so I've been writing in that self-selected echo chamber myspace for most of the past year.
see... I go there anyway after work most days, to pretend like I'm hanging out with friends,
and posting in one place is easier than posting in two...
but there I'm only writing for people who (mostly) already know me...
thanks to the triumvirate of rain, the housing market crash, and economic slow down I have some free time (meaning I'm unable to find someone who wants to rent me) today, I'll be moving stuff over from Myspace and augmenting the posts.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
nerd con
I flew down to LA for 26 hours to go to this big ass convention for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.
If you know me, you know that Star Wars plays the the same role in my life that the bible does for some other folks... except that I know Star Wars is a bunch of made-up bullshit, and I'm not about to kill anyone over it. But it did give me a mythological backbone for my ideas about change and freedom and cooperation and good and evil and truth. The core story is a about a kid who starts out wanting to free his fellow slaves, then he's indoctrinated by a secretive and powerful cult that denies amorous love, then he goes ape shit nuts trying to figure out how to have it both ways, then he decides the only way to bring peace is to consolidate power, then his kids call bullshit and he kills the bad guy and is redeemed all in a 13 or 14 hour cycle with spaceships and laserswords and hairydog men. Change a few names and you've got Gilgamesh, or Dorothy, or Yi, Rupe, Ajax, Finn, etc.
Last time I went to a nerd convention I was really bothered by the triumphant "I am so great" attitude of the mouth of Lucasfilm, my P.O. Box neighbor, Steve Sansweet. Maybe I've been suckered by the geek solidarity that comes from seeing hundreds of Stormtroopers march in formation, or some guy in a Boba Fett costume fly over the LA Convention Center courtyard in an actual jet pack, or 4 year old kids saying "I'm not afraid of monsters, cuz I have a lightsaber," or the schmaltzy sentimentality of a giant toy maker producing an action figure in memory of a little girl that died of brain cancer; but it seems that Lucas has enjoyed some kind of reality check. The focus of this convention was the fans, and the creative careers and hobbies fans have built, from costuming, to fan films, to car mods, to those guys with that Robot Chicken show.
There is not a doubt in my mind that Star Wars is little more than a money pump for George, but I think he's definitely realized that if he doesn't let other folks play in the sandbox, he'll end up kind of lonely. That massages my wallet enough to keep consuming, plus the animated and live-action TV shows might be enough of a carrot to get me to write regularly and well.
If you know me, you know that Star Wars plays the the same role in my life that the bible does for some other folks... except that I know Star Wars is a bunch of made-up bullshit, and I'm not about to kill anyone over it. But it did give me a mythological backbone for my ideas about change and freedom and cooperation and good and evil and truth. The core story is a about a kid who starts out wanting to free his fellow slaves, then he's indoctrinated by a secretive and powerful cult that denies amorous love, then he goes ape shit nuts trying to figure out how to have it both ways, then he decides the only way to bring peace is to consolidate power, then his kids call bullshit and he kills the bad guy and is redeemed all in a 13 or 14 hour cycle with spaceships and laserswords and hairydog men. Change a few names and you've got Gilgamesh, or Dorothy, or Yi, Rupe, Ajax, Finn, etc.
Last time I went to a nerd convention I was really bothered by the triumphant "I am so great" attitude of the mouth of Lucasfilm, my P.O. Box neighbor, Steve Sansweet. Maybe I've been suckered by the geek solidarity that comes from seeing hundreds of Stormtroopers march in formation, or some guy in a Boba Fett costume fly over the LA Convention Center courtyard in an actual jet pack, or 4 year old kids saying "I'm not afraid of monsters, cuz I have a lightsaber," or the schmaltzy sentimentality of a giant toy maker producing an action figure in memory of a little girl that died of brain cancer; but it seems that Lucas has enjoyed some kind of reality check. The focus of this convention was the fans, and the creative careers and hobbies fans have built, from costuming, to fan films, to car mods, to those guys with that Robot Chicken show.
