Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die

2011-02-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

NYC update

2009-07-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while because I've been crazy busy and way too tired to do anything after work. But, tonight I realized that I should put some updates before I forget.

First, I've been driving around one of my boss's cars. I don't particularly like having to drive places only because the subway is faster sometimes, but I like the driving itself. But, today I managed to either get his car stolen or lost. I have been calling a few of the dozen or so numbers to call and checking online and it hasn't been reported in anywhere yet. Hopefully it's stolen so I don't have to pay an outrageous fine.

Fortunately I had a nice day at the beach and a BBQ in my friends back yard in the South Bronx yesterday, so I wasn't crazy exhausted while dealing with the car thing this evening.

I haven't left the office before 8 for the last week at least. Friday I was there till midnight trying to resolve a problem with one of the events we had. The guy who was supposed to organize it lied and is apparently a flake so John and I had to gather media contacts and local contacts for people to invite to an impromtu event as well as make sure the 13 people on that bus had a place to stay and eat. That's the short version.

Last week John had an immigration meeting in CA and Manolo and Alison both left to be speakers on the routes so I was the only one in the office doing the caravan work. It was insane. I think I had my ear away from a phone for a collective 30 minutes from 9 in the morning to 8 at night and every moment was spent multi tasking. It was kinda fun in a strange way.

Saturday i went to the post office and as I walked out I saw something I haven't seen here before. Some dude tried to steal this lady's purse. She wasn't gonna give it up and fortunately two enormous dudes were right there. A bunch of other people helped them wrestle the guy to the ground and he was screaming as if they were the ones doing something wrong.

Then, at the bbq last night a ton of teen kids were playing ball on the courts next to this school and suddenly out of all of their fun a fight broke out. It seemed like every person was fighting. That was pretty insane.

Other than that, I managed to stay at this nice place in Brooklyn up until the day I leave and I'm stoked. I'm a little bummed that I'm already leaving in 4 days though.

New York City!

2009-06-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

I arrived in New York City yesterday to do another month this summer working in the office for the organization that I go to Cuba with. I'm staying in Brooklyn for these first two weeks. I have a place in a rad little neighborhood close to rad pubs, a Trader Joe's, and two blocks from the subway. The ride to work is about 30-40 minutes as opposed to the 20 minute walk last year, but it is good reading time so I'm still stoked.

I have a nice back garden and an entire apartment to myself. I'm right across from a fire station and I have a door that can stay open at night--I like the white noise of the city. It helps me sleep well. In two weeks or so I have to move to south-west harlem, and harlem is where I want to be anyway, partially because there is lots of diversity and it's way closer to the office I'm working in.

Last night when I arrived I had the thought that it would be fun to show up to my first day in the office dressed as a dutch-reform woman, but all of the thrift stores were closed so that didn't work out. I did get volunteered to do a radio PSA tomorrow, so that's interesting. I also might end up driving a box-truck on one of the 14 routes that go through the US. We'll see about that one.

It's a safer neighborhood than I was in last year...for a white guy that is. Again, that's part of the reason I'd rather be in Harlem. Nonetheless, it's a good place, free, and has a garden with a fish pond (plus three turtles).

I worked from 10 to 7:30 this first day. That's the reason I'm up at 1 am writing this blog. It's nice to have plenty of time to unwind no matter how late you work. Sleep will come someday. When, I don't know.

As of now, that's it. I'll definitely have to post some pictures of this place before I leave. Ha! -- I've said that before.

2009-05-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Use the whole pig. There is this stuff called crackling. It's crispy pig fat. Good hot, not so much cold. I've had it homemade and it was ok. Yesterday I bought in a bag, like crisps, and i thought I was going to vomit all over everyone around me. It's good to see that it doesn't go to waste though.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my door brushing across the carpet, followed by a "RRRRROOOOBBBBB!!!!!!" It was Joseph coming to see if I was still sleeping. With that tactic he should have figured out by now that I'm never asleep when he does that. Apparently 8:30 in the morning is play time. I had no idea.

So, he likes to use my window as a pirate's den. He can yell out to the neighborhood and kinda feel like he's outside because it's a low hung skylight. I was pretty much still in the mood to sleep, but he was obviously having fun so I didn't want to disturb that. It didn't stop me from sleeping. Eventually he jumped on me and woke me up. I asked, "why on earth did you come up here." "because I wanted to see you." Aaaahhh. What a cute little terror.

I'll miss that. I'm not really looking forward to going back to the states. When I left I wasn't sad because I knew that I'd see everyone in a few months. Many of the friends that I've made here I won't see for at least a few years, if ever. I certainly won't miss the weather. I won't miss the coffee one bit. But I will definitely miss the ale. I will miss the Royal Oak.

My friend Justin played last night at the Oak. He's really really good, but pretty much just plays for fun. Well, he likes to have fun when he's playing, so he tailors the songs he plays to the crowd. Sometimes its a sing along, other times there's a naked man running around pretending to be Guenevere from the Camelot story.

Pints of ale here are served by pump, not pressurized tap. Today I'm going to get to pull my own pint. I'm stoked.

I have one paper left to edit. Everything else is finished. It's nice to know that I never have to write a paper again unless I choose to. Also, I can finally read for fun.

Wednesday was a great day. It was sunny, Lola and I took the kids to the park. Me and Joseph were racing on the way back and we had to slow down because of a man on a bike (which turned out to be his dad) and Joseph stopped paying attention and fell. It was a good fall. He has a nice mark on his face now.

Yesterday was better than most. The bad thing about English weather is not that it rains all the time but that it constantly threatens. It's as if there's a villain outside waiting to blast you in the face with a water canon right as you walk out the door. "Oh man, it looks like weather. I'm not sure I want to get stuck out in the rain." The next morning you wake up and it never rained. You realize that you've wasted the entire day indoors. That is normal English weather. Yesterday it really rained, that was a nice change.

Today is a nice day. But not so much a good day. It's my penultimate day here. I only have two more nights to hang out with my friends. I have one paper to finish. Lola seems a bit frustrated today so I might take Joseph off her hands for a bit if she wants me to. I don't envy here sometimes. But, man she's a killer cook.

I'm not stoked about leaving.

The lost post - no, not Ireland or italy

2009-04-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

THIS IS WHAT I STARTED TO WRITE ABOUT TWO WEEKS AGO WHEN I RETURNED TO BATH.

On Wednesday I caught a train from Seville to Malaga...a town on the Mediterranean coast. As I was laying out on the beach (that's right, tanning like girls do...minus the bikini) I looked over and saw a thermometer sign that said 29 degrees celcius (85 F). Within 3 or 4 hours I was back in England. It was cold and wet! The day before Lola invited me to Hugo's christening but the flights were too expensive so I told her unless I changed my mind about paying that much that I probably wouldn't be coming. I slept at a friend's house in London that night, took a train to school the next morning, then went home and did some homework. The whole I time was missing Spain a lot. The weather didn't bother me here until I went to Spain and got a reminder of what warmth is like. As soon as Ian got home from work we started talking about Spain and the christening and how it was too bad I wasn't going to be able make it. Then I decided that I didn't care. So, next week I'm going back to Spain to enjoy the sunshine, friends, and the food.

Before that, I spent about 9 days working on a little farm. This lady Angela I was staying with was a rad lady. She had good food, a nice room for me to stay in, and all the beer that I could want. The stone workers that worked for her would start at 8 take a break for breakfast and beer at 10 work til about 1 or 2, return at 3 then work til 5. In a day they drank about 12-14 beers. It was a great work culture I thought. One friend told me that if the spanish aren't offered beer when they work they won't work much. I built a chicken coup out of used materials, some removable screens for her window in the bug season, and did a bit of garden work. All in all I had a great time.

Almost every night I went down into town, about a kilometer away, to a bar called cafe jardin. The first night I went in there I met these English dudes. The thing about the European Union is that you can go to any member country and work, own property, whatever. So, one of them had come as a wwoofer (the organic farm thing I was doing) about 10 years ago and stayed, had a kid, bought property, and is just there now. For the rest of the week we all hung out almost every night after I was done working on Angela's place. I went to a rad hippie party with then and all kinds of other things. It was a blast.

On a monday I took a train to seville and got a hostel. I met up with Lola and her friend one night, then hung out with the kids (baby Hugo and Joseph) then went out again that last night I was there. I managed to arrive in Seville during Semana Santa (holy week -- the week before easter) in time to see the processions. Basically, there is one cathedral and tons of smaller churches. Each church has a float that represents some point in the biblical story of Jesus. These things are huge...many of them take 40 guys to carry them. They are accompanied by music, marchers that look like KKK members, and all sorts of other things depending on the church. They march from their church to the main cathedral and back. Often it's more than a 20 km walk which takes maybe 24 hours of so. It's nuts. Even if you're not a religious person you can't help but be a little moved by the art and ceremony of it.

From there I went to Malaga, the beach, and the bad weather of England -- as the story begins.

Below are pictures. I didn't feel like taking the time to add caption or give the narrative journey by pictures as I normally do. Go ahead and make up your own captions.

The first NINE are of ORgiva, the others are from Seville and MAlaga

more on politics

2009-04-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

That last post about what's really going on with the world got me to thinking about all kinds of things that governments do. Now, I'm going to be talking about politicians here but I do not mean to make politicians the bad guys and not governments. The job of the government is simply to perpetuate itself. The politician is simply a tool. Now, that leaves the question of who the government is if the politician is just a tool for it. I could answer that but I'll let you think about it.

The more time I've spent over here the more I've begun to hate the British government. Recently there was a scandal where Members of Parliament were using legally allocated money for their living and travel expenses to enrich themselves if they live outside of the main London area. One woman claimed her sister's house as her primary residence and got something like 100,000 pounds per year for it even though it was not her primary home. Her real house would have gotten her significantly less.

Gordon Brown's statement was that the law for this kind of compensation needs to reduce the compensation and ensure that it cannot be abused to assure the voting masses that MPs "serve the public and not themselves." Well Mr. Brown, when a vast majority of people resent the fact that your government is closing down all of the post offices, you're not serving them. When you install CCTV virtually everywhere, you're controlling the population through fear of reprisal not serving them. When you allow the National Health Service to revoke the credentials of a nurse who secretly filmed abuse and neglect of elderly patients due to institutional failures, you are not serving the public. I'm amazed to say it, but the government here is worse than the government in the United States.

One thing I miss is the ability to talk cops and border agents however I wish. Although the constitution is a giant pile of crap, it serves me some good in that way. Here, I do not have nearly the same freedom as I do in the US in terms of that. However, encounters with the police are much rarer here. I don't think I've ever seen a cop pull anyone over and the only people I've seen them stop are people who are blatantly drunk and causing problems. And as a side note, they aren't allowed to carry guns or tasers, only mace and a truncheon (beating stick).

That's not to say that I like the US...even though the gods sent Obama to clean things up. First of all, and I've mentioned this before, his economic team is on the side of the wealthy elite, not the other 95% of Americans. Those guys have made an absolute fortune on Wall Street -- of course the plans they have developed involve no risk for the companies and no benefit for the tax payers. More than that, I recently read that Obama's new budget is going to actually increase military spending by 4%. The navy is going to get a bunch of this to fight a new enemy with some fancy speed boats -- PIRATES! I've said it before and I will say it again. WE CREATED THOSE PIRATES!! They first began pirating when chemical companies began dumping waste off the Somali shore because the "government" there had no ability whatsoever to patrol the shore with the chaos we destabilized, then started to fix then, tragically bailed on.

There's more than just pirates and rich bastards but I'll leave those for another time. For now, I'm going to write a few of my several final papers and work on a post about Spain with a ton of pictures. To the bar!!

The News

2009-04-12T12:40:00.000-07:00

The news in the UK is absolutely flooded with the news of that ship captain who was recently released. Before that? It was all about how there is an American captain being held by pirates. Apparently when the navy people finally did their little offensive and got the captain back they killed three of the pirates. Something that is most likely being overlooked by most people is that in each statement by any pirates there, they start off by saying that they are only interested in the ransom mainly because life in Somalia is hard and this is a way that they can make money. Let me remind you that to a great extent we did that to them. In fact, our miserable failure there is the reason that your president Clinton sat by and refused to call the genocide that was going on in Rwanda exactly that.

The other thing I have to say about this is that IT DOES NOT MATTER!!! You have a president now who is giving a shit load of money to the exact corporations who got the US, and the world for that matter, into the mess they're in now. There are workers all over the country who make barely enough to live on -- not because of this whole financial mess, but before this. In fact, the majority of workers, in order to afford a place for their families to live. But, while Obama is pretending to get stuff done by saying 'it's in the right timeframe of the plan he laid out in his campaign', which somehow has a great pacifying effect, the financial advisors he hired are helping out their wallstreet friends. Anyone who thinks that each tiny upsurge in the market is a sign of improvement is an idiot. Let me digress a bit to say that at least he is putting some restrictions (though not many) so that the tax payers won't completely lose out unless the whole system absolutely collapeses...this is more than I can say for what I think the other guy would have done. And back to it. Even if things do get better financially the suffering has already occurred and it will continue to occur as long as people are forced to accept that the value of their lives can be determined by money.

Orgiva! La Vida BUENA!!

2009-03-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

So, I'm in a small village about 40 kilometers from the Mediterranean right now called Orgiva. I'm here with a lady named Angela. She's been living here for 3 years and was in another part of Spain for several years. She English and lives here off her pension that she earned from working as a social worker for over 30
years.
This period before Easter is when Spain goes off. Yesterday, the day I arrived in Orgvia, was the day to celebrate the town's saint -- I don't know who it is and I didn't get the impression that many people in the town did either. The celebration was with fireworks and a huge procession of people carrying a big display of Jesus and one of Mary (dude's mom, not the hooker). Everyone in the town was there. As soon as Jesus came out of the cathedral this giant chain of firecrackers went off outside this little pub we were in. The windows were taped because they've learned that the noise is so intense that it even blows out the windows in the back of the place unless they're taped.

The procession went on until 2 in the morning as did the fireworks. Every time the procession stopped there were fireworks to greet it. It would stop at every crossroads and the fireworks went off to keep the evil spirits away. Plus each little neighborhood had their own display. Some were poppers some were Disneyland style fireworks.

The it sounded like a war zone and it didn't look much different, minus the dead people...well, Jesus and Mary were there.

One of the coolest things was seeing all of the people there. I guess it's kind of like Santa Cruz on Halloween or New Years but fewer stabbings and less belligerent people (although they certainly had their share of "communion cervesa"). Plus the party wasn't contained to streets, anyone with a balcony, including the dentist office, had people up to celebrate.

Jesus at night was pretty impressive, but it really seemed like the main event was the firework -- no offense to the right hand man of course.

Here's a view from Angela's house. Well, two. The second one at night is way rad. Click on the second one to see a big version. You can see the smoke...all of that is smoke, no clouds. Plus you can see the silhouette of the hill in the background. Now, past that hill on the right is how to get to the sea. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go there.

On the Road

2009-03-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

Well, tomorrow I'm off to Spain for nearly two weeks. I'll be working on a farm for a bit just south of Granada. Depending how long I stay I'll make my way to the coast for a few days then up to Seville. Lola and the boys are visiting her family there so if I end up there I'll probably swing by and see them.

I've been lagging on updating my blog with pictures and stuff. At some point I'll put up some pictures of Ireland and Milan.

I'm bringing my running shoes and can't wait to run in some nice warm weather.

I didn't think that I was endowed with the emotion of excitement until I realized the other day that I get to be in the sun. If you experienced the weather here you'd understand how that can be exciting.

A night with the Gypos

2009-03-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

So, I relay to whoever is paying attention to this a report that is out of chronological order. I should be telling about my weekend in Dublin but something else way funner (excuse the lack of proper english) that happened tonight. I've made this group of friends who I love here in Bath. We always have talks are of history and philosophy and it's always a good time.

Tonight, though, a few gypsies (watch the movie SNATCH to know what I'm talking about) were hanging out at the pub tonight. They were perfectly fine until they stole my hat. My hat is my "kick ass red knit cat" that I wear most of the year. It's become a trademark here in Bath just as it is in the US.

As we were hanging outside these gypsie guys took my hat off my head and continued to walk on. They wouldn't give it back. After walking a few blocks trying to get it from them I punched the bigger one with the dog in the face to stun him, ran up to the other and took my hat off his head -- it was an opportunity that made itself available so I took it...the timing couldn't have been better. This entire time the police were riding along side because they saw the commotion going on but didn't do anything about it. So, while the one guy was stunned I took my hat off the other guy's head and ran so they wouldn't beat me up for stealing MY hat from them.

Fortunately I run fast so they couldn't keep up with me. Now I have my hat. The cop who was watching the whole thing simply turned around and headed back into town. I actually had a conversation with the cop but he was unwilling to do anything for some reason that is unknown to me.

On my way back to the pub a few friends were walking towards the mess to help me out but since it was already taken care of we headed back. Basically, I fought a gypsie, stole from him, and managed to have a good rest of the night.

That was pretty amazing.

and so the story goes...

2009-03-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

I should be studying for a midterm right now but I've had enough of the damn British empire for a little bit.

So, I finally have my plans for spring break figured out -- I'll be spending two weeks on an organic farm in souther Spain. I'm heading off to Dublin next weekend and the weekend before spring break I'll be heading to Milan.

