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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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

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.

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:

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.

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.

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?

VOTE BUYING & QUICK FIXES

Maybe we really are idiots. Probably. Presidential candidates have all sorts of advisors and pollsters and consultants to tell them how best to pander to the interests, insecurities and prejudices of us, the electorate. So they must be pretty assured that we’ll fall for the nonsense they’ve been feeding us.

Lately, with all the talk of recession, they’re competing to see which one of them can promise to toss the most money our way, in the belief that we will be deceived into thinking that will actually do something good for the economy.
And most of us will fall for it. We’ll take the 250, 400 or 800 bucks and cheerfully spend it on something, under the mistaken impression that we’re helping fix the economy by doing so.

And maybe that will stem the problem, briefly. It is possible to stop a leaking pipe with duct tape, at least for a little while. Which is what the presidential candidates are hoping to do. It’s a whole lot easier to run for office in what is perceived as a strong economy, than in a weak one. If they can put off having the economy tank until after November, the politicians will prosper. Even if we won’t.

The problem is, none of them are talking about real solutions to the real problems. When you wrap duct tape around a leaky pipe, you are simply putting off potential disaster.

Trying to fix the economy by simply handing out money is stupid. There are a lot of reasons for that. Two of them are fundamental.

• The money’s got to come from somewhere. The government can’t simply print some more to pass around, that would cause inflation. The government has no savings it can simply dip into for this rainy day. Quite the opposite, it’s already deep in debt. The only way to come up with the cash, is for the U.S. to go even deeper into debt. And that is going to happen at a time when the dollar is weak and borrowing terms are going to be high. Among the reasons we’re facing economic problems now is the size of our debt. We need to try and cut it, not add to it.

• The stuff we’re going to buy with the money the government hands out is mostly already made; it’s mostly made elsewhere (like China); and once we’ve spent the money that will be that, we’ll be some new sneakers or digital cameras or one house payment richer, but we’ll be right back where we started. What then? Another handout?

Unfortunately the really big economic problem for the U.S. is psychological. We think buying stuff is all that it takes to make an economy prosperous. And sure, consumption is one of the pillars of a strong economy. But at a certain point, if there isn’t much in the way of new investment, if it becomes difficult to start new businesses, if there’s a dwindling pool of savings to draw from, it all turns into one big potlatch. Instead of producing new wealth, everyone just trades what they already have with each other. Some people take bites out of each trade and get richer that way, and a lot of people are happy for awhile because they’ve got some new stuff, or at least stuff that’s new to them. But you can’t keep that up forever.

Didn’t most of our parents warn us about how if we spent our allowance on candy bars, no matter how sweet they tasted at the time, later on, when we wanted money to buy that new bike, or baseball glove, or video game, we wouldn’t be able to.

Like the proverbial shark, a healthy economy needs to keep moving. An economy based entirely, or mostly, on consumption, is sooner or later going to be dead in the water.

The foundations for a strong developed economy are investment and innovation. Simply handing people cash to spend doesn’t do much for either of those things. (I suppose it might if the money came with a requirement that it had to be put into the stock market, or at least a savings account for a minimum amount of time.)

The people who are trying to buy our votes are talking about handing out something in the neighborhood of $150 billion. Maybe what they really need to do is to invest that money in something that is going to actually benefit the country and the economy for years to come, rather than simply buying us a bit more stuff now.

The estimated price tag, for instance, for a new, super high-speed rail line running through California, from Sacramento, through the San Francisco Bay Area, to Los Angeles and on to San Diego and the Mexican border, is about $20 billion. The long term economic benefits of that, not just to California but to the entire country – since California is by far the most important economic component of the U.S. – would be worth well more than the required investment. The project would also pump a lot of money into companies all over the country that participated in it.

Our educational and public health systems are among the poorest in the rich world. What kind of long term investment could be made in those with that money? What kind of jobs could be created, and long term economic benefits accrued from putting dollars into those areas, rather than just a few extra bucks into lining our pockets?

Several recent surveys have cited the U.S. for decaying infrastructure; dangerously so in some areas. Fixing that would create jobs, opportunities and facilities for companies that would put a lot more than a few temporary dollars into wallets.