There is not a doubt in my mind that Star Wars is little more than a money pump for George, but I think he's definitely realized that if he doesn't let other folks play in the sandbox, he'll end up kind of lonely. That massages my wallet enough to keep consuming, plus the animated and live-action TV shows might be enough of a carrot to get me to write regularly and well.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
cops kill kids
for background go here and search "Jeremiah Chass". For an historical context check here and here and here. Don't forget the annual police riot on Cinco de Mayo, roving check points to impound vehicles from folks too poor to keep up registration and insurance, rumors of pending ICE raids...
Sonoma County has a self-image as a bucolic refuge from the urban centers of Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco. It's close enough to enjoy the cultural benefits, distant enough to ignore the social problems. This county's perception of itself is built on a lot of pseudo-religious feel-good new-age bullshit. People hope to shop their way to better tomorrow at Whole Foods and the Harmony Festival. People hope to meditate their way to a better tomorrow, by visualizing world peace. People expect "community" to spring up fully formed from nothing more than a good idea.
Unfortunately the only way that things actually happen is if they get done. For this to happen someone has to do them.
Our society gives unquestioned authority to police. Police can kill kids who are freaking out because their parents want to lock them up, and get away with it.
If we are going to change this we have to change it. We have to take the right that cops have to legitimately use violence without question or repercussion away from them.
In 2005 cops killed more residents of Sonoma County than criminals did.
The local media doesn't even print police call logs.
In fact early reports of Jeremiah's murder make it clear that local reporters had no idea how to get public records.
Sonoma County has a self-image as a bucolic refuge from the urban centers of Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco. It's close enough to enjoy the cultural benefits, distant enough to ignore the social problems. This county's perception of itself is built on a lot of pseudo-religious feel-good new-age bullshit. People hope to shop their way to better tomorrow at Whole Foods and the Harmony Festival. People hope to meditate their way to a better tomorrow, by visualizing world peace. People expect "community" to spring up fully formed from nothing more than a good idea.
Unfortunately the only way that things actually happen is if they get done. For this to happen someone has to do them.
Our society gives unquestioned authority to police. Police can kill kids who are freaking out because their parents want to lock them up, and get away with it.
If we are going to change this we have to change it. We have to take the right that cops have to legitimately use violence without question or repercussion away from them.
In 2005 cops killed more residents of Sonoma County than criminals did.
The local media doesn't even print police call logs.
In fact early reports of Jeremiah's murder make it clear that local reporters had no idea how to get public records.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
three times dumb
today I'll catch up with a three fer.
Sunday:
Cynicism coupled with irony was funny for about half a season of South Park, since then it has infiltrated every aspect of American discourse. When the voice of reasoned liberal maintenance of the status-quo talks about citizen participation in the judicial process as a negative, it is an illustration of the goals of the liberal status quo. Liberals just like conservatives are happy to have an entrenched political class, professional decision makers, who preside with benevolence over us plebes. By the bottom of the article jury duty is summarized as a possibly enjoyable public service, but for the first 8 paragraph it echoes the common whining that surely isn't news. Nowhere in the article is jury nullification mentioned, no where in the article is the idea of "a jury of peers" examined, nowhere in the article are intersections of race and class and ability to take a week off work discussed.
It only took four years of war, 600,000 dead Iraqis, 3000 dead GI's, and the collapse of the president's legitimacy for the Press Democrat to be able to parse the "support the troops" jingoism from the actual human desire to keep loved ones safe. Now if it could examine the legitimacy of the spit on soldier myth or it could remind the world who it was that: opposed and the Vietnam War Memorial and who designed it, who it was that cynically and jingoisticaly tried to buy the vets off 15 years after the wars end, finally someone needs to research and write about the cold shoulder Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion gave to vets returning from southeast Asia.
