge -- Music For Pleasure

2006-05-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

I am really glad that The DaVinci Code got ripped critically, but I'm really glad it did well.

Huh?

Well, I am conflicted about Tom Hanks and Ron Howard.

Tom Hanks isn't worth talking about, really. I like his movies ok. Think he did a good job in Castaway, one of the hardest roles in any movie ever. Like most movies he's done. Think he's a good actor. Just don't feel it, I guess. Can't tell why.

Ron Howard I used to like. I liked his feel-good, optimistic pov like in The Paper. But then he ruined How the Grinch Stole Christmas And I turned against him. A Beautiful Mind reinforced my thinking that any script he touched would have been better in someone else's hands. I have grown to hate his sentimental, hackneyed style.

But he has directed some of my favorite movies. The Missing is a recent one I think was really, really good -- both as a movie on its own and also how it redefines the Western and portrays the time and complexities of living in the real West far more realistically than previous efforts. Yes, I'm saying that a movie that treats shamans as really having powers as realistic. What can I say. My opinions, like Bush's, steer clear of objective reality.

Before that, we have Parenthood, Cocoon, Splash, Night Shift. Bam, Bam, Bam. Perhaps it's Ron Howard being Serious that I can't handle. I dunno. Perhaps it's just Clint Howard's ugly mug I can't stand seeing in every frigging movie.

King Crimson -- We'll Let You Know

2006-05-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

Well, after my last post, I wrote the following letter to the President. I've replaced my personal info, which I did include to Bush, here. I don't mind the President or Secret Service spying or arresting me, but you guys are abnormal, guilty types, and I don't trust you ---

“Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.”

Ordinary Americans. Innocent Americans.

Mr President, who decides who is “normal?” You? The NSA? What do Americans have to do to suddenly be declared “abnormal?” Is it something simple, like wearing a hijab or frequenting mosques or the like? I’d like to know, so I can stay within your definition of “normal.” I am, however, not a Christian, I don’t like Country or Nascar, and I don’t watch American Idol or 24. Perhaps I already fall outside your definition of “normal.” Perhaps my writing this letter to you and speaking against your repeated and crass violations of our civil rights puts me outside the pale of “normal.” If so, my cell phone number is ***-***-****. You may want to pass that along to the appropriate parties so that they can add my phone records to the millions already collected, or perhaps listen to my conversations, in which I frequently exercise my free speech rights and say all sorts of things that would probably land me in jail if I were Muslim and Arab. I’m not authorizing you do do this, but you already know that as President, you are Authorized to do anything you want anytime you want it.

As to Innocent, it’s almost as if you have never heard the phrase “innocent until proven guilty.” Aren’t ALL Americans thus innocent until proven otherwise? If not, again, please let me know what the boundaries are so I know if I am “innocent” or “guilty.” My home address is 570 S *********** , ********, CA 9****. This is in case you decide that this letter and my previous letters to you, most of which have been critical, put me outside your “innocent” box, and I need to be arrested or rendered to some willing country for “questioning.”

I am on fire, I tell you.

Oh. Hope your Lag B'Omer is fun. I am doing absolutely nothing for it except telling everyone it's Lag B'Omer. Then everyone, Jew and Goy alike, says

"Oh! Cool. What's Lag B'Omer?"

"Well, it's a holiday that marks a certain number of days since the start of counting the Omer. 33 I think."

"What's the Omer?"

"G-d told the Jews to count a certain # of days, 49 I think. It's from Egypt to Sinai, basically, Pesach to Shavout."

"What's Shavout?"

"Oh, never mind."

Someone shoot an arrow for me, OK? I always wanted to do archery.

Machine Head -- LA Gothic

2006-05-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

So. Bush says the government doesn't listen to the phone conversations of "ordinary Americans." Funny. I don't think the White House even understands how the very idea of "ordinary Americans" violates the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights. Of course, the idea that they get to decide who is "normal" doesn't send chills down the spine of most Americans, because they blithely assume they are "normal."