A few weeks ago we visited London, I may have already put something up about that. This is a picture of Big Ben. It's really not all that exciting. We got a tour of Westminster Palace, that was neat. Last Thursday we went to Oxford. We took a tour of Christ Church College. It's where they guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland taught and where the stuff in the book was inspired from. It's also where the first few Harry Potter films were made...some of the people in my class were way too excited about that part. I knew there is a reason that I think San Jose State is a mediocre pile of crap for a school and that set it in stone. Then again, there's people back home who I really like who might be just as excited so maybe I shouldn't be too hard on 'em.

As for school, it's going pretty well but I have a lot of reading that I can't really get done. So I'm just picking the stuff that actually interests me and going with that. I don't recall if I've posted the courses I'm taking: the history of Empire, a self-guided study/history of anarchist thought, anthropology (we go around to neat stuff in England on Thursdays), and a class on novels. After spring break the dude expects us to read a 600 page novel along with bits of a critique of it within two and a half weeks. This wouldn't be too bad if I didn't have all of the other reading and research papers. With that, I'm a little frustrated with school part but everything else is good.

Pictures!
This is the River Avon that goes through Bath.

This is what it looked like in my back garden when it snowed.

this is their version of living on a boat

this is the intersection I live near...i just thought it was a nice picture.

apparently they even have graffiti in quaint little Bath. I think it's supposed to be George W.

My hat's a hit everywhere. I even met a girl at the Royal Oak one night who was a friend of a friend and she says she always see 'the hat guy' all over town. It's nice.

Separated by a Common Language

2009-02-21T10:21:00.001-08:00

this is Bath from a distance...i actually thought the photo would be much bigger. Oops.

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One of my professors likes the joke that UK and America are two nations separated by a common language. The funny thing about that is that it's a little bit true. The classic difference is that they call french fries 'chips'. So, what then do they call chips...as in potato chips? Crisps. Then they have fries which, as far as I know, are just really thin crisps (chips). Maybe fried?

The most confusing one is 'alright.' It's a greeting - 'Alright mate.' Sometimes it's a statement sometimes it's a question - 'Alright mate?' In either case the appropriate answer is 'Hi' or hey or something along those lines. The real way to answer would be to say 'alright' back. That seems easy enough and once you catch on it is. At first I wasn't sure whether or not to give an answer to let them know whether or not I'm alright. Then when someone asks 'are you alright?' it throws you off because you're not sure if they just added a few words to their greeting or if they really want to know your current state of alrightness. There is also 'Hi ya.' I'm used to that one though because I have an English friend in the States who says that...plus it doesn't require any interpretation.

Here's another one. The English love to 'queue' (pronounced like the letter 'Q'). I had a ridiculously long conversation tonight about queuing with some locals. One girl's explanation was that they try to take out the unnecessary words. So, instead of saying 'wait in line' they say queue. There's that.

Now, there's the normal ones: bloke=dude, lad=boy, mate=friend, quid=bucks($).

Chips (or crisps) aren't the only one that takes some getting used to. The one I haven't figured out is what to call crackers or cookies. The names range from crackers, cookies, biscuits, digestives, and there are a few I can't remember at the moment. Sometimes I go into the store to get some cheese crackers or something and ask one of the workers after my search through the aisles proves unsuccessful. I ask where the cheese crackers might be and the aisle he points me to has nothing but cookies -- well, what I would call cookies. Then i finally find something that is close to a cheese cracker. It looks basically like a Ritz cracker but apparently it's called a biscuit. And the messed up thing is that none of them are consistent. Among the cookies are biscuits that look just like the crackers, which look exactly like the digestives.

I'm sure more will pop up, but the only other ones I can think of at this point are sledging, which is sledding...that's easy enough. Then there's winging (sounds like win-j-ing)...it means whining.

Oh. The locals in the area I'm in call supper 'Tea' and they call lunch 'Dinner.'

My guess is that a lot of these things are local (maybe Southwest) things. So, I guess they don't apply to the whole of England. Nonetheless, it's still messed up.

Done and done.

English Coffee

2009-02-17T14:16:00.000-08:00

There is no such thing as English Coffee. There is English pisswater in a cup... there is English instant crystals that turn into a coffee-like substance... there is English tea... there is English cafe's... There is no such thing as English coffee.

When I was in London last weekend I went until about 3PM (15:00) without having a cup of coffee. Half way through the morning I realized that I didn't have a headache. I usually have a headache by 11AM if I haven't had a coffee yet. My body is dependent on it and I'm perfectly fine with that.

When I got home on Sunday, Lola told me that they bought a mini French press so I could make real coffee instead of instant. This morning I went to do that. All I found was 'real' decaf coffee in the pantry. Then I looked at the instant coffee that I've been drinking since I got here. IT IS DECAF!!!!

Now, I understand that I have been weened off of caffeine, and more so, the plecebo effect works...since I didn't even realize I was drinking decaf. Well. My life has changed. I don't mind. I suppose it's better for me. They asked me if there's anything I want and I've been considering cutting back on the caffeinated that I drink since I drink more than the average human, so I've decided not to request regular instant coffee, or even the good stuff. I figure if I want it I can pay for it...that's a disincentive for myself.

It was a real surprise this morning, when I discovered all of this, but now I've come to terms with it.

Alright!

A post without pictures

2009-02-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

So, I keep thinking about hooking up my camera to upload the few pictures I have, then think of the 10 minutes that will take and put the camera away again. It doesn't really matter that much because I don't have many new pictures anyways. I was in London all weekend, then in Cardiff to watch a Rugby match among the Welsh (who were playing against the English that night). And, despite all of that I never found a time when taking a picture was worth while. So, I'll just tell you about it breifly.

But, mainly this is just for the sake of an update to any of my friends and family who are keeping up on this.

This last weekend we went to London. We saw a few museums, but the most interesting thing to me was seeing Westminster Palace (or Hall -- I'm not too sure which one to call it). This place is where Parliament sits. Apart from the historical points, the thing that stuck out the most was that nothing, not even the seat of government, was guarded as heavily as things are in the US. I'm not sure whether that is rhetoric/image or tactic (although those two choices could be the same things really). They don't have as many visible, physical guards, but they have a ton of cameras so I guess that does the trick.

After we visited London I took a train to Cardiff. A few friends who I met here in Bath were going up there to watch an England vs. Wales rugby match, mainly to experience the Welsh pub atmosphere during such an intense game. It was at least as good as what I thought it was going to be.

Other than that I'm doing well. It's a little warmer now -- 7 degrees celcius. I've learned that I don't like examining novels in a big class setting. As far as I can tell it's a waste of my time on earth...when I'm sitting in class all I can do is think of starting to shoot people, starting with myself. I enjoy my other classes. Now, let me clarify. I don't dislike the novels I'm reading. I dislike the discussion. People are stupid, they try to impress the teacher and/or make and original point, and I'm just not sure what it is that I'm supposed to be learning from that. But, the other three classes I have are stimulating enough for me to enjoy.

The main reason I wanted to write this post was because of two events that happened with the kid I live with. First, when I was gone this weekend he put a broken hanger on his lip and said "hey daddy, look, I'm Rob." That's pretty good for a four year old. Then, tonight, he was fighting eating his dinner. He always does this, which is probably just a phase he's going through because his mom's cooking is amazing (there's no rational reason to refuse it). So, we thought it was just his 2nd or 3rd excuse to get out of eating. Then, he started to spit his food out...Well, he wasn't spitting his food out, he was starting to vomit. Apparently he's sick. He ended up doing two or three huge heaves of puke onto the table and floor. It was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. I can't explain the volume of vomit other than simply calling it amazing.

So, maybe I'll put those pictures up.

Tomorrow, I skate!

On America

2009-02-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

I've been asked numerous times since I've been here what I think of the new president. My answer is always something along the lines of "at least it's not the other guy." I've been trying to follow the newspapers back home as much as I can and it seems that Obama is creating quite a stir -- which is good. Someone needs to break the American public out of their complacency, whether it is for good or bad, as long as people are feeling passion for something. (well, I don't totally agree with what I just said because I think the Republican side of things is way more full of shit and it would be and aweful world if they ruled everything.)

To the point: I've been reading about the upcoming stimulus plan. I think the original version was just fine. In fact, it may have been too moderate. But, as I'm reading all of this I see the Senate deciding one thing, the House deciding the other and nothing much getting done.

At home I constantly talk to people about politics so talk of 'House this'/'Senate that' just seems normal. I don't question the idea that these two houses have the ability to check each other. We take pride in our 'checks and balance' and that is essentially what is going on between the House and Senate...right? Wrong!

It's all political bullshit. These bankers and aristocrats are just gambling with the lives of normal people for nothing more than a few years of job security in their government office.

But, what struck me is not how this stimulus plan is turning out. What struck me is that none of this stuff is relevant. I'm sitting on this "side of the pond" (that's for heather) looking at the incredible complacency of these people, whose economic crisis might be worse than ours, and seeing that they trust their government just as much as we do...and theirs is just as worthless. In short, I guess it's becoming even more odd to me that one nation can see themselves as better than another when really they are all completely worthless.

Update and pictures tomorrow!

Weekend Number One

2009-02-02T06:53:00.000-08:00

I had my first full weekend here in England and decided to spend the better part of it away from Bath. I was kinda missing the ocean and i wanted to take a ride through the countryside to see the rural side of England so I took a train down to Plymouth. This is the place that the Pilgrims took off from. Well, they really took off from Southampton but broke down in Plymouth and went on to America from there. They spent their last night in this Gin Distillery (which was some sort of Christian gather place at the time) that I visited.

The first thing I did when I got there was check out a few historic type things. That only took about an hour or so. I don't really care all that much to relish in the historicness of stuff -- i'm perfectly fine with looking at it, reading a little about it then moving on. This is also a reason that i will probably do most trips while I'm here on my own.

I was waiting to be in a coastal town before I marked fish and chips off the list of English cliches. I was walking from the food place to go take a tour of the gin distillery when two drunk guys got out of a cab right near me. This is at about noon. As they're stumbling into the pub they tell me that i'm going with them and they're buying me a drink -- can't refuse that. A bunch of their friends showed up at the same place and it turns out they are all army guys. There's a base in Plymouth and apparently these guys had the weekend off. Another fun thing i found out was that when they first got out of the cab, the guy in the picture on the right didn't want to buy me a drink, he wanted to beat me up for no reason. The other dude's solution to that was to invite me for a drink. 2 points for me. You can see that one of them is wearing a t-shirt. well, it's literally freezing outside and apparently he left his jacket with the prostitute he bought the night before. With that, when the army guys offered to sneak me on to the base for a free place to stay i figured i'd rather get a hostel.

I ended up at this pub near the university for some dinner. As I'm sitting there a group of college students keeps running over to the jukebox to put on the worst American music -- Pantera, Blink 182, bad 80s stuff, and Michael Jackson. I made a comment to them about it and next thing I know we are all hanging out for the rest of the night. We bounced around from place to place all night so I met a ton of people. I got comments about my accent everywhere from "they're right, you guys do sound stupid" to "say something else, that is so hot."

Even though hanging out with those folks on Saturday was fun, Sunday was pretty great too. I took a ferry over to a Mt. Edgcumbe, which is across the river from Plymouth. I walked around there for a while and on beginning to dread the walk from the ferry dock to the train station a bus pulled up that would take me directly to the station. What I didn't realize was that it was going to be almost a two hour bus ride. It would through the mountains, went through three tiny little villages, along the coast, on a ferry, then finally to my stop. It turned out to be pretty rad. I was in the very front of the top level of the bus so I got a killer view and some decent pictures.

Back Home...
I finally found a nice comfortable coffee joint with free wifi. I went into one place to ask if they had it and they charged so i asked where else might be comfortable and have free wifi. McDonalds was the best she could do.

I'm heading off to Milan this weekend. Hopefully I can have a good time and keep up on my reading too.

The other day it snowed. Then it melted. Then, last night it got about 4-6 inches. That was fun.

A long but fruitful introduction

2009-01-29T09:44:00.000-08:00

After about 5 days being in Bath I've finally figured out how to get around the place without getting completely lost. It's not on a grid system and there are tons of little alleyways and side streets that you wouldn't expect to offer anything but that's usually where the cheaper food places and thrift stores are. I've been enjoying myself at this local pub called the Royal Oak. It's a friendly place. I can usually just sit down to a table of people and just start talking and we have a nice conversation.

The other night me and some classmates went to a higher end pub that had 'Robert Burns Night.' Basically, at 8:30 a piper (bagpipes) came marching around all fancy like then they read an ode to haggis and then they served free haggis with scotch. If you can get past the thought that you're eating goo out of a sheep's stomach it actually tastes pretty good.

One of the best things here is the ale. They serve it from a pump and it's served more or less at room temperature. One of the worst things is the coffee. Most places either serve instant coffee or real coffee that somehow tastes just like instant coffee. The trick is to find a place that serves 'italian coffee,' but not a chain -- chains that claim italian still taste like ass. I've found a little cart only a few blocks down from where my classes are so I go there every morning and have a nice conversation with the person working then go to class. It's a nice little routine.

one of the weirdest things is the toilets. When they flush, it's not a gentle swirl that sucks your poo to the netherworlds. It's more like a gurgling waterfall splashing everything violently and somehow managing to keep it in the toilet. The other thing about the toilets is that there is no possible way to take a quiet poo. The water is about a foot away from your butt so it really works up its speed then splash!, and you're always pretty certain that even though the nearest person is three floors down, they just heard your bowel movement.

The first picture above is the front of the house I'm living in. Our side is actually just the left side. On the roof you can see three skylights. the left two are over my room and the one on the right is my bathroom.

This picture to the left is my bedroom. As you can see there is a skylight right by my head so when I wake up in the morning i look straight out over the city without having to even move. This other picture doesn't do the view justice, but you get the point.

One last thing, because this post is getting pretty long: Lola, the mom here, is Spanish so, unlike the British, she won't settle for bad food. And, yes, if you don't already know, most British food lacks in flavor. It's not aweful but it's not good. I guess that's why the eat a lot of curry.

a 2000 year old city (+/-)

2009-01-24T09:51:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am in Bath, England. We arrived in London this morning at 10 am (2 am CA time), jumped on a coach to Bath and met up with out families. I could not be more excited about the family I'm staying with. It's an couple in or near their forties (Ian and Lola), a five year old boy (Joseph), and a baby boy (Hugo). I thought that a five year old with a British accent might be pretty cute but I had no idea. And it makes it all the better that he talks and talks and talks and talks.... The baby is only 7 weeks old so it's really not all that exciting.

My house is about a 5-10 minute walk to the town center, 1 minute to a pub, and 5 minutes to the skate park. It's pretty perfect.

I only got about an hour of sleep on the coach ride from the airport so I'd imagine I'm going to crash at some point. Maybe after a pint at the pub. Cheers!

New Orleans update 2

2009-01-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some more pictures of the building and the property. I've also included a video at the bottom. It's Turner explaining the school.

This picture is from the back of the garden. As of the the garden is more of a mud hole but it's one of the projects of the projects of the school. The main strip of land on the left is the current garden project. The land on the right is a future garden. And of course there is the building in all its glory.

On the left is the main room. Right now we're trying to take the sag in the joists that run across. We have to get it straightened out so it can look good with drywall on it. We've been going around the neighborhood looking for straps and angle iron to hold the joists straight once we've jacked them up. It's kinda hard to get much done when you don't have money for new materials...but we're getting closer.

This is the upstairs room. Before we started jacking up the joists this floor had a huge arc to it. We also have to patch the leaks in the roof before we can hang drywall downstairs. That's the main thing I want to get done before I leave.

When we doing the last bit of demolition the other day we came across this bottle in the wall. Since it has been tucked away in the wall the water in it didn't evaporate. We're assuming it is flood water. It would be rad to get it tested for chemicals and heavy metals.

As soon as the water was pumped out a few weeks after the flooding rescue crews went from house to house searching for survivors and the dead. On each house there's a marking that indicates what they found inside. Most of them "TFW" - Toxic Flood Water. Because of the oil refinery and other chemical warehouses around, there was a shitload of chemicals that polluted the soil and poisoned animals and people here.

The stove on the left is our heat source. My friend John who is here was a squatter in NYC for years. He built a stove like this when he was living in the Manhattan Bridge. It puts out a ton of heat and we've got plenty of wood to burn. It's supposed to be in the 40s for the next few days so I'll be sleeping by that.

The tub here is the beginning of the garden. Most of this stuff we found growing around here so we just transplanted it. Oh...and the dog in the middle is Buddy. A crack head dropped him off to Turner because he heard that Turner took good care of the dog he already had.

Hopefully this link attaches the video. If not, just google 'school at blair grocery' and look for video results.

New Orleans - 2009

2009-01-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been in New Orleans for about 5 days now. There is a group of students in from New York City who are working on various projects throughout the neighborhood of the Lower Ninth ward. Mostly they are working in the few blocks close to the School at Blair Grocery.

The School at Blair Grocery is a school that my friend Nat has started for kids who either have been kicked out of the regular school system or kids who simply would not be going to school if it were not for an alternative like this. The curriculum is everything from urban farming projects to regular school-like material.