Why not use the money to double, triple, hell, quintuple the funds available for small business loans. Loans to new, small businesses are one of the first areas to really suffer due to the current credit crunch related to the sub-prime housing loan debacle. Small businesses employ more people and come up with more innovative new products than any other sector of the U.S. economy

But no, why not just give me four hundred bucks. At the moment I’m in Washington D.C. Only yesterday I walked underneath a ramshackle old railroad bridge. It was very picturesque even if trains can’t run on it anymore. I’ve got my eyes on a new digital camera. I’ll buy it online from a place in New York. It’s a Japanese brand, manufactured under contract by a Korean or Chinese company, with parts that are sourced from eight or nine different countries. I’ll use it to take pictures when I walk around. Hell, it might even be tax deductible. Even the IRS wants me to spend my money, rather than invest it. Maybe they know something I don’t know.

While I’m picking bones about the economy, or should that be picking over the economy’s bones?, I must admit to a certain amount of perverse pleasure over the past couple of days when the U.S. stock markets fell.

The day before yesterday, while it was a holiday here, stock markets around the world plummeted, supposedly on worries about the U.S. heading into recession. The Federal Reserve, looking for a quick fix way to prevent U.S. markets following suit when they opened this morning, announced it was lowering interest rates by three quarters of a percent.

That doesn’t seem to have worked. Maybe in part because it reeked of desperation and savvy investors are learning to distrust the financial maneuverings of the U.S. government.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like low interest rates as well as the next guy. I’ve got a mortgage (although I’m happy to say it’s locked in at five percent) and I own stocks (which look much more desireable when interest rates are low.) But if the Fed could drag us back a year or two to the much-missed era of low interest rates and booming housing prices, all that would do is exacerbate our current mess.

Nothing has been done to rein in predatory lending practices, or even just plain stupid lending practices in which lenders and buyers both look for quick, easy, cheap money by offering terms that don’t make any sense to anybody who understands the concept of there being no free lunch.

As soon as interest rates drop low enough, it’s all going to start up all over again. The very least that ought to happen is that loan documents should be required to be written in real, easy to understand, no small print English. Oh yeah, and banks ought to be required to actually make a reasonable stab at ensuring their customers can pay back loans. If the government doesn’t require all that, the shareholders of lending institutions ought to find ways to do it.

There have to be some long term, realistic solutions to these problems. Something better, at least, than the panicky lowering of interest rates. But none of the people in power really want that. In the same way that a bad corporate manager only sees as far as the next quarterly report, our politicians only see as far as the next poll, or this year, primary. They’d rather buy our votes with money. That’s easier and cheaper than coming up with the hard work and creativity that are necessary to actually solve any problems.

WHAT THE FRENCH DO BEST

Las Vegas: Apparently, it's topless revues. That's what the ads for Fantastique! say here at the Paris Las Vegas Casino Resort.

But at Bally's, next door and owned by the same company, they do even better than that. They are, "Making the world a better place, one dancer at a time" with their Jubilee! revue.

Down the street at The Venetian, they have a new restaurant / nightclub called Tao. It promises "spiritual dining" and "religious nightlife."

Now I can sort of understand spiritual dining. Maybe it's gourmet vegetarian food, something like that. Although I doubt it. I'm sure they've come up with some good excuse for spiritual fifty buck steaks. If the Dalai Lama can eat steak, I don't see why a diner shouldn't be able to tuck into an overpriced t-bone at Tao.

The religious nightlife though; that confuses me. That sounds too much like quiet contemplation in your cell, maybe wearing a hair shirt. Some people, I'm sure, are into that, but probably not here in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is once again trying to pass itself off as "Sin City." It fails, miserably. If there are any of the seven deadlies being broken here, it's avarice and gluttony. There's no doubt plenty of lusting going on as well, but it's mostly unrequited unless it's an expensive commercial transaction - and in that case we're back to avarice.

In truth, Las Vegas is to vice as Adventureland at Disneyland is to adventure. At Disneyland it's kids that are taken in by the artifice, here it's drunk college kids and people who've never encountered the real deal.