It's an overused quote, but the poem attributed to Martin Niemöller is apropos now. This is the original German, but you don't have to speak German to get it. (I got it from Wickipedia.)

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

In the US the poem got screwed up because the victims in the original are Communists, Social Democrats, Trade Unionists, then lastly, Jews. Well, in the US in the 50s, you couldn't stand up and say that Communists and Trade Unionists shouldn't be rounded up, or you'd get blacklisted or something, so they got rid of the unsavory groups, stuck Jews at the top, added Catholics, that sort of thing.

Right now, they're coming for the Muslims and Arabs. Are we going to raise our voices? Are we going to protest? Or are we going to go about our business, assume that we're "normal," and be shocked and surprised when our door is battered down and we're led away at gunpoint?

"Oh, silly Lee," you say. "So dramatic. America is Different. That would never happen Here." But every coup, every civil war, every genocide has before it someone saying the same words about that particular country, that particular leader. Every genocide has many victims who die because they trusted that things wouldn't get that bad. There's no way to know how bad things will get, but we know that what's happening now in the US has led to terrible things other places in the past, places supposedly as civilized and tolerant.

And even if it never gets past abusing the rights and bodies of Arabs and Muslims, what value does America really have if we tolerate violations of civil rights to those deemed "abnormal?"

Sunset Rubdown -- Shut Up I am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings

2006-05-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

I love long song titles. People can take it too far, like Sufjan Stevens does on Illinois with this one:

The Black Hawk War, Or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself In the Morning, Or, We Apologize For the Inconvenience But You're Going to Have to Leave Now, Or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!

So in comparison to that, something like "Shut Up I am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings" is concise, right?

****

I think Bush is collecting information on who I call and who calls me. After all, I often talk about Revolution and other Socialist ideas. I rail against the Rich almost every day. I long to see Capitalism Smashed. Wait a minute... What am I saying? Of course I'm not being monitored. I'm not Arab or Muslim. If I were, I'd be convicted already of some terrorism charge. But because I'm not Arab or Muslim, I can spout off about anything I want and not get in trouble or have my phone calls monitored. At least I'm pretty sure about that after reading Milton Viorst's sobering article "The Education of Ali Al-Timimi" in the new Atlantic.

****

You know how Woody Guthrie had "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS" on his guitar? I'm sure if he was alive today he'd be visited by the Secret Service for supposedly making a threat against the President. Anyway, The "illegal alien" thing has been going on for generations, and here's a song Guthrie wrote about it:

Plane Wreck At Los Gatos
(Deportee)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

The thing is that Dylan now was so obviously a pallid pretender to the Guthrie mantle. Today it's clear that Springsteen comes closer to anyone to really taking on the role Guthrie once played in music. Here's a Springsteen song from 2005's Devils and Dust:

"Matamoras Banks"

For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes,
so they lay open to the stars

Your clothes give way to the current and river stone
'Till every trace of who you ever were is gone
And the things of the earth they make their claim
That the things of heaven may do the same

Goodbye, my darling, for your love I give God thanks,
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Over rivers of stone and ancient ocean beds
I walk on sandals of twine and tire tread
My pockets full of dust, my mouth filled with cool stone
The pale moon opens the earth to its bones
I long, my darling, for your kiss,
for your sweet love I give God thanks
The touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Your sweet memory comes on the evenin' wind
I sleep and dream of holding you in my arms again
The lights of Brownsville, across the river shine
A shout rings out and into the silty red river I dive
I long, my darling, for your kiss,
for your sweet love I give God thanks
A touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Kind of motivates me to try to write a poem at the same time it keeps me from bothering because he's so good.

It's Friday. Let's have a Shabbat where we can grab onto a glimmer of the kind of world we want to have, so we can work on that next week. Or not. Shabbat Shalom.

Patti Smith -- Break It Up

2006-05-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

So. The Pentagon is trying to turn the War on Terror into America's Funniest Home Videos. It's an amazingly inane and immature move by the Pentagon. "Oh, lookie! Zarqawi doesn't know how to fire a gun! Oh, how rich, his deputy doesn't have the sense not to grab a hot gunbarrel! Hah! What rubes we fight!"