Right now we are trying to turn the main room of the school into a more functional room. For the last few months the main room has been a bike shop, and workshop, a storage place for lumber, and a bedroom. The goal is to get it so the room can be finished off with drywall and electricity and can be a little better of an environment.

Nat's students painted the walls of the room and now my friend Jon and I are straightening the sagging joists on either side of the beam that runs down the middle.

If you want to see more pictures and learn some more about what's going on here with the school go to his blog.

Last night was pretty uneventful for a New Years night. We pretty much sat in the building all night. I had a few beers and listened to the gun shots going off around the neighborhood at midnight. There were fireworks and guns going off all over the place. I learned that there's a distinct difference between the sound of a gun and a firework. It was a fun game I was playing to pass the time.

More later.

The Parable of Dinner

2008-12-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

If you give me a fish, you have fed me for a day.

If you teach me to fish you have fed me until the river is contaminated or the shoreline seized for development.

But, if you teach me to organize, then whatever the challenge, I can join together with my peers and we will fashion a solution of our own!

---------------------------------------------------

Despite hating most people, I really like people. I often will drop by a friends house just to chat or hang out with no desire to do anything in particular. The majority of my friends are young families. I've figured out that if I show up after 5 they will be home from work, but much later than that they'll be busy putting their kids to bed. Although it's not my intent, this works out that it's dinner time.

Tonight I went over to some friends' house to show them pictures of my recent trip to New Orleans. Two things stood out...

Considering I always show up at dinner time I'm always a little concerned that people think I just come over for dinner. This whole thing of showing up sometime after 5 and before 8 made me realize that often there is only a three hour period in any given weekday that a family gets to hang out with each other. The reason for 5:00 is that is usually when the parent(s) get home from work. The reason for 8:00 is that they kids (young kids) need to wake up for school in the morning. The reason for waking up for school in the morning is that school starts at 8 am (ish). This is because there must be a certain amount of time spent in school per day on particular subjects. So, the focus goes to the kid needing to get an proper education at the risk of valuable family/socializing time. All of this so they can wake up one day with their own kids , go to work and repeat the same cycle they lived as a child and subject their own children to it.

Americans, especially christians, talk about the erosion of family values. Based on this completely non-scientific observation it seems that the biggest threat to the 'family' is the oppressive conditions that the American workforce must operate under in order to survive - the mortgage, medical bills, student loans, need to get a high paying job, etc. That all seems pretty god damn ridiculous to me.

The second thing about this visit with my friends tonight was that the dinner they had was not made by them. There are four families who take turns making dinner for each other. When it is your night to cook, you cook enough for the other three families and take it to them. You don't necessarily eat together, but it's this nice little community that's being built. Plus, there are rules to what has to be provided, like protein, carbs, and so on. I think that is neat.

I don't know where the quote I started with originated, but I like it and I think applies to my experience tonight. If you bring me a dinner I can eat tonight. Since I know how to make dinner but I'm spending all day at the office and will have to spend at least an hour preparing a healthy meal I will only have two hours of quality time with my family. If my friends and I organize to allow one another to eat healthy and provide opportunities to develop relationships between friends and family then I can survive in a system that isn't structured for my happiness and ultimately I can operate without it.

19 Men

2008-11-09T21:18:00.000-08:00

I should be writing term papers but this is on my mind...

On September 11, 2001 nineteen men hijacked three planes two of which hit the world trade center buildings, one crash-landed in Pennsylvania, and one crashed into the Pentagon. Thousands were killed. It was (as far as I know) the largest fatality rate in any modern terrorist act and set the stage for the situation the US is in today -- not so much the financial part but the two wars part.

Khalid Almihdhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem Alhazmi, Hani Hanjour (AA flight #77); Satam M.A. Al Suqami, Waleed M. Alshehri, Wail M. Alshehri, Mohammed Atta, Abdulaziz Alomari (AA flight #11); and Marwan Al-Shehhi, Ahmed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri (AA flight #175); and Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, Ahmed Alnami, and Ziad Samir Jarrah (UA flight #93) participated in the attacks that occurred on US soil over seven years ago.

These are 19 men. They are murderers by the standards of some and martyrs by the standards of others.

Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado made a statement at one point referring to the people who worked in the World Trade Center buildings at the time of the attack as equivalent to Adolf Eichmann who was a train engineer who delivered Jews to concentration camps in NAZI Germany and refused to admit that he had done anything wrong -- he turned a blind eye from the evils of his labor.

From every angle the 9/11 attacks have been analyzed: from Muslim fanatics, from Christian fanatics, from liberal scholars, conservative scholars, and everyone within and between those. We wage two wars based on the idea that we have to keep the world safe from more men like those. We are in billion dollars of debt because of those wars. The political climate of our nation has been deeply divided because of those wars. These things are just the beginning of how America has suffered from the terrorist attacks.

As as nation we have been angry, vengeful, sad, and scared.

Here's what's been on my mind: Those 19 men who terrorized our nation used to be somebody's boys. They used to run and play with their brothers and sisters. They used to have religious ceremonies and holidays with their families. Their mothers used to rock them to sleep at night when they were scared. Their grandmothers and great-grandmothers were so excited to live to see the day they were born. They rejoiced at their high school graduations and their college graduations. Many of them may even have had kids of their own. They were loved.

There are direct, intermediary, and precipitating causes for most things that happen in this world. A direct cause for these men bombing the WTCs was more than likely religious fanaticism. I want to remind us that this can happen to Christian Americans too -- think abortion clinics and Oklahoma City. This is inexcusable. An intermediary cause might be a book they read or a group of people they associated with while in high school or college. A precipitating cause may have been poverty, oppression, Arab-Israeli conflict, or some other kind of violence.

The fact is, they were not born this way. This side of them was created. If the average US citizen understood this, they might think twice about the fact that we're killing innocent people daily in Afghanistan. Maybe it is good that we rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein but it is certainly a cluster-fuck now.

The two wars that we are fighting might have been started under the guise of national security but I think we can all admit that lying below that was a sense of vengeance. We believed Bush that Iraq was involved in 9/11 because we were irate. We wanted blood. And whose blood did we get? Mostly civilians. Friends I knew since childhood have been changed forever because of those wars. They used to be great guys.

When we are killing kids, women, old folks, and innocent men, what is it that we're proving?

I guess my point is this: what if, instead of hoping for success in either of these wars we were to admit that the problem lies somewhere within the Western construct of society. If we were to admit that our way of conducting civilization is not 100% right we might still have to fight these two wars in order to save people from tyranny, but we might also be able to bring down the tyranny that is taking over our society and leading use to agree that killing children is necessary.

Killing children is what "the enemy" does. We're better than that.

I don't really have answers, just questions for this one

A Letter to the President Elect

2008-11-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

Mr. Obama,
I'm not going to type 'President Eelect Obama' because that's too much typing and it really doesn't have a good ring to it. Well, I guess I ended up typing it anyway. I guess I've started our relationship with a lie.

I'll be honest. I didn't vote for you. But I didn't vote for anyone so don't feel bad.

There are conflicting emotions going on with me right now. First, I am excited that a black man has been elected president. I am also excited that this fucking election is finally over. I am also excited that you were elected and not John McCain. On the other hand, I'm afraid that because of you as President, young black men all over the nation will look to you as their role model: the type of black guy who makes himself as white as possible in order to appear as a normal white guy, in order to be acceptable. I look at a black kid on the street and feel sad for him that even in today's world white people still look at him and immediately think that he is a criminal; they're afraid -- as irrational as it may be -- that he poses a threat to their beautiful white daughter. Then, I look at the black guys in my college courses and feel sad for them that they have to be extra smart, act slightly effeminate, and suppress the truth that they know about racism in America in order to fit into the white world. They can't afford to stand out in their classrooms and admit that this nation isn't built for them to succeed.

I say that because I am skeptical about your sincerity about change. You may have made that fancy speech about racism in response to the Rev. Wright situation and "opened up the race conversation" in the US, but that only means that you successfully evaded a huge political liability and distracted the American citizens...lets face it, they aren't that smart...it was an easy task.

I'm not convinced that you are an agent of real change.

With everything in me I hope (i use that word reluctantly) that you have just been "playing it safe" to win this election and that as soon as you take office in January you will begin a drastic restructuring of American culture. I know that isn't going to really happen but at least I can hope for change.

The fact is, you will continue supporting wall street. You will follow through with your fucked up plan of supporting the "healthcare" industry by forcing employers and employees to bear the burden of paying jacked up prices for doctors and insurance companies instead of telling those expensive assholes, "NO! You cannot charge that much! It's just not right make people PAY TO LIVE!!" You will mutter a few words next time Exxon reports record profits and leave it at that, then blame Congress for not doing their oversight responsibilities if anything illegal turns up. You might make it easier on college students to prepare for helping our world (like those preparing to be teachers), but it's still going to be hard for us because you won't fix the industries that drive up tuition costs year after year after year... why? because you're such a sucker for liberal economics.

I read about a boy in Kenya who is recovering after being attacked by an American funded group in the Congo. I have a hard time believing you will put an end to that funding and do something about the suffering that is happening in nations that we like to ignore. No...instead, you will divert the attention, as all other politicians do, to something that the American people can identify with - "let's see, what's more appealing to the American people, Muslims killing 300,000 or so blacks, or blacks killing 5 MILLION or so blacks?" I'll give you your answer. BOTH ARE FUCKED UP!! But, at least we can stop funding those who kill people. Well, blacks kill blacks all the time, in NYC, in New Orleans, in Chicago...that's old news. Oh, plus we have huge economic ties to the DRC region because some of our country's corporations rape their natural resources without regard for life...that's important for the world economy, right?

My basic point is this. I'm glad you won, rather than McCain, but FUCK YOU!! You might bring change to America as we know it, but we both know that America as we know it is wrong. The only difference between us is that I'm willing to admit what the problem is. I don't need hope for change because I can admit what the real problem is and try to do something about it. You, on the other hand, are so wrapped up in the ideology of racist America that you must submit to the idea that humans can be valued by a dollar amount.

I feel bad for you, and at the same time I'm happy that a black man will finally have to face the problems that white, affluent American presidents have ignored for centuries. I have no doubt that it will eat at you that you are supporting a system that hurts people of every color. Not only will you be supporting it, but you will have to support it for at least four years at the cost of thousands, if not millions of lives.

With that said, I congratulate you on your victory, I wish you the best of luck, and I pray to whatever fucked up god may be out there that I'm wrong about everything above.

-Rob Huffman

Financial awesomeness / a prediction (at the end)

2008-10-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while for two reasons: (1) because no body actually reads my blog, and (2) because I haven't had any thing to say -- yes, even in the midst of this economic crisis that is happening.

The fact is, I am enjoying the shit out of this economic "meltdown". Partially because it is not a meltdown -- it is simply what happens when the worth of a society is put into one place. In the late 1800s there was the Great Panic in the US. This was a period of time when the national unemployment rate skyrocketed. The reason was we had put so much labor and so much money behind the railroad and primitive infrastructure systems to cross the continent that when it was all finished we had nothing to do. Also there was the overrated Great Depression. It started in October of 1929 when due to reasons -- mostly stemming from overconfidence in the stock market and a lack of oversight -- that were not the fault of average Americans. Then, in 1933 or so the runs on the banks began. We had people starving thoughout the nation and a new president came in and did something. (I say he did something because that's all he promised to do, as opposed to Hoover who thought we should just leave shit alone.) Roosevelt wasn't willing to let people starve and be unhappy in order to let capitalists work out the kinks. I'll return to that point later.

There were several other breakdowns along the way all having to do with the idea of "too many eggs in one basket."

Now...here we are! Over a year ago I predicted that between July and September of 2008 the economy would crumble and the government would pump in astronomical amounts of money to try to fix it. HOLY SHIT I WAS RIGHT!!! Why? Because it's elementary capitalist theory.

TODAY's SITUATION
I'm not going to get into why this is happening. All of the things your are hearing on the radio have some element of truth. Last night I was able to see Naomi Klein speak about her book The Shock Doctrine. I was very impressed by her premise: basically, those in power use traumatizing events that put whole populations in a state of shock to advance their own prosperity whether that be money, power, or whatever else is thinkable. I do not disagree with her thesis, however, I do disagree with her limit. In the book she is speaking specifically of capitalists. The way I stated her thesis would include everyone in a position of power. In fact, I have recently been throwing around the idea of staring a socialist club on my campus because I know it would attract a lot of people at this period in time -- this would be using "the shock doctrine" to my advantage.

SO...
I've watched several interviews from Naomi Klein's website www.shockdoctrine.org and found that her primary problem, and this is true of all pundits, is that she is trying to place the blame on people. She certainly isn't shy about the fact that she is anti-capitalist, which is against a system, but she keeps trying to find someone to blame. If you look at the website a great example of this is her interview with Bill Maher.

What you will see in that interview/debate is that she ends up defending her theory against a man who is proposing that the American people, those who fucked up on their mortgages, are to blame. She steps into the position of blaming it ALL on the corporations and politicians, corruption and whatnot. I don't necessarily disagree with her, but my problem is that she is submitting to arguments that force her into that defensives posture when she needs to be attacking the very notion of capitalism. She finds herself in these interviews where sound bites are the key to success. She cannot present a coherent anti-capitalist agenda in thirty seconds -- nor can anyone else -- that breaks down people's deeply held, irrational beliefs. Of course if they were to read her book they might find themselves agreeing with her, but in reality more people are able to watch a small bit of TV than pick up a good book. And that is part of the problem!!

Who is to blame is not the question. Rather, it needs to be, what is to blame.

Capitalism does not value human life. As far as Naomi Klein goes, this is an unspoken theme that runs throughout her writing. What if she were to be so bold as to say that on the Colbert Report? Well, no one would understand her.

That was a digression.

Capitalism does not value anything other than profit. It is NOT sustainable. There cannot be infinite growth in a finite world. But, that is the narrative that we live by. Wealth can always be made. Everyone can get a "slice of the pie."

We are not only dealing with human life, but that of plants, of animals, of natural resources, of OUR ENTIRE PLANET -- the thing we rely on for our existence. Capitalism does nothing other than exploit the available resources. The only time it refrains is when it is stopped by either governments, individuals, or the total elimination of the needed resources. Primarily, capitalism does not value human life. People die every day because our society has been conditioned to think that profits are a necessity. We are using all of the world's resources to supply unnecessary goods to the masses, from which the profits benefit only a small elite. The animals that we need for nutrition, not to mention the fact that they provide fertilizer for the plants we need, are being killed off species by species.

On a purely human level, it does not make sense that people should have to work their ass off at a shitty job in order to PAY TO SURVIVE!!! We are not born into this world to suffer. We are born to exist. When the value of our existence is based on how many things we have, how big our house is, how much our net worth is, and how many chics we got to give us a blow job last weekend, we have something wrong. The worth of each and every one of us has been recreated to mean all of these things. IT'S NOT RIGHT!!

It's a manufactured existence! We need to reinvent how the market works. It needs to be run by those who it serves. It needs to be run for the benefit of those it serves. It does NOT need to be run by a select few who own the majority of the resources. We need to stop being giant fuckin' pussies and dancing around this "fine line" between capitalism and whatever-the-fuck-else. CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE!!!!!

If you think Barak Obama is going to make a change, you're stupid as shit! When he starts talking his border-line socialist views and speaking the populist speak, that we need market regulation, then says "I've spoke with my financial advisers," (who just happen to be rich Wall St. fucks) he's just giving a little heads up to the financial community that they shouldn't believe what he's saying.

If you think John McCain is going to make a change, you're stupid as shit!

Oh, and fuck Ron Paul too!!

Your life has been run by a storyline that submits the results of your life to people who are looking out only for their pocket books. If you think that's ok, you're wrong.

Another Prediction
Let's assume Barak Obama wins the election. I, like many, would not be a bit surprised if someone tries to kill him. I would also not be surprised, if that were to happen, it would happen between election day and inauguration day. Also, having written that, I would not be surprised if the FBI or Secret Service puts me in jail.

Everywhere but here...

2008-09-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

It seems that everywhere else in the world is involved in some kind of war, whether with a foreign power or and internal war. Iraq, Russia, Georgia, Columbia, Burma, Sri Lanka, India, China, Pakistan, Sudan, the Congo, Zimbabwe, Mexico, and the list can go on. All of these wars have to do with a conflict of powers. People are taking to the streets, blowing each other up. For what? Well, in the end that will be seen, but for now we can simply call it political leverage.

There are also other wars that are going on in place like Cambodia, Nepal, and even the United States. These are more silent wars -- wars against human trafficking -- no one is blowing things up. No one is shooting. In Louisiana, New Orleans to be specific, poor black folks who have owned their homes for generations after their ancestors worked as slaves for rich white folks. With Katrina they were damn near eliminated and are fighting to maintain what is theirs. It may not be in a desirable place, but it's home and it was attained litterally with blood, sweat, and tears. Their fight, as well as mine, is against racism that emanates from our social structure. In Cuba, the people suffer as a result of a nearly half-century long blockade against their government.

All of this is happening, but where we live we barely feel the effects. Why aren't there any bombs going off in the US? Why aren't people trying to forcefully eliminate those who are in power, maintaining the false legitimacy of government?

