Here it is, possibly the single most important vote that some senators and representatives are going to make in their whole careers and...
THANK GOD, OREGON'S CHILDRENS' WOODEN TOY ARROW INDUSTRY IS SAVED! THE PUERTO RICAN RUM INDUSTRY WILL THRIVE TO DISTILL ANOTHER DAY.
Earmarks. Of course there were earmarks on the economic bailout / rescue bill.
JUST HOW SHAMELESS ARE THESE PEOPLE?
That wasn't really a question.
Mark Twain said: "America has no distinctly criminal class, excepting maybe Congress." It is as true today as it was in Twain's time.
I'm at Bouchercon in Baltimore. It's the huge annual mystery readers and writers confab and is as fun, and at times useful, as ever. Large amounts of booze are being drunk - some of it probably Puerto Rican rum at that. Plenty of both inebriated and sober talk about writing and publishing is in the wind. Some people are sneaking around the hotel corridors. Awards are being given out. Books are being signed. It's like any convention anywhere, I suppose. For us writers, who spend our days sitting alone in front of computer screens or pads of paper - I even know one who still uses manual typewriters - it's a welcome and necessary reminder that we are part of a community, an industry and that no matter if we write about serial killers or cats solving crimes, we share a common cause and bond. I like it.
09 October 2008
01 October 2008
MAIN STREET AND WALL STREET ARE STUCK WITH EACH OTHER, SO GET OVER IT
First off, a soothing note for my readers who don't give a rat's ass for my political / economic rants, raves and, obviously well-informed opinions: next week I'll be in Baltimore for Bouchercon. That is essentially going to be the kick off of my Fall 2008 Drive-By Book Tour. So soon you'll get your fill of amusing anecdotes from the treacherous road of book promotions. Still, in the meantime:
What's all this constant bullshit and whining about "Main Street" this and "Wall Street" that?
This morning I saw a story in my L.A. Times headlined: "Lehman collapse suspends Ritz renovation." That's as good a place as any to understand why you can't possibly separate the needs and activities of "Main Street" from those of "Wall Street."
Lehman Brothers was the primary lender to the Ritz Carlton, Rancho Mirage hotel. Lehman goes belly up, the money stops flowing to the hotel group, then on to the construction companies involved in the project and everything comes to a crashing halt. Think about what that means.
How many workers have now lost their jobs because of the halt in construction?
How many suppliers of materials to that job - many of them small,local companies - have now lost a customer? If too many of their customers disappear, how many people are they going to have to lay off?
How many local businesses are losing the laid off workers as customers because they now have to pinch even more pennies to get by, or even have to move out of the area to find work elsewhere? And, once again, if their business suffers, sooner or later they're going to have to lay off workers.
What does that do to the local tax base, and consequently things like school funding, police and fire services, road repairs, etc.
I could spend a very long time listing all of the potential negative affects that the halt in construction on this one major project will have, due to the bankruptcy of a huge "Wall Street" institution.
And you can bet that there are plenty of small companies that borrowed money from Lehman Brothers, too. And they're scrambling like mad to find someone to take up those loans so that they can continue to do business. And these days, until things are worked out, they're not finding those loans. What's happening to their workers and suppliers and communities?
The worst pain of the collapse of Lehman Brothers is being felt all along "Main Street." Like it or not, "Main Street" has a huge vested interest in the health of "Wall Street."
Where do you think the money comes from for all those small and other business loans? Who's providing the credit cards, the mortgages, the student loans, the insurance policies, the management of 401-K and pension fund money, the trade finance, etc?
Now it is true that that money isn't made by "Wall Street." It is made, earned, generated by "Main Street" and then filtered through "Wall Street" for purposes of management, manipulation and protection.
And that's a necessary part of the process. If a stranger comes to you and asks for a loan to buy a house in your neighborhood, are you going to directly loan them the money? If the Ritz Carlton wants to build a fancy new hotel in your town and that's going to create a lot of jobs and knock on business opportunities, are you going to reach into your pocket to loan them the money? Of course not.
You put your money in the bank, buy stocks and bonds with it, etc. all so that big institutions can more efficiently put it to work - hopefully paying you something for the right to use your money - and you don't have to personally take the risks involved in making those loans or higher risk investments.
The problem isn't the system. The system - sort of a partnership between Main and Wall Streets - actually works quite well so long as everyone does their part in good faith. The problem rose when, for all sorts of reasons and made possible by willy-nilly ill-thought out deregulation without concurrent oversight, the stewards of all that money that was raised on Main Street, started taking enormous, ill-considered risks with the money. And, the people on Main Street did the same thing; taking out loans they couldn't really afford. Everyone figured that a steady, never-ending upward spiral of the economy would let them get away with it.
Only it came crashing down, as it was inevitably bound to. Regardless of who should take the blame for it, all of us now need a bailout. Even those of us who played no part in causing the problem. A bailout is not a good thing. But it's a necessity. We are in a situation where a bailout of Wall Street is also a bailout of Main Street. You just can't separate the two.
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be well thought out. There ought to be some potential for taxpayers to recoup their money, if not even make a profit. There needs to be oversight so that we aren't simply throwing good money away. There needs to be a means of ensuring that the avaricious assholes and nitwits who got us into this mess to begin with don't reap windfall profits from saving their asses from the mess they got us into. (And that means all of those people: no big executive parachutes, and also no debt relief for people who snapped up two, three, four houses using sub-prime loans that anyone with a lick of sense knew were too good [sounding] to be true.)
But that's all there ought to be. Right now the job is to stop the bleeding and settle things down so that they can get better. Once the patient is stabilized there will be plenty of time for figuring out what to do to make sure this doesn't happen again. It's not unlike a heart attack. Diagnose it, treat it, and only after the patient is back in the recovery room read him the riot act about how he needs to lay off the triple bacon cheeseburgers, fries and super-sized drinks and maybe throw in a little exercise from time to time.
In this morning's paper I also read about the Senate bailout bill that will be voted on today. It includes a provision mandating that companies above a certain size that provide health coverage to their employees, have to make sure the coverage treats mental and physical ailments equally.
HUH? What the fuck does that have to do with it? What's next, a bunch of earmarks finding their way onto the bailout bill? Ted Stevens may be on trial, but I'm sure he can think of something to attach to the bill, a rail line to nowhere perhaps.
What's all this constant bullshit and whining about "Main Street" this and "Wall Street" that?
This morning I saw a story in my L.A. Times headlined: "Lehman collapse suspends Ritz renovation." That's as good a place as any to understand why you can't possibly separate the needs and activities of "Main Street" from those of "Wall Street."
Lehman Brothers was the primary lender to the Ritz Carlton, Rancho Mirage hotel. Lehman goes belly up, the money stops flowing to the hotel group, then on to the construction companies involved in the project and everything comes to a crashing halt. Think about what that means.
How many workers have now lost their jobs because of the halt in construction?
How many suppliers of materials to that job - many of them small,local companies - have now lost a customer? If too many of their customers disappear, how many people are they going to have to lay off?
How many local businesses are losing the laid off workers as customers because they now have to pinch even more pennies to get by, or even have to move out of the area to find work elsewhere? And, once again, if their business suffers, sooner or later they're going to have to lay off workers.
What does that do to the local tax base, and consequently things like school funding, police and fire services, road repairs, etc.
I could spend a very long time listing all of the potential negative affects that the halt in construction on this one major project will have, due to the bankruptcy of a huge "Wall Street" institution.
And you can bet that there are plenty of small companies that borrowed money from Lehman Brothers, too. And they're scrambling like mad to find someone to take up those loans so that they can continue to do business. And these days, until things are worked out, they're not finding those loans. What's happening to their workers and suppliers and communities?
The worst pain of the collapse of Lehman Brothers is being felt all along "Main Street." Like it or not, "Main Street" has a huge vested interest in the health of "Wall Street."
Where do you think the money comes from for all those small and other business loans? Who's providing the credit cards, the mortgages, the student loans, the insurance policies, the management of 401-K and pension fund money, the trade finance, etc?
Now it is true that that money isn't made by "Wall Street." It is made, earned, generated by "Main Street" and then filtered through "Wall Street" for purposes of management, manipulation and protection.
And that's a necessary part of the process. If a stranger comes to you and asks for a loan to buy a house in your neighborhood, are you going to directly loan them the money? If the Ritz Carlton wants to build a fancy new hotel in your town and that's going to create a lot of jobs and knock on business opportunities, are you going to reach into your pocket to loan them the money? Of course not.
You put your money in the bank, buy stocks and bonds with it, etc. all so that big institutions can more efficiently put it to work - hopefully paying you something for the right to use your money - and you don't have to personally take the risks involved in making those loans or higher risk investments.
The problem isn't the system. The system - sort of a partnership between Main and Wall Streets - actually works quite well so long as everyone does their part in good faith. The problem rose when, for all sorts of reasons and made possible by willy-nilly ill-thought out deregulation without concurrent oversight, the stewards of all that money that was raised on Main Street, started taking enormous, ill-considered risks with the money. And, the people on Main Street did the same thing; taking out loans they couldn't really afford. Everyone figured that a steady, never-ending upward spiral of the economy would let them get away with it.
Only it came crashing down, as it was inevitably bound to. Regardless of who should take the blame for it, all of us now need a bailout. Even those of us who played no part in causing the problem. A bailout is not a good thing. But it's a necessity. We are in a situation where a bailout of Wall Street is also a bailout of Main Street. You just can't separate the two.
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be well thought out. There ought to be some potential for taxpayers to recoup their money, if not even make a profit. There needs to be oversight so that we aren't simply throwing good money away. There needs to be a means of ensuring that the avaricious assholes and nitwits who got us into this mess to begin with don't reap windfall profits from saving their asses from the mess they got us into. (And that means all of those people: no big executive parachutes, and also no debt relief for people who snapped up two, three, four houses using sub-prime loans that anyone with a lick of sense knew were too good [sounding] to be true.)
But that's all there ought to be. Right now the job is to stop the bleeding and settle things down so that they can get better. Once the patient is stabilized there will be plenty of time for figuring out what to do to make sure this doesn't happen again. It's not unlike a heart attack. Diagnose it, treat it, and only after the patient is back in the recovery room read him the riot act about how he needs to lay off the triple bacon cheeseburgers, fries and super-sized drinks and maybe throw in a little exercise from time to time.
In this morning's paper I also read about the Senate bailout bill that will be voted on today. It includes a provision mandating that companies above a certain size that provide health coverage to their employees, have to make sure the coverage treats mental and physical ailments equally.
HUH? What the fuck does that have to do with it? What's next, a bunch of earmarks finding their way onto the bailout bill? Ted Stevens may be on trial, but I'm sure he can think of something to attach to the bill, a rail line to nowhere perhaps.
23 September 2008
POINTING THE FINGER, GIVING THE FINGER
It might be easier to simply state who isn't to blame for the current financial meltdown that is in some way going to screw almost all of us:
Honest, not overly greedy bankers, brokers and CEOs. Believe it or not, there are some.
Honest members of congress and scrupulous regulators. Well, I'm not so sure there are any of those. But I can always hope. Do they even allow that ancient Greek guy with the lantern to wander the halls of Congress?
Honest realtors. There must be some. I know of at least a couple who have tried to discourage potential customers from buying houses that they couldn't really afford.
Informed, careful borrowers and home buyers. Yep, there are some of these folk, too. People who know how to balance a checkbook better than the government does.
Of course it's a whole lot more fun to cast blame, to give the finger to the crooks, miscreants and feckless morons who got us into this fix. Who are these swine (I shouldn't say that, I like pigs)...Who are these evildoers (to lift a phrase from one of the chief evildoers himself) and fuckwits?
Our lame duck, shit for brains, president. He may have put aside his coke habit and disco shoes in the late '80s, but he's done his best to promote the ugly attitude of "greed is good." His profligate spending, at the same time as his slavish devotion to tax-cutting - mostly for his cronies and those of his ilk - have led the country into a state where if it was a corporation it would have no choice other than to file for bankruptcy.
Our corrupt, lobbyist tit-sucking, pipe-dreaming Congress. Maybe it's an honest mistake - fat chance of that - maybe they are a glass-is-half-full crowd on the Hill and they think that people are basically good and that left alone to their own devises they will be honest and good and work for common benefit. Why else would they be so quick to deregulate as much as they could - not, in itself a terrible idea - but without realizing that deregulation requires oversight and that some things actually do work better when they are regulated because otherwise bad people will, oddly enough, do bad things that throw it all into imbalance.
Alan Fucking Greenspan. Yeah, we all loved him when things were cruising nicely along and housing prices and stock prices were booming and the dollar was strong and all that. And yeah, he coined the term "irrational exuberance" to warn us all that we might be cruising for a bruising. He should have listened to himself. He kept lowering interest rates, over and over and over again and that just added rocket fuel to all of our irrational exuberance. And when the rocket ran out of gas before getting into permanent orbit - watch out below. What he was pushing was the financial equivalent of crack.
Corporate irregular regulators. In spite of what the white haired, ill-informed old fart running for president has to say, not so much the SEC. Sure there were plenty of artificially inflated stock prices on the market, but that was due to the artificially inflated economy as a whole, not so much to stock fraud, which is what the SEC is supposed to oversee. But, in spite of deregulation and in spite of Executive, Congressional and Corporate efforts to thwart the work of corporate and financial regulatory agencies, those agencies do actually exist and they could have done something, or at least said something. Instead, they just rolled over and allowed everyone to get away with whatever they wanted.
Greedy, short-sighted, thieving corporate executives. They've been so busy lining their own pockets that they have come close to killing the goose that's laying their own golden eggs. Of course they don't really mind, because they've stacked the deck so that even when they fail, their fall is cushioned with ludicrously large payoffs for having screwed up, or in some cases, having been caught cheating. They have no incentive to do good for their customers, the economy as a whole or even their own shareholders if they can still rake in seven, eight and nine figure severance packages when they fuck up.
Stupid, complacent, short-sighted shareholders, especially institutional shareholders. The first line of defense against corporate fuck ups shouldn't have to be regulators, it should be corporations' own shareholders. They have more at stake and so they ought to be more vigilant than anyone else when it comes to oversight. Mom and pop shareholders with their small portfolios are pretty much just along for the ride, they have no clout. But institutions, with their large portfolios, can make a real difference in corporate governance, if they can see past the quarterly reports - which they usually can't because they tend to suffer from the same willful myopia that infects too many corporate executives. If major shareholders see something going on that might hurt the long term prospects of a company, even if it looks good in the quarterly reports, they need to throw the bums out, and they need to take away the perks of failure when they do. When they don't, they're making their own bed of nails, and helping to make ours, too.
Speed freak, action-junkie greedy speculators. There are some very good uses for financial instruments like short selling, derivatives, hedge funds, etc. When they are used properly they help keep markets stable. But when people start seeing them as the means to turn a quick buck, and they all start piling on at once to try and move the market rather than adjust to it or simply to protect themselves from its fluctuations, they can quickly destabilize the market. Some of these assholes, too many of them, prefer volatile, wild markets, that's where they make the most money.