This evening I've got a book event at a new bookstore called Cheesecake & Crime. It's in Henderson, a suburb of Vegas. I think it might be where the real world - at least the real world of shopping malls and strip malls and grocery stores and little houses where the people who work along The Strip can afford to live - is to be found. Maybe there will even be some real vice. Although I doubt it.

PRIMARY MUSINGS

Why should anyone give a damn what I think about the upcoming Presidential Election? Why should anyone give a damn what any one voter thinks? But, I've got this blog, so I'm going to use it to disseminate at least some of my political views.

Here's what I think about the upcoming Presidential Primaries:

First off, no matter who the Democrat Party candidate is in the November election, I'll probably end up voting for her, or him. We've had too much of the Republicans for the past eight years no matter who their nominee is. Things have tilted too far to their side. The country needs some balance and to get it, things are going to have to tilt back to the other side for a little while. Not to mention that the next president will certainly appoint at least one supreme court judge and the country cannot take the risk that the appointee will be heavily influenced by the religious right.

Plus, someone's got to cut back on war spending, and it isn't going to be the Republicans.

The funny thing is that people still labor under the delusion that one party is the party of sound fiscal policy and the other isn't. It's just not true. Both parties are profligate spenders. Both parties figure they can buy our votes through how they spend money.

The difference is that the Republicans overspend on "defense" and the Democrats want to overspend on domestic policies. Traditionally, the Republicans are the ones who actually believe in a free lunch. They want to spend without raising taxes. When they accuse the Democrats of being "tax and spend" - at least that makes sense. Don't tax, but spend anyhow is about as dumb a policy as there is. The Republicans just spend on different things than the Democrats do.

And the Republicans get away with that for eight, sometimes twelve years at a time, then the Democrats get elected and have no choice but to raise taxes to pay for all the massive Republican defense spending and tax cut backs. So then the Democrats get painted as the party that raises taxes and the Republicans get elected again. It's a pretty good political strategy and a really lousy fiscal one.

So, I'm not going to even worry about who the Republican nominee is going to be. Whoever it is, they aren't getting my vote - as amusing as I think Ron Paul is.

As for the Democrats, my top three choices for the nomination come from among the six serious candidates. (I say "serious" because I don't believe Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel ever had a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination, and even if they did, neither of them would be my choice anyhow.) But my top three are the least likely to get the nomination: Richardson, Biden and Dodd.

Richardson is my candidate of choice. He's got the widest range of experience, has proved himself an effective governor, and has some very bright ideas. Problem is, he's a lousy candidate. He lacks charisma, is sometimes too honest, and puts his foot in his mouth when he's tired - just like most people do, but presidential candidates need to learn to keep their mouths shut.

So, what of the other three, who seem to have a chance at the nomination?

I don't like John Edwards. I don't trust him, and he scares me. If you can really believe what he says - and I have my doubts about that - he has a near complete lack of understanding of the global economy, or the way that the global economy and trade affect the U.S. If, as President, he could actually do what he says he would like to do - which, luckily, he couldn't - in terms of trade policy, he would severely set back our economy. The U.S. would lose a great many more jobs than it has already. Any possible recession, would threaten to become a full blown depression, and it would take down a lot of other countries with it. I'm sorry about your father's job John, but we are the world's most developed, technologically advanced economy; there is no sane reason that t-shirts or socks should be manufactured in North Carolina. Maybe with all of your trial lawyer fees you can afford to buy undergarments made in America, but most people can't. We need better, new economy jobs, not to protect the old jobs that other countries can now do as well and cheaper.

Luckily, I don't really think he's got a hope in hell, anyhow.

So that leaves us with Hillary and Obama, and I'm okay with either of them.

I also worry, though, that either of them will have a more difficult time getting elected than they ought to.

Despite being one of the more moderate, centrist senators, who has received high marks for her willingness and ability to work with the Republicans, Hillary is still a very divisive figure. The Republicans don't just not agree with her, they hate her. And they're ready for her. I am certain that they have both barrels locked and loaded and ready to hurt her in all sorts of ways the moment she gets the nomination. They've been preparing for her for the past three years. I still think she can win, but it will be a whole lot closer than it ought to be. And, as much as I hate her stance on the Iraq War, I think she'd be a good president and surround herself with good advisors. And, though I would prefer our first woman president to be a completely self-made woman, rather than the wife of a previous president, I would be happy to see the breaking of that glass ceiling in any event.