The problem is that our civilization as a whole does not value humanity. There are some who do, but the vast majority has been pacified by the perks of modern society -- a hot wife with nice new tits, the event of meeting celebrities and feeling like you too can be one someday, or simply the thought that if you don't live like everyone else you will be a complete outcast.

Maybe pacifism isn't a choice by those of us who may claim it, but a larger plot to encourage us to take peaceful, futile actions against those who wish to stay in control. Maybe we should be blowing shit up. Maybe someone should be out there blasting away at corrupt politicians. Everyone else is doing it. That's what happens in a revolution -- you kill those who are the opposing force. Maybe a revolution doesn't start with a huge violent movement, but rather with small, calculated actions.

Who knows.

But, it's sure fun to think about.

Pictures and Thoughts...I'll have more

2008-06-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

You stand, for what seems like an eternity. If it's late it seems worse. Normally when you're underground it's cool, like in a basement. But not in the subways. It's hot, humid, and full of people you don't know. Aahhh! I love it!! The light comes around the bend like in a bad indi film. For some reason you doubted the train would come...but it did. ---the way the light appears in the dimness of the subway tunnels is and oddly comforting thing. It's nothing like I've experienced in other cities like DC, Boston, or Chicago where the ground blinks or an announcement happens when the train is arriving---I LOVE IT!

Here are some pictures of things. Some are of a view that I absolutely love in Central Park...others are of my neighborhood at night.

One side note that I'd like to add is about the buses. I've been riding the buses a lot lately. There are certain things you can do to get around without actually knowing what you're doing around here and that's what I've been doing. On the bus, a lady gets on with her kid. She can't quite get her shit together before the bus takes off. She hands her kid to some lady who is sitting in the seat right in front of her. She doesn't know the lady, nor does the kid, but the kid and the lady play until the mom gets settled. It could be a female thing, but it only seems to happen inthe "ghettoer" parts of town (among black/latino folk) so I am going to read more into that aspect. It's a weird sense of community on public transportation that I have never seen before in a big city. As with everything before, I LOVE IT!!

Harlem Journal

2008-06-13T07:41:00.001-07:00

Below is a link to an article in today's New York Times about the neighborhood I'm living in. It's kind of funny to see first-hand the effects of the gentrification that's going on here. A few years ago I had a professor who is now the mayor of Santa Cruz. One day his classroom was covered in fliers calling him a "pro-gentrification" douche bag. I guess I just always assumed that most people like me are opponents of gentrification but a lot of white people that I've talked to here are very much for it. Considering this is the notorious Harlem I am on the side of making it a safer place and if that takes building expensive buildings, then go for it. But this guy, Ray, who works at the bakery down the road is having to find a new place in a cheaper part of town because he can no longer afford to stay here. He and his son have been living in a building in which many of the tenants are crack heads but he can't even afford to stay there. He loves the neighborhood because he grew up here and was here through the worst times of Harlem but can't stay anymore. He's going to have to move to a neighborhood that is less safe and will have to commute to his job which means he will be less available to his son or have to put in fewer hours so that he can maintain his close involvement in his son's life. It's interesting to see the bad side of this stuff being lived by people that I meet.

Anyway, here's the article.

That was quick

2008-06-10T18:48:00.001-07:00

Less than an hour and a half ago it was super hot and humid. Now it's really cool outside and raining super hard. I just thought it was weird how fast it changed.

Poor people with no anus

2008-06-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

There is a strong correlation between the amount of ice cream sold and a rise in crime rates. I had to read a short study about that for a research methods class last semester. Really, the amount of ice cream sold is directly related to the heat. And there is a decent causal relationship between the temperature and an increase in the crime rate. All of that to say that it is really really hot in New York right now -- in the upper 90s with really fucked up humidity.

As for the crime, i don't know.

I think I mentioned last time that I go to this coffee shop just to talk to people because no one ever really talks to you -- especially when you go into chain places like starbucks or staples. I bought some stuff at a small bodega by my house the other day and i was a buck short. The guy said I owe him. The next day I walked in to buy something else and paid him back his dollar and he was really impressed. He started talking to me. I've been buying lunch at this pizza place by my office for the last few days and today the guy wanted to give me a 'fist pound'... you know, like the terrorist signal the Obamas use. It's pretty insignificant but it's amazing how you can be surrounded by so many people and have zero interaction.

I went out with my roommates the other night. We went to a house party here in Harlem then migrated to mid-town among the yuppies, got kicked out of a bar that we fought our way in to. So, the next day I ran into one of the guys we were with on the street by his house. He came up to me and it threw me off because the only people that talk to me on the street are asking for change or cigarettes...since i wasn't expecting it, it was a really akward conversation.

Today I got the use the "You people?! Aah, I'm calling a house meeting y'all" line with some of the black folks that work in my office. They thought it was the funniest damn thing. We always make jokes about what white people and black people...usually one getting beaten by the cops the other not. One lady said "the day that shit is worth anything poor people will be born without an asshole." Good times.

Still no pictures. I was going to last Saturday but had to work for most of the day. It was cool though. I was in the south Bronx all day manifesting material on a bus and barbecuing. And, hanging out on their stoop...which is a New York poor people past time...it was neat. The people whose house it was at told me to come back whenever I want just to hang out and have food. It was just like Scotts Valley, except in one of the worst neighborhoods in the US instead.

That's it for now. Pictures soon, maybe.

Adjusting

2008-06-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

I still haven't taken any pictures. There really hasn't been much time to come home, get my camera, then go out again...plus I hate looking like a tourist. But, in the meantime, here's a bit of what my life here is like.

It's musical. As I type, there's a group of teenagers walking down the road singing a really bad hip hop sing-along as if it were an irish bar song. Along those lines, people act in public as if it were the privacy of their own home. I used to just think that people who talk to themselves on the street are crazy...not so much. Here, you get the sense that the street is their home, although sometimes it does feel like a competition to see who can be the craziest. Since home is boring, there are no yards to be private in, and you can never get a moment alone, you might as well talk to yourself. It's kind of like the sidewalk or the subway is your living room.

Black people don't talk on their cellphones here the way they do in CA - the talk directly into the mic then hold the phone about a foot from your ear maneuver. Just an observation, no conjectures as to why.

I rarely see my roommates and that's kinda wierd; I always saw jon and mike. Although there are only three guys in our apartment, ours in the "home base." The guys/gals on level two and three all all really good friends with my roommates so they always come down to our place because of the TV and cable. I like that. But, no one ever wants to go out during the weeknight because they all work so late. I've been putting in nine hour day's but I start at 9:30 or 10 so it's not as intense as their 6 or 7 start time (that means they have to leave earlier). Hopefully this weekend some of them will be around to go places.

Work is pretty fun. I do menial shit. Mainly I've been put in charge of putting together the boxes and route packets for the various bus route leaders that will begin their journey's to McAllen, TX in a week or so. After a few days of bitch work they realized that I'm not an idiot so I have a few other things to do now. That's kinda nice. Unlike the construction work I do, I can't just see what I have to do and be on my own for a while...well, I do, but when my boss is giving me a task I have to anticipate later problems and ask for the solutions, so I disturb him as little as possible later. It's pretty intense right now with all the last minute problems being taken care of, which to me equals fun. Everyone in the office is really fun - that's it for that aspect.

Tonight after work i went to a place that has half price drinks every weeknight from 4-8. It also had an outdoor patio which is weird in my neck of the woods...ya know, 'cause you'll get shot. This place is on the Upper Westside. There is about a five block strip of Amsterdam that has a shitload of cool bars. I had a couple of drinks on the patio and just got to sit and watch people be weird. There was this old man who walked so slow (because of ailments, not like the crazy pink guy in santa cruz) that he was having significant conversations with people as he walked past the sidewalk seating. I also noticed a lot of Jewish folks - redundant I guess because, after all, it's New York. One super Jewish guy got caught by his wife as he was looking down the shirt of a hot Latina while walking by her table. That was awesome.

Hey! Do you know what the difference between a jewish baby and a normal white baby is?... The jewish baby is obviously jewish - that's not really a joke - they have jewish noses as infants.

Other than that I haven't explored much of NYC. Went to try to see David Sidaris (sp?) last night in Union Square, but it was a packed house. This weekend, if I'm not busy working I'll get to do touristy shit.

I feel that I am naturally an introvert, but this place makes me realize how moderately introverted I am. I find myself going to this particular coffee shop that's really close to my house on the way to and from work, only because the girls who work there are really nice and talk to me. It's not that GIRLS are talking to me, but that ANYONE is talking to me. I sit in there and just absorb the niceness.

New York - day One

2008-06-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

I arrived in New York City today. So far, it's a pretty cool place. A little intimidating, but cool. Across the street is a pit bull locked behind a gate. I went outside earlier to go for a walk and saw this lady rubbing her ass in the dogs face. Suddenly she decided that she wanted to piss on the dog. Down went the pants and out came the pee.

I'll have pictures of the area when I get comfortable enough to take them.

I went to the Frederick Douglass in Southeast DC a few months ago and realized that I was the only white person. At the risk of sounding like a racist, that's a little scary. It's not the black people, it's the fact that when any one ethnicity (other than white folks) are concentrated in one area it tends to be a poor, crime prone area. Harlem isn't that bad, but it's pretty damn close.

There's a difference between nice/urban and nice/suburban. A row of shops that we would consider trash in Scotts Valley are welcome signs of economic prosperity here.

Fighting fire with wind...and crickets

2008-05-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

I took a bunch of stuff to my dad's house this week. It was the longest that I've stayed in my hometown in a few years...I was there for three long days!

I show up to my dad's house on Wednesday and immediately got in a fight...with a fire. The wind was blowing like crazy. It was pretty fun. i haven't done something like that in a while. I the process all of the mice and squirrels and gophers that were running from the fire were going toward my dad's house and we all started stepping on them. it was kinda fucked up but kinda fun too. It was like that game at Chuckee Cheeses where you knock the gophers on the head with the bat.

I went to an old friends house...he's an older guy. He was having a little bible study which was pretty painful to sit through but the guys were funny. One of the guys just let 10,000 crickets into his school as a senior prank. At one point i mentioned this softball team we used to play with called the Pink Pounders. The kids started laughing because they didn't think we got the joke. Then, the guy that had been on the team was talking about how they would get drunk and balls would hit them in the head. It's true, I saw it once, but the guys couldn't stop laughing about the pink pounders and balls hitting foreheads. In that way it was an entertaining bible study.

Other than that I just did my best to make my fundi family realize how absurd their beliefs are. It's fun for me...not a fight anyone can win but it's still fun.

Hmmm...balls on head, pink pounders, crickets, gopher stomp, fire fighting, fundi fighting...over all the best time I've spent in my hometown since i've moved away, well, sober at least.

To be or not to be: what a gay ass question

2008-05-20T00:23:00.000-07:00

So, I'm in this mood right now. Kind of a nostalgic thing. It's because I packed up most of my belongings into my car to take to my dad's house to store for the next year...since I wont be needing them. I guess I don't really need them anyway, considering I never use them...but books and things, you can't let those go.

Ok, that was a tangent.

There are things that I wish I could be, but am not. I wish I were a red head. I heard once that by 2050 there will be no fully redheaded people -- I'm talking genetically. I'm attracted to red-head chics, so it would be great to meet up with one and carry on the genes if I were a red head too.

I also wish I was black. Now, I don't try to act like a stereotypical black person. I don't listen to gansta rap either. But, I'm a pretty smart guy and I think it would be cool to be a smart black guy that makes something of himself. To break the mold. That's not to say that there aren't successful black men, in fact there are tons, but they aren't the majority or even the common perception of what black men are.

Being a woman would be pretty cool too. Well, with the exception of the warewolf effect that goes in cycles with the moon...or however that menstruation stuff works. Mostly though, for the same reason as I'd like to be a black dude. I'd break the "glass ceiling" and all that fun stuff -- but not like Hilary Clinton, I'd do it like a gentleman would.

There is the rare occasion that I wish I were a cancer patient. Only on my conditions though. I would go to the hospital and they would say that I only have a few months to live. I'd go do some things, break some bones, do a shit load of blow, and all kinds of other stuff. But, when I was finally too weak to be out of bed I would be laying in a hospital. President Bush would grant my last wish of meeting him...probably because of some guilt that he feels about killing all those boys and girls in Iraq. I'd pretend that I was too weak to talk loudly but that I had something really important to say. He'd lean in. Then, without warning I'd slap the shit out of him. Not only would that be awesome, but it would be cool to see a bunch of Secret Service agents beat up a bed ridden, cancer patient.

It's kind of a bummer being a normal white dude. I mean, sure there's the whole 'greater ability to succeed' thing. But, everything is pretty much handed to you. I didn't grow up in a wealthy family, barely even middle class. But, I go places and have done some crazy shit...but I'm just a white guy so who really cares.

If only I could be a red headed, black hermaphodite who gets diagnosed with terminal cancer -- oh how glorious it would be!

A Song - Oooh how artsy!

2008-05-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

You're gonna sink wearing that heart of gold
You're holding fast son you better let it go
The weight of guilt son's gonna drag you down
You better let it go else you're gonna drown

A heavy cross'll make a brighter crown
You carried the burden now just set it down
The weight of guilt and a tired soul
Too great a weight to carry on your own

If you can bear no cross you can wear no crown

By Ben Nichols
Lucero

Aaaahhhhhh!

2008-05-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

When I moved back to Santa Cruz in 2003 I started volunteering for Young Life. I also worked with the middle school ministry -- WyldLife. In 2004 I took over as the coordinator for WyldLife because the girl who was on staff left. In May of 2006 I went on staff. Last night, 1 May 2008, was my last club. I still have some office stuff to finish up in order to earn my monthly wage, but other than that I'm done!

It's one of the best feelings ever!!! Before I started with Young Life I was a volunteer leader for a church youth group in my home town. To sum it up, my entire adult life has been spent working with middle school kids in the realm of Christian ministry. So, my excitement about leaving staff and no longer even working with Young Life doesn't come without some apprehension. It's not that I'll miss the work but that I have apparently reached some big milestone.

I've never been too excited about preaching to kids but for some reason it was important to me for these kids to have some decent role model in their life. Not that I'm necessarily a great person, but I'm not their parents, I'm not their friends, I'm not their teacher, and I'm not a drug addict. I am something that falls in between all of those. I'm the guy that a kid can actually talk to and act normal around because there is no need to impress me, keep me happy, or stay out of trouble.

Over the years I decided that that aspect was more important than anything. And I still think that.

There is two aspects that I want to write about in reference to why I'm so happy about leaving: the Christian part and the "burn out" part.

CHRISTIAN: The short version of the section below is this: It's not that I don't believe in God anymore, it's just that I don't really give a FUCK!

When I first started working with YL I was attracted to the way they did the gospel thing. Later I would realize that this was a local thing as opposed to a YL in general thing. Then, YL was just about hanging out at Club (the weekly youth group aspect) and bowling or whatever other activities we would invite the kids along for. In a way, our goal was to just make the kids part of our life...like friends. From a Jesus standpoint I liked it because I thought that their way of talking about sin was different with the typical church -- i hated the church and I still do. What I mean by "the church" is the popular view of most Christians have about the relationship of God and Jesus and the people of the world...and then how the rules, traditions, and images that we must maintain fall into all of that bullshit.

When I went to camp with a group of kids the first time I learned that I hate alter calls. What I saw was the lemming effect: one kid (who may or may not have had a genuine God experience) proclaim that they found the Lord. Then another, then another, another, and so on and on. At some point you get the feeling that it's just an image thing...and the trap of Christianity begins.

A year or so later I decided that the formerly "progressive" (or so it seemed to me when I first bought into it) explanation of sin, as a separation from God and not necessarily the badness that we do, was complete shit. I have another explanation for sin and what I think a healthy relationship with God might look like...but I've posted about that before so I wont waste time here.

I also began to have a hard time figuring out how Christianity can make a damn bit of difference when a kid has been abused, is on drugs, is poor, can't read, has a bad home life in general, or any other shit that the kids have to deal with. On top of this, I couldn't understand why, when kids have to deal with so much, we would want to put all this pressure of living up to some institutionalized Christian standard.

But, I stuck with it for a long time because I still felt that it was important to be part of the lives of the kids and this was a great way to do it.

Eventually I completely changed the way we present the gospel to our middle school kids. Within a year or two so did a group in North Carolina, which led YL to issue THE NON-NEGOTIABLES OF YOUNG LIFE. This was a set way that the Gospel had to be presented - no ifs, ands, or buts about it! Before that I was on the verge of considering going off staff but that set it in stone.

There is no way that I'm going to work for an organization who claims the name of Christ as its leader and then does that kind of shit. Unfortunately there is no one way to understand the bible. If there was we'd be much better off. But YL was determined to make sure that people learned stuff their way. Their way of interpreting the gospel I find to have the potential of being harmful to anyone who isn't smart enough or jaded enough to think through shit for their self.

BURN OUT: The short version of this section, and it sounds a little bit boastful or something like that, is that I care too much and I don't want to do it for a while.

I've learned things about kids that nobody else knows about them. I've seen sides of kids that they never let anyone else see. They always have to put on some kind of front for their parents or their friends or whomever. The more I got to know kids, the more helpless and worthless I felt. What could I do?!? The kid that can't read, I can help. The most I could do for a kid whose home life is completely screwed up but not illegal, is be there for him to vent to -- yes that's important, but it's hard to know that's all you can do. According to YL I could also offer him God's love...how precious!