Meanwhile, Zarqawi's troops have no problem blowing themselves and others up at will in Iraq. They may be following the orders of a guy who doesn't know how to get a machine gun to fire in automatic mode. They may be pitched against American soldiers who know everything about weaponry and tactics, who'd never make the silly mistakes the Al Queda terrorists did. But the knowhow of the American troops makes them no more able to stop the roadside IEDs or the suicide bombers. And while the Pentagon tries to mock Zarqawi by pointing out his lack of firearms skill, his folks killed more Iraqis and American soldiers today.

Perhaps the Pentagon should spend less time showing Al Queda blooper reels and more time, um, well, pursuing Bin Laden and Zarqawi? But we seem to be much better at capturing blooper reels than we are at capturing terrorists, so never mind.

Idiots.

The Kinks -- Afternoon Tea

2006-05-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

So, I've been delinquent. I feel bad. I haven't been posting here.

I've been busy. Terribly so. Oh, well.

On Monday we had the immigrant marches nearby, but I was lazy and didn't march with them. On immigration I have two main planks for my presidential platform --

1) Change immigration laws as far as who we want to allow in: Currently we are biased towards folks with money and skills. I say, "Screw that." Folks with money and skills can make a go of it in their own country. I want America to actually live up to the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty. I want us to really go after the poor, tired, huddled masses. We should be landing cargo planes in Darfur, scooping up the victims and bringing them over to America and getting them medical care and English lessons. If you are poor, diseased, and doomed to die poor, I want you for our country, because our country can change your life and destiny.

2) Make borders more porous, not less porous. Currently, we have tons of people having families in the US and living here who don't want to, but they have no choice. They'd rather have their family stay in Mexico and live here and go back home every month or two, but the border crossing is too dangerous. If we made our borders more open and allowed people to flow freely in and out, we'd have fewer people moving to live in the US, more people going to Mexico for medical care, clothing, food, etc. Better for everyone. Why should capital move over borders so freely when people can't?

3) Adopt Mexico's sensible new drug laws and decriminalize personal possession. We are wasting billions as a country persecuting drug users, putting them in jails, making them go to rehab, making a whole industry around treating illicit drugs as different than cigarettes and alchohol, punishing victimless activity among consensual adults. I don't associate with drug dealers, but they are getting a raw deal. The billions we'd save could be spent on social services, security on the borders, etc etc...

4) Annex Mexico. This is the longterm solution to our issue. Once the population of the US becomes majority brown in this century, we may as well just make it official and take over the country. Then we have a lot less border to worry about. We have the Canadian border, sure, and that's massive and porous and much more easily crossed than Mexico's, but Mexico's southern border with Belize and Guatemala has to be more easily controlled. If not, we can just annex Latin America down to the Panama Canal. It's just the way things will be... it may not be "annexation," perhaps more like the way the European Union is going, but it will come.

Back to work. Si Se Puede!

Super XX Man -- The Usual Way

2006-04-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

I get to see the ocean almost every day and see this sort of beauty. Sometimes it's a burden, because it's so terrible not to really appreciate it, but on days like this, it's no trouble. So gorgeous.

So, I happened to watch the first episode of Shalom in the Homeon TLC (Mondays 10pm). I like Rabbi Shmuley and it was a great show. He really focuses on the importance of actions and of common sense in a way that's refreshing and powerful. It's worth watching. Shmuley had a talk show in Salt Lake City with a overwhelmingly goyish audience for years until last year, after he organized a bunch of help for black Katrina folks relocated to Salt Lake City and ran afoul of the apparently bigoted radio station owners... he's very interesting because he mostly deals with goyim. And I think he gets a really receptive audience that way because his message isn't out there.

Anyway. I am reading Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Really interesting. Gotta go and read and sleep!

Spoon - Small Stakes

2006-04-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Is this a great corner or what?