Suicide by cop is a public relations creation. There is no recognized psychological syndrome called "suicide by cop", there is no researched sociological phenomenon called "suicide by cop". The phrase "suicide by cop" has been coined by law enforcement agencies and their apologists who try to divert, disrupt and discount any questioning of police power and authority. Even accepting the lay definition offered here Thurston was unarmed and fleeing from police, the glove don't fit.
Santa Rosa city council still fails to understand that downtown Santa Rosa is blighted by the mall and 101. This $3 million waste is the latest effort to avoid the truth. Maybe if the Santa Rosa City Council was more than a glorified block association for the affluent Montgomery neighborhood, some truth could get spoken.
Once again ceremony has been turned into a commodity.
If Ann Richards is a visionary rebel leader WE ARE FUCKED.
Hey look it's not news but it's scary and there's a movie on the way.
About fucking time now maybe some of the wealth made by slaves can get to their descendants? Oops there's my Marx showing...
If Pat Robertson was calling for my assassination I'd be stocking up on guns too.
Monday:
I wonder what were folks in California would rank the war on their list of concerns versus... I dunno... spandex clad billboards. I wonder why there hasn't been a rolling interruption of business as usual up and down the state for a week solid to discuss the war?
More happiness at the corner of profit and charity still no acknowledgement of human rights... you know like food, clothes, shelter, education, health care.
After several decades of annexation plans rejected for their bald faced racism suddenly the Press Democrat is reporting on Roseland a developers wet dream: depressed property values from the a combination of white flight, county neglect of the infrastructure, a fictional blight of crime, and large undeveloped tracts.
Tuesday:
Surprise surprise stonewalling disguised as concern for officer safety.
Maybe Jesus does love you after all, no wait that was money from PEOPLE that kept the shelter open.
The scale of this one man crime spree probably exceeds the economic impact of every boosted Ipod and car stereo in the county for a year, but it won't get discussed in those terms. The most telling part is that he had over $1 million in stuff that no one knew was missing, and that up to half of it was viewed as obsolete trash that Agilent was going to write off as a loss. Do you understand that? $500,000 worth of perfectly usable machines were seen as "last generation" so they were going to be tossed out and written off from the corporations books. It's an accounting scam, a tax cheat, corruption. No one will talk about it that way either.
This is what happens when a reporter puts a by-line on a police press release. Warrants are public records, the reporter could have found out what the warrants were actually for instead of parroting the menace of "no bail warrant". And what exactly is "suspicion of possessing a concealed gun in a car" is the suspicion that the concealed gun was in the woman's car at the time of arrest? or is it that she had a loaded gun in plain view in a car? or that she had a gun in car at some time in the past?
Sunday:
Cynicism coupled with irony was funny for about half a season of South Park, since then it has infiltrated every aspect of American discourse. When the voice of reasoned liberal maintenance of the status-quo talks about citizen participation in the judicial process as a negative, it is an illustration of the goals of the liberal status quo. Liberals just like conservatives are happy to have an entrenched political class, professional decision makers, who preside with benevolence over us plebes. By the bottom of the article jury duty is summarized as a possibly enjoyable public service, but for the first 8 paragraph it echoes the common whining that surely isn't news. Nowhere in the article is jury nullification mentioned, no where in the article is the idea of "a jury of peers" examined, nowhere in the article are intersections of race and class and ability to take a week off work discussed.
It only took four years of war, 600,000 dead Iraqis, 3000 dead GI's, and the collapse of the president's legitimacy for the Press Democrat to be able to parse the "support the troops" jingoism from the actual human desire to keep loved ones safe. Now if it could examine the legitimacy of the spit on soldier myth or it could remind the world who it was that: opposed and the Vietnam War Memorial and who designed it, who it was that cynically and jingoisticaly tried to buy the vets off 15 years after the wars end, finally someone needs to research and write about the cold shoulder Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion gave to vets returning from southeast Asia.