I have piercings, I don't dress like a square. When people look at me they probably don't think "oh, I would love for my kid to hang out with that guy." But, I'm a pretty nice guy...and I'm not a moron. Of course this following statement isn't always true, I think it's faily accurate: because of the fact that I'm not very refined, when people learn that I'm okay, they really like me. It's like they expect one thing and when they get another they are so excited that I'm one of the greatest people ever.

That leads in to this. I have got to know a ton of people. Some very well, others just kind of well. This is both parents and kids. I've observed things in families that a teacher, pastor, coach, or family friend don't get to observe. It's wierd! The more people I got to know and the more kids that got to know me, and I them, the more of their shit I had to deal with. My biggest character flaw is that I care too much for other people and not nearly enough for myself. I live with other people's pain. I think about it when I go to bed...it keeps me up.

I tried really hard to encourage my leaders to hang out with kids. Not everyone is cut out for it. But, when a kid couldn't get ahold of a leader they wanted to hang out with they'd call me. I generally have a lot of time to kill so I would hang out. Then I'd learn about them. I'd get to know their folks. And the same story continues.

Eventually you start to shut down. You can't stand to get to know more kids so you don't do much anymore. The kids who you wish you didn't know because they aren't the kind of person you generally like to hang out with are the next to go. Before you know it, the kids and families who you know the best and spend a lot of time with begin to get to you. You shut them out. What your left with is sitting at home. Wishing you could drink yourself into oblivion. But you still have to hang out because it's your job. Now, you're faking it. You realize that you're not being as sociable as you used to be so you force yourself to act like you used to.

Try to live that...it's gets old fast. It's not that I don't care anymore. I still lose sleep over other peoples' problems. I still meet new people and love every minute of it. But I'm tired.

.........................................

Basically, the story is this. What was once a turning point in my life became a thorn in my side. Because I don't care about the Christianity thing and don't find much importance for it, I want to distance myself from it. I don't want that to be the foundation for my relationship with the people I know and care about. It's as simple as this: I know the people I live around and they know me; they're fucked up and I'm fucked up -- and sometimes that's fine; we don't need to fix each other and we don't need to tell each other how to live; we just need to be there for each other with no strings attached. If not just because I know so many people, I will always work with kids in some way. I'll always care for people too much. But at least I won't be bound by the rules and expectations of a morally debased organization.

It's awesome!!!

The only thing I want to make sure of is that I don't simply react. That my relationships with people don't become based on the fact that I used to by tied down by YL and I now am not. I want to make sure that I am just Rob without YL...nothing more. I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone who will read this, but it makes sense to me.

How do you feed the poor?

2008-03-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

Do you give the poor fish, or teach them how to fish? Let's say it's going to be a government sponsored program. The taxpayers will say that you teach him how to fish so that he can provide for himself so he doesn't become dependant on our tax dollars. With this new skill though, he may find that he is an incredible fisherman and get all the fish so that there aren't enough for everyone. Then, if teaching people to fish ends up not working because of lack of resources, there must be a system to make sure that everyone has enough. It's liberty versus equality. If everyone is free to do what they want then not everyone will have an equal opportunity to provide for themselves. If you make sure that everyone has the proper resources to provide for themselves then you limit the liberty of people to do as they wish.

If we're talking about larger social problems like unemployment, lack of skills, and so on, where do you start? I would say with education, so you can give everyone a fairly equal start to then do what they can with their abilities. They can proceed into college, into a trade school, or choose to get into a job that requires little or no real training...like fast food. In my state, we're facing an across-the-board budget cut, which means that programs that are guaranteed a specific percentage of the budget, like education, will lose a ton of money. In my town we're looking at losing almost 1,000,000 dollars each year which translates to upwards of 30 teaching positions. This turns into a larger teacher/student classroom ratio. With kids who speak a first language other than english, this is going to mean less attention thus less success. For kids whose first language is english, this has several consequences; they range from less extra-curricular activites, to potential resentment of the ESL kids if they put this all together. If test scores become lower as a result of California's budget cuts there will be less federal funding. It's a downward spiral.

The only reason I write this is to get it out of my head. I just had a conversation with a guy and I took it to the point of questioning a bond measure that is going to raise money to build a new middle school - considering the financial state that our district is going to be I think this bond measure is a bad idea. I'm trying to develop a good argument against the bond measure so I can have a conherent conversation with people as to why I think it's a bad idea. And, that's why you just read this. Haha...thanks for wasting your time!

Thoughts on the world and politics

2008-02-29T09:55:00.000-08:00

I've recently been wrapped up in developing an opinion about the conflict in Darfur. Of course on the face of things it seems like it is an aweful mess and should be stopped by force immediately. Well, that's not so simple, of course. As part of my learning of this issue, I've learned about another crisis that is going on in Africa. Sure, there is Kenya and Cameroon and all the civil unrest for political reasons in many countries, but I'm talking about the Congo. In the last decade, since 1997 (1) 5,000,000 people have died. That's holocaust scale death. So, I found it funny this morning when reading through the NY Times that there was a story about the Congo when there normally isn't. It was about how the logging industry might be endangering sea turtles. SEA TURTLES! ...FIVE MILLION PEOPLE! One of those is a more important issue...I'll let you guess which one.

Your current president is an amazing man. He criticized Barak Obama for wanting to develope relationships with the leaders of 'enemy states,' like Raul Castro. First, it's amazing that he could think that way when he encouraged Abbas and Olmert to have monthly meetings and their favorite pastime is blowing eachother's people up. If guys like that can find it in them to get together, I'm sure the leaders of our country can find it beneficial to talk with Castro. Not to mention, the policy in Cuba of not talking with their leader has obviously failed for the last 40 years.

(1) This is the year following the genocide in Rwanda. That whole thing was a convoluted cluster-fuck but part of what made that Congo thing erupt. Rwandi Tutsi began chasing Hutus who had fled to the Congo and it stirred up a whole mess of issues.

War games?

2008-02-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

Something on NPR today got me thinking. A while ago China tested and anti-satelite missle. The other day the Bush administration announced that it had successfully shot down a failed military satelite. I'm not sure if we had already tested any anti-satelite missles yet. If not, was the case to shoot down this satelite last week just a way to make sure that we had the same capabilities as China? With that, is it possible that the whole "failed satelite" with dangerous liquids thing was just a front to be able to test this technology? I'm not into conspiracy stuff but this seems like something fun to look in to.

So, go reasearch this for me and figure it out.

Marxism and Christianity

2008-02-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

---I didn't take the time to edit this for sequence, so ignore the fact that it may seem to wander---

A number of years ago I started re-evaluating my religious standing. Whether or not I believe in a god and so on. Eventually I stopped believing then came back around to it. Through this, however, I decided some things about what Jesus, God, and their other pal want the world (and their presence in it via their followers) to be like - nothing like it is now or really has ever been since...I guess only a few years after Dr. J had left the earth.

Reconciling this with my work, youth ministry, is not an easy thing to do. As ill informed as my thoughts may be, I do believe that they are accurate but no modern Christian wants to hear what I have to say because it turns everything around. So, I'm in the season now where I introduce Jesus to the kids. Last semester I introduced God. I didn't grant any credibility to the OT (creation story) being really true, but that was something to be understood in it.

Basically how I set it up was that God created us and had 3 things in mind. 1) Love 2) Community - he realized that one person wasn't enough so put another and said "Multiply". 3) Trust - when he set us loose in the 'garden' he pretty much said "everything here is yours...GO NUTS!" This comes into play as an atribute of God that we should emulate but have chosen not to.

The caveat was then that there was this tree. When we ate from that we basically took matters into our own hands. Instead of trusting him, we decided that we now know what is best, and would rely on our own judgement.

I made that point with a story (though admitedly not the intent of the parable) about a dad who asked one son to work in the field. The son said Ok but didn't work. Dad went to the other son and said go work and the son said no but later changed his mind. My point was that we get to make decisions and sometimes they end up good but sometimes they don't. Essentially, we create the reality that is around us by the things that we do.

So I come to the point of my talk tonight. I thought through that last point: Do we do things that create our reality or do the things that happen to us and things that surround us create our reality. Of course this is a neverending debate but I feel pretty secure in thinking that the former option is more true.

When I was thinking about this, I realized that it is basically Marx's idea of "mode of production", that the things that people do are what makes a society work, not that the society working (via trade, property rights, etc.) makes the people because ultimately we get to choose whether or not we partakein such things. This is definately oversimplified by the point stands.

Tonight I focused on the idea that what other people say don't matter - in terms of Jesus, people had a lot of different names for him but he really only chose two to describe himself as - so say the scriptures: Son of God and Son of Man. I wont get into why I think that is important here, but it is.

Next talk I'm going to talk about what Jesus did and how that effected the world around him.

Eventually I get to sin. What does sin look like here? We have effectively chosen to be our own God. By taking on the understanding the difference between good and evil we have set ourselves up to be the judges of the world around us. Sin, then, is the fact that we have taken our assumed responsibility and completely messed the world up. That the decisions we make as individuals translates into billions of people making similarly bad decisions and we have the world we have now. What we lack is knowing what truth looks like, so our judgement does us no good, only bad. Because by our nature we act as our own God thus choose our own truth and that truth is different for everyone so there is conflict. I don't buy into the typical Young Life (the organization I work for) notion that sin is a separation from God. Since God is supposed to be everywhere, he has given his gift to all people, and he apparently is involved in our everyday activites I don't see how this traditional approach to sin as an incurable separation really holds any weight.

So, this leads to Jesus how? Because he was sent to us as the Son of God (in the sense of "like father like son") in emulation of God, and the Son of Man (an instance in the human species - much like saying I am Ben Huffman's son and so is my brother and my other brother, so I am only a bit of my fathers collective SON), to show us a better way to use our "judgement", our knowledge of good and evil. By also emulating God and remembering that part of that is to trust - I guess, to trust He who actually knows how to use this distinction between good and evil properly.

It then comes back to us to make that decision to use his example wisely. And I think, this is how I will describe salvation. For example, in Matthew 19:28 (I think...it's in there somewhere) Jesus says that basically those who do what God wants will have a seat in Heaven next to the father. The arguement against this is that there is the part in the NT where it says that the wages of sin is death. I say to that, that the OT says that if you eat from the tree you will surely die. Obviously A and E didn't physically die, so it must be a spiritual death of some kind. From that I can assume that perhaps Paul is talking about a different death than physical too. Maybe even a different one of heaven versus hell. The death that Adam and Eve experienced was here on earth right? Being banished from the garden and having to deal with the consequences of trying to be their own gods. That is a death here on earth. I suppose that comes in the form of being unhappy, of the remorse over physical deaths, of going day to day without food, of experiencing loss, and so on.

As I type there are a thousand different things that pop in to my head as to why this approach also would not be attractive to kids. But that's not what it's really about for me. The truth is, I'm not scared for the kids' or anyones afterlife, so why do I really need to be concerned with whether or not they accept the gospel as I present it. What matters is that I present it the best way that I understand it to really be.

Some would say that I'm afraid of talking about sin because I don't want to hurt the kids' feelings. Though one who would make that claim would not believe me here, that's not an issue at all. It's that I truly don't think it's right. My thoughts and strategy here are much softer than traditional depictions of sin, but I don't think they are wrong. And I don't think that the traditional Sin is even an effective way to understanding what sin is...especially for these kids who don't have any grasp on the concept of consquences. It may seem at first glance that my approach is not dealing with those consequences that I speak of, those consequences that the kids don't understand. But on a closer look we see that we are presented with choices, those choices en masse create our shitty world, if we love God and trust God then we will do what is prescribed for us to do, otherwise our world will still be a shithole...granted, in the larger scheme of things it will still be a shithole, but in our more immediate surroundings we have the ability to create a "better world" so to speak, to create a better truth for our daily lives and those we encounter.

But I'm mandated by Young Life to present sin and other such religious abstractions in a very particular way. As the powers-that-be state, they are the Non-negotiables of Young Life. What this means, I do not really care.

For anyone who may read this, feel free to present me with counter arguements because it will help me work this out. Or even feedback on how to make it better. At this point I'm pretty set in this thought process. I'm really more concerned with how to present my talks in a way that the kids will actually care to listen, so that they can hear a different approach to the God that they may have grown up with.

No Anti-lent this year! It's the real thing!!

2008-02-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

So, this year I'm actually aware of lent in time to remember to do it. I didn't grow up observing lent but it seems like fun to quit doing something that I do more than necessary just to see if I can. So this year, complaining. For the next 46 days (counting the Sundays) I will not complain. So I'm getting it all out here so I can look back and remember what it is that I miss so much.

I hate people on the bus who talk on their cell phones. Most people that have the lack of courtesy that drives them to talk on their cell phone in a confined public space are the type of people that only have one or two functionaing brain cells - people that shouldn't breed. Like this lady that spends every Tuesday and Thursday on the ride home talking to two or three different people about here medical conditions. The one she tells her sob story and he hangs up on her. The other, she tells about how the other guy hung up and then gives that same guy the same sob story with the exact same vigor. The third person, she tells that she needs a ride from the bus stop because, well, she has a medical condition and it involves...what?... the same shit that she just got done telling the other two guys.

My women's US history professor spends the first half of class talking about her in-laws and parents. Where they live, their past, what kind of herbs they grow (not even kidding), and what their migratory habits are in their retirement years. Now, I like hearing about women and a whole different view on history, but she is missing alot of things in her analysis of the role of women and why they have always been viewed the way they have. Apparently it's open-minded to think that way, but thinking only that way and ignoring all of the other important stuff doesn't seem to be very open-minded.

People who turn left on roads without a turn lane drive me crazy - especially during rush hour! Go to a light, make a U turn, and save us all some time so that we don't have to wait behind you while the world revolves around you! On the subject of driving, why can people not look around and see driveways where cars are trying to get in and out of (from a left turn lane) when they are sitting at a stop light. Look around and observe that you might want to leave some room for poeple to get through.

Cubans! I want to go on the same trip that I went on last year to Cuba, but the people that Pastors for Peace is working with in Cuba cannot figure out the exact dates and what theme they want for the trip. Meanwhile, I'm deciding when I'm going to be able to go on my summer skate trip/camp that all of the high school guys I work with are looking forward to, and I can't plan my trip to Greece. Work more than 6 hours for once and maybe you'll get it figured out...seriously Cuban friends...I love your culture and country and sense of solidarity, but make a damn decision!

The Scotts Valley post office. their hours are 9-4:30. Times when people are at work or in my case school. How am I supposed to buy stamps when you guys are never open?! I have a non-profit to keep afloat. I need stamps but I have to go to class too.

In the afternoons at school, the bus that I need only runs every 2 hours. So, if I get out of class late or have to take care of some quick business I'm stuck at school for another 2 hours. This wouldn't be so bad if maybe I went to a school where there were real people. I cannot even begin to describe the people that I go to a university with, but they are completely retarded! Words like HELLA! "So I was at this party the other day, hella drunk, and mike comes up with his pants hella saggin, and he hella was wasted, and hella said, 'hey do you wanna get some hella good food with me?' And I was like O-M-G i'm hella down aaaeeeight!" Maybe that's why people are more than happy to spend an ass load of money on private schools, because the people that can afford that have at least somewhat high self-esteem and aren't inbreed.

And on the subject of breeding. My roommates and I should be the only people on earth who get to decided who gets to breed and who gets to drive.

Girls - If you think I'm cute (which I assume all girls do, especially hot ones), then talk to me. See, we live in a world where women want more of a role in this patriarichal world. While this is happening, men, like myself, are becoming more and more pansie (if I can use that word as a verb). This is mainly directed toward this hot girl in one of my history classes.

Back to driving, my roommate reminded me of people that drive in the rain with their headlights off. In CA it's a law that if your windsheild wipers are on then your lights have to be also. Why? Safety. So i hear someone talking on local radio one day about how she's never had trouble seeing people like this. I was on my way to work the other day and it was raining. There was a lady behind me who had her headlights off. She had her blinker on because she was about to make a left turn on a road with no turn lane. I had to stop suddenly...so did she. And then there was a noise. She got rearended. I understand that her having her headlights off had nothing to do with that, but I just thought that was a fun story to tell. Mainly because it was a very slight bump. Her stupid high school daughter had this look on her face like her entire world came crashing down around her because her eyeliner was about to run and she was gonna have to get out in the rain and her hair would get frizzy. It made me laugh and I went on to work.

And just when i thought I was out... I'm in a political thought class. As you may know, these classes are magnets for egos. This particular class has about 7 people who were always trying to prove how smart they were in classes I shared with them last semester. And of course, they make it a point to make sure that the professor knows how much they know. In reality they know nothing. I'm not saying I do...my mind doesn't think like that...not good for political theory. But what I do know is that Machiavelli is wrong, Hobbes is wrong, Paine is wrong, Rouseeau is wrong, and so on. There is no such thing as a perfect political theory. some parts of theories are right and most parts are wrong. But my point was that these guys only speak because they want other people to think they are smart. Now, I personally think I am pretty smart...in some ways. But I realize that I look like a complete jackass when I try to one-up people in class, so I refrain. Plus, we all want to get out of class earlier and the less you talk the shorter class may be.