Greedy, lazy and corrupt realtors. Not everybody should buy their own home. Plenty of people can't really afford it. For other people, it doesn't make financial sense in their current circumstances. But there are more than enough realtors out there who are happy to convince them otherwise. They want their commissions. They get those commissions no matter how bad a deal gets made, so long as the deal gets made. A new homeowner can default on their loan a month after escrow closes, and it's no concern to the realtor who put together the deal. Their check is already banked.
Crooked, slimeball mortgage brokers. The greedy, uncaring realtor's best friend. They knew what they were doing but they didn't care. "Of course you can afford this house. I know a guy. First month's free." They knew they could package all those crappy loans into big juicy bundles that helped pump up the quarterly reports that everyone paid so much attention to and sell them on the bogus basis that, "sure, some of these are gonna crap out, but it's a risk worth taking because of the ones that won't fall apart and the property market's gonna keep going up anyhow, right?" Yeah, right.
Venal, loan-sharking credit card pushers. Just like some people can't actually afford to buy a house, some people ought to live on a "pay as you go" basis. It's got so that you don't even need credit to get a credit card. Whoopee, free money! At least that's what all those TV ads and credit card pushers on college campuses would like us to believe. Two percent APR for balance transfers. Oh boy! What they do is no different than what a heroin pusher does, only its more profitable.
Media fuckwits and pundits (which ought to be a swear word unto itself.) I don't give a shit whether they're liberal or conservative, what they mostly are is stupid and unable to live up to the task of being the most important watchdog this country ought to have. Analysis? "We don't need no stinking analysis," is what they'd say if they were honest, since that seems to be their real attitude. Why weren't all the so-called experts warning us all about this stuff for a long time now? Surely they weren't that stupid as to buy into it all? Well, apparently they were that stupid. They just got hypnotized by all the big numbers, because they figured that was something they could get their audiences all jacked up on. If mortgage brokers and credit card issuers were pushing heroin, the media's been shoving meth crystal into our brains.
You and me. (Well, not so much me, the only debt I've got is a good, solid mortgage that I can afford. I don't even use credit cards.) Now don't get me wrong, some people have little choice but to use credit cards, and for some people it does make sense to do almost whatever they have to, to buy a house. But let's face it, buying a house is, for most people, the biggest, most important expense they will ever incur. While there is plenty of blame to go around, part of that blame must be shouldered by people who leapt before they looked. When you're about to spend the most money you've ever spent, on something of vital importance to you and your family's future, you have to do your homework. If you don't understand something, you need to get it explained to you in a way that you do understand. If something seems too good to be true - "Credit, income, job? Oh, you don't need those to buy this house, I can get you a mortgage without even filling out any paperwork." - you need to assume that it is too good to be true. And if you don't, you're being a fool and you need to share in the blame when things go wrong. Even in a market where everyone is for the most part honest, the concept of "let the buyer beware" is vital to its smooth running.
Yes, we have a lousy educational system in this country, especially when it comes to teaching people about such things as fiscal responsibility. (And it's not like the government is setting a good example, either.) But everyone, when doing something, anything, significant, has to bear at least some responsibility for knowing what they're doing.
And yes, there are unscrupulous people out there who will lie to you, or at least deceive and confuse you, to get you to do things that aren't good for you. And if you're not aware of that already, grow up, fast. Con men have long been successful preying on the unthinking greed and stupidity of their victims. That's what's been going on in huge parts of the housing and credit markets. Sure, the con men are bad guys and ought to be stopped, locked away if they've actually violated any laws. But that doesn't entirely let their victims off the hook for being greedy or stupid or culpable in the mess that this country now finds itself in. "I didn't know that I should try and understand all that confusing paperwork involved in the biggest expenditure of my entire life, and the mortgage guy said I didn't need to," is an excuse that doesn't cut it.
Do I even need to say anything about people who max out their credit cards buying shit they don't really need and can't afford: giant flatscreen TVs, gas-guzzling SUVs, cruises, lost weekends in Vegas, whatever? And then they transfer the debt from one card to the next, maxing out one higher credit limit after the next, until they can't do that anymore and presto chango they're in some sort of huge financial trouble and contributing to the economy's problems when they default.
There are plenty of people who have no choice but to resort to credit cards to pay for legitimate necessities: food, clothing, housing, transportation. And those people are exempt from what I'm about to say.
But there are plenty more who have overextended themselves on consumer crap because they think that's their god given right as Americans - the most powerful, richest people on the planet. To them, I'd like to shout out a hearty - FUCK YOU! If there was any way to cut you morons out of any bailout programs, I'd be happy to do it.
For that matter I'd be thrilled to cut pretty much any of the miscreants listed above out of any bailout program. Or at least limit their participation in it to the bare necessities for preventing a total economic meltdown. I'm not sure how, or if, that could be accomplished. But it seems like giving Bush and Paulson carte blanche to do it the way they want to is just going to encourage too many of these crooks and cretins to eventually do the same things all over again.
Honest, not overly greedy bankers, brokers and CEOs. Believe it or not, there are some.
Honest members of congress and scrupulous regulators. Well, I'm not so sure there are any of those. But I can always hope. Do they even allow that ancient Greek guy with the lantern to wander the halls of Congress?
Honest realtors. There must be some. I know of at least a couple who have tried to discourage potential customers from buying houses that they couldn't really afford.
Informed, careful borrowers and home buyers. Yep, there are some of these folk, too. People who know how to balance a checkbook better than the government does.
Of course it's a whole lot more fun to cast blame, to give the finger to the crooks, miscreants and feckless morons who got us into this fix. Who are these swine (I shouldn't say that, I like pigs)...Who are these evildoers (to lift a phrase from one of the chief evildoers himself) and fuckwits?
Our lame duck, shit for brains, president. He may have put aside his coke habit and disco shoes in the late '80s, but he's done his best to promote the ugly attitude of "greed is good." His profligate spending, at the same time as his slavish devotion to tax-cutting - mostly for his cronies and those of his ilk - have led the country into a state where if it was a corporation it would have no choice other than to file for bankruptcy.
Our corrupt, lobbyist tit-sucking, pipe-dreaming Congress. Maybe it's an honest mistake - fat chance of that - maybe they are a glass-is-half-full crowd on the Hill and they think that people are basically good and that left alone to their own devises they will be honest and good and work for common benefit. Why else would they be so quick to deregulate as much as they could - not, in itself a terrible idea - but without realizing that deregulation requires oversight and that some things actually do work better when they are regulated because otherwise bad people will, oddly enough, do bad things that throw it all into imbalance.
Alan Fucking Greenspan. Yeah, we all loved him when things were cruising nicely along and housing prices and stock prices were booming and the dollar was strong and all that. And yeah, he coined the term "irrational exuberance" to warn us all that we might be cruising for a bruising. He should have listened to himself. He kept lowering interest rates, over and over and over again and that just added rocket fuel to all of our irrational exuberance. And when the rocket ran out of gas before getting into permanent orbit - watch out below. What he was pushing was the financial equivalent of crack.
Corporate irregular regulators. In spite of what the white haired, ill-informed old fart running for president has to say, not so much the SEC. Sure there were plenty of artificially inflated stock prices on the market, but that was due to the artificially inflated economy as a whole, not so much to stock fraud, which is what the SEC is supposed to oversee. But, in spite of deregulation and in spite of Executive, Congressional and Corporate efforts to thwart the work of corporate and financial regulatory agencies, those agencies do actually exist and they could have done something, or at least said something. Instead, they just rolled over and allowed everyone to get away with whatever they wanted.
Greedy, short-sighted, thieving corporate executives. They've been so busy lining their own pockets that they have come close to killing the goose that's laying their own golden eggs. Of course they don't really mind, because they've stacked the deck so that even when they fail, their fall is cushioned with ludicrously large payoffs for having screwed up, or in some cases, having been caught cheating. They have no incentive to do good for their customers, the economy as a whole or even their own shareholders if they can still rake in seven, eight and nine figure severance packages when they fuck up.
Stupid, complacent, short-sighted shareholders, especially institutional shareholders. The first line of defense against corporate fuck ups shouldn't have to be regulators, it should be corporations' own shareholders. They have more at stake and so they ought to be more vigilant than anyone else when it comes to oversight. Mom and pop shareholders with their small portfolios are pretty much just along for the ride, they have no clout. But institutions, with their large portfolios, can make a real difference in corporate governance, if they can see past the quarterly reports - which they usually can't because they tend to suffer from the same willful myopia that infects too many corporate executives. If major shareholders see something going on that might hurt the long term prospects of a company, even if it looks good in the quarterly reports, they need to throw the bums out, and they need to take away the perks of failure when they do. When they don't, they're making their own bed of nails, and helping to make ours, too.
Speed freak, action-junkie greedy speculators. There are some very good uses for financial instruments like short selling, derivatives, hedge funds, etc. When they are used properly they help keep markets stable. But when people start seeing them as the means to turn a quick buck, and they all start piling on at once to try and move the market rather than adjust to it or simply to protect themselves from its fluctuations, they can quickly destabilize the market. Some of these assholes, too many of them, prefer volatile, wild markets, that's where they make the most money.
Greedy, lazy and corrupt realtors. Not everybody should buy their own home. Plenty of people can't really afford it. For other people, it doesn't make financial sense in their current circumstances. But there are more than enough realtors out there who are happy to convince them otherwise. They want their commissions. They get those commissions no matter how bad a deal gets made, so long as the deal gets made. A new homeowner can default on their loan a month after escrow closes, and it's no concern to the realtor who put together the deal. Their check is already banked.
Crooked, slimeball mortgage brokers. The greedy, uncaring realtor's best friend. They knew what they were doing but they didn't care. "Of course you can afford this house. I know a guy. First month's free." They knew they could package all those crappy loans into big juicy bundles that helped pump up the quarterly reports that everyone paid so much attention to and sell them on the bogus basis that, "sure, some of these are gonna crap out, but it's a risk worth taking because of the ones that won't fall apart and the property market's gonna keep going up anyhow, right?" Yeah, right.
Venal, loan-sharking credit card pushers. Just like some people can't actually afford to buy a house, some people ought to live on a "pay as you go" basis. It's got so that you don't even need credit to get a credit card. Whoopee, free money! At least that's what all those TV ads and credit card pushers on college campuses would like us to believe. Two percent APR for balance transfers. Oh boy! What they do is no different than what a heroin pusher does, only its more profitable.
Media fuckwits and pundits (which ought to be a swear word unto itself.) I don't give a shit whether they're liberal or conservative, what they mostly are is stupid and unable to live up to the task of being the most important watchdog this country ought to have. Analysis? "We don't need no stinking analysis," is what they'd say if they were honest, since that seems to be their real attitude. Why weren't all the so-called experts warning us all about this stuff for a long time now? Surely they weren't that stupid as to buy into it all? Well, apparently they were that stupid. They just got hypnotized by all the big numbers, because they figured that was something they could get their audiences all jacked up on. If mortgage brokers and credit card issuers were pushing heroin, the media's been shoving meth crystal into our brains.
You and me. (Well, not so much me, the only debt I've got is a good, solid mortgage that I can afford. I don't even use credit cards.) Now don't get me wrong, some people have little choice but to use credit cards, and for some people it does make sense to do almost whatever they have to, to buy a house. But let's face it, buying a house is, for most people, the biggest, most important expense they will ever incur. While there is plenty of blame to go around, part of that blame must be shouldered by people who leapt before they looked. When you're about to spend the most money you've ever spent, on something of vital importance to you and your family's future, you have to do your homework. If you don't understand something, you need to get it explained to you in a way that you do understand. If something seems too good to be true - "Credit, income, job? Oh, you don't need those to buy this house, I can get you a mortgage without even filling out any paperwork." - you need to assume that it is too good to be true. And if you don't, you're being a fool and you need to share in the blame when things go wrong. Even in a market where everyone is for the most part honest, the concept of "let the buyer beware" is vital to its smooth running.
Yes, we have a lousy educational system in this country, especially when it comes to teaching people about such things as fiscal responsibility. (And it's not like the government is setting a good example, either.) But everyone, when doing something, anything, significant, has to bear at least some responsibility for knowing what they're doing.
And yes, there are unscrupulous people out there who will lie to you, or at least deceive and confuse you, to get you to do things that aren't good for you. And if you're not aware of that already, grow up, fast. Con men have long been successful preying on the unthinking greed and stupidity of their victims. That's what's been going on in huge parts of the housing and credit markets. Sure, the con men are bad guys and ought to be stopped, locked away if they've actually violated any laws. But that doesn't entirely let their victims off the hook for being greedy or stupid or culpable in the mess that this country now finds itself in. "I didn't know that I should try and understand all that confusing paperwork involved in the biggest expenditure of my entire life, and the mortgage guy said I didn't need to," is an excuse that doesn't cut it.
Do I even need to say anything about people who max out their credit cards buying shit they don't really need and can't afford: giant flatscreen TVs, gas-guzzling SUVs, cruises, lost weekends in Vegas, whatever? And then they transfer the debt from one card to the next, maxing out one higher credit limit after the next, until they can't do that anymore and presto chango they're in some sort of huge financial trouble and contributing to the economy's problems when they default.
There are plenty of people who have no choice but to resort to credit cards to pay for legitimate necessities: food, clothing, housing, transportation. And those people are exempt from what I'm about to say.
But there are plenty more who have overextended themselves on consumer crap because they think that's their god given right as Americans - the most powerful, richest people on the planet. To them, I'd like to shout out a hearty - FUCK YOU! If there was any way to cut you morons out of any bailout programs, I'd be happy to do it.
For that matter I'd be thrilled to cut pretty much any of the miscreants listed above out of any bailout program. Or at least limit their participation in it to the bare necessities for preventing a total economic meltdown. I'm not sure how, or if, that could be accomplished. But it seems like giving Bush and Paulson carte blanche to do it the way they want to is just going to encourage too many of these crooks and cretins to eventually do the same things all over again.
03 September 2008
HERE'S WHY BRISTOL PALIN'S PREGNANCY IS POLITICALLY RELEVANT
Because her mom, Sarah Palin, candidate for vice president of the United States, as governor of Alaska, cut state funding for teen pregnancy programs.
Because her mom has strongly opposed sex education in public schools - something that has been shown over and over again to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy.
Because her mom has strongly opposed access to information on contraception, as well as contraception itself, to teenagers.
Because her mom is opposed to legal abortion, even in circumstances such as pregnancy resulting from rape or where a continued pregnancy threatens the life of the pregnant woman.
Need I also point out that less funding for teen pregnancy programs, lack of sex education and lack of information about and/or access to contraception all result in more abortions, not fewer abortions.
Sure, I feel bad for Bristol Palin and the young fellow who is no doubt being herded into a shotgun wedding. What they are going through ought to be a family matter and none of the rest of our business. What they do about their problems should be their own personal choice.
But it is our business for the very reason that Sarah Palin wants to create a world in which none of us have the personal choice to deal with these same sorts of problems in the way that we want to. She wants a world in which these problems crop up more frequently, not less so, because she lives in some fantasy Christian world in which faith and "morality" trump reason, logic and practicality.