You know what's really, really odd? How many 16 year old kids are wandering around trying to live in MY teen years. Fuck them! I mean, hey, some of these kids are nice, but how weird is it to see teenyboppers with Robert Smith on their chests and saying how much they love Joy Division and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry? It's really werid and it's really fucked. When I was 16 I certainly wasn't wearing Bob Dylan or Beatles t-shirts. I was into Jam, Clash, XTC, Joy Division, Stranglers, 999, and on and on. Stuff that was new then. I am not a baby boomer, and I am not laying claim to "my generation" stuff like the boomers did. It's just that an integral part of being a teen has historically been an absorption into all that counted as "NOW" and these kids are growing up looking to my teen years rather than looking to themselves. This is Bad. What does that say about the quality of culture today? Funny thing is that there's a lot of great music NOW out there. Shit. How lame can you get? In high school we were mods but we weren't mostly listening to Who and Faces... we were mostly listening to Jam and Specials and Beat,etc... oh, whatever.

Listen, 16 year olds out there! Stop trying to live my teen life! Cut yourself to music that's new and belongs to you. Get your piercings and your tattoos and feel suicidal listening to your own damn tunes! I was there in the 80s! It started good and then it went really bad! It's not worth emulating, let alone worshipping.

It's not like I've been in a funk about gettting older and seeing how a lot of kids have the same tastes in movies and music as I do. It's not like this just brings home how useless it is to try to pin one's identity on one's taste in consumables like food or music or books or movies. It's what we PRODUCE that matters and I haven't produced anything for ages. But that's nothing to do with it, you hear?

The kids today are so fucking lost and so fucking conformist even in their indiscretions. It's fucking sad. Soon the ultimate outsider will be the kid who is content to be happy and do alright in their own skin. Damn, we're all messed up. And I haven't changed since I was 16. Good or sad? Could go either way. Or the answers could be two sides of a razor and I could get split down the middle.

Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles -- Quinze Anos

2006-04-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the reasons to impeach Bush keep coming... I find it particularily ironic since Bush and his Republican cronies have tried to silence whistleblowers with stern admonitions about leaks. Here we see that it has been Bush and Cheney behind leaks. Disgusting.

I'd rant about this for an hour or so, but it's a busy, busy day today at work...

Ani DiFranco -- To the Teeth

2006-04-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Feingold for President.

I have been yearning for this man for years, a polititian who stands by his principles no matter what, who isn't afraid to stand alone, like he did when he was the only senator voting against the Patriot Act.

If/When Feingold announces his run for the '08 Presidency, that very day I change my registration from Green to Democrat. That very day I hook up with the local Feingold for President folks and volunteer.

Mike Oldfield -- Hergest Ridge

2006-04-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

So. Another report linking brain tumors to cell phone use.

I'd be surprised if everything electronic in our lives wasn't somehow related to brain tumors, but it's interesting. Much like the link between automobiles and mortality/morbidity, it's a risk/benefit analysis. How many lives are saved with cells vs taken?

America's worldview and agenda are ruled by two Complexes. We all know the Military Industrial Complex, and we have seen what Eisenhower warned against come to pass. But there's another one out theree, one that is quickly becoming more powerful than the familiar Military Industrial. And that's the Medical Industrial Complex.

The Medical Industrial Complex reduces the many dimensions of the world and our experiences into a simple idea. We are supposed to be Healthy. It's our birthright to be free of pain and stress and medical conditions that leave us at less than optimal Medical condition. It's also the only legitimate measurement of our effectiveness and the only legitimate use of our resources. Each disease or condition or syndrome that removes us from perfect alignment with the Ideal of Health must be fought. Of course, there is only one enemy here at the end of the day, and that is Death.