I think I'll end with this... Christians. When we study various societies in history we come to understand that religion has been a tool of the elite. Like political theorists, they are part correct and mostly not. But especially when Christians do the kinds of things that the church today sees as important, they are undermining what God and his little buddy Jesus actually wanted. It is my belief that the Christian church is itself subverting the gospel of Jesus, which one would think would be the most important thing to them, for their own worldly gain.

I'm done. Have a good lent as I'm sure I will. I wonder if all of this lack of complaining is going to actually change the chemistry in my brain and I will forever be an optimist after this season of lent. Maybe it will be like a godly prozac.

ranting is good

2007-11-30T20:04:00.001-08:00

I’m currently reading A Legacy of Ashes by Tom Weiner. He is talking about the history of the CIA in a novel like format – similar to how Bob Woodward write his books. In reading I was observing that the CIA, especially in its early years, would pay lots of money for “intelligence” that almost always turned out to be false. Based on that information the Director of Intelligence (and sometimes the President) would approve operations that ended up in a bunch of American CIA operatives getting killed. What was happening was that the Director was getting a bunch of wrong information and jumping to conclusions.

I was watching the news today about Hilary Clinton’s office in Rochester, NH getting held up by a guy with a bomb. First, the guy was a well-known local who had a history of mental problems. There were also a bunch of hostages. Then, there only three hostages and the all got out. Then there was one hostage left and the bomb guy was some kid’s step dad who has been drunk for 72 hours. Through the whole thing there would be three different news faces telling three different things that didn’t end up being the truth at all. That’s a very brief description of how the facts of the thing developed, but while I was watching it and noticing these changes I realized that the conclusions I had been led to only 10 minutes before were not right at all. Fortunately this was an example where the crisis was resolved in only a few hours. But when things go on and on for days or months, how much can we really believe what the news tells us. Well, we all know that we can’t really. But this is what we get and that’s fucked up.

MEDICARE – The political right uses the high cost of Medicare to explain why national healthcare is a bad idea. Government run stuff is inefficient. Lots of the pricing for Medicare benefits were based on 1980s market prices – so we still pay that much. Then, the issue is spun to make it look like people opposed to it are trying to “cut Medicare spending” so Democrats stay away from it, republicans alike. But at the same time the Republicans are the ones who want to cut costs. It is estimated that because of this pricing the government overpays for about 80 percent of Medicare recipients stuff. So the problem is not necessarily that government run Medicare is inefficient in its operation, but that it is priced so that it is inflated and looks like an inefficient program. It’s actually all really confusing and I didn’t to its complexity justice at all. But the point is that you should not believe a damn thing you hear. NOTHING!!

the gospel

2007-11-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

Joshua sat with his friends outside of the church on a day like any other. Enough clouds dotted the sky to block the sun every now and then. The wind seemed colder than normal this time of year but had a refreshing scent to it. They had been through a lot recently. To relax like this was a nice break from the previous weeks. There were unanswered questions and a lot of concern about what their future would be. By now, Joshua knew that his time with his friends would soon come to an end. There are some things that you just do not say to anyone, indiscriminately. But enough was enough, and each of the men felt that he would be denying what was truly important if he did not take extraordinary measures in order to do what he knew was right.
The church they had been going to recently used to be a place where all were welcome. It became a place that they would go just to hang out. They could always find a good conversation, whether between themselves or with strangers. Joshua saw men coming in to give their offering. They would kneel, light a candle, say a prayer, kiss their coins, and drop them in the box. A homeless lady, who had developed a reputation of being beyond help, came in to do what these men were doing. She simply walked up to the offering box and dropped her coins.
Joshua pointed out to his friends what a show these men make about giving when they know full well that they have plenty to spare. This woman, however, was giving all she had. She may have been expecting to get something out of it, some magical gift from above that would get her through the rest of the month, but in reality she had just given up. She saw no need to hold on to these things if she had nothing to look forward to. The church does good things for the community, why not give back – that was her thinking.
Joshua began to rant. “I don’t know why they think this building is so important. You know that some day this will be nothing but a pile of rocks. I bet God would want it that way too. Do you really think that the money these men give means anything other than supporting the maintenance of a place they can go to show how holy they are?”
His friends had been with him for long enough to know that Joshua was God. They clung to every word he spoke, and just like the mysterious god they grew up knowing, they assumed that everything he said had some hidden meaning to it. They began to ask him when the church would no longer be important.
“You’ll see. There will be signs.” He listed several things that would happen upon the irrelevance of the church, things that would be sure to point to the fact that the church as they knew it was already meaningless. “You know what I have taught you is just and good. You know that this world looks on the things we believe and views them as blasphemy because they contradict the institutions that have become acceptable to these evil men. And I will add to that, that because of what you know to be truth, you will be hated; because of me you will suffer.”

my funny town

2007-10-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

I serve this town called Scotts Valley. Unfortunately I don't live in the town because it's too expensive. I live in a small town down the road from it. But I feel a wierd sort of "calling" to be part of the town. It could be that I've just been part of it for so long and gotten to know so many families that I can't help but be part of it, but then there's this part of me that loves the town. I know that's kind of wierd, and it's hard to explain...it's just how it is.

Anyways. Over a year ago I started hanging out with a couple of Latino kids. They live in this particular apartment complex. As I started meeting other poor minorities in the community I noticed that they all lived in the same place. Unfortunately I rarely run into those kids anymore.

I was talking to a kid from the skatepark the other day that is a mexican kid. I asked if he lived in this same apartment complex. He does. Then I asked if he knows how I knew that he lives there. He guessed it..."because I'm mexican?" EXACTLY!! We had a good laugh about it. But now I'm trying to figure out if this is some sort of injustice (like segregation through low income housing measures) or if it's good that they can afford housing around this area.

This town is a place with lots of hurt. Parents who have no time for their kids or didn't even want their kids in the first place so don't know what to do with them, along with the fact that it's an affluent area so everyone buys into the magazine culture...girls - I should try to achieve this impossible image... boys - so...why is it wrong to objectify women?

To top it off, there's a whole section of the community that's tucked away in a little corner and forgotten about. Did I mention that they conveniently located this apartment complex right next to the police station?

A reflection on ministry...advice welcome

2007-10-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had our first WyldLife Club. As you may know, this is the ministry I work with. Basically, we hang out with middle school kids. It's pretty fun.

I was at this place this last week where the only thing I knew to do was literally get on my knees and pray. I'm the type of person that has a tendency to worry about other people than myself. I don't mean that in a toot-my-own-horn sort of way but as a curse. My situation in life is such that I get to spend lots of time observing these kids in a way that most people don't get to see. For their teachers they are always trying to not get in trouble. For their parents, they are always trying to be who their parents want them to be. For their friends, they are trying to be something that they aren't. With me, in the various ways that I hang out with them, I get to see all of these different aspects, then see what's really going on with them. I don't know why, but kids (and adults sometimes) let me see sides to them that most other people probably don't get to see.

I call it a curse because I can't help but to take the weight of their problems and think about it and lament about it. It wears me out sometimes.

One of my favorite things is to provide an atmosphere where kids can get away from all that bull shit and just be kids. Care-free, happy, relaxed, and loved. Tonight was a good night in that way.

We're only having 'club' once a month, so we are making program pretty intense. The leaders did a great job at keeping things going and interesting so that the kids could just sit back and enjoy. I was excited about that. It was awesome to see them take control and do the best they could.

The most important thing in all of this for me is relationships - with God as the center. Though the kids don't necessarily know that God is in on these relationships.

At the end of each night we give a talk. This year, since we only have nine clubs I'm going to give all of the talks. Another reason is that I'm developing (with the help of my pastor) a new way of presenting the Gospel than the traditional 'look at Jesus. He did cool things...crazy things. You should like Jesus. Now, you are a sinner. You ruined your relationship with God. For that you are supposed to die. Well, remember that Jesus guys? He built a bridge in the form of a cross so that you can hang out with God again.'

Though it may be true, I think it's fucked that that's how we let kids know the story of God and his pursuit of us. It misses a bunch of stuff. It shows them something they should be ashamed of...it doesn't give them something that they might want to be a part of. Whether they know/feel it or not, kids are alienated and only live in the sins of their parents and our society. The last thing they need is to be ashamed of one more thing. They need to belong in a world where they don't currently belong.

I started tonight with creation. in a nutshell, I dismissed the importance of the 7 day creation and other shit we're taught and focused on why the story was told in the first place. One thing I focused on was that his first commandmen, as such, was "take it all!" NOT "don't eat from that tree". I also made sure that I communicated was that God put us here so that we could be his little helpers on earth. So that we could be in community with him. And that when we were created he said that we are VERY GOOD, not just good like everything else...VERY GOOD. Why? Because we are the keystone. He has entrusted us with the rest of his creation...to take it all freely and enjoy it. With that, I focused on "freely". The idea that we have absolute freedom to do what we want.

Next week I'm going to reiterate all of that a bit and focus a little more on the fun stuff. This week was basically "what life is supposed to be like". Next week is that, but with a little bit of "what life really is."

If you have any pointers they are appreciated. I want to try to find some themes like love, trust, community, and so on to tie back into the story later in the year. Any suggestions?

Rob Attack!

2007-09-20T05:44:00.000-07:00

So, I just read in the paper that Santa Cruz County has a Superior Court judge named Robert Atack. I'm going to go ahead and make the assumption that it's pronounced 'uh-tack'. Like, "I was walking in the forest and got attacked by killer bees with ninja swords and fire."

Two things about this. First, that's a pretty intimidating name for a judge to have.

Second, that's a pretty kick ass name for ANYONE to have!

If that were my name, I'd take full advantage of all benefits that go along with it.

If I had a million dollars...

2007-09-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

I asked one of my roommates the other day if he thought, that if I were to fly a plane from Las Vegas to Reno but got lost somewhere along the way, a search effort would begin, then after a few days the officials would say that they were going to expand the search for nearly two weeks. This obviously was in response to Steve Fosset's rescue effort. My assumption was that the only reason anyone gives a rip is because he's rich. Apparently there have been numerous planes that haven't made that trip but only now are being dicovered. "Teams have discovered nearly one uncharted wreck a day since the intensive search began" -AP. So, in looking back on my question... no, they wouldn't spend an ass load of money on a search effort to find me. I could make a point here if I wanted to, but I'll let this one go.

In the cards

2007-08-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'm going to make a prediction and see how it turns out. I've had a lot of time on my hands lately. It's quite a long-term calculation, so it might be few years until the results show themselves...about 5 years to be exact, for the full thing to take place.

Start
Close to the 2008 presidential elections (somewhere between July and September), a bubble that will have been forming in the stock market will burst, sending the economy into a bit of a decline. The Bush administration, having redeemed itself a bit, in terms of economics, will pour a bunch of money into subsidies in order to keep things afloat. Because of this decline, a highly undecided population will completely lose faith in Republicans and elect a Democrat as their president. That president will be faced with the challenge of getting the market back to a natural pace, thus not needing subsidies. This will take a while. In the meantime, whatever new plans of socialization and reform that the new president ran his campaign on will have gone down the drain because of our tax dollars being used to boost the economy. The public will forget about the fact that the economic trouble began under the previous president, only focussing on the fact that this president couldn't bring us out of it and make good on his campaign promises, and consider his election a mistake and he will only serve one term.
End

We'll get a good feel for how on I am in 2008...this should be fun. Stay tuned!

Time for some news... A break from Cuba

2007-08-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'll get back to posting about my trip to Cuba sometime soon. I've been getting caught up on society in the last 10 days since I got back from my month long time away. So...

The US along with British officials is fining British Airways for price-gouging. 121mPounds by the UK and $300mil from the US. These fines are going to accompany a class-action lawsuit that will be filed by millions of British customers. Apparently Virgin and BA colluded on this deal but Virgin pulled out and tattled on BA which is what led to this whole thing. The main thing was over how much they were making the customers make-up for the rising cost of oil...and here it is...is it at all possible that US oil companies might be doing the same thing? Of course it's possible, but would the US ever fine its own bread and butter?

The British military released a study that it conducted on the effects of mental trauma on its veterans of the most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The results show that there is severe effects seen in family breakdowns, alcholism, and mental health problems. Isn't that amazing...somehow the British can manage to admit that war scars people but we, with many many more fucked up soldiers returning home are offering little assistance oreven recognizing the fact that they are indeed messed up. Oh, I know...US wars are about justice...wars like that don't mess people up. DENY DENY DENY. That's they way of our government...until of course enough evidence builds and then they slowly investigate.

Only weeks before Congress goes on a small break, they pass a bill that allows warrantless wire tapping and monitoring of international phone calls and emails. I just made a friend in Cuba who i've been keeping touch with...there's part of me that wants to say some shit that gets those fuckers knocking on my door.

Now, speaking of Congress going on a break. How many people do you know that get to take a month off of work without a huge blow to their pocketbook? I certainly don't know many. With that said, until Congress starts making conditions so that the people they represent get at least a month off without fear of financial ruin, I better see some town hall meetings going on every damn night while those assholes aren't doing their job in Washington.

One last good one...Since the beginning of the war the US military has lost at least 190,000 weapons and more than half of the supplies that were supposed to go the training the Iraqi military since they began their war in 2003. During this time they were saying that the sudden increase in armed insurgents must be because Iran is funding them. Now, I'm not saying that Iran is innocent but I have a funny feeling that we may have been paying to have our own soldiers shot at. Isn't that fun!

Tales of a Commie (Part 2) - Havana round 1

2007-08-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

I fell asleep on the plane but woke up just in time to see us approaching Cuba from the Gulf of Mexico. I saw a small bit of shoreline before it was completely engulfed by costal fog. It reminded me of Santa Cruz. As we were coming in for the landing I felt less safe than I normally feel on airplanes. As far as I can guess this comes from my understanding of Cuba up to this point as a 3rd world country whose technology is not as good as in my country. The way the air-conditioning on the plane spewed out steam didn’t help with my lack of faith in the Cubana airplane. I realized that I was going to need to drop my previous notions of Cuba in order to fully experience it – that I couldn’t learn with whatever blinders I may have had on prior to this.
We landed in Havana sometime in the late morning. At this point I’m thoroughly excited because this is where my learning begins not to mention the fact that after all the sleepless nights and work we’ve done, the thought of getting to step foot on Cuban soil (officially breaking the blockade) was finally becoming a reality. I’m a staying at a church in a working class neighborhood of Havana with people from our group that are mostly in their upper 40’s or older. There are only two other guys that are close to my age. The reason I chose this place is because I figured I could observe downtown Havana any time I wanted by taking a cab there, so staying in the place close to downtown didn’t make much sense. A neighborhood like this I could only observe if I was staying in it…it’s definitely not one of the tourist areas.
On the way in to Havana from the airport I was expecting conditions to be like most of what I’ve seen in Mexico. Nothing was as I expected it. The scenery was amazing…I had never seen a tropical place before. But there was so much more. All around I see power lines and power sub-stations nearly identical to the ones we have in the US. This place isn’t traditional 3rd world. It’s developed (from a physical standpoint) to the best of its ability, which isn’t far off from most of the US. One major difference is the buildings. All of the buildings are old looking. Most of them look pretty dilapidated but in that, they aren’t gross like the housing projects in US inner cities. They maintain a certain respectability that I can’t really explain with words. I think it’s because they weren’t dumps…instead of being run-down they were just quaint. From the condition of everything, it made me wonder what it would be like if they were able to have enough money to keep everything fixed up. Is that one of their values or would they prefer to spend their time doing more meaningful things as long as the basic purpose of the buildings (waterproof shelter) was being fulfilled?
After dinner at Luyano (the church I’m staying at) I had a chance to look around the neighborhood before we left for our first cultural event. On almost every doorstep family members were hanging out with each other and their neighbors. In the middle of the streets groups of kids were playing soccer or rolling down the hills on makeshift skateboards. The older people mostly just hang out in their doorways, but the younger people, both kids and adults, will wave or say something in Spanish that sounds like a kind greeting. On the way to the William Carey Baptist Church for our first ‘cultural event’ I noticed that the whole city was full of people just hanging out and playing. The only hostility I sense is in the drivers – there’s a lot of honking, which I would later find out is how they drive courteously…they honk when passing people or entering certain types of intersections to let people know they’re there…that way they don’t wreck. All over the place there were people on bicycles. Most of them had more than one person though. On one, there was a mom with a kid in her lap who was sitting in front of the dad who was peddling.
The William Carey Center is another one of the churches that people from our group are staying at. It’s only two blocks from the main downtown tourist area. In their courtyard they had chairs and a stage set up that they pulled from their indoor sanctuary. The first act was some musical things – nothing all that great. The best part was the dancing. They are part of the best dance group in Cuba. They consisted of boys and girls anywhere from 10 to 18 who have obviously put a great deal of time practicing their dances to the point where they were perfect. The dancers were all perfectly in sync with each other. Just when we thought it was done every single one of the dancers came back out. They were all up and down the aisles and filling the stage. At first it was a very high-energy planned dance. Eventually it turned into more of an improv dance. Their body language and enthusiasm for the stuff they were doing is how I came to the conclusion that it was improv. There was a designated leader and what that person did the others followed…and they followed very well. When they finally left stage to their dressing room you could hear, over our rowdy applause, their own applause and excitement. The whole atmosphere was enough to make even a cynic like me damn near cry. This is the first time that it occurs to me that their culture transcends the material problems the people face. Their culture is so rich that the poverty they experience, in comparison to the wealth of Americans and other wealthy nations, is of very little importance. This is one of the first things to know in understanding Cuba. And here’s another thing…the training that these kids got in dance is free because their government wants to support the cultural arts.
The following morning is our tour of La Habana Vieja (Old Havana). This is one of the few areas of Havana that is in the process of restoring their old buildings for a prettier look. One thing that should be noted here is that when the buildings are restored the families who have lived in them still get to live there. It’s not like typical gentrification you see in the US. The tour guide gives us a brief history of the old garrisons that still occupy some of the city and history of the struggle from colonial times that the people of Cuba have come through to get to where they are today. There is a lot to see in Habana Vieja. Along every street there are locals who make themselves into photo-ops. Old women smoking cigars and dressed in extravagant clothing will let you take their picture for a few pesos. The people of the community still hang out and don’t seem to mind all of the tourists.
Later in the day we make a visit to the ‘120 year old club’. This is a group started by doctors who figured out a life style which they believe has the potential to keep them alive and healthy to at least 120 years of age. I personally wouldn’t want to live that long, but more power to ‘em for trying.
Instead of going back to Luyano I decide to stay in downtown Havana. For hours I walk around looking at the shops and people. It is weird not being able to communicate with people. Even though there are hundreds of people around me there’s a weird sense of loneliness in it. At one point a Cuban from one store spoke English to me. That catches me off guard so I buy ice-cream from him.
A group of us decide to walk to a hotel where there is a restaurant and bar on the roof with live music. It’s about a 5k walk through very urban feeling neighborhoods. It was a change of scenery to see real Havana locals hanging out in their own bars, not the tourist ones. On one corner there is a group of men surrounding a table in the middle of the street where they’re playing dominoes under a streetlamp. When we get to the hotel there is a guy making sure that no Cubans are coming in…it’s a law that unless working at tourist hotels, Cubans aren’t allowed in. My first reaction is that it isn’t all that nice that the people don’t get to go into the nicer places in their neighborhoods, but then again, I don’t go to hotels in my town. Later on I ask someone about that law. When tourism was pretty new to Cuba men from foreign countries would come over to Cuba and bring young Cubans up to their rooms to have their way with them. The Cuban government began pressing charges against these tourists, which didn’t go over too well with those folks countries of origin. Eventually this law was passed as a protective measure for the Cuban people. This is another thing to understand about Cuban society… most of the laws they pass are protective…not like the US where we need to pass a law for every little thing all the way down to how tinted your windows on your car can be.
On the way back to Luyano, Dan (one of the IFCO staff people my age) and I shared a cab. Dan speaks pretty fluent Spanish but since Luyano isn’t in Havana proper the driver doesn’t know where it is. He takes us a long way around before he gets close and stops to ask for directions. At this point I think that the place we’re staying is pretty run down. But then he drives us through a part of town that is really poor looking. All of the roads off of the main street didn’t have streetlamps. They didn’t even looked like they were paved all that well. Even without that though the people were still hanging out with each other. It’s about 11 at night and kids are still playing hopscotch and the adults are all playing dominoes or talking. At about midnight and a half I’m still sitting outside with some of the folks I’m staying with. All over you hear loud music and entire families still awake, just hanging out. Now I’m wondering why the kids don’t have bedtimes and why no one seems to work during the day.