Now that she is the Republican candidate for vice president, running with the oldest man to ever run for president, her medieval, ignorant nonsense cannot simply be dismissed as a matter of her, and her family's, personal choice. It is not merely the lunatic raving of some nutjob religious crank on a street corner; or even the silly notions of the ill-informed soccer mom next door. It is something that could have a very real impact on every one of us.
I feel bad for Bristol Palin. I feel bad for her because she was raised in "the bosom of a loving Christian family" that did its best to keep her in the dark about the real choices that all people ought to be able to make for themselves in an informed manner. Now that family is having to deal with the real world consequences of their ignorance. And the fact that they are, and that Bristol's mom wants to be elected to within a fast-aging heartbeat of the most powerful job on the planet, seems pretty damn relevant to me.
Because her mom has strongly opposed sex education in public schools - something that has been shown over and over again to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy.
Because her mom has strongly opposed access to information on contraception, as well as contraception itself, to teenagers.
Because her mom is opposed to legal abortion, even in circumstances such as pregnancy resulting from rape or where a continued pregnancy threatens the life of the pregnant woman.
Need I also point out that less funding for teen pregnancy programs, lack of sex education and lack of information about and/or access to contraception all result in more abortions, not fewer abortions.
Sure, I feel bad for Bristol Palin and the young fellow who is no doubt being herded into a shotgun wedding. What they are going through ought to be a family matter and none of the rest of our business. What they do about their problems should be their own personal choice.
But it is our business for the very reason that Sarah Palin wants to create a world in which none of us have the personal choice to deal with these same sorts of problems in the way that we want to. She wants a world in which these problems crop up more frequently, not less so, because she lives in some fantasy Christian world in which faith and "morality" trump reason, logic and practicality.
Now that she is the Republican candidate for vice president, running with the oldest man to ever run for president, her medieval, ignorant nonsense cannot simply be dismissed as a matter of her, and her family's, personal choice. It is not merely the lunatic raving of some nutjob religious crank on a street corner; or even the silly notions of the ill-informed soccer mom next door. It is something that could have a very real impact on every one of us.
I feel bad for Bristol Palin. I feel bad for her because she was raised in "the bosom of a loving Christian family" that did its best to keep her in the dark about the real choices that all people ought to be able to make for themselves in an informed manner. Now that family is having to deal with the real world consequences of their ignorance. And the fact that they are, and that Bristol's mom wants to be elected to within a fast-aging heartbeat of the most powerful job on the planet, seems pretty damn relevant to me.
25 August 2008
SOME ASSORTED THOUGHTS ON THE OLYMPICS AND THE DEMOCRATS
FORTY ONE BILLION DOLLARS! That's what China spent on the Olympics. Sure the country has the biggest cash surplus of any country on the planet at the moment. But it's also got 800 to 900 million people who live on two dollars a day or less.
I enjoyed watching Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps and the Brazilian women's volleyball team as much as anyone. But I would have happily foregone those pleasures if that FORTY ONE BILLION DOLLARS had been spent on something that benefited at least some of those impoverished, oppressed Chinese people.
And these figures don't even account for the cost to a number of farmers who lost this year's crops due to diversion of water from their farms to the creation of the sailing and kayaking venues; or the fact that the fancy new facilities were built in the same way that most government building projects are built in China - with near slave labor.
Sure the Chinese got to wallow in national pride. And now Beijing has some pretty new sports venues. And here in the U.S. we got some great TV to watch - albeit with really inane commentary for the most part.
But I'm sorry, the Olympics isn't worth it. IT WAS DISGUSTING.
And speaking of stupidly expensive exercises; the Democratic Convention kicks off today.
This is, of course, to anoint one of the two men who are going to spend OVER A BILLION DOLLARS trying to get elected by telling us, among other lies, how responsible they are going to be with our money.
Before I start excoriating the Democrats (I'll excoriate the Republicans during their convention) for being fuckwits, let's get a couple of things straight.
I'm a registered independent.
I mostly vote for Democratic Party candidates - although I have voted for a few Republicans over the years and once or twice when I really couldn't stomach voting for either, I voted for third party candidates without a hope in hell of winning in the hope they'd get enough votes to stir the pot up a little. (I never, by the way, voted for Ralph Nader. I think he was a fine consumer advocate. Other than that, I think he's a cretin.)
I am going to vote for Barack Obama, and happily so. I think one more term of a Republican administration at this point will seal the deal on the destruction - for at least a generation to come - of many of the things I love about this country.
We cannot afford any more of this nonsense about cutting taxes at the same time as boosting spending enormously to pay for ill-advised, in the long run unwinnable, wars justified through lies.
We cannot afford any more of the remarkable culture of financial malfeasance without at least some effective oversight - that the Republicans have been more responsible for than the Democrats. I'm all in favor of free markets, but at a certain point certain unregulated economic activities, even so-called "free market" ones, can skew the free market in ways that make it not work. There is a difference between "free" markets and "anarchic" markets where the strong have free rein to cheat, lie, steal and generally crush the weak.
We desperately need to repair our relations with the rest of the world. Barack Obama is far better positioned to accomplish that than John McCain.
And, maybe most importantly, the next president is going to appoint, minimally one, possibly as many as three, Supreme Court justices. The current court already leans further to the right than is good for our civil rights and liberties, as well as the environment. Balance needs to be restored. A Republican president will - and candidate McCain has already said that he will - appoint similar justices to the appointments made by GW Bush. That will complete the transition of the court to the right wing, for a generation or more. No American who loves the ideals that this country was founded upon, could possibly want that.
OKAY, SO IT'S CLEAR - I WILL VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA. I might even contribute some money, maybe a little work, to his campaign.
That said, THE DEMOCRATS ARE IDIOTS AND THEY COULD WELL LOSE THIS ELECTION BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRIBLE CAMPAIGNERS.
The recent kerfuffle over McCain's failure to know how many houses he owns, is a case in point. McCain, stupidly, admitted to not knowing. Obama then blew a perfectly good opportunity to take the high road, cut off any attack response from the McCain campaign, and put his message across.
Because Obama attacked McCain for being an out of touch rich guy, he opened himself up to being attacked back: "Wait a minute there, buster, you too." (At the current rate, it's going to take me somewhere between sixty and eighty years to earn the four plus million bucks Obama took in last year. And I'm above the national average.)
The fact is, anyone who gets as far as the two final candidates, is going to be out of touch with the daily lives of ordinary people. They're not going to the grocery store to shop. They're not pumping their own gas. They're not wondering if they can afford to take their family to a ballgame.
But that's got nothing whatsoever to do with their ability as president to deal with the problems of ordinary people. Franklin Roosevelt, arguably the American common man's greatest friend of the Twentieth Century, came from a life of fabulous wealth and privilege. Hell, if you're a leftist and you're still worried about it; Frederich Engels supported his poorer pal Karl Marx with the wealth from his family's textile mills.
What Obama could have said is something along the lines of: "Sure McCain's out of touch [a nice little dig there], neither of us is living the day to day life of the average American. The difference is in what we plan to do about it. My plan is better. Here's why..." He would have cut off any counterattack at the knees and he could have taken an opportunity to get one of his most important points across.
But, he didn't. And that's because politics in this country has been distilled down to attack and defend. Usually it's the Republicans attacking and the Democrats defending - which is one reason the Democrats have been losers so much in most of the years since Richard Nixon. A charge, which is leveled first and usually easy to sum up in a few short words, is always going to be better remembered than a response, no matter how well reasoned, which comes second and more often than not requires a more complex or nuanced explanation. The whole point of an attack is to get it in first and make it simple. That's nearly as effective with a lie as it is with the truth. The Democrats have lost over the years by playing the Republicans' game.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think there might be an argument to be made in favor of "promote."
>>>Sure, us pampered candidates are out of touch with ordinary Americans, but I'm a good study, I've got good advisers and here's what I plan to do about it. What's the other guy got?<<<
>>>Sure I'm more charismatic than my opponent. But I'm smart, too, because here's how I plan to use that to get things done that need doing and here's what I'm going to do. What's the other guy got?<<<
But, what's going to happen, and is already happening, is that the Democrats are going to fall into the Republicans trap just like they always do. Obama's plan actually lowers taxes for a whole lot more people than McCain's does. But because McCain's plan lowers taxes on the wealthy - who make the biggest stink about taxes - he's trying to pass himself off as the tax cutter of the two. And since he made the charge first, it is more likely to stick even though it's total bullshit.
What happened to: >>>Hey, eight years of huge expenditures at the same time as big tax cuts have left our country in a terrible financial position. We are going to have to raise some money. That's going to mean some higher taxes for some people. I plan to squeeze some of that from the pockets of the people who can most easily afford it and ease up on a lot of you who are being most hurt by this financial mess. What's the other guy got?<<<
But, unfortunately, this one, like all elections, will deteriorate into the usual politely veneered name calling - with surrogates permitted to strip off the veneer and outright attack the other guy.
If that's the case, I suppose - SIGH - the Democrats ought to start doing it first, fastest and most viciously so as to put the Republicans on the defensive for a change. And that's going to make me like them even less than I already do. But I'll still like them better than the Republicans.
I enjoyed watching Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps and the Brazilian women's volleyball team as much as anyone. But I would have happily foregone those pleasures if that FORTY ONE BILLION DOLLARS had been spent on something that benefited at least some of those impoverished, oppressed Chinese people.
And these figures don't even account for the cost to a number of farmers who lost this year's crops due to diversion of water from their farms to the creation of the sailing and kayaking venues; or the fact that the fancy new facilities were built in the same way that most government building projects are built in China - with near slave labor.
Sure the Chinese got to wallow in national pride. And now Beijing has some pretty new sports venues. And here in the U.S. we got some great TV to watch - albeit with really inane commentary for the most part.
But I'm sorry, the Olympics isn't worth it. IT WAS DISGUSTING.
And speaking of stupidly expensive exercises; the Democratic Convention kicks off today.
This is, of course, to anoint one of the two men who are going to spend OVER A BILLION DOLLARS trying to get elected by telling us, among other lies, how responsible they are going to be with our money.
Before I start excoriating the Democrats (I'll excoriate the Republicans during their convention) for being fuckwits, let's get a couple of things straight.
I'm a registered independent.
I mostly vote for Democratic Party candidates - although I have voted for a few Republicans over the years and once or twice when I really couldn't stomach voting for either, I voted for third party candidates without a hope in hell of winning in the hope they'd get enough votes to stir the pot up a little. (I never, by the way, voted for Ralph Nader. I think he was a fine consumer advocate. Other than that, I think he's a cretin.)
I am going to vote for Barack Obama, and happily so. I think one more term of a Republican administration at this point will seal the deal on the destruction - for at least a generation to come - of many of the things I love about this country.
We cannot afford any more of this nonsense about cutting taxes at the same time as boosting spending enormously to pay for ill-advised, in the long run unwinnable, wars justified through lies.
We cannot afford any more of the remarkable culture of financial malfeasance without at least some effective oversight - that the Republicans have been more responsible for than the Democrats. I'm all in favor of free markets, but at a certain point certain unregulated economic activities, even so-called "free market" ones, can skew the free market in ways that make it not work. There is a difference between "free" markets and "anarchic" markets where the strong have free rein to cheat, lie, steal and generally crush the weak.
We desperately need to repair our relations with the rest of the world. Barack Obama is far better positioned to accomplish that than John McCain.
And, maybe most importantly, the next president is going to appoint, minimally one, possibly as many as three, Supreme Court justices. The current court already leans further to the right than is good for our civil rights and liberties, as well as the environment. Balance needs to be restored. A Republican president will - and candidate McCain has already said that he will - appoint similar justices to the appointments made by GW Bush. That will complete the transition of the court to the right wing, for a generation or more. No American who loves the ideals that this country was founded upon, could possibly want that.
OKAY, SO IT'S CLEAR - I WILL VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA. I might even contribute some money, maybe a little work, to his campaign.
That said, THE DEMOCRATS ARE IDIOTS AND THEY COULD WELL LOSE THIS ELECTION BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRIBLE CAMPAIGNERS.
The recent kerfuffle over McCain's failure to know how many houses he owns, is a case in point. McCain, stupidly, admitted to not knowing. Obama then blew a perfectly good opportunity to take the high road, cut off any attack response from the McCain campaign, and put his message across.
Because Obama attacked McCain for being an out of touch rich guy, he opened himself up to being attacked back: "Wait a minute there, buster, you too." (At the current rate, it's going to take me somewhere between sixty and eighty years to earn the four plus million bucks Obama took in last year. And I'm above the national average.)
The fact is, anyone who gets as far as the two final candidates, is going to be out of touch with the daily lives of ordinary people. They're not going to the grocery store to shop. They're not pumping their own gas. They're not wondering if they can afford to take their family to a ballgame.
But that's got nothing whatsoever to do with their ability as president to deal with the problems of ordinary people. Franklin Roosevelt, arguably the American common man's greatest friend of the Twentieth Century, came from a life of fabulous wealth and privilege. Hell, if you're a leftist and you're still worried about it; Frederich Engels supported his poorer pal Karl Marx with the wealth from his family's textile mills.
What Obama could have said is something along the lines of: "Sure McCain's out of touch [a nice little dig there], neither of us is living the day to day life of the average American. The difference is in what we plan to do about it. My plan is better. Here's why..." He would have cut off any counterattack at the knees and he could have taken an opportunity to get one of his most important points across.
But, he didn't. And that's because politics in this country has been distilled down to attack and defend. Usually it's the Republicans attacking and the Democrats defending - which is one reason the Democrats have been losers so much in most of the years since Richard Nixon. A charge, which is leveled first and usually easy to sum up in a few short words, is always going to be better remembered than a response, no matter how well reasoned, which comes second and more often than not requires a more complex or nuanced explanation. The whole point of an attack is to get it in first and make it simple. That's nearly as effective with a lie as it is with the truth. The Democrats have lost over the years by playing the Republicans' game.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think there might be an argument to be made in favor of "promote."
>>>Sure, us pampered candidates are out of touch with ordinary Americans, but I'm a good study, I've got good advisers and here's what I plan to do about it. What's the other guy got?<<<
>>>Sure I'm more charismatic than my opponent. But I'm smart, too, because here's how I plan to use that to get things done that need doing and here's what I'm going to do. What's the other guy got?<<<
But, what's going to happen, and is already happening, is that the Democrats are going to fall into the Republicans trap just like they always do. Obama's plan actually lowers taxes for a whole lot more people than McCain's does. But because McCain's plan lowers taxes on the wealthy - who make the biggest stink about taxes - he's trying to pass himself off as the tax cutter of the two. And since he made the charge first, it is more likely to stick even though it's total bullshit.
What happened to: >>>Hey, eight years of huge expenditures at the same time as big tax cuts have left our country in a terrible financial position. We are going to have to raise some money. That's going to mean some higher taxes for some people. I plan to squeeze some of that from the pockets of the people who can most easily afford it and ease up on a lot of you who are being most hurt by this financial mess. What's the other guy got?<<<
But, unfortunately, this one, like all elections, will deteriorate into the usual politely veneered name calling - with surrogates permitted to strip off the veneer and outright attack the other guy.
If that's the case, I suppose - SIGH - the Democrats ought to start doing it first, fastest and most viciously so as to put the Republicans on the defensive for a change. And that's going to make me like them even less than I already do. But I'll still like them better than the Republicans.