As for Obama, as much as I would love to believe that race wouldn't be an issue in a presidential election, I don't believe that. It won't be a huge issue - most of the people who won't vote for a black man, wouldn't vote for a Democrat either - but I think it would still be a big enough issue as to also make an Obama election a whole lot tighter than it should be. And, with his short track record in national politics, a very close election will make it harder for him to govern effectively. I don't worry too much about the experience factor. I think an awful lot of what goes into making a good president is the people he or she is surrounded by. And I think he'd appoint good people. Also, being black, and having lived in Indonesia as a child, I think he'd be well-situated for beginning the vital process of improving relations with the Islamic world.

So, who am I going to vote for in the California Primary? I don't know. I'll probably vote for Richardson anyhow in the hope that he gets enough votes that whoever's the nominee has to pick him for vice-president or Secretary of State.

Now I'll try to get back to some more amusing topic in my next blog post.

IKE TURNER, 1931-2007

So what if I was 16 and horny. So what if I was in the front row at the Shrine and looking up the very short skirts of the Ikettes, two of whom were not wearing underwear. Sure, Tina had that voice. And those legs. But for me, it was all about Ike.

There he was, in a white suit with a black t-shirt. He spent a lot of his time with his back turned to the crowd, hardly moving. But oh-my-fucking-god; the sounds that came out of that man's guitar. (Only Hendrix did more. He'd played in Ike's band once. But there were times when I liked Ike better.) And the control he had over the band. (As far as controlling a band went, the only one I ever saw who came close to Ike was Frank Zappa. He was in fair second place.)

Now he's dead at 76, and too many people don't know who he was, don't know what they missed, what they'll be missing. Ike Turner was, at the very least, the missing link between blues and rock and roll. In any sensible, realistic list of the creators of modern American music, he'd be a shoo-in for the pantheon.

Too many people know him from the movies. Sure What's Love Got To Do With It was a good bio-pic. But it didn't tell his story, certainly not the whole story, or even the important parts. There's even some controversy over how accurate it was. Some of that controversy has even been fed by Tina herself in interviews in the years since.

In the years after he broke up with Tina, Ike's life spun largely out of control. But he always kept working. Last year he won a Grammy for his album Risin' With the Blues. It's a very good record, one that will give you a taste of what he was capable of. But only a small taste.

Seeing him live was always the best. There are no albums that capture that. Certainly none of the ones with Tina.

The last time I saw Ike was at a small club in Los Feliz, here in Los Angeles. He mostly played keyboard. He was also an accomplished pianist. The band was totally in his control. The first half was magical. Then there was a break.

After the break it got sort of pathetic. He brought a Tina clone on stage. She had great cleavage. A very short skirt. An okay voice. But she wasn't Tina. And even worse, working with her to try and recapture some past glory days, Ike wasn't Ike.

And Ike, all by himself with his guitar and his band, man, that was always way more than enough. I'm gonna miss him.

Here's some assorted pictures that I like. I found them online.

CRIME FIGHTING WITH BOOKS

Far too many girls in poor countries are sold into sexual and other forms of slavery by their families. Cambodia, being one of the poorest countries in the world, is no exception.

My latest book, GRAVE IMPORTS, is set in Cambodia. Though it deals with the theft of the country's antiquities, a vital part of the story is the social and economic context in which it takes place.

I hope you enjoy the book. Above all, I want it to be entertaining. But if you get anything more than simple amusement out of reading GRAVE IMPORTS, I hope it's an awareness of the terrible problems facing the people of Cambodia.

And of course, I'm hoping to make some money from having written the book. I am trying to earn a living here. But I also want to give something back. Besides making you aware of the problems in Cambodia, I want to do something a bit more concrete.

I've donated money from my advance, and will continue to do so from royalties, for GRAVE IMPORTS to a group called American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC), that I think is doing very important, and good, work in the country.

You can click on the banner above or below and learn more about AAfC and how you can help its efforts to keep Cambodian girls in school and out of the brothels and sweatshops. And besides the satisfaction of knowing you've helped an important effort, you'll get something extra as a thank you in return.