Tales of a Commie (Part 1) - Getting to Cuba

2007-08-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

This is the first installment of what I believe will be 5 describing my trip to Cuba. I've decided to write it this way because I want to make you really work to find out what I did in Cuba...since we can't really have a conversation in person in which I would be really vague, I'm just going to make you read a whole bunch. For some reason this part is mostly in present tense...i don't really know what's up with that. Enjoy!

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On 14 July 2007 I landed in McAllen, TX to begin my mission to Cuba. The group I’m with is called IFCO/Pastors for Peace (Pastors). They are a group that has been involved in promoting various types of solidarity work since the late 1960’s – from foreign work in Latin America to domestic groups in African American movements. At this point all I know of Pastors is that, despite the name, they are not necessarily a Christian organization. They operate on more of a Unitarian mentality, akin to many groups who claim to follow liberation theology. I’m interested to see what type of people I run into. Everyone on the caravan is there because they want to have a part in ending the US blockade against Cuba, and in my experience these types are very anti-American to the point that they blinded by hate from seeing the injustice on the other side of whatever cause they might be serving.
I have two goals for this trip. Primarily I want to learn as much as I can about Cuba in a way that is fair to the truths presented on both the pro and anti-Castro sides of the debate. As with most parts of my life I’m also very interested in meeting the people that I’m on the caravan with learning their stories – why they are involved in this work and where they come from in life.
Our time in Texas had two main purposes. We had to pack, mark, and manifest the aid we were taking into the vehicles that would take us to the Gulf of Mexico as well as learn the basics of what we were going to experience in Cuba and crossing both into Mexico and back into the states in direct violation of the US government. They leadership told war-stories of things that had happened in past year – times when they went on hunger strikes and were beaten by the border officials. Most importantly was that we were to be non-violent and stubborn in any attempt the officials made to pry unnecessary information from us. The worst-case scenario is that they will try to take all of the aid from us and prevent us from being able to take it to Cuba.
In order to save time and space I’ll skip the specifics about the days in McAllen. All that’s really important is that on zero hours of sleep I and busy packing buses and trucks, typing up manifests and translating them into Spanish (I don’t speak Spanish so that was fun), and doing at least one security shift at night from 2 to 4 in the morning. The purpose for security I will take the time to explain. There are two groups out there who will go to great lengths to sabotage the work we are getting ready to do. The first is a group of Cuban people who don’t live in Cuba (they mainly live in Florida/Miami) and are absolutely militant about not supporting the Castro government(1) . The second is the US government. Our fear is that one or both of these groups will attack the credibility of Pastors by planting drugs on our vehicles, so when we cross the border we will get negative press coverage. There’s also the fear of theft, but that isn’t as big of a threat as the former.
On my night shifts doing security there were a lot of cars with darkly tinted windows that would drive by very slowly, numerous times, often times changing the license plates between Mexican plates, Texas plates, and government plates. What were they really going to do? My guess is that it was really only meant as intimidation. The morning before we left they had been circling all night. We were keeping the time we left a secret, even to the people on the caravan, because one year they put up roadblocks so our vehicles couldn’t leave the ‘compound’.
At 4 in the morning we started waking everyone up. On the outside it looked like everything was normal. On the inside though the people were busy getting their stuff ready to rush out to the buses so the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) people wouldn’t try to stop us from leaving. At about 6 a.m. the exodus began. As I stood guard at one of the gates the people made their way to the buses. The buses started, we opened the gates, I boarded one of the buses and off we went to the border. All of the agents that had been patrolling gave us a nice little escort all the way through town to the border. When we got there, there were border patrol cars, lights flashing, blocking the road in order to direct us into a special inspection station. They did very little. We had to get off our buses and they scanned the buses with this giant x-ray machine they have. This is where they took our computers.
When they took the computers off our bus, they did the same thing they did a few weeks prior on the Canadian border when part of our caravan was bringing medical supplies across the border. They said that they would be held for no longer than 30 days in order to determine if they were duel use computers, meaning that they could be used for military purposes. The only resistance I heard about was a smart-ass comment made by the leader of the whole thing, Lucius Walker. A DHS officer asked if he could get a picture with Lucius to show his family and he replied, ‘why don’t you show them a picture of you taking our computers.’ Although that was a funny reply, our lack of resistance led me to question the purpose of our taking all this aid across(2).
The next part was getting through Mexican customs. They too had us pull into a special station. They then told us to take everything off the buses and out of the trucks. We declined their offer. We unloaded about 20 items from each truck so they could compare our manifests. They were told that if they wanted it all unloaded they would have to do it themselves, which naturally made them go by our rules. The communication of the Mexican officials was terrible. We (all 120+ of us) ended up waking back and forth across their whole border place several times before they figured out what the hell they were doing. We were having a problem getting visas for vehicles. Especially a bus that didn’t have a VIN number on it. This bus was packed full with aid. We were just about to get the bus when one of our drivers wrecked into a roof section of an area they told us we had to pull all of our vehicles into. The roof was too short but everyone seemed to have overlooked that.
We got to the border at 7 that morning. The main group left at about noon or 1. A handful of us stayed behind to do whatever was going to have to be done with the bus. On my end of things this was a great opportunity to hang out with some of the best people on the caravan. Eventually we were able to get one of our passenger buses to come and we proceeded to load all of the aid from the condemned bus onto that one. We left the border at midnight that day. We had to be up at 4 the next morning to begin our drive to the Gulf, and the group of us that stayed behind still had to eat and shower. I slept about 2 hours that night at our hotel in Reynosa, Mexico.
In the morning we had to re-pack everything in order fit all of the people and all of the aid in light of the fact that we had a full bus less space than we did the day before. Before all of this took place though a lady came up and offered to buy me a cup of coffee and breakfast at the 7-11. She ended up being one of my favorite people ever. Her name is Diane. She has been at this protest business for a long time. As an example how involved she is, she was invited to Loretta Scott King’s funeral. She has a condition similar to MS. About 90% of her muscle is deteriorating but that doesn’t stop her from going out there and getting arrested and telling the government what she thinks. I can’t really say what it is, but there is just something about her that makes her one of the most pleasant people I’ve ever met.
Back to the re-packing… Just as we got the plan together and began pulling all of the stuff off to re-pack, the sky bursts open dumping flood-worthy amounts of water on us. Despite that we continued to pack. Some people were complaining, but those were the people who complained about most everything. I guess they don’t understand that this trip isn’t a vacation. Finally we began making our way to Tampico, Mexico. We arrived close to midnight and unloaded all of the aid onto containers that would be put onto barges. That night we were to stay at a hotel that would have showers, breakfast, and a pool. The last group of us got the hotel at about 4 in the morning. We had to leave at 6 in order to catch our plane at 7:30 that morning. Most of us didn’t sleep. We swam, ate, and showered then got on the buses to the airport.

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1. Before the revolution most of the bigger industries of Cuba were owned by rich American individuals and corporations. Agriculture being the best example. On these massive farms Cubans were employed for very poor wages and kept in plantation style accommodations while the landowners realized huge profits. Most of these plantations were run by Cubans who were paid a lot by the Americans to keep the workers under control. When Castro assumed power he set out to redistribute the property. He gave much of the property to the workers who had been exploited for so many years. It was theirs to own and maintain for generations to come. The Cubans who had once enslaved their own people sought exile in the US. Here they tried to get their property back. The new Cuban government said that they would give them their property but only a portion that they could farm on their own. They weren’t about to let the people be subject to those conditions again and they were also concerned that too much useable land my go un-farmed. To this day those once rich anti-revolutionary Cubans wage a war to end the Castro government.

2. I’ve written a letter to IFCO saying that I think the trip needs to be more aggressive, not in terms of violence but in our active resistance, if we’re going to make any progress. I may post the letter some time.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2007-08-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

So, here I am in Denver, CO. Why is it, that in the middle of the country the people who run the hostel I'm staying at are creepy-ass Slavic folks? If I don't survive the night...Mike, you can have my useful things, and Jon, you can have my worthless things.

The past month seems like a blur. It began on July 4th when I left on a trip with 7 high school guys on a skate trip/camp to Oregon. I must add that this was a great 10 days. We drove home on July 13th arriving about midnight then I did my laundry and caught a plane to Texas where I didn't get more than about 2 hours of consecutive sleep for the next 7 days. I logged it somewhere, but off the top of my head, I think the hours of sleep I got from July 13th - 19th was in the low 20s.

I had a brief stay in Texas as posted before, and am now going to cry myself to sleep in creepy-as-fuck Denver hostel after a 20 hour ride on a more-than-usually uncomfortable bus.

But, on the train ride home I'll be typing up my thoughts on Cuba. No guarantee as to when that will be posted, but hopefully it wont suck. I learned a lot when I was there about both Cuba, the US, and the world in general. A few beliefs that I've carried with me over the years became more solidified and some less. It should be fun. Most importantly, I can't wait to sleep in my own warm comfortable bed.

A report from the Fair Mother City

2007-07-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

So, here I am. A place I never really thought I'd be. The one and only Abilene, TX! Compared to the other parts of Texas I've seen over the last few weeks, this place is...well, fair. I'm hanging out with Agent B and friends enjoying the sights and winding down from my most recent adventure.

We crossed back into Texas from Cuba (by way of Mexico) on July 28th without incident unfortunately. As some of you may have read on Mike's blog we had the computers that we had with us seized when we crossed into Mexico. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had to make sure that they weren't duel use computers - meaning that they needed to determine whether or not they could possibly be used to assist the Cuban military in a violent assault on the peaceful people of the wonderful US of A. Hopefully you caught the sarcasm. DHS had been patrolling our 'basecamp' in McAllen for a number of days before we crossed into Mexico, so they had to get something out of all the work they put in, making sure that our support to a 'terrorist state' didn't go unpunished.

Now, more than ever I am absolutely sick of the American Empire. Hopefully I'll be able to get some quality writing time in on the train ride home over the next few days, so I can share with you all my experience and the experience of the Cuban people.

For now, from the Fair Mother City I wish you all well. (although I'm currently in the company of one third of my viewers so, mike and james, that's for you) BUH BYE!!

Viva Solidarity!

2007-07-15T16:40:00.001-07:00

So, I'm in McAllen, TX right now preparing to go to Cuba with Pastors for Peace. I've been here for two full days now. Meeting all the people and observing how a group this large interacts has been an adventure in itself so far. It seems that most of these liberal folks that I'm with are pretty laid back. They don't want to push anything on anyone else so most comments are passed off as merely suggestions. The most closed minded of the folks seem to be the younger ones. It's pretty damn funny to watch.

Anyways my whole point in writing is to say that we're going to leave here early Tuesday morning to cross into Mexico. This is the part where the caravan has been stopped in the past - computers seized, buses held, breast pumps confiscated, etc. Part of our group from Canada had a bunch of stuff held at customs when they were crossing into the US a week and a half ago. Events like that and the events of the past suggest that there is always the possibility of being hassled at the border. If in fact we do get hassled and it lasts long enough for the press to get wind of it, it would be great if you all (all four of you who read my blog) would be watching for it on various newsfeeds, and give your congressional representatives a call and say, "listen up fucker! I've got a friend down there and you better call someone and let that aid get to Cuba." I'll let you all know how it goes in a week or so.

a mind dump before I leave

2007-07-03T23:28:00.001-07:00

As far as I know this will be the last post I will have for quite some time. Tomorrow morning I accompany a group of seven high schools tudents on a four day skate trip in Oregon followed by a week-long Young Life camp before I head off to Cuba for a few weeks. There’s something about the pressure of making sure I have everything ready for so many people to have a great week that I thoroughly enjoy. I almost thrive on moments like this. As my night was winding down I was driving along with this weird feeling. I didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t anxious, sad, happy, angry, desperate, or any of those common emotions one might expect when taking on such and endeavor. I called up a friend to let him know about a speaking position he might want to fill. He was happy that I thought of him, then asked if he could pray for me. I pulled over to the side of the road and over the phone he prayed for the kids and me and all that fun stuff. The weirdest thing happened…this odd moist sensation began to develop around my eyes. Suddenly there was this strange trickle of salty water hitting my lips. I finally was able to put my finger on what this indescribable emotion that was pestering me was…JOY. I’ll leave the explanation for it alone.

What this led me to was thinking about what a great responsibility I have ahead of me. I have to be the single adult in charge of these kids for four days until I get to the camp…not a big deal. Once I’m at camp I get a little relief but still the task of making sure the kids come away from the camp week, having experienced God (whether they know it or not), is now on my mind. At Young Life camps, they follow the traditional approach to teaching the gospel - Look at Jesus, this super cool guy…ooh isn’t he awesome, well lets find out what makes him even cooler…first the bad news, you’re going to hell for being a sinner…now that that’s over with, feel bad that it’s you that made him die on the cross…ok, now that you are emotionally broken, he rose from the dead in order that you may have life...don’t know what the hell that means but just trust us, you’re life is gonna be great if you follow our ways.

THIS DRIVES ME UP A FUCKIN WALL!!!

I started thinking how I can balance being contrary to the way they are presenting the gospel but not so much that the kids don’t learn something from the camp or possibly come away as bitter as I am. What is it that I need to say and do in order to make sure the kids have learned about Jesus and God without showing complete animosity toward the way it’s being fed to them from up front? I tried to sleep then picked up a book that I’m reading…Emma Goldman’s autobiography. Right where I left off was where she began her first lecture tour. She began describing her first lecture…she got up and something grasped her…true emotion, true enthusiasm for the subject on which she was speaking. In her following few lectures she wasn’t able to harness that and wasn’t satisfied with not having spoken from her heart. What got her first audience so excited was, as she puts it, ‘strange and magic words that welled up from within me, from some unfamiliar depth.’