30 July 2008
NOT EATEN BY BEARS
Yep, that's right, I survived the trip to Montana. I haven't, however, been able to find any updates on the fate of the besieged Russian scientists. Perhaps they have all been eaten and word has yet to get out. I hope not. Much as I think bears should be entitled to eat those people who encroach upon their territory - the food chain should not be tinkered with - I think the people who are being threatened with being consumed, should be able to fight back.
In Montana, while driving from my father's house to the west entrance of Glacier National Park, I did pass this place.
"Your Car is Your Cage" is one of the very best slogans I have ever encountered. So good that I've had moments of thinking I should have it tattooed upon my body. I would have to personalize it: "My Car is My Cage." It says so much about life in Los Angeles. I suppose it also says a lot about me that I can write that, believe it, and yet I love living here. I guess that, much like a long term zoo animal, I have become habituated to my environment.
I could never live in Montana. There's just not enough variety, not enough noise, not enough people, not enough of everything. While I was there I had occasion to think about California. It is arguably the single most varied, diverse - geographically, geologically, culturally, socially, economically, in every which way - place on the planet.
Still, I'm happy to visit other places and Montana certainly was beautiful:
The "Going to the Sun" highway in Glacier National Park. 
Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park. 
McDonald Creek, Glacier National Park. 
My father, Martin Stone on the trail. The guy is astounding. The reason that I, and the rest of the family, were there was his 80th birthday. He led us all on a four mile hike. He was a bit disappointed with that. He had a much more strenuous 12-mile hike in mind that he could normally easily do. But, due to a recent problem with one of his legs he had to settle for the lesser march. Good thing. By the last third of a 12-mile hike he'd have had to carry me on his back. The thing is, he probably could. Plus, if that had been the case it would have made it far too easy for the bears to eat the both of us.
My upcoming book, FLIGHT OF THE HORNBILL, is dedicated to my father. If you like my books, if you find some of what I write in this blog of interest, if there are things you like or find interesting about the way I look at the world and write about what I see, you can thank, or blame, my father for a lot of that. I, for one, thank and love him for it.
In Montana, while driving from my father's house to the west entrance of Glacier National Park, I did pass this place.
"Your Car is Your Cage" is one of the very best slogans I have ever encountered. So good that I've had moments of thinking I should have it tattooed upon my body. I would have to personalize it: "My Car is My Cage." It says so much about life in Los Angeles. I suppose it also says a lot about me that I can write that, believe it, and yet I love living here. I guess that, much like a long term zoo animal, I have become habituated to my environment.I could never live in Montana. There's just not enough variety, not enough noise, not enough people, not enough of everything. While I was there I had occasion to think about California. It is arguably the single most varied, diverse - geographically, geologically, culturally, socially, economically, in every which way - place on the planet.
Still, I'm happy to visit other places and Montana certainly was beautiful:
The "Going to the Sun" highway in Glacier National Park. 
Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park. 
McDonald Creek, Glacier National Park. 
My father, Martin Stone on the trail. The guy is astounding. The reason that I, and the rest of the family, were there was his 80th birthday. He led us all on a four mile hike. He was a bit disappointed with that. He had a much more strenuous 12-mile hike in mind that he could normally easily do. But, due to a recent problem with one of his legs he had to settle for the lesser march. Good thing. By the last third of a 12-mile hike he'd have had to carry me on his back. The thing is, he probably could. Plus, if that had been the case it would have made it far too easy for the bears to eat the both of us. My upcoming book, FLIGHT OF THE HORNBILL, is dedicated to my father. If you like my books, if you find some of what I write in this blog of interest, if there are things you like or find interesting about the way I look at the world and write about what I see, you can thank, or blame, my father for a lot of that. I, for one, thank and love him for it.
24 July 2008
EATEN BY BEARS
They tell you that when you encounter a bear in the wild you're supposed to make yourself look big, make noise, stand your ground. If one actually charges you, fight back with all you've got, or play dead. There seems to be some disagreement on the matter.
Here's what I think. You're not going to win a fight with a bear. The bear is going to kill you and eat you. If you fight back, at least that will get your adrenalin pumping overtime. That will help your endorphins to kick in. And then it won't hurt as much when you are being eaten.
Or, if you are really lucky, your feeble attempts at fighting the bear will result in the bear killing you quick, rather than toying with you. And that's gotta be better than being eaten alive.
This is on my mind because tomorrow I am going to Montana. To a place where they have grizzly bears. Oh yeah, and I came across this article (click on the headline to read the whole, horrifying story): MAN EATING BEARS KILL TWO SCIENTISTS AND LAY SIEGE TO SURVIVORS TRAPPED IN REMOTE FOREST BASE.
Civilization has been a long, arduous march away from the woods. And I like to think of myself as a civilized man.
I once flew for three-and-a-half hours in a single-engined plane, not too far over unbroken forest canopy to a mud landing strip in the highlands of Central Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. At one point we flew over the wreckage of an identical plane that had crash-landed onto the tops of the hundred or more foot tall trees.
None of that made me nervous. The two day trek along a well-kept path in the jungle to a remote longhouse of the Kenyah tribe, was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
I nearly died of fright when a snake flew overhead.
That's right, flew. It was a bright blue snake, poisonous of course. It actually glides from tree to tree by flattening out its body and catching air. The other people in my party were delighted to catch a glimpse of this wonder of nature. I just felt inadequately armed and armored.
The last time I went camping was around 1977 or '78. My then girlfriend Chris, and I, went to the Stanley Basin in Idaho. Even I will admit that it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. We spent the day fly-fishing. Well, she did, I'm incompetent at that sort of thing. She caught dinner and I cleaned it and cooked it. I'm good at that sort of thing. (But I must confess that I don't like trout, no matter how fresh. I prefer saltwater fish.) We went to sleep in our bags under the trees - no tent, but we were near the car.
In the morning I was woken up by a terrible chattering. I looked straight up into the gaping maws of doom. I shrieked, rolled away from the tree, broke from my sleeping bag and made a mad dash for the safety of the car. Chris, terrified by my reaction, quickly followed.
It was a squirrel. Clinging upside down to the tree, staring into my face and nattering on about something or another. Hey, maybe it was a rabid squirrel.
I don't like the woods. They scare me. I realize it's illogical, but drop me off in the middle of the most violence-prone, crime-ridden urban neighborhood in the world and I might be wary, but I'm comfortable.
I know full well that bears and squirrels and flying snakes don't carry guns; and that I'm about a thousand times (or more) more likely to be shot to death by a fellow human than I am to be eaten, poisoned or scratched to death by any other animal. But that's just the way it is.
Those of you who like the woods should be glad. You don't have me around to mess them up for you.
Here's what I think. You're not going to win a fight with a bear. The bear is going to kill you and eat you. If you fight back, at least that will get your adrenalin pumping overtime. That will help your endorphins to kick in. And then it won't hurt as much when you are being eaten.
Or, if you are really lucky, your feeble attempts at fighting the bear will result in the bear killing you quick, rather than toying with you. And that's gotta be better than being eaten alive.
This is on my mind because tomorrow I am going to Montana. To a place where they have grizzly bears. Oh yeah, and I came across this article (click on the headline to read the whole, horrifying story): MAN EATING BEARS KILL TWO SCIENTISTS AND LAY SIEGE TO SURVIVORS TRAPPED IN REMOTE FOREST BASE.
Civilization has been a long, arduous march away from the woods. And I like to think of myself as a civilized man.
I once flew for three-and-a-half hours in a single-engined plane, not too far over unbroken forest canopy to a mud landing strip in the highlands of Central Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. At one point we flew over the wreckage of an identical plane that had crash-landed onto the tops of the hundred or more foot tall trees.
None of that made me nervous. The two day trek along a well-kept path in the jungle to a remote longhouse of the Kenyah tribe, was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
I nearly died of fright when a snake flew overhead.
That's right, flew. It was a bright blue snake, poisonous of course. It actually glides from tree to tree by flattening out its body and catching air. The other people in my party were delighted to catch a glimpse of this wonder of nature. I just felt inadequately armed and armored.
The last time I went camping was around 1977 or '78. My then girlfriend Chris, and I, went to the Stanley Basin in Idaho. Even I will admit that it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. We spent the day fly-fishing. Well, she did, I'm incompetent at that sort of thing. She caught dinner and I cleaned it and cooked it. I'm good at that sort of thing. (But I must confess that I don't like trout, no matter how fresh. I prefer saltwater fish.) We went to sleep in our bags under the trees - no tent, but we were near the car.
In the morning I was woken up by a terrible chattering. I looked straight up into the gaping maws of doom. I shrieked, rolled away from the tree, broke from my sleeping bag and made a mad dash for the safety of the car. Chris, terrified by my reaction, quickly followed.
It was a squirrel. Clinging upside down to the tree, staring into my face and nattering on about something or another. Hey, maybe it was a rabid squirrel.
I don't like the woods. They scare me. I realize it's illogical, but drop me off in the middle of the most violence-prone, crime-ridden urban neighborhood in the world and I might be wary, but I'm comfortable.
I know full well that bears and squirrels and flying snakes don't carry guns; and that I'm about a thousand times (or more) more likely to be shot to death by a fellow human than I am to be eaten, poisoned or scratched to death by any other animal. But that's just the way it is.
Those of you who like the woods should be glad. You don't have me around to mess them up for you.
30 June 2008
SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE KINDLE
Recently, my publisher and agent have been looking into licensing the rights to publish my books for Amazon's Kindle. Several writer friends now have Kindles and have carried on enthusiastically about them. I'm not so sure.
One writer friend is currently reading a new book on a Kindle. The book was bought for less than the price of the hardback, or a trade paperback and there is every chance that the author received a much lower royalty on that sale than he would have on a traditional book sale. (And, if his contract is anything like mine, he probably only got half of the royalty (minus his agent's 15% of course), while the book's traditional publisher got the other half.) Good for my friend who saved money on the book and loves the Kindle. Good for Amazon who made most of the money. Good for the publisher who got half the royalty at virtually no cost to itself. Not so good for the author.
I've got some questions:
• What are the royalties on Kindle sales? How often are statements issued? How often are they paid?
• Is there any sort of advance payment?
• Is Amazon’s right to publish for the Kindle, exclusive? Is there a limit, time or otherwise, to that exclusivity? Kindle is a proprietary technology, so if they get exclusive rights to a book, it is very much as if we licensed the right to sell a book only to Barnes & Noble and not to Borders or any other bookstores. That seems like a bad idea. At the moment there isn’t much competition for Kindle – although Sony makes an e-book reader – but in the future there will be.
• If we, or our agent, upload the book ourselves (in essence, make the sale ourselves), how is that affected by the existing contract with our traditional publisher – the one that says they get 50% of e-book sale proceeds - but, presumably only if they make that sale, because the contract only gives them “non-exclusive” rights to license subsidiary rights.
• On the other hand, if we (my agent and I) are uploading the version of my books that my traditional publisher worked on – editing, formatting, cover art, etc. – then they probably are entitled to some percentage, even if they didn’t make the “sale.” But, probably it should be less than 50% since they aren’t having to produce and distribute an actual book, and we’re doing the work to upload the book, or the manuscript or whatever. If that is the case, what percent are they entitled to?
A lot of these issues are similar to those that led the screenwriters to go on strike last year. But, we book authors don't have the same sort of clout - very few of us have networks, advertisers and viewers dependent on our output.
At the moment, sales of e-books for the Kindle - and for Sony's reader - are pretty small. But they're growing. And as the technology improves, as more reading machines come on the market, as more books are available at lower prices, that market is going to grow - fast. And unless writers' contracts reflect these technological and market changes, writers are going to be on the losing end.
My standing instructions to the lawyer who reviews my contracts are: "As a writer, I realize that I'm going to get screwed. Just make sure that they use enough lube." The Kindle is going to require an additional application of grease to my contracts before I’m happy with it.
One writer friend is currently reading a new book on a Kindle. The book was bought for less than the price of the hardback, or a trade paperback and there is every chance that the author received a much lower royalty on that sale than he would have on a traditional book sale. (And, if his contract is anything like mine, he probably only got half of the royalty (minus his agent's 15% of course), while the book's traditional publisher got the other half.) Good for my friend who saved money on the book and loves the Kindle. Good for Amazon who made most of the money. Good for the publisher who got half the royalty at virtually no cost to itself. Not so good for the author.
I've got some questions:
• What are the royalties on Kindle sales? How often are statements issued? How often are they paid?
• Is there any sort of advance payment?
• Is Amazon’s right to publish for the Kindle, exclusive? Is there a limit, time or otherwise, to that exclusivity? Kindle is a proprietary technology, so if they get exclusive rights to a book, it is very much as if we licensed the right to sell a book only to Barnes & Noble and not to Borders or any other bookstores. That seems like a bad idea. At the moment there isn’t much competition for Kindle – although Sony makes an e-book reader – but in the future there will be.
• If we, or our agent, upload the book ourselves (in essence, make the sale ourselves), how is that affected by the existing contract with our traditional publisher – the one that says they get 50% of e-book sale proceeds - but, presumably only if they make that sale, because the contract only gives them “non-exclusive” rights to license subsidiary rights.
• On the other hand, if we (my agent and I) are uploading the version of my books that my traditional publisher worked on – editing, formatting, cover art, etc. – then they probably are entitled to some percentage, even if they didn’t make the “sale.” But, probably it should be less than 50% since they aren’t having to produce and distribute an actual book, and we’re doing the work to upload the book, or the manuscript or whatever. If that is the case, what percent are they entitled to?
A lot of these issues are similar to those that led the screenwriters to go on strike last year. But, we book authors don't have the same sort of clout - very few of us have networks, advertisers and viewers dependent on our output.
At the moment, sales of e-books for the Kindle - and for Sony's reader - are pretty small. But they're growing. And as the technology improves, as more reading machines come on the market, as more books are available at lower prices, that market is going to grow - fast. And unless writers' contracts reflect these technological and market changes, writers are going to be on the losing end.
My standing instructions to the lawyer who reviews my contracts are: "As a writer, I realize that I'm going to get screwed. Just make sure that they use enough lube." The Kindle is going to require an additional application of grease to my contracts before I’m happy with it.
28 June 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMA & THE U.S.
Yesterday, June 27, Emma Goldman was 139 years old. So long as there is anyone left alive who loves freedom and who loves the U.S. for the real reasons that it is great, she lives on. It is fitting that the celebration of her birth should come close to July Fourth, Independence Day.
Here's what she had to say about the U.S. while she was on trial for speaking out against the draft during the First World War - another "war for democracy." (I think I may have blogged about this before, but it bears repeating, especially during an election year.)
"Who is the real patriot, or rather what is the kind of patriotism that we represent? The kind of patriotism we represent is the kind of patriotism which loves America with open eyes. Our relation towards America is the same as the relation of a man who loves a woman, who is enchanted by her beauty and yet who cannot be blind to her defects. And so I wish to state here, in my own behalf and in behalf of hundreds of thousands whom you decry and state to be antipatriotic, that we love America, we love her beauty, we love her riches, we love her mountains and her forests, and above all we love the people who have produced her wealth and riches, who have created all her beauty, we love the dreamers and the philosophers and the thinkers who are giving America liberty. But that must not make us blind to the social faults of America. That cannot compel us to be inarticulate to the terrible wrongs committed in the name of the country.