Suicide by cop is a public relations creation. There is no recognized psychological syndrome called "suicide by cop", there is no researched sociological phenomenon called "suicide by cop". The phrase "suicide by cop" has been coined by law enforcement agencies and their apologists who try to divert, disrupt and discount any questioning of police power and authority. Even accepting the lay definition offered here Thurston was unarmed and fleeing from police, the glove don't fit.
Santa Rosa city council still fails to understand that downtown Santa Rosa is blighted by the mall and 101. This $3 million waste is the latest effort to avoid the truth. Maybe if the Santa Rosa City Council was more than a glorified block association for the affluent Montgomery neighborhood, some truth could get spoken.
Once again ceremony has been turned into a commodity.
If Ann Richards is a visionary rebel leader WE ARE FUCKED.
Hey look it's not news but it's scary and there's a movie on the way.
About fucking time now maybe some of the wealth made by slaves can get to their descendants? Oops there's my Marx showing...
If Pat Robertson was calling for my assassination I'd be stocking up on guns too.
Monday:
I wonder what were folks in California would rank the war on their list of concerns versus... I dunno... spandex clad billboards. I wonder why there hasn't been a rolling interruption of business as usual up and down the state for a week solid to discuss the war?
More happiness at the corner of profit and charity still no acknowledgement of human rights... you know like food, clothes, shelter, education, health care.
After several decades of annexation plans rejected for their bald faced racism suddenly the Press Democrat is reporting on Roseland a developers wet dream: depressed property values from the a combination of white flight, county neglect of the infrastructure, a fictional blight of crime, and large undeveloped tracts.
Tuesday:
Surprise surprise stonewalling disguised as concern for officer safety.
Maybe Jesus does love you after all, no wait that was money from PEOPLE that kept the shelter open.
The scale of this one man crime spree probably exceeds the economic impact of every boosted Ipod and car stereo in the county for a year, but it won't get discussed in those terms. The most telling part is that he had over $1 million in stuff that no one knew was missing, and that up to half of it was viewed as obsolete trash that Agilent was going to write off as a loss. Do you understand that? $500,000 worth of perfectly usable machines were seen as "last generation" so they were going to be tossed out and written off from the corporations books. It's an accounting scam, a tax cheat, corruption. No one will talk about it that way either.
This is what happens when a reporter puts a by-line on a police press release. Warrants are public records, the reporter could have found out what the warrants were actually for instead of parroting the menace of "no bail warrant". And what exactly is "suspicion of possessing a concealed gun in a car" is the suspicion that the concealed gun was in the woman's car at the time of arrest? or is it that she had a loaded gun in plain view in a car? or that she had a gun in car at some time in the past?
Saturday, February 24, 2007
An undumbable force
Since the 70's, with the convergence of war damaged, err... I mean..., battle ready vets and a war at home against the radical left, Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) teams have become a fixture of nearly ever police force large enough to have more than two employees. SWAT teams are sold to the public as what is neccessary to keep them safe from todays sophisticated criminal gangs. In popular culture SWAT teams are the armored guys who clear the hotel just in the nick of time before the dusky badguy levels the place. In real life SWAT teams are much like rookie soldiers in a certain forgein occupation: they have no idea what's going on "He was believed to be armed and posed a threat to officers, although no weapon was immediately found, Briggs said."; they are focused on the safety of the team not the safety of the public "Motel guests were startled by the shooting."; they are not accountable to they people they are supposedly serving. If the man they shot can't be identified, and the woman they're holding can't be identified, how can anyone confirm they have the people they were looking for?
Another thrilling success at the intersection of profit and charity. Dead in the park at 62, let's see carry the one... he would have been 19 in 1964... at the risk of making too many assumptions: way to support the troops folks! Those bumper magnets really are getting all the hard work done.
This is what happens when you fuck with the cops in Cotati. Even if you are a respected local politico. If Kirchmann was drunk and abusive, isn't it 6 weeks enough time for charges to be filed? Kirchmann's charges of harrassment are 100% investigatable, but it seems the local paper doesn't do that.
Cops are weird people.