The Medical Industrial Complex tis fighting a much huger war than the Military Industrial, with the most battles on the most fronts and far more money and lives involved. The huge stockpiles of medications out there, and the huge array of diseases against which they are trained, is mind-boggling. The Medical Industrial Complex currently is fighting battles against dozens of kinds of cancers, heart diseases, Tay Sachs, Sickle Cell Anemia, Crohn's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Scleroderma, Parkinsons, Alzheimers... you and I can recite the litany all day, till late in the evening we'd get to fallen arches and bunyans. Many of these battles have been fought for generations and no matter how many fundraisers are thrown, there's no cures coming. But they are coming, and in the next ten years, we'll see many of these diseases and syndromes conquered.

As these battles are won, the Medical Industrial Complex will need new ones to fight. The survival of the Complex demands it. So we will see two things. First, we will see the medicalization of conditions not properly medical. Into this camp we are already seeing problems more properly dealt with psychologically, like cosmetic surgery, weight control surgery, erectile function issues, etc. And second, we will see new conditions previously not diagnosed, such as those caused by environmental factors like cellphone radiation or particulates in the air or radon, etc etc etc, conditions that would not be dealt with before, as people would have died already from the now-conquered diseases.

Yeah.

No Music -- iPod still elsewhere

2006-04-01T22:07:00.000-08:00

On Ventura Blvd today. Don't you love the tube socks and the gold boots?

No Music -- keep forgetting iPod at Home

2006-03-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

At home, I usually go to sleep listening to music. Lately it's been the new Neko Case album, and it's rather nice for falling asleep to. And lately in the morning I've remembered to do all sorts of important things, but have been forgetting to grab my iPod. Oh, well.

It's a nice day today -- sunny and 70. I'm sleepy with a bit of a headache after getting a proper night's sleep again. I wonder if it's springtime allergies.

My daughter is getting mostly A's, our terrible computer system problems that I've been dealing with for the past couple days are resolved, and all is right with the world. Well, not ALL, but lots.

And I have Monsieur Ibrahim, Broken Wings, and Howl's Moving Castle to watch. When, I'm not sure, but there you go. I'm Netflix's favorite kind of customer, the kind that has 3 CDs out at a time but takes two weeks to watch them. So they get between $2.50 and $3.00 per CD from me. This is a good deal for me as well, though, because I tend to forget things, so it works out since there are no late fees.

Boy, the things I forget. I got a parking ticket a month ago in Santa Monica and forgot till today to pay it. Oops. The $45 dollar fine became a $90 fine because I missed the deadline.
I keep the world going through the forgetfulness-fueled redistribution of my wealth to the corporations and municipalities. Without me, they would fall to the ground, gasping for lack of funds.

No Music -- iPod @ home

2006-03-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

So. It's raining heavily, so I got to try out my new umbrella! It's a huge golf umbrella we got as a promotional freebie. I has cool wind vents, so it won't blow inside out in a sudden gust, fibreglass frame and shaft, and it covers an area so great that you could seriously shade three adults walking side by side from the rain. It's the Humvee of umbrellas, is what it is. OK to use walking to and from your car on unbusy sidewalks, but in downtown pedestrian traffic on the way to the subway? It's much too huge. It covers the whole sidewalk. It's a beauty, and when I was just out, it rained nice and hard so I got good use out of it.

And that's about the most interesting thing that happened today. My trip to Portland went well... and work is awfully confusing.

Neko Case -- A Widow's Toast

2006-03-24T16:51:00.000-08:00

I am so wiped out today it's not funny... here's a shot I took from the plane on the way out of LA Wed evening. That's the Palos Verdes Peninsula down there. Only problem with the trip is that I was SUPPOSED to be gone at 2pm. The flight I was on was delayed, so I had to get to St Louis on a later flight. And my luggage got misplaced. So I did my presentation in the same clothes I'd worn the night before. But my luggage got to me in the end. Last night the trip was draining... two flights over 8 hours, basically. And Monday I fly to Portland and back.

But on the plane I read an article about the Congo and the civil war there, child soldiers, gangrapes, people cutting out their victims' livers and hearts and eating them. Whole villages macheted to death. Roaming gangs of crippled people laying siege to businesses to get money to eat. Etcetera. So I have nothing to complain about, and we live in the best of all possible places, surely.