"We simply insist, regardless of all protests to the contrary, that this war is not a war for democracy. If it were a war for the purpose of making democracy safe for the world, we would say that democracy must first be safe for America before it can be safe for the world."
Emma Goldman came here from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. My family showed up about twenty-five years later from Poland, the Ukraine and Romania. And like pretty much everyone else who shows up here, they all came looking for something better; for freedom, opportunity, elbow-room, to live in a society where they could be largely left alone to be themselves. And for the most part, with some terrible exceptions, they found all that.
And they also found each other. Last weekend, here in Los Angeles, I went to a free music festival in Pasadena. There were bands from Mexico, Cambodia, Africa, South America, even places as exotic and foreign as Europe and New York. Earlier in the day I'd had an Armenian lunch. That night my friends and I had a Chinese dinner. And that is not an atypical weekend for many people in America's big cities.
At its greatest, the U.S. isn't a melting pot, it's a stew in which you can taste and savor all of the individual ingredients while also getting the strong flavor of the whole.
And I'm pretty sure that's one of the things that Emma Goldman loved about this country. And one of the things that she understood it takes open eyes and vigilance and tolerance and agitation and speaking up to protect.
On Independence Day we can best celebrate the U.S. both by our willingness to fight for the many things that are right about this country, and against those that are wrong.
By the way: To celebrate both Emma and the U.S.'s birthdays, I made a donation to the Emma Goldman Papers Project at UC Berkeley. The project is laboring to publish a comprehensive four-volume set of Emma Goldman's papers: speeches, letters, articles, pamphlets. This is a treasure that should not be lost. If you're interested in learning more about Emma Goldman, and about the Papers Project, (or in making a donation of your own), you can click here.
02 June 2008
BOOK EXHIBITIONISM & UNALIENABLE RIGHTS AND WRONGS
Book Expo America was in Los Angeles this year. My publisher, Bleak House Books, was there and so was I. It was astounding, a reminder that despite all the creativity involved, I'm part of an industry. What I do is not really all that different than someone who stamps and molds widgets that are then sold to hardware stores. Not deep down at the heart of the matter, in any event.
A couple of complaints:
I, and a lot of other authors at BEA, gave away advanced reading copies (ARCs) of our upcoming books. There was a gigantic autograph area specifically for that purpose. People lined up to get them. Some of those lined up were used and collectible booksellers who wanted nothing more than to get some free stock for their stores. They have no intention of carrying the final product, the one that my publisher sells and that I get royalties for. When those people asked me for a signed ARC, I politely and cheerfully gave them one. But inside I felt like slapping them silly.
Kindles, or something like them, are probably the wave of the future; one of them at least. The tsunami of the future more like. But I'm suspicious. My most recent publishing contract says that I split the proceeds from the sale of electronic rights 50-50 with my publisher. (My agent gets 15 percent of my part of that, too.) When an actual paper copy of one of my books sells, I get a percentage of the cover price from every sale. Electronic rights are usually a one time deal, having nothing to do with how many individual books are sold. (Even if they were calculated on each sale, e-books generally sell for less than half the price of "real" books.) I ran into a few fellow authors who seemed very enthusiastic about Kindles. There is no doubt that the growth of e-publishing is inevitable and I am not one to stand in the way of "progress." Still, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that this is just another way that us authors are going to get fucked.
But, despite my complaints, I had a grand old time at BEA. There are too many pictures to post here, so you can go to my set of them at Flickr.
NOW FOR SOME POLITICAL PONTIFICATION
Are there any legal limits on how the constitution, of the U.S. or California, can be amended? This is an important question.
If an amendment is passed by congress, a state legislature or referendum (in the case of California) and then ratified as required, by definition what it pertains to becomes "constitutional."
Recently, the California Supreme Court overturned the state ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. They could do that because the ban was a mere law, it wasn't part of the state's constitution. So, opponents of gay marriage now want to pass a constitutional amendment that could not be overturned by the (state) court.
This brings up the question of, can you pass a constitutional amendment about anything? Are there no “unalienable” rights?
What if Congress passed a constitutional amendment, and two-thirds of the states ratified it, that revoked the 14th and 19th amendments, disenfranchising everyone other than white males? There's nothing unconstitutional about that.
Far fetched? Maybe. Prohibition was passed, then repealed. Germany in the 1920s and early '30s was chaotic but democratic. Hitler was elected, then amended the German constitution to create a legal foundation for everything he did.
The initial founding document of the United States, preceding the Constitution by a little over 11 years, is the Declaration of Independence. In its second paragraph it states: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..."
Here's a question: does the Declaration of Independence have any actual legal standing? If so, does that mean that some rights are "unalienable"; meaning that they can't be taken away, not even by amending the constitution? And does it also really mean that all "men" (the modern interpretation of which would be "people") share in those unalienable rights?
Is marriage, and its attendant package of legal and financial protections and responsibilities, one of those rights? In spite of divorce rates and a few couples I know, doesn't marriage have something to do with the "pursuit of happiness?"
If indeed all people share rights (and responsibilities) equally, can even a constitutional amendment apportion those rights unequally? Is there some higher, legal power, or basis, than even the Constitution?
I hope so.
A couple of complaints:
I, and a lot of other authors at BEA, gave away advanced reading copies (ARCs) of our upcoming books. There was a gigantic autograph area specifically for that purpose. People lined up to get them. Some of those lined up were used and collectible booksellers who wanted nothing more than to get some free stock for their stores. They have no intention of carrying the final product, the one that my publisher sells and that I get royalties for. When those people asked me for a signed ARC, I politely and cheerfully gave them one. But inside I felt like slapping them silly.
Kindles, or something like them, are probably the wave of the future; one of them at least. The tsunami of the future more like. But I'm suspicious. My most recent publishing contract says that I split the proceeds from the sale of electronic rights 50-50 with my publisher. (My agent gets 15 percent of my part of that, too.) When an actual paper copy of one of my books sells, I get a percentage of the cover price from every sale. Electronic rights are usually a one time deal, having nothing to do with how many individual books are sold. (Even if they were calculated on each sale, e-books generally sell for less than half the price of "real" books.) I ran into a few fellow authors who seemed very enthusiastic about Kindles. There is no doubt that the growth of e-publishing is inevitable and I am not one to stand in the way of "progress." Still, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that this is just another way that us authors are going to get fucked.
But, despite my complaints, I had a grand old time at BEA. There are too many pictures to post here, so you can go to my set of them at Flickr.
NOW FOR SOME POLITICAL PONTIFICATION
Are there any legal limits on how the constitution, of the U.S. or California, can be amended? This is an important question.
If an amendment is passed by congress, a state legislature or referendum (in the case of California) and then ratified as required, by definition what it pertains to becomes "constitutional."
Recently, the California Supreme Court overturned the state ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. They could do that because the ban was a mere law, it wasn't part of the state's constitution. So, opponents of gay marriage now want to pass a constitutional amendment that could not be overturned by the (state) court.
This brings up the question of, can you pass a constitutional amendment about anything? Are there no “unalienable” rights?
What if Congress passed a constitutional amendment, and two-thirds of the states ratified it, that revoked the 14th and 19th amendments, disenfranchising everyone other than white males? There's nothing unconstitutional about that.
Far fetched? Maybe. Prohibition was passed, then repealed. Germany in the 1920s and early '30s was chaotic but democratic. Hitler was elected, then amended the German constitution to create a legal foundation for everything he did.
The initial founding document of the United States, preceding the Constitution by a little over 11 years, is the Declaration of Independence. In its second paragraph it states: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..."
Here's a question: does the Declaration of Independence have any actual legal standing? If so, does that mean that some rights are "unalienable"; meaning that they can't be taken away, not even by amending the constitution? And does it also really mean that all "men" (the modern interpretation of which would be "people") share in those unalienable rights?
Is marriage, and its attendant package of legal and financial protections and responsibilities, one of those rights? In spite of divorce rates and a few couples I know, doesn't marriage have something to do with the "pursuit of happiness?"
If indeed all people share rights (and responsibilities) equally, can even a constitutional amendment apportion those rights unequally? Is there some higher, legal power, or basis, than even the Constitution?
I hope so.
25 May 2008
ME AND OBAMA'S MAMA
The other night I was talking with a friend about what we'd like to do if we weren't writers. There isn't much. I love what I do.
But I did mention that I used to know someone in Indonesia who had the greatest job that I ever heard of.
I met Ann Sutoro when I was working for Asian Business magazine and interviewing people for a cover story on what the private sector can do to help alleviate poverty. She was an economic anthropologist working for Bank Rakyat Indonesia, the rural development bank of the country. She was in charge of the bank's microfinance program.
From her office in Jakarta, Ann would pick out an impoverished village somewhere in the country. She'd travel there, spend several weeks getting to know the place, getting to know the movers and shakers in the village, who had the brightest entrepreneurial spirit, the best ideas. About 95% of the time the people she came up with were women. Then she'd go back to Jakarta and write up a report.
Loaning this woman US$70 would enable her to get a small refrigerator for her food stall, and among other things she could then stock medicine for curing river blindness in kids. Another woman could use 40 bucks to buy some equipment to better husk rice, so there'd be less waste and she could build up her business. For 65, yet another woman could get a second loom for weaving cloth and expand her business. It was all little loans, but it meant big improvements in the lives of whole villages. (And the default rates on the loans was much lower than it was on the big loans other banks made to corporations or wealthy individuals.)
Ann would write up her report, get the money from the bank, then return to the village to dispense the loans. She got to play fairy godmother to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. And best of all it wasn't charity. She was simply helping them to help themselves.
I liked her, a lot, the moment I met her. We became friendly and for several years, whenever I was in Jakarta I'd give her a call. We'd have a drink, a meal, hang out talking in her beautiful house in Jakarta. She had a great, quirky, sense of humor, was kind and decent to a fault and was just plain whip smart, one of the sharpest people I've ever known. I envied her her job, admired her tremendously and always looked forward to seeing her.
She died of cancer in 1995 and it was a tremendous loss. I've thought of her often over the years. Whenever the subject of great things to do with one's life comes up, I always trot out the story of Ann Sutoro. Because of her, if I ever went back to school, it would be to study economic anthropology. (Easy to say, though, not much real risk of that.)
Today, I was trying to think up a subject for this blog entry and I was thinking about my conversation of the other night. I thought I'd write about a few of the world's best jobs, so Ann immediately popped into my head. Just for the hell of it, I googled her, not really expecting to find much, if anything. What I found out is that she was Barack Obama's mother.
There's much that I like and admire about Obama. But, as with all politicians, there is also much about him that makes me suspicious and nervous. But I do know one thing for sure. He comes from a very good family. At least on his mother's side.
But I did mention that I used to know someone in Indonesia who had the greatest job that I ever heard of.
I met Ann Sutoro when I was working for Asian Business magazine and interviewing people for a cover story on what the private sector can do to help alleviate poverty. She was an economic anthropologist working for Bank Rakyat Indonesia, the rural development bank of the country. She was in charge of the bank's microfinance program.
From her office in Jakarta, Ann would pick out an impoverished village somewhere in the country. She'd travel there, spend several weeks getting to know the place, getting to know the movers and shakers in the village, who had the brightest entrepreneurial spirit, the best ideas. About 95% of the time the people she came up with were women. Then she'd go back to Jakarta and write up a report.
Loaning this woman US$70 would enable her to get a small refrigerator for her food stall, and among other things she could then stock medicine for curing river blindness in kids. Another woman could use 40 bucks to buy some equipment to better husk rice, so there'd be less waste and she could build up her business. For 65, yet another woman could get a second loom for weaving cloth and expand her business. It was all little loans, but it meant big improvements in the lives of whole villages. (And the default rates on the loans was much lower than it was on the big loans other banks made to corporations or wealthy individuals.)
Ann would write up her report, get the money from the bank, then return to the village to dispense the loans. She got to play fairy godmother to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. And best of all it wasn't charity. She was simply helping them to help themselves.
I liked her, a lot, the moment I met her. We became friendly and for several years, whenever I was in Jakarta I'd give her a call. We'd have a drink, a meal, hang out talking in her beautiful house in Jakarta. She had a great, quirky, sense of humor, was kind and decent to a fault and was just plain whip smart, one of the sharpest people I've ever known. I envied her her job, admired her tremendously and always looked forward to seeing her.
She died of cancer in 1995 and it was a tremendous loss. I've thought of her often over the years. Whenever the subject of great things to do with one's life comes up, I always trot out the story of Ann Sutoro. Because of her, if I ever went back to school, it would be to study economic anthropology. (Easy to say, though, not much real risk of that.)
Today, I was trying to think up a subject for this blog entry and I was thinking about my conversation of the other night. I thought I'd write about a few of the world's best jobs, so Ann immediately popped into my head. Just for the hell of it, I googled her, not really expecting to find much, if anything. What I found out is that she was Barack Obama's mother.
There's much that I like and admire about Obama. But, as with all politicians, there is also much about him that makes me suspicious and nervous. But I do know one thing for sure. He comes from a very good family. At least on his mother's side.
14 May 2008
"DESIRE TO LAUGH*" - ALBERT HOFFMANN 1906-2008 - AND THE LATEST ON TACO TRUCKS BELOW
Albert Hoffmann, the scientist who discovered / invented / synthesized LSD, died recently at the age of 102. That has given me the occasion to pause and reflect, fondly, upon my own history with LSD.
And that's right, I wrote "fondly." LSD was good for me. It made my life better. I have not taken it since 1970, but I took an awful lot of it before I stopped and I'm glad I did.
Now there are those of you out there reading this who are probably thinking: "I hope he doesn't have children." Well, not to worry, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't suggest to them that they ought to drop acid. But I'd have a tough time discouraging them.
There are others of you out there reading this who are probably thinking: "That stuff must have scrambled his brains." And I suppose you're right. It did. But I like the way my brains have been scrambled and I'm doing just fine with them mixed-up that way.
The first time I took LSD was in September 1966 (I was fourteen), about two weeks before it became illegal in California. I had traded a UCLA professor a bag of mediocre Mexican pot for a dosed sugar cube. Over the next three and a half or so years, I probably took acid between two and three hundred times. It was easy to lose track.
Now I'm not about to say that LSD will work wonders for everybody, or anybody. There is every chance that I was simply lucky not to have wound up a screaming, drooling, non-functional maniac. Some of my friends did, at least temporarily. A couple of them, near as I can tell, have never fully recovered.
When I dropped acid with friends I was always assigned the job of "maintenance foreman." That meant I took care of us. If there were tickets to be bought for something, activities to be organized, shopping to get done, talking to "the man" if "the man" showed up, driving; that's what I did. I even learned to drive a stick shift when I was stoned on acid and a friend needed to go somewhere and had forgot how to drive.
So, here's what LSD did for me.