For everyone who hasn't looked hard at the Kennedy/Johnson years, or Carter, or Clinton here is your first lesson in the futility of the Democratic Party. All the US needs to do in Iraq is, to quote the house from Amityville, get out.
I'm sure all you all either run into or perpetuate the "best system" ever bullshit. Secret prisons, secret evidence, torture... yep, best ever... at fucking sucking ass. I realize that this story is about those Frenchified wimps up north, but that secret evidence, secret prisons and torture are only on the mind of most US citizens as tired plot motivators on 24 is a real problem.
And finally Walter Reed, these stories and the public reaction to them is the best illustration of what "support the troops" means, it's a jingoism for "shut up and die." New paint and sweeping up the mouse turds won't address the real problems raised in the original report, check this.
Funny how so many important stories get run on Saturday.
Another thrilling success at the intersection of profit and charity. Dead in the park at 62, let's see carry the one... he would have been 19 in 1964... at the risk of making too many assumptions: way to support the troops folks! Those bumper magnets really are getting all the hard work done.
This is what happens when you fuck with the cops in Cotati. Even if you are a respected local politico. If Kirchmann was drunk and abusive, isn't it 6 weeks enough time for charges to be filed? Kirchmann's charges of harrassment are 100% investigatable, but it seems the local paper doesn't do that.
Cops are weird people.
For everyone who hasn't looked hard at the Kennedy/Johnson years, or Carter, or Clinton here is your first lesson in the futility of the Democratic Party. All the US needs to do in Iraq is, to quote the house from Amityville, get out.
I'm sure all you all either run into or perpetuate the "best system" ever bullshit. Secret prisons, secret evidence, torture... yep, best ever... at fucking sucking ass. I realize that this story is about those Frenchified wimps up north, but that secret evidence, secret prisons and torture are only on the mind of most US citizens as tired plot motivators on 24 is a real problem.
And finally Walter Reed, these stories and the public reaction to them is the best illustration of what "support the troops" means, it's a jingoism for "shut up and die." New paint and sweeping up the mouse turds won't address the real problems raised in the original report, check this.
Funny how so many important stories get run on Saturday.
Friday, February 23, 2007
the dumbening continues
day two:
There's been a bit of a virtual dust up over homeless people hanging out at the Sonoma County Library main branch. My suspicion is that the complainers are a loud small group with an axe to grind about both the visable poor and libraries. Leave it to a librarian to understand that homelessness is a complex social, political and economic problem, that won't be solved by criminalizing poverty; and leave it to the desk jockeys to appease whiney NIMBY's.
In all the paranoia about sex offenders almost no one checks facts. I searched for the accused in the linked article in both the national database and the state that he is supposedly registered in. Guess what... no hits. Remember cops lie, reporters are lazy. Other fun facts about sex offenders: urinating in public is a sex offense, in CA if a 19 year old has consensual sex with a 16 year old the 19 year old has committed a sex offense (guilty, btw). The best part about the current hysteria in CA is that new laws have ensured the creation of remote ghettos populated by at least a higher proportion of, if not entirely, sex offenders... it'll be like Village of the Damned, but with baby fucking, or at least a lot of peeing on the exterior walls.
With flat standardized test scores, reporters are still unable to question the official line. Maybe standardized tests measure a standardized skill in a standardized group, and maybe human learning is a multifaceted complex phenomenon effected by culture, personal interest, and other social factors. But what the fuck do I know I picked punk rock and malt liquor over skool.
Does everyone remember the shit storm that the Argus-Courier (unfortunately their website has been gutted and turned it a giant ad for Petaluma's new boutique couture) and Press Democrat brought down on the People's Revolutionary Organization last fall? Funny how a homeowner who actually committed thousands of acts of vandalism is held up as a folk hero. Then the piece ends with an admonishment to not do what he did. Fact is what the "pot-hole animal" did worked, and it worked because of how public consciousness works; political, social, and cultural campaigns use propaganda, stark images, and loud interruptions of the complacent because that's what it takes to get people to examine their lives. What the "pot hole animal" shows us is that once the public mind has been changed things like "the law" don't matter anymore.