So I'm going to go and enjoy my headache and go home and have a sleep-filled weekend and appreciate things like waking up and not having to worry about having my head cutoff by drug-crazed child soldiers.

Shabbat Shalom.

Beulah -- Landslide Baby

2006-03-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

Rained yesterday. Sunny today. It's a happy day. Woo hoo.

I brought my lunch. Basmati rice I made in a vegetarian soup stock. Pretty good.

I am feeling so uninspired and uninspiring. Hmm. Wait! Uninspiring. That reminds me of Bush. And THAT reminds me of... OOH!

Listen. I've always said that women with large brains and lots of power really do it for me. I thought Janet Reno was the bees knees. Condi Rice is wrong politically but she's still hot. And on it goes. However, the highest spot on my list is now this hottie:

Listen. Looks come and go. But smarts and courage are forever and are really hot. Bush called on Helen Thomas today for the first time in years, I understand, and she let him have it...

THE PRESIDENT: Helen. After that brilliant performance at the Gridiron (dinner), I am -- (laughter.)

Q You're going to be sorry. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, then, let me take it back. (Laughter.)

Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --

Q Everything --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

Q -- everything I've heard --

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me...."

It goes on like this, Bush doing his usual bs and Helen interrupting him. How much more do you need? You know you love her too.

Robert Fripp and Brian Eno -- Terebellum

2006-03-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

My daughter. Ok, so she's camera shy here. She's gorgeous, trust me. She's wearing my peacoat and a hat that my coworker brought me from Hong Kong.

I have been getting a lot of sleep and still feel under the weather. I hope I get a good night's sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow, because I have so much to do this week. I'll be traveling Wed and Thu and I have another trip next Monday...

So many things in the news that I don't know what to comment on, except back the call for a Religious UN. Oh, yeah. The regular UN isn't enough fun as it is? On the other hand, I do trust religious leaders much more than political ones...

Adrian Belew -- Inner Man

2006-03-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

Fujimugs has a regular contest with a theme. People submit photos they take specifically for the contest. The current theme is "Incomplete," and this is the photo I submitted. It's a house on Bundy Drive in Los Angeles. The taxes are lower on renovations vs a teardown and total rebuild. So it's common to see something like this in West LA, where there are few restrictions preventing people from buying a home and tearing it down to build another. People are paying millions of dollars often with the house being pretty much sold as a "teardown"-- the land is worth millions alone. It's actually cost-effective to build a totally new house because in today's market you can still make a profit. (This is one of many reasons why it's folly to allow pure market forces to be the highest values, which is what you get with capitalism. The start and end of ethical considerations is "Can I make profit?" If so, do as thou will. Never mind that while you are destroying one home to stick another one in its place and spending millions in the process, people are homeless in your town. Bastards.)

So this is the one little part of the house that remains. Everything else is being built new, thousands of square feet, multiple stories. But because of this one wall and fireplace, it counts as a remodel just the same as if they added a breakfast nook. Nice loophole, huh?

It's a nice a quiet morning, cool and overcast, with rain off and on and a chance for thunderstorms, which I am looking forward to. I love thunder... maybe I'll clean up this apartment. Maybe not.

Stew - C'mon Everybody

2006-03-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

Business travel in America -- real business travel, not coddled executives in corporate jets -- is a PAIN. I have to go to St Louis next Thursday from here in LA. There are non-stops that are a fortune or connecting flights that end up taking 10 hours of travel and get you there after midnight.... and with a meeting at 8:30am, that isn't gonna happen. SO I look for nonstop flights. Only issue is that they are only in the morning. SO I'd have to stay another night in St Louis. So which wastes more time and money and which works better to ensure I can do my job... neither option ends up being good. Plus we do our own travel reservations and it takes forever. The company thinks it saves money because, by having us do our reservations directly, it sees the allocated expense for travel agents drop, but it can't see the corresponding drop in our effectiveness as we poke about with our own travel arrangements. Bollocks. That's what I say. At least money is no object. Well, mostly not.

Oh, and Shabbat Shalom.