It made me, mentally, stronger. I guess in the Nietzschean sense of "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." I don't fully believe that. Some of the things that don't kill you, can maim you. But still, in some of my most formative years I dealt with a lot of really strange and challenging stuff in a wide variety of circumstances. No matter how bizarre the world around me got, or at least the world as I was seeing it, I learned to cope with it. To this day I am very difficult to freak out. I tend to stay calm under stress. Sure, I have little explosions every now and then when things aren't going my way. But I tend to settle back into equilibrium pretty quick.
It helped give me a great deal of tolerance for things that might otherwise strike me as weird, strange, abnormal. I hardly think of anything as abnormal or normal anymore. When something seems weird or strange, I find it more interesting than threatening. That helps my powers of observation.
It taught me to see colors better than I might have otherwise. One of the things that LSD does is to enhance your sensitivity to color, kind of like boosting the saturation setting in Photoshop. I do take pretty good pictures, if I do say so myself, and I think LSD is partly responsible for that.
Same with patterns. Under the influence of acid I never hallucinated anything that wasn't actually there. I tried, and it never worked. (I've had to depend on the occasional high fever attending a recurrent episode of malaria for that.) But I did perceive complex patterns where none, probably, really existed. Part of my approach to photography, and much of my writing for that matter, is to find some kind of order, structure, pattern in the chaos that makes up the real world.
Who knows if I killed off a bunch of brain cells or not? Maybe I could have been smarter or saner. I don't know and I don't care. I'm smart and sane enough as I've ever needed to be. Either that or deluded enough to think that I am. And so far at least, I've escaped the attention of the nice men in the white coats.
So in my case, I want to celebrate the memory of Albert Hoffmann. And give a nod of thanks to Augustus Owsley Stanley III who certainly did more than his fair share to help psychedelicize my adolescence.
* According to the recent obituary in The Economist, "desire to laugh," were the last words Hoffmann was able to write in his lab journal after he first, deliberately, took a dose of LSD.
TACO TRUCK UPDATE
At midnight last night, the new, onerous LA County Taco Truck ordinance came into being. A brave group of taqueros has banded together to resist. Once more I ventured into East L.A. with pals - the toothsome Christa Faust and Bill Krauss, a fine fellow taco lover. Here's the poster for the event we attended, followed by some photographic evidence:
Tacos El Galuzo
Channel 34 was there
Cabeza - YUM!
Taco truck fine diners
And that's right, I wrote "fondly." LSD was good for me. It made my life better. I have not taken it since 1970, but I took an awful lot of it before I stopped and I'm glad I did.
Now there are those of you out there reading this who are probably thinking: "I hope he doesn't have children." Well, not to worry, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't suggest to them that they ought to drop acid. But I'd have a tough time discouraging them.
There are others of you out there reading this who are probably thinking: "That stuff must have scrambled his brains." And I suppose you're right. It did. But I like the way my brains have been scrambled and I'm doing just fine with them mixed-up that way.
The first time I took LSD was in September 1966 (I was fourteen), about two weeks before it became illegal in California. I had traded a UCLA professor a bag of mediocre Mexican pot for a dosed sugar cube. Over the next three and a half or so years, I probably took acid between two and three hundred times. It was easy to lose track.
Now I'm not about to say that LSD will work wonders for everybody, or anybody. There is every chance that I was simply lucky not to have wound up a screaming, drooling, non-functional maniac. Some of my friends did, at least temporarily. A couple of them, near as I can tell, have never fully recovered.
When I dropped acid with friends I was always assigned the job of "maintenance foreman." That meant I took care of us. If there were tickets to be bought for something, activities to be organized, shopping to get done, talking to "the man" if "the man" showed up, driving; that's what I did. I even learned to drive a stick shift when I was stoned on acid and a friend needed to go somewhere and had forgot how to drive.
So, here's what LSD did for me.
It made me, mentally, stronger. I guess in the Nietzschean sense of "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." I don't fully believe that. Some of the things that don't kill you, can maim you. But still, in some of my most formative years I dealt with a lot of really strange and challenging stuff in a wide variety of circumstances. No matter how bizarre the world around me got, or at least the world as I was seeing it, I learned to cope with it. To this day I am very difficult to freak out. I tend to stay calm under stress. Sure, I have little explosions every now and then when things aren't going my way. But I tend to settle back into equilibrium pretty quick.
It helped give me a great deal of tolerance for things that might otherwise strike me as weird, strange, abnormal. I hardly think of anything as abnormal or normal anymore. When something seems weird or strange, I find it more interesting than threatening. That helps my powers of observation.
It taught me to see colors better than I might have otherwise. One of the things that LSD does is to enhance your sensitivity to color, kind of like boosting the saturation setting in Photoshop. I do take pretty good pictures, if I do say so myself, and I think LSD is partly responsible for that.
Same with patterns. Under the influence of acid I never hallucinated anything that wasn't actually there. I tried, and it never worked. (I've had to depend on the occasional high fever attending a recurrent episode of malaria for that.) But I did perceive complex patterns where none, probably, really existed. Part of my approach to photography, and much of my writing for that matter, is to find some kind of order, structure, pattern in the chaos that makes up the real world.
Who knows if I killed off a bunch of brain cells or not? Maybe I could have been smarter or saner. I don't know and I don't care. I'm smart and sane enough as I've ever needed to be. Either that or deluded enough to think that I am. And so far at least, I've escaped the attention of the nice men in the white coats.
So in my case, I want to celebrate the memory of Albert Hoffmann. And give a nod of thanks to Augustus Owsley Stanley III who certainly did more than his fair share to help psychedelicize my adolescence.
* According to the recent obituary in The Economist, "desire to laugh," were the last words Hoffmann was able to write in his lab journal after he first, deliberately, took a dose of LSD.
TACO TRUCK UPDATE
At midnight last night, the new, onerous LA County Taco Truck ordinance came into being. A brave group of taqueros has banded together to resist. Once more I ventured into East L.A. with pals - the toothsome Christa Faust and Bill Krauss, a fine fellow taco lover. Here's the poster for the event we attended, followed by some photographic evidence:
Tacos El Galuzo
Channel 34 was there
Cabeza - YUM!
Taco truck fine diners
02 May 2008
THE FIRST EVER RUNNING OF THE TACOS - OR WHY I'VE GOT A CRUSH ON CHRISTA FAUST
I've always admired Christa's writing (www.christafaust.com). HOODTOWN is one of the best, quirkiest, most fully-realized novels I've read in a long time. The other two books I've read by her ain't no slouches neither. The woman can write.
But boy howdy can she also eat:
Last night was Taco Truck Night here in Los Angeles. The misguided L.A. County Board of Supervisors, egged on by developers and restaurateurs, passed a law that would put hundreds, perhaps thousands, of taco trucks out of business. Even the L.A. Times has editorialized against the law. A whole lot of people depend on the trucks for cheap, tasty food, and few of the trucks are in real competition with brick and mortar restaurants. Even if they were in competition, isn't that what our economic system is supposed to be about?
To quote the L.A. Times editorial of today, May 2: "If providing cheap, tasty food that puts competitors out of business were a crime, the late McDonald's mogul Ray Kroc would have died in prison." Okay, so I disagree with the word "tasty" in that sentence. But still, you get the idea.
So last night, Christa, who is always up for an adventure, culinary or otherwise, unchained herself from her deadline burdened computer; brought along another writer pal, Nathan Long, and the three of us headed to East L.A. in my car to do our part to support taco trucks on their special night.
I was thinking to hit two, perhaps three of my favorite trucks and carts, eat a taco at each and retire happily sated from the field of battle. But Christa, whose slight but muscular, nicely illustrated frame belies her remarkable gustatory gusto, was having none of that.
Our first truck was La Korita, parked in a gas station two blocks east of Soto on Olympic. Nathan and I had carne asada, Christa the carnitas. For me, the real highlight of La Korita is its freshly made tortillas. The carne asada is also among the best in town. (The photographic evidence is above.)
Then we cruised up Soto in search of a place called La Estrella, but were distracted by the paintings of the Blessed Virgin, Jesus and a taquero with his al pastor wheel on the side of Tacos El Pecas, parked at a car wash. The tacos al pastor were good, not spectacular, but I have encountered few taco truck tacos that aren't at least good. Here's the evidence (Christa slurping an horchata):
From there we cruised north on Soto to Whittier Blvd. and turned east. There are often illegal taco carts along the sidewalk just west of the cemetery on Whittier. We were not disappointed. We stopped at the first one we saw - I don't recall seeing a name on the cart. It was on the north side of the street near Mott St. It was excellent al pastor.
We then passed a number of inviting carts, trucks and a chicken grill as we headed further east, past the 710 freeway, past the old Huggy Boy radio studio which is now a church of some sort. We were taking a break to simply cruise and take in the sights, sounds and smells of East L.A. - one of the great pleasures of life, especially on a hot summer night. Last night wasn't one of those, but it was close enough.
I was taking us to my favorite taco cart. At night, the southwest corner of Cesar Chavez and Hicks - a few blocks west of Gage - is home to what is, in my humble opinion, the finest al pastor to be had north of the border. Christa and Nathan seemed to agree. And they know their al pastor.
After that we were beginning to think we were filling up, so we thought to head toward Eagle Rock and Glassell Park where the fellows who organized Taco Truck Night have their home truck - La Estrella on York Ave. around Avenue 54.
But once again we were distracted. I was pointing out Los Cinco Puntos - a carniceria at the triangular corner of Cesar Chavez, Lorena and Indiana, where one can find the best carnitas and handmade tortillas in the city - when we noticed Cemitas Tepeaca and its colorful neon exclaiming "Cemitas, Tacos y Burritos." Better yet, it was parked in front of what looked like an interesting mural. (East L.A. walls are covered with great art, some of it truly great art. Just driving around and paying attention is as good as a visit to a museum or several great galleries.)
I don't know if Cemitas Tepeaca makes its own carnitas or gets it from Cinco Puntos, but they were superb tacos. While the al pastor place we went to just before it is the taco cart I'd most like to be stranded on a desert island with, this was the most interesting, colorful, and still extremely tasty stop of the night.
Finally we made it to La Estrella on York. It was, being an increasingly gentrifying neighborhood, and home to the organizers of the event, the only taco truck at which we saw any sort of large crowd of hipsters and foodies. And Spanish language news radio and TV reporters as well, of course. It was a fun scene, good to see that at least some people had come out for the event. But the carne asada tacos were the most disappointing fare of the night. They weren't bad, but they weren't all that good either. Still, a very big thank you is called for to the guys who organized the night, the petition and are working hard in the fight for taco trucks. You can find their website here: http://saveourtacotrucks.org/
After those, our sixth tacos (actually seven for Nathan who had two at the start of the trek), we decided to head home. But along the way we had to pass my favorite taco cart in Christa and my neighborhood (Silverlake) - the al pastor wheel at Fletcher and Larga, across from the U-Haul. It wasn't in us to simply drive by. So we finished off the night there, with excellent al pastor and what might be my favorite salsa roja in town - a bit thinner than most, but with a good, solid bite and a nice tickle of vinegar.
My car was low on its rims on the drive home. The three of us were groaning, belching, way too full but plenty content. Little more got done last night. It didn't need to. I don't know that we saved the taco trucks. But it was a splendid effort.
But boy howdy can she also eat:
Last night was Taco Truck Night here in Los Angeles. The misguided L.A. County Board of Supervisors, egged on by developers and restaurateurs, passed a law that would put hundreds, perhaps thousands, of taco trucks out of business. Even the L.A. Times has editorialized against the law. A whole lot of people depend on the trucks for cheap, tasty food, and few of the trucks are in real competition with brick and mortar restaurants. Even if they were in competition, isn't that what our economic system is supposed to be about?
To quote the L.A. Times editorial of today, May 2: "If providing cheap, tasty food that puts competitors out of business were a crime, the late McDonald's mogul Ray Kroc would have died in prison." Okay, so I disagree with the word "tasty" in that sentence. But still, you get the idea.
So last night, Christa, who is always up for an adventure, culinary or otherwise, unchained herself from her deadline burdened computer; brought along another writer pal, Nathan Long, and the three of us headed to East L.A. in my car to do our part to support taco trucks on their special night.
I was thinking to hit two, perhaps three of my favorite trucks and carts, eat a taco at each and retire happily sated from the field of battle. But Christa, whose slight but muscular, nicely illustrated frame belies her remarkable gustatory gusto, was having none of that.
Our first truck was La Korita, parked in a gas station two blocks east of Soto on Olympic. Nathan and I had carne asada, Christa the carnitas. For me, the real highlight of La Korita is its freshly made tortillas. The carne asada is also among the best in town. (The photographic evidence is above.)
Then we cruised up Soto in search of a place called La Estrella, but were distracted by the paintings of the Blessed Virgin, Jesus and a taquero with his al pastor wheel on the side of Tacos El Pecas, parked at a car wash. The tacos al pastor were good, not spectacular, but I have encountered few taco truck tacos that aren't at least good. Here's the evidence (Christa slurping an horchata):
From there we cruised north on Soto to Whittier Blvd. and turned east. There are often illegal taco carts along the sidewalk just west of the cemetery on Whittier. We were not disappointed. We stopped at the first one we saw - I don't recall seeing a name on the cart. It was on the north side of the street near Mott St. It was excellent al pastor.
We then passed a number of inviting carts, trucks and a chicken grill as we headed further east, past the 710 freeway, past the old Huggy Boy radio studio which is now a church of some sort. We were taking a break to simply cruise and take in the sights, sounds and smells of East L.A. - one of the great pleasures of life, especially on a hot summer night. Last night wasn't one of those, but it was close enough.
I was taking us to my favorite taco cart. At night, the southwest corner of Cesar Chavez and Hicks - a few blocks west of Gage - is home to what is, in my humble opinion, the finest al pastor to be had north of the border. Christa and Nathan seemed to agree. And they know their al pastor.
After that we were beginning to think we were filling up, so we thought to head toward Eagle Rock and Glassell Park where the fellows who organized Taco Truck Night have their home truck - La Estrella on York Ave. around Avenue 54.
But once again we were distracted. I was pointing out Los Cinco Puntos - a carniceria at the triangular corner of Cesar Chavez, Lorena and Indiana, where one can find the best carnitas and handmade tortillas in the city - when we noticed Cemitas Tepeaca and its colorful neon exclaiming "Cemitas, Tacos y Burritos." Better yet, it was parked in front of what looked like an interesting mural. (East L.A. walls are covered with great art, some of it truly great art. Just driving around and paying attention is as good as a visit to a museum or several great galleries.)
I don't know if Cemitas Tepeaca makes its own carnitas or gets it from Cinco Puntos, but they were superb tacos. While the al pastor place we went to just before it is the taco cart I'd most like to be stranded on a desert island with, this was the most interesting, colorful, and still extremely tasty stop of the night.