There's been a bit of a virtual dust up over homeless people hanging out at the Sonoma County Library main branch. My suspicion is that the complainers are a loud small group with an axe to grind about both the visable poor and libraries. Leave it to a librarian to understand that homelessness is a complex social, political and economic problem, that won't be solved by criminalizing poverty; and leave it to the desk jockeys to appease whiney NIMBY's.
In all the paranoia about sex offenders almost no one checks facts. I searched for the accused in the linked article in both the national database and the state that he is supposedly registered in. Guess what... no hits. Remember cops lie, reporters are lazy. Other fun facts about sex offenders: urinating in public is a sex offense, in CA if a 19 year old has consensual sex with a 16 year old the 19 year old has committed a sex offense (guilty, btw). The best part about the current hysteria in CA is that new laws have ensured the creation of remote ghettos populated by at least a higher proportion of, if not entirely, sex offenders... it'll be like Village of the Damned, but with baby fucking, or at least a lot of peeing on the exterior walls.
With flat standardized test scores, reporters are still unable to question the official line. Maybe standardized tests measure a standardized skill in a standardized group, and maybe human learning is a multifaceted complex phenomenon effected by culture, personal interest, and other social factors. But what the fuck do I know I picked punk rock and malt liquor over skool.
Does everyone remember the shit storm that the Argus-Courier (unfortunately their website has been gutted and turned it a giant ad for Petaluma's new boutique couture) and Press Democrat brought down on the People's Revolutionary Organization last fall? Funny how a homeowner who actually committed thousands of acts of vandalism is held up as a folk hero. Then the piece ends with an admonishment to not do what he did. Fact is what the "pot-hole animal" did worked, and it worked because of how public consciousness works; political, social, and cultural campaigns use propaganda, stark images, and loud interruptions of the complacent because that's what it takes to get people to examine their lives. What the "pot hole animal" shows us is that once the public mind has been changed things like "the law" don't matter anymore.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
new style?
okay I'll be posting links to stories from the local daily that get my teeth grinding for hopefully obvious reasons.
First are rectangles squares? The whole premise is so maddeningly dumbening that we are all stupider for having read the lead. Epithets will always be slang, epithets are crude street language...slang! I understand that it is hard to write a deep piece about social values and the intersections of political consensus and teenage behavior, but cracker please this is totally half assed.
Next up we have the cause celeb for the local good germans, check out the reader comments "shut up...obey" is my personal favorite. Too bad the reporter lacks the ability to refer to the bill of rights and settled case law.
Mississippi circa 1950 anyone? Here the Press Democrat utterly fails to mention that this is what happens when a medical system is motivated by profit or charity, instead of basic human rights. I guess examining fundamental motives has to be left to high school drop out, drug addict, loud mouths.
And finally Jesus doesn't love you any more. 'Nuff said.
non-sequitur: did everyone catch the Stan Lee cameo in Heroes on Monday?
First are rectangles squares? The whole premise is so maddeningly dumbening that we are all stupider for having read the lead. Epithets will always be slang, epithets are crude street language...slang! I understand that it is hard to write a deep piece about social values and the intersections of political consensus and teenage behavior, but cracker please this is totally half assed.
Next up we have the cause celeb for the local good germans, check out the reader comments "shut up...obey" is my personal favorite. Too bad the reporter lacks the ability to refer to the bill of rights and settled case law.
Mississippi circa 1950 anyone? Here the Press Democrat utterly fails to mention that this is what happens when a medical system is motivated by profit or charity, instead of basic human rights. I guess examining fundamental motives has to be left to high school drop out, drug addict, loud mouths.
And finally Jesus doesn't love you any more. 'Nuff said.
non-sequitur: did everyone catch the Stan Lee cameo in Heroes on Monday?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