Finally we made it to La Estrella on York. It was, being an increasingly gentrifying neighborhood, and home to the organizers of the event, the only taco truck at which we saw any sort of large crowd of hipsters and foodies. And Spanish language news radio and TV reporters as well, of course. It was a fun scene, good to see that at least some people had come out for the event. But the carne asada tacos were the most disappointing fare of the night. They weren't bad, but they weren't all that good either. Still, a very big thank you is called for to the guys who organized the night, the petition and are working hard in the fight for taco trucks. You can find their website here: http://saveourtacotrucks.org/
After those, our sixth tacos (actually seven for Nathan who had two at the start of the trek), we decided to head home. But along the way we had to pass my favorite taco cart in Christa and my neighborhood (Silverlake) - the al pastor wheel at Fletcher and Larga, across from the U-Haul. It wasn't in us to simply drive by. So we finished off the night there, with excellent al pastor and what might be my favorite salsa roja in town - a bit thinner than most, but with a good, solid bite and a nice tickle of vinegar.
My car was low on its rims on the drive home. The three of us were groaning, belching, way too full but plenty content. Little more got done last night. It didn't need to. I don't know that we saved the taco trucks. But it was a splendid effort.
26 March 2008
THANK YOU, BILL
Here's some quotes from a speech that Bill Clinton gave a couple of days ago in West Virginia:
"If a politician doesn't wanna get beat up, he shouldn't run for office...Let's just saddle up and have an argument. What's the matter with that? That's what America's about, right?"
He's right. At least that's what this country's supposed to be about. People have a bunch of different ideas, they get together and argue about them - sometimes the arguments even get a bit heated - and then they vote on it and the argument that has been most persuasive wins.
That's how democracy is supposed to work. Sure, it's not very efficient. Sometimes it's not even very civil. Undoubtedly some good ideas get voted down and some bad ones are enacted. Most of the time we end up voting for someone who's imperfect. (Can you imagine that; an imperfect politician? Gosh.) But so far it does seem to be the only way in which a government can manage to please a whole lot of people, a lot of the time.
Problem is that we've come to believe that this idea or that one is absolutely right or wrong, so argument with it is irrational. That's what the Bush Administration has been trying to do; make us all shut up and not argue because they're right and that's all there is to it.
Well, as a vast majority of people in this country now know, that's not all there is to it.
But the kind of right-wrong, black-white thinking that the administration has crammed down our throats, and in which the media has been complicit, has screwed us up in all sorts of ways.
Increasingly I have been hearing Obama and Hillary supporters say that they won't vote for the other one if their candidate isn't nominated. Are they nuts? They seem to think there's something wrong with the two candidates arguing and duking it out for the nomination.
But that's how it's supposed to work. Even when they insult each other, that's how it's supposed to work. And when your candidate doesn't get the nomination, what you're supposed to do is shrug your shoulders, say "maybe next time," and vote for the better of the choices that you've ended up with.
The thing about all this fighting and up and down and talk of right and wrong is that it's just a natural part of the process of things settling down into somewhere in the comfortable middle. You can talk all you want about change, but the great genius of democracy isn't radical change, it's the leveling affect that it has. When it works, it allows for measured, rational, slow but sure change; the sort that in the long run does the most real good and is the longest lasting. Too many of us, however, have become too impatient for that.
We've also got our heads deeply embedded up our asses over the economy. We catastrophize nearly everything. But a stable economy has its ups and downs. That, as in politics, is how it finds its smooth running middle.
The least stable economy is one that doesn't go through the occasional wild mood swing. Inflation, recession, expanding bubbles, bursting bubbles, are all natural in a growing, healthy economy.
I spent a while on the phone last week trying to convince a friend that they hadn't really "lost" several hundred thousand dollars in the stock and property markets.
"Have you sold any stocks or property at a loss?"
"No."
"Are you going to have to? Do you have a subprime loan or any upcoming payments for something that are going to require you to sell something at a loss? Or do you need to borrow some money against your portfolio?"
"No."
"So you haven't really lost any money, have you?"
"Well, my portfolio is down 15 percent and I can't sell my house for what I could have last year, and and and..."
All I can say is, you haven't lost any money, you've lost your common sense.
There are plenty of people who do have subprime mortgages and who do have payments they need to cash out some investments to make and other such things. And yes, those people are going to lose money. But most people, aren't. Just like any roller coaster, if you sit there and hang on, the track's going to eventually smooth out. If you try to bail out on a big hill or curve, you're probably going to get hurt.
Americans are so busy thinking that everything is supposed to be perfect - and that they have some sort of inalienable right to a free lunch - that they go into a huge tailspin when things aren't just the way they want them to be.
Well, nothing's ever going to be exactly the way you want it to be. Get over it. You're just making things worse for yourself and everybody else when you overreact.
Meanwhile, here's some pretty pictures from a recent excursion out to the California State Poppy Reserve near Lancaster in the far northeast corner of Los Angeles County:
"If a politician doesn't wanna get beat up, he shouldn't run for office...Let's just saddle up and have an argument. What's the matter with that? That's what America's about, right?"
He's right. At least that's what this country's supposed to be about. People have a bunch of different ideas, they get together and argue about them - sometimes the arguments even get a bit heated - and then they vote on it and the argument that has been most persuasive wins.
That's how democracy is supposed to work. Sure, it's not very efficient. Sometimes it's not even very civil. Undoubtedly some good ideas get voted down and some bad ones are enacted. Most of the time we end up voting for someone who's imperfect. (Can you imagine that; an imperfect politician? Gosh.) But so far it does seem to be the only way in which a government can manage to please a whole lot of people, a lot of the time.
Problem is that we've come to believe that this idea or that one is absolutely right or wrong, so argument with it is irrational. That's what the Bush Administration has been trying to do; make us all shut up and not argue because they're right and that's all there is to it.
Well, as a vast majority of people in this country now know, that's not all there is to it.
But the kind of right-wrong, black-white thinking that the administration has crammed down our throats, and in which the media has been complicit, has screwed us up in all sorts of ways.
Increasingly I have been hearing Obama and Hillary supporters say that they won't vote for the other one if their candidate isn't nominated. Are they nuts? They seem to think there's something wrong with the two candidates arguing and duking it out for the nomination.
But that's how it's supposed to work. Even when they insult each other, that's how it's supposed to work. And when your candidate doesn't get the nomination, what you're supposed to do is shrug your shoulders, say "maybe next time," and vote for the better of the choices that you've ended up with.
The thing about all this fighting and up and down and talk of right and wrong is that it's just a natural part of the process of things settling down into somewhere in the comfortable middle. You can talk all you want about change, but the great genius of democracy isn't radical change, it's the leveling affect that it has. When it works, it allows for measured, rational, slow but sure change; the sort that in the long run does the most real good and is the longest lasting. Too many of us, however, have become too impatient for that.
We've also got our heads deeply embedded up our asses over the economy. We catastrophize nearly everything. But a stable economy has its ups and downs. That, as in politics, is how it finds its smooth running middle.
The least stable economy is one that doesn't go through the occasional wild mood swing. Inflation, recession, expanding bubbles, bursting bubbles, are all natural in a growing, healthy economy.
I spent a while on the phone last week trying to convince a friend that they hadn't really "lost" several hundred thousand dollars in the stock and property markets.
"Have you sold any stocks or property at a loss?"
"No."
"Are you going to have to? Do you have a subprime loan or any upcoming payments for something that are going to require you to sell something at a loss? Or do you need to borrow some money against your portfolio?"
"No."
"So you haven't really lost any money, have you?"
"Well, my portfolio is down 15 percent and I can't sell my house for what I could have last year, and and and..."
All I can say is, you haven't lost any money, you've lost your common sense.
There are plenty of people who do have subprime mortgages and who do have payments they need to cash out some investments to make and other such things. And yes, those people are going to lose money. But most people, aren't. Just like any roller coaster, if you sit there and hang on, the track's going to eventually smooth out. If you try to bail out on a big hill or curve, you're probably going to get hurt.
Americans are so busy thinking that everything is supposed to be perfect - and that they have some sort of inalienable right to a free lunch - that they go into a huge tailspin when things aren't just the way they want them to be.
Well, nothing's ever going to be exactly the way you want it to be. Get over it. You're just making things worse for yourself and everybody else when you overreact.
Meanwhile, here's some pretty pictures from a recent excursion out to the California State Poppy Reserve near Lancaster in the far northeast corner of Los Angeles County:
23 March 2008
THE JOYS OF LIFE IN LOS ANGELES
It got up into the 90s yesterday, at least in the parts of town where I spent my afternoon. There was a slight breeze though and it felt good.
Now I am fully aware that in these days of global warming and high gas prices, driving around, simply looking at stuff is politically incorrect. But that's one of the things I most like to do. Sure, the world your kids are going to get old in will be worse for it, but, well, so sue me.
One of the running themes of the book I'm currently working on - tentatively titled "Shanghaied," is the age old excuse of: "If I wasn't doing it, someone else would." I would like to go on record as saying that I think that excuse is a crock of shit. The book makes fun of people who use it. But, well, any claim I may have ever made on perfection is increasingly laughable as I get older. And wiser, of course.
So I cruised around yesterday. My first destination was my favorite freeway interchange in the city. The elegant, soaring curves of the 110 and 105 mashup. Luckily, there's a MetroLink rail station smack in the middle of it, so I was able to wander around and shoot pictures. I need to go back when the light's better though, around sunrise or sunset.
Then it was time for lunch. I started driving east on Imperial Highway toward Plaza Mexico on the western edge of Norwalk. There's a big goat taco place there, right in between The Gap and a Ritmo Latino CD store. But along the way I passed The Slater Market and Hawkins House of Burgers. It looked too good to pass up. Turned out that it was. It's been there since 1952, which is how long I've been here, too. It was cheap, the burger was fantastic, my conversation with a couple of regulars who've been hanging out at the place for many years was interesting. I'm going to have to go back for soul food one of these weekends. (It's at the corner of Slater and Imperial Highway, south side of the street, just a few blocks east of Central Ave.)
Then I cruised up Main Street back into downtown, past the several blocks of furiously competitive goat taco stands - but I was full at that point, so I didn't stop. I went all the way past Chinatown to the LAX-C Market at 1100 N. Main. It's an old wholesale market, decorated with murals of Native Americans shooting arrows from horseback. Imagine, if you will, a Thai Costco. That's what it is. It is as big, if not bigger than any Costco I've ever been to, and it is entirely Thai (and some other Southeast Asian) food, cookware and household products. It is open for retail. Someone was grilling satay in the parking lot. Kids were tormenting the giant fish in the moat that runs along the front of the place. No one was speaking English. I felt right at home. It's Los Angeles.
Then I went home, where the garden has gone apeshit.
There aren't a whole lot of other places in the world where you can do all this in the course of a few hours.
Now I am fully aware that in these days of global warming and high gas prices, driving around, simply looking at stuff is politically incorrect. But that's one of the things I most like to do. Sure, the world your kids are going to get old in will be worse for it, but, well, so sue me.
One of the running themes of the book I'm currently working on - tentatively titled "Shanghaied," is the age old excuse of: "If I wasn't doing it, someone else would." I would like to go on record as saying that I think that excuse is a crock of shit. The book makes fun of people who use it. But, well, any claim I may have ever made on perfection is increasingly laughable as I get older. And wiser, of course.
So I cruised around yesterday. My first destination was my favorite freeway interchange in the city. The elegant, soaring curves of the 110 and 105 mashup. Luckily, there's a MetroLink rail station smack in the middle of it, so I was able to wander around and shoot pictures. I need to go back when the light's better though, around sunrise or sunset.
Then it was time for lunch. I started driving east on Imperial Highway toward Plaza Mexico on the western edge of Norwalk. There's a big goat taco place there, right in between The Gap and a Ritmo Latino CD store. But along the way I passed The Slater Market and Hawkins House of Burgers. It looked too good to pass up. Turned out that it was. It's been there since 1952, which is how long I've been here, too. It was cheap, the burger was fantastic, my conversation with a couple of regulars who've been hanging out at the place for many years was interesting. I'm going to have to go back for soul food one of these weekends. (It's at the corner of Slater and Imperial Highway, south side of the street, just a few blocks east of Central Ave.)
Then I cruised up Main Street back into downtown, past the several blocks of furiously competitive goat taco stands - but I was full at that point, so I didn't stop. I went all the way past Chinatown to the LAX-C Market at 1100 N. Main. It's an old wholesale market, decorated with murals of Native Americans shooting arrows from horseback. Imagine, if you will, a Thai Costco. That's what it is. It is as big, if not bigger than any Costco I've ever been to, and it is entirely Thai (and some other Southeast Asian) food, cookware and household products. It is open for retail. Someone was grilling satay in the parking lot. Kids were tormenting the giant fish in the moat that runs along the front of the place. No one was speaking English. I felt right at home. It's Los Angeles.
Then I went home, where the garden has gone apeshit.
There aren't a whole lot of other places in the world where you can do all this in the course of a few hours.
14 March 2008
I USED TO, KIND OF, SORT OF LIKE
Hillary. I even voted for her in the California primary. I figure that barring reactions to unforeseen circumstances, even the greatest, most effective presidents have a small window of opportunity to get the best of their politicking done, especially when it comes to dealing with domestic issues. In his first year in office, before Vietnam wrecked everything, LBJ pushed through Congress the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty and numerous other significant legislation from which we have benefited since. A lot of FDR's New Deal was put into place in his first year. I don't like a lot of what Reagan accomplished, but much of it happened in his first year.
After the first year, politics sets in and everyone in government spends more time looking to their own reelection - the most important part of which is money raising - than they do to the common good. It's one of the reasons why every single presidential election really ends up being about domestic issues; the economy, taxes, health and education, the bread and butter of daily life. Those are the things the president is best equipped to deal with as soon as they get over their hangover from the inaugural balls.
And there's a whole lot of domestic business that needs attending to in this country, having been sorely neglected over the last seven years.
Which is why I voted for Hillary. I don't particularly like her style. I hate her war mongering on Iraq. I think she rubs too many people the wrong way. (A lot of which I think is unfair. If she was a man doing and saying the same things, I think it wouldn't be a problem for her.) But, I do, or did, buy the argument that she could hit the ground running as president. She hasn't been in the Senate all that much longer than Obama, but enough. And for even longer than that she's been well positioned to get a feel for how things work between the Executive and Legislative branches. She has been a highly effective senator because of her ability to navigate the maze of stupidity and venality that makes up the Congress. And she even seems able and willing to work with Republicans to get things done.
I figured that Hillary could get more done in her first year in office than Obama could, and that first year is going to be vital in getting the country back on the right track.
Now, I'm not so sure. The manner in which she has handled, or rather mishandled, her campaign makes me worry about her abilities to orchestrate the more crucial political tasks she'd face as president. She's not particularly inspiring, and I can live with that. A great leader is both inspiring and effective, but that's a very rare combination. I'll settle for effective if I have to choose between the two. (Hell, I was a Richardson supporter when this whole thing started.) I'm beginning to think Hillary might not be as effective on a national level, as she has been in representing her state.
As for Obama, he's certainly inspiring, I'll grant him that. But I still harbor worries about his effectiveness. I've had several interesting conversations with his supporters who seemed to see in him exactly, and just, what they wanted to see. According to one he's a staunch advocate of free trade. According to another he'll protect American jobs by putting up barriers to some imports and outsourcing. He doesn't have enough of an actual track record for me to get a strong sense of him.
Obama reminds me of JFK and that worries me. Kennedy was inspiring all right. He was also a lousy president. People tend to forget that because he was handsome and assassinated young. Some people say he didn't have time to accomplish much. Hey, what about that first year in office thing? He didn't have the political courage, or clout, to push for civil rights legislation when it might have been even easier for him than for Johnson. He didn't have the courage or foresight or maybe clout to begin pulling us out of the increasingly nasty foreign entanglements in Southeast Asia and Latin America, and even a couple in Africa, that Eisenhower had begun to ease us into. He elevated tensions with the first moderate government to show up in the Soviet Union since its creation, helping put the whole world at risk. But hey, he gave some great speeches.
Hopefully there's more to Obama than there was to JFK, hopefully a lot more. It's looking increasingly like we'll get a chance to find out. (That is, if a black man really can get elected president. I still think we're a lot more racist of a country than we like to think we are.) I will vote for him enthusiastically. I like what he represents. I love it that at long last we have a choice between a woman and a non-white candidate for president. And he's right, it is time for a change. I just wish I had a bit better feel for what that change might really be or how it's going to happen.
And the alternative? Well, there is no alternative. John McCain has a mostly terrible track record. I disagree with about 85 percent of his votes as a senator. I don't trust him as far as I could throw him when it comes to appointing Supreme Court justices. And most recently, despite having suffered terribly as a prisoner of war himself, he voted against the bill that would ban waterboarding - among other forms of torture - by all representatives of the U.S. (Something he seemed to be in favor of when he didn't need to court the conservative vote.)
ENOUGH OF THAT FOR NOW
I just returned from my latest book oriented road trip. L.A. to Tucson to Santa Fe to Denver (for Left Coast Crime) to Las Vegas to home. Here's some photographic evidence:
They weren't in bloom yet, but I've always loved saguaro cacti, ever since seeing them in cartoons as a kid.
I've also always loved baseball, especially during spring training when it's more casual than usual. (And I'm impressed with my new camera and lens, too. Note the ball.)
Bald men seem to be in great demand at Crime writing conferences. I'd consider shaving my head if I wasn't convinced it has an odd shape. (The highly paid escort? Nobel Peace Prize laureate? Astronaut? Webmistress? in the middle is disguised at her request.)
Three guys vying for the attention of the same girl - our agent, Janet Reid, who wasn't there. (Me, Bill Cameron and Colin Campbell at the bar. Where else would we be? It was a writer's conference.)
The view from my hotel room in Las Vegas. The highlight of my brief stay in the city - besides dinner with friends - was a conversation at a bar at Planet Hollywood Casino (the current "casino girl" hangout of choice) with a young, blond hooker. She was demurely dressed in jeans and a simple blouse with only a top button undone. I knew she was a hooker only from her slow cruise around the bar before settling into a chair, her body language, the way she smiled at me several times and, well, there were the shoes, too, of course. Any number of the other women in the place looked a whole lot more like the hookers you see on TV and in the movies. Only they weren't. And she complained about it when I bought her a drink. "With all these straight girls dressing like whores, it makes it hard for me," she said. The thing is, despite the legal brothels in the state, despite the whole "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" thing, it's still illegal for prostitutes to ply their trade in the casinos. Sometimes it's enforced more seriously than others. Marie, who I was talking with, had recently spent 11 days in the slammer for having picked a guy up at Caesar's Palace. So she tried to dress down, not be too obvious. But when all these straight girls were distracting the potential customers with their sleazy dress, she had to try harder to make her business known in other ways. And that puts her at greater risk of being busted. And she doesn't make nearly the kind of money that Governor Spitzer's squeeze does. I felt for her. She wouldn't let me take her picture.
After the first year, politics sets in and everyone in government spends more time looking to their own reelection - the most important part of which is money raising - than they do to the common good. It's one of the reasons why every single presidential election really ends up being about domestic issues; the economy, taxes, health and education, the bread and butter of daily life. Those are the things the president is best equipped to deal with as soon as they get over their hangover from the inaugural balls.
And there's a whole lot of domestic business that needs attending to in this country, having been sorely neglected over the last seven years.
Which is why I voted for Hillary. I don't particularly like her style. I hate her war mongering on Iraq. I think she rubs too many people the wrong way. (A lot of which I think is unfair. If she was a man doing and saying the same things, I think it wouldn't be a problem for her.) But, I do, or did, buy the argument that she could hit the ground running as president. She hasn't been in the Senate all that much longer than Obama, but enough. And for even longer than that she's been well positioned to get a feel for how things work between the Executive and Legislative branches. She has been a highly effective senator because of her ability to navigate the maze of stupidity and venality that makes up the Congress. And she even seems able and willing to work with Republicans to get things done.
I figured that Hillary could get more done in her first year in office than Obama could, and that first year is going to be vital in getting the country back on the right track.
Now, I'm not so sure. The manner in which she has handled, or rather mishandled, her campaign makes me worry about her abilities to orchestrate the more crucial political tasks she'd face as president. She's not particularly inspiring, and I can live with that. A great leader is both inspiring and effective, but that's a very rare combination. I'll settle for effective if I have to choose between the two. (Hell, I was a Richardson supporter when this whole thing started.) I'm beginning to think Hillary might not be as effective on a national level, as she has been in representing her state.
As for Obama, he's certainly inspiring, I'll grant him that. But I still harbor worries about his effectiveness. I've had several interesting conversations with his supporters who seemed to see in him exactly, and just, what they wanted to see. According to one he's a staunch advocate of free trade. According to another he'll protect American jobs by putting up barriers to some imports and outsourcing. He doesn't have enough of an actual track record for me to get a strong sense of him.
Obama reminds me of JFK and that worries me. Kennedy was inspiring all right. He was also a lousy president. People tend to forget that because he was handsome and assassinated young. Some people say he didn't have time to accomplish much. Hey, what about that first year in office thing? He didn't have the political courage, or clout, to push for civil rights legislation when it might have been even easier for him than for Johnson. He didn't have the courage or foresight or maybe clout to begin pulling us out of the increasingly nasty foreign entanglements in Southeast Asia and Latin America, and even a couple in Africa, that Eisenhower had begun to ease us into. He elevated tensions with the first moderate government to show up in the Soviet Union since its creation, helping put the whole world at risk. But hey, he gave some great speeches.
Hopefully there's more to Obama than there was to JFK, hopefully a lot more. It's looking increasingly like we'll get a chance to find out. (That is, if a black man really can get elected president. I still think we're a lot more racist of a country than we like to think we are.) I will vote for him enthusiastically. I like what he represents. I love it that at long last we have a choice between a woman and a non-white candidate for president. And he's right, it is time for a change. I just wish I had a bit better feel for what that change might really be or how it's going to happen.
And the alternative? Well, there is no alternative. John McCain has a mostly terrible track record. I disagree with about 85 percent of his votes as a senator. I don't trust him as far as I could throw him when it comes to appointing Supreme Court justices. And most recently, despite having suffered terribly as a prisoner of war himself, he voted against the bill that would ban waterboarding - among other forms of torture - by all representatives of the U.S. (Something he seemed to be in favor of when he didn't need to court the conservative vote.)
ENOUGH OF THAT FOR NOW
I just returned from my latest book oriented road trip. L.A. to Tucson to Santa Fe to Denver (for Left Coast Crime) to Las Vegas to home. Here's some photographic evidence:
They weren't in bloom yet, but I've always loved saguaro cacti, ever since seeing them in cartoons as a kid.
I've also always loved baseball, especially during spring training when it's more casual than usual. (And I'm impressed with my new camera and lens, too. Note the ball.)
Bald men seem to be in great demand at Crime writing conferences. I'd consider shaving my head if I wasn't convinced it has an odd shape. (The highly paid escort? Nobel Peace Prize laureate? Astronaut? Webmistress? in the middle is disguised at her request.)
Three guys vying for the attention of the same girl - our agent, Janet Reid, who wasn't there. (Me, Bill Cameron and Colin Campbell at the bar. Where else would we be? It was a writer's conference.)
The view from my hotel room in Las Vegas. The highlight of my brief stay in the city - besides dinner with friends - was a conversation at a bar at Planet Hollywood Casino (the current "casino girl" hangout of choice) with a young, blond hooker. She was demurely dressed in jeans and a simple blouse with only a top button undone. I knew she was a hooker only from her slow cruise around the bar before settling into a chair, her body language, the way she smiled at me several times and, well, there were the shoes, too, of course. Any number of the other women in the place looked a whole lot more like the hookers you see on TV and in the movies. Only they weren't. And she complained about it when I bought her a drink. "With all these straight girls dressing like whores, it makes it hard for me," she said. The thing is, despite the legal brothels in the state, despite the whole "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" thing, it's still illegal for prostitutes to ply their trade in the casinos. Sometimes it's enforced more seriously than others. Marie, who I was talking with, had recently spent 11 days in the slammer for having picked a guy up at Caesar's Palace. So she tried to dress down, not be too obvious. But when all these straight girls were distracting the potential customers with their sleazy dress, she had to try harder to make her business known in other ways. And that puts her at greater risk of being busted. And she doesn't make nearly the kind of money that Governor Spitzer's squeeze does. I felt for her. She wouldn't let me take her picture.
29 February 2008
CHILDREN AND OTHER ROAD HAZARDS
Yes, I did get got for driving 85 mph on a 70 mph freeway on the high desert highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I was guilty. The several SUVs and two Mercedes that had swiftly passed me just a minute or two before I was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol, had nothing to do with it. It was just my tough luck that his radar got me, rather than them.
So I spent a day last week in online traffic school, where I didn't learn a whole lot that I didn't already know. One thing, however, became quite clear. The single major road hazard, the one thing that is most distracting, dangerous, even deadly, is children. Nary a screen went by that didn't include some sort of caution about kids. They're noisy and disruptive in the car and unpredictable, quirky, quick and at times suicidal on the streets.
Sure, booze seems to be implicated in more traffic accidents than any other single factor, but near as I could tell from traffic school, children are running a close second.
I always knew they were trying to kill us. Gang way for the new generation. Biology is merciless and it is now evidently using technology to do its dirty work.
This is a matter of some immediate concern as I am once more about to hit the road. This morning I am off to Arizona, en route to Denver for Left Coast Crime. I'll stop for a night in Phoenix where my cousin Robert and I intend to find some minor trouble to get into. (It's the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance at The Rhythm Room. That could be fun.) Then down to Tucson to take in some spring training baseball with my father. (I'm trying to decide if I should take my mitt, but I never can find anyone to play catch, much less real baseball, with these days.) Then it's a drive through New Mexico, fueled by as many meals involving green chilies as I can squeeze into it.
Then, finally, Denver. I'll be there for four days, which is three days longer than I've spent there before. I enjoyed Left Coast Crime in Seattle last year, we'll see how it shakes out this year. I'm on a panel on Friday about sex and violence, so that can't be too bad.
And finally, speaking of sex and violence, I sure as hell want this stupid primary season to be over. When is someone going to wise up and pass a law restricting presidential campaigns to no more than four months, or something like that? The stupidity just keeps growing. Even if you start out sort of kind of liking a candidate, by the time they've finished - or even just got halfway through - pandering to voters and special interests, you've learned to loathe them. No wonder it's always a matter of voting for the lesser of two evils. The whole process tears down anything or anybody who goes into it with good, honest, intelligent intentions. (Although I must admit to cynical doubts that anyone ever does go into politics with "good, honest, intelligent intentions.")
Oh yeah, one more thing, I forgot:
MyPOD
I have gone modern. The other day, looking over the cabinet from which spilled my collection of CDs, I decided I was tired of them. Tired of trying to find ones that had been put back into the wrong case whenever a certain friend comes over and plays music, tired of shuffling through them to find what I want, tired of messing around with them, of the space they took up. So I bought a big (in capacity) small (in size) external hard drive and downloaded all 638 of them onto it. I then boxed them up, took them to Amoeba on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and sold them for a mere fraction of what they had cost me over the years, but still, more than enough for my purposes. With that money I bought a new 160 GB IPod Classic and a Bose stereo thingy to plug it into and an adapter for my car and still had money left over and still have all my music - which I downloaded into the IPod from the hard drive. Only now, rather than spilling out of a cabinet in my house, my entire CD collection fits in my pocket. I'm taking it with me to Denver. I wonder how long I can impose my collection of Cambodian cassette tapes (recorded onto CDs) on my cousin during the drive?
So I spent a day last week in online traffic school, where I didn't learn a whole lot that I didn't already know. One thing, however, became quite clear. The single major road hazard, the one thing that is most distracting, dangerous, even deadly, is children. Nary a screen went by that didn't include some sort of caution about kids. They're noisy and disruptive in the car and unpredictable, quirky, quick and at times suicidal on the streets.
Sure, booze seems to be implicated in more traffic accidents than any other single factor, but near as I could tell from traffic school, children are running a close second.
I always knew they were trying to kill us. Gang way for the new generation. Biology is merciless and it is now evidently using technology to do its dirty work.
This is a matter of some immediate concern as I am once more about to hit the road. This morning I am off to Arizona, en route to Denver for Left Coast Crime. I'll stop for a night in Phoenix where my cousin Robert and I intend to find some minor trouble to get into. (It's the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance at The Rhythm Room. That could be fun.) Then down to Tucson to take in some spring training baseball with my father. (I'm trying to decide if I should take my mitt, but I never can find anyone to play catch, much less real baseball, with these days.) Then it's a drive through New Mexico, fueled by as many meals involving green chilies as I can squeeze into it.
Then, finally, Denver. I'll be there for four days, which is three days longer than I've spent there before. I enjoyed Left Coast Crime in Seattle last year, we'll see how it shakes out this year. I'm on a panel on Friday about sex and violence, so that can't be too bad.
And finally, speaking of sex and violence, I sure as hell want this stupid primary season to be over. When is someone going to wise up and pass a law restricting presidential campaigns to no more than four months, or something like that? The stupidity just keeps growing. Even if you start out sort of kind of liking a candidate, by the time they've finished - or even just got halfway through - pandering to voters and special interests, you've learned to loathe them. No wonder it's always a matter of voting for the lesser of two evils. The whole process tears down anything or anybody who goes into it with good, honest, intelligent intentions. (Although I must admit to cynical doubts that anyone ever does go into politics with "good, honest, intelligent intentions.")
Oh yeah, one more thing, I forgot:
MyPOD
I have gone modern. The other day, looking over the cabinet from which spilled my collection of CDs, I decided I was tired of them. Tired of trying to find ones that had been put back into the wrong case whenever a certain friend comes over and plays music, tired of shuffling through them to find what I want, tired of messing around with them, of the space they took up. So I bought a big (in capacity) small (in size) external hard drive and downloaded all 638 of them onto it. I then boxed them up, took them to Amoeba on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and sold them for a mere fraction of what they had cost me over the years, but still, more than enough for my purposes. With that money I bought a new 160 GB IPod Classic and a Bose stereo thingy to plug it into and an adapter for my car and still had money left over and still have all my music - which I downloaded into the IPod from the hard drive. Only now, rather than spilling out of a cabinet in my house, my entire CD collection fits in my pocket. I'm taking it with me to Denver. I wonder how long I can impose my collection of Cambodian cassette tapes (recorded onto CDs) on my cousin during the drive?
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