I want that. Whether they accept it or not, my job is to let these kids know about a god that they might want to be with, not some god that they feel sorry for. The things that I’m passionate about, involving God, are complex in practice but simple in theory. Most notably, community. Like Mike talked about. A community in which you have to face things/people that you may not like but somehow you enjoy every bit of it. A community where everyone is welcome – even sinners (not something Christians are very good at promoting). The God I believe in loves people. He accepts people. He is patient with people. He also makes it possible for people to know they’ve screwed up (not to be confused with wrath or punishment). People don’t have to know him in order for him to know them. My god probably gets pissed off from time to time. He might even wish bad things on us so that we might learn. But above all that, he loves them and tolerates them.

That’s what I’m enthusiastic about. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I often think that I worship a different god than most Christians. It’s going to take a lot for me to not be a cynical bastard (outwardly) with a lot of things that I encounter at this camp but I hope that if I can maintain the composure to stay focused on what I’m passionate about, I, and these kids, will have a great week. That’s it. Nothing too profound…mainly just a mind dump.

A Short History of Progress (book review)

2007-07-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

This is the first book that I've read all the way through in only a matter of days, in quite a while now. Ronald Wright, a Canadian novelist, essayist, and historian introduces his book with an explanation of a painting by Paul Gauguin, on which the words, 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we gong?' are painted. This is is the criteria for questioning that Wright follows in his assessment of failed civilizations over the span of human civilization. As he pulls from a large selection of anecdotal evidence, Wright paints a picture of the mistakes that civilizations have made over the last few millenia, from over farming to over production. One case he writes about is that of Easter Island, an island rich with forest that sustained a civilization for a good period of time. In the end, the people of the island became so greedy in their search for power and significance that they litterally cut down the last tree that they could have used in order make a canoe to get off the place because they were blinded by progress. Though there are funny stories like this strewn throughout the book, the overall tone is much more dim.

By the end of the book the feeling you get is that this is written as less of an informative history and more of a plea for change. He points out dangers such as the militarization of space, underproducing food for and overpopulated world, and echoes warnings of fellow writers (Huxley, Orwell, Coetzee, and Hoban) on globalization and complacency. In the final pages, Wright expresses his belief that the powers that be are simply ignoring what we are doing to the earth and the demise we are driving ourselves toward, on the hope that God will come fix at night what we've destroyed by day and goes on to say "none of this should surprise us after reading the flight recorders in the wreckage of crashed civilizations; our present behaviour is tyical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance." He wraps the book up by showing that the fallen civilizations of the ancient world were at the time a mere speckle of what the earth had to offer as far as people and nature goes; but this time, with growing interdependance and the massive amount of people at the mercy of few, civilization faces a much more brutal fate, with possibly no hope for recovery - that 'now is our last chance to get the future right.'

It's a quick read. If you have time and read fairly quick, it can easily be an evening read...132 pages.

Oprah's Vajayjay

2007-07-01T17:04:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's how you spell vajayjay. And here's what's going on with Oprah Winfrey's.

Bringing my two worlds together

2007-06-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

When the President Talks to God

When the President talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long
Does he ask to rape our women’s rights
And send poor farm kids off to die
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the President talks to God

When the President talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft.
Is he resolute all down the line
Is every issue black or white
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the President talks to God

When the President talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod
Agree which convicts should be killed
Where prisons should be built and filled
Which voter fraud must be concealed

When the President talks to Godv
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs, the ghetto’s broke
‘No, they’re lazy George, I say we don’t
Just give ‘em more liquor stores and dirty coke’
That’s what God recommends

When the President talks to God
Do they drink Near Beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved
I guess God just calls a spade a spade
When the President talks to God

When the President talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he’s not
That, that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the President talks to God

My coming trip...

2007-06-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

In my travels this summer I will be heading to Cuba among many other places. In Cuba I am hoping to take a lot of pictures as well as talk to the locals to get to know the culture better. I'm going to do a little write-up when I'm done and hope to provide a well rounded look into the political and cultural aspects of Cuba. There are alot of good things that many people don't know about Cuba that I'd like to bring to light. In hanging out with latin american activist folks I've observed that most of these people spend most of their time defending Castro as well as other leftist leaders in south and central america. I would agree that these leaders aren't as bad as most American people think but there are also things that these activist folks ignore. For example, why, if as they say, Cuba is such a great place and Castro isn't that bad, do people risk their lives getting to America. Also, I heard a story from some people who hired a kid to drive them around for a day when they were in Cuba and he was a little scared that he might get arrested if anyone knew that they hired him...because he's not an official taxi driver.

My question to you folks is this...if you were to interview people in Cuba, what would you want to find out more about? What questions would you ask people or what subjects would you discuss? I know a few things I'd like to learn but what about you. I need a little help here to be more creative in my interview(ings). Please point other people in the direction of this blog so that I can get as much feedback on the subject as possible before I head off. For now I'm going to Montana! Thanks!!

What's the matter with the kids today?

2007-06-04T22:35:00.001-07:00

Today I went to the college that I'll be attending for the next few years (San Jose State University) to take care of some business. I went into the Political Science department head's office to figure out what it is that I need to do to be successful in the program - maybe to get some advice on special things to do in order to make the most of the program. He was a pompous asshole. That was the first thing that made my excitement about going to school there dwindle.

Then I went to register for a writing test that I have to take in order to enroll in any of the upper division courses. The girl (my age) who was running the little office there kept using the word "HELLA". This is a word I don't like. I associate it with stuck up valley type people...you know, yuppies. It's something rich kids say. They say it before everything. For example, "Me and Marcy went to the mall today and had a HELLA fun time. We ate HELLA food at Baja Fresh and it was HELLA good dawg. We're gonna HELLA party HELLA hard this weekend at Jimmy's HELLA big house. It's gonna be HELLA tite!" Walking through the campus I heard that word in conversations. IT WAS HELLA STUPID!!

Then, I'm walking along and I see a guy walking toward me. He looked my age, seemed like a normal dude just from looking at him. As he got right next to me, he took one big step and off he went on his fucking Heelies...you know, those shoes with the wheel in the heel that send thousands of kids to the hospitals each month. Come on dude you in your twenties. That might be okay for a 6 year old but not for a college student!

A few months ago I was having a conversation with someone who graduated from that college. He encouraged me to get involved with student groups within my area of focus so I can get to know people and feel like I'm part of the community, that it may pay off some day when I need a job or some sort of connection. Judging from what I saw at the place today I'm pretty damn certain that getting to know people at that school wont do much good for me. There's a good chance that it might even lessen my chances of achieving some level of greatness. I'm still excited to be finally going to a 4 year university but I'm not looking forward to having to be around those people. Yes, because I think I am better than them!

A Few Thoughts

2007-05-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

1) I've been following this story for the past few weeks about a UN inspector who is inspecting holding facilities in the US for illegal immigrants. When I first read the story, my thought was, ‘it’s about time the US gets investigated for something.’ Now most of the investigations have taken place. A few however were cancelled at the last minute and no reason was given. The only one that was given a reason was a cancellation in TX in which the facility spokesman basically said that they were in the middle of a law suit with the ACLU and didn’t want any incrimination brought about that could aide the ACLU. The whole part about us denying a UN inspector and not wanting to incriminate ourselves reminds me of the 01/02 time-frame when Iraq kept denying UN weapons inspectors. Just one more example of how hypocritical our government is.

2) I once heard an explanation terrorists are basically created the same way gang members are -- poor people (young men) looking for dignity but get into situations they can’t get out of. I’ve always like this, but put some more thought into it today. Terrorism has 3 attributes according to international law: a) the threat or act of violence creating a climate of fear, b) targets civilians, and c) is based upon political, social, economic, or religious reasons. (With this definition, basically everyone who commits a crime is a terrorist, but our national and state laws also define certain crimes, so people aren’t tried as terrorists for everything…that’s not my point though.)

The obvious solution to the causes of terrorism as described above is to alleviate the conditions of poverty and such things that cause this behavior. My recent criticism of this theory is as follows… by targeting poverty as the cause of terrorism we might ignore many other issues. Governments for example…our government has had a history of terrorist activities based on the 3 criteria above. (Sure, we don’t ‘target’ civilians we call it collateral damage.) Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are made up of mostly middle-class educated people. At least one of the guys that hi-jacked the planes for the 9-11 thing had been in school in Germany as an example… not poor and ignorant like we want to assume.

So, as far as I can wrap my brain around it, the danger of focusing on the cause of terrorism being poverty, we might ignore our role in the whole situation and also ignore holding our government accountable for it’s actions. We are trying to ‘Americanize’ the entire world and people hate us for it. While doing this we are also taking part in terrorist type activities, holding ourselves to different standards, and further pissing people off. There was an even stronger point I had come up with but I seem to have forgotten it now. That sucks…it was a good one. Of course we should take some responsibility in alleviating world poverty, but not in the name of fighting terrorism. Our reason should just be, ‘because we can’

3) I’ve been reading the Old Testament because I never have and I don’t know many of the stories from it in depth. I want to examine a few things while reading it. When and why does God call for war? What things might be metaphor and not realistic? With that – why would it be important for certain things to not be seen as history but as symbolism? What notions do I have of God that might be wrong or at least not completely biblical or correct?

What I’ve found so far: Not only is Got a jealous god, but he is pretty damn forgetful too. A few times so far God is about to put his wrath on some people and someone says, “wait, what about your promises to us?” and God says, “Oh shit! You’re right, I almost screwed that up. Thanks man, here’s a treat.”

There’s more that I’ve learned, but that’s the most fun right now.

Mother's day

2007-05-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

I saw this sign on the way down the highway today. Kinda thought it was funny...ironic I suppose.

Mother's Day
I haven't sent any flower or cards to my mom for Mother's Day over the past few years. A couple of times I've gone over to her town and taken her out to dinner but I try not to go there too often. This year she's married and was going to be in an even shittier town celebrating mother's day with her new husband and some of his family so I stayed in Santa Cruz. I have this thing where I don't like to buy stuff for holidays. I hold firm in my belief that most holidays are simply there for companies to sell shit. They may not have always had that purpose but since holidays have turned into marketing devices I refuse to participate. I could have made a card and sent it to her, but even then I would be buying supplies in support of the holiday. I've gotten some flack because I choose not to do this. The main arguement is that it's not about me it's about her. I have to admit that it is a little selfish that I might be making her kind of sad in an attempt to hold to my own values but hopefully she will understand.

Time for a rant!

2007-05-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

In my frustration with the media coverage of the guy that crashed his truck in Oakland, CA I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper that got published this past Sunday*. I was actually kind of amazed that they published it because I accused them of libel.

This whole thing has made me even more frustrated with the world we live in. Seriously, I hate our world. Everybody falls into one of three categories: 1) Assholes who only look out for their own interests (CEO's, politicians, and religious leaders) 2) Giant pussies who are afraid to stand up for what is right and rely on other people to make decisions for them, or 3) people who do the best make their point only to be dissappointed at the end of the day knowing that their world is just one day closer to being a complete shit hole. Why can't option 3, the people that really care about the world, have as much media coverage as category 1? I'm no genius, but I'd bet that the number of people in the world who are willing to put aside religious issues and other such hang-ups in order to create a more peaceful and safe world (2 & 3), greatly out-number the folks who want power at any cost(1). But no-one hears us.

The media has special protection under the consitution because of the importance put on personal freedom. The media is protected in order for it to be able to provide information that you wouldn't normally get from your government...because the framers of the constitution understood, as much as all of us do, that governments lie...not just our government, but ALL governments. I don't know where I was first introduced to the following idea, but somewhere along the way someone said that 'the government and media can't tell you what to think, but they can tell you what to think about'.

When AP and all the papers across the country publish one man's criminal record, when it has nothing to do with any crime committed or foul play of any kind, what is it that they are not telling us. What drives them to publish sensational bullshit instead of real news? My answer: the media can't get any answers from the government so they've given up. Just like in the Rawanda deal in the 90's, the U.S. and the entire world community is being cautious about calling the problem in Darfur genocide. If they were to do that, then according to U.N. agreements, they'd have to intervene. They have not been able to come up with anything, so the press leaves it alone. It's not sexy enough to print.

I have a bit of a theory. It's not original, just my own take on it. The world is getting dumber (or is it 'more dumber'?...yes I'm funny). Look at the US. Because of TV and other forms of motion media, people don't need to read. We see this problem in our own schools. News papers and other print periodicals can provide a vast array of mainstream and underground knowledge that you can't get anywhere else. But with the growth in illiteracy, or at least proficient literacy, less people are reading these, they're going out of print, and we must rely on the electronic media. What happens is that whatever is shown on TV is all people know about, and the only news they get. Such as the lack of coverage on the battle of naming what is going on in Darfur. In the mid 20th century, Nepal was faced with a massive change in government. There were communists, socialists, royalists, and the list goes on of different parties who were trying to control the county. What it boiled down to was who had access to radio and TV to get their views across because the vast majority of the population was illiterate. Same thing as in Rawanda; the Hutu extremists made use of radio broadcasts to get the people up in arms to slaughter the Tutsi.

What I think this leads to is simple. Since electronic media is funded mainly by advertising, the public is more and more bombarded with ads. These ads tell little boys and girls what they can and can't be. They tell kids that they need to watch "the OC" because that's where they'll learn how to be cool. All of this is done for the sake of money. The marketing firms and corporations are just out to make another buck...and they're doing it at the expense of us, and more importantly our kids. Higher teen pregnancy rates, highers death rates, school shootings, drug use...on and on and on.

What can we do? NOT A DAMN THING!! But it feels good to try.

*text of my letter:
I feel a deep sympathy for this Mosqueda guy who crashed his truck in Oakland. He was well past the TSA standards for driving hazmat and posed no threat. The whole point of prison and recovery is re-integration into mainstream society so people can show reform and become productive citizens — just like Mosqueda has done with his 10 years of sobriety and having a job. But as the way of the media, there must be a scandal. If anyone should be scolded and their reputation tainted, it should be AP for reporting this libel and the Sentinel as well as every other paper for printing it. The reports could have been excitement that, amazingly, nobody got hurt. But that wouldn't accomplish their goal of keeping the fear level at "orange!"

I've had my one-in-a-milliion situation in ministry

2007-05-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

So, I gave a talk tonight. I'm never nervous about speaking in front of middle school kids because I do it often. Tonight however I was a little nervous. I gave my talk tonight on what this whole God/Jesus thing means to me. I started off by telling the kids that the've been dealt a crappy hand in life. That the world sucks. And that we went through the Jesus story to find a solution to our shitty world. I proceeded to tell them that at one point I stopped believing in God and eventually came back to faith because I re-discovered what God was.

Anyways...here's the fun part. After the talk, I was milling around and a kid grabbed me and struck up a converstation about my talk and how it interested him. How he is trying to figure out this whole God thing and he's not sure what to think, but what I said was intrigueing(spelling?). Then his friends came around and he stopped talking.

Every youth worker hopes at some point that a kid will engage them in conversation about God or whatever. It makes us feel like we're doing our job...even for me. I don't ever expect to "lead a kid to Christ" in the traditional sense, but I do enjoy a nice real conversation and l like to hear kids question things. All I want to do, is be there to help them think through things. This is probably the only time this will ever happen in the rest of my ministry career...and that's ok. James was the youth pastor at a church I went to in early high school. I wonder if I was that kid for him at all -- the one that he never thought he'd "reach" -- although i didn't really hang around him much. But I can imagine that if the NOW me was working with the THEN me, the NOW me would be pretty damn frustrated.

Anyways, tonight I as encouraged. That's nice for a change. I get verbal encouragement from people all the time, but this was a different type of encouragement.

My name is Thomas...or is it Judas?

2007-05-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering lately what my purpose in working with kids is. What does God have in store for me? It's funny that Mike posted his recent 'Marginalia' post about the same time that I'm wondering many of the same things as him. It could have something to do with the fact that we live in the same place, but I'm not going to entertain that idea...it would be too easy. Although it could be something in the water.

Anyways, at the youth group I work with, we just finished the story of Jesus right around Easter. Since then I've been having the leaders tell the kids -- in the weekly talk -- about what this whole God/Jesus thing means to them. They've been telling these warm fuzzy stories about feeling accepted by God and being able to turn to God when they couldn't turn to anyone else..blah blah blah. Can I vomit now? The reason I say that is because I've never felt that crap. My entire history of faith has for the most part been brief moments of clarity surrounded by an assload of doubt.

I suppose my job, my purpose, is to share Jesus with these kids. Two problems: 1) I don't even feel like I have a grasp on that stuff most of the time. What is it that they need to hear about Jesus? My pastor and I were having a discussion the other day, and he elaborated on it in his sermon this past Sunday. He made the comment that in the church we have a tendency to lay out the story of Jesus as if he is saving us from God. That God is punishing us for being so bad and Jesus came to repair that relationship so we don't die. This is the part of 'sharing Jesus' that really turns me off to it.

At these camps we go to, on the night the speaker is going to talk about sin, he always encourages us leaders to let the kids wrestle with the idea that they sin and can't have a relationship with God. As if they've driven him far away. Do the kids not already have enough to worry about and to be scared about? Their parents are splitting, they get beat up at school everyday, and the list goes on... How then do I share about Jesus? This leads to problem 2): I'm not good at having conversations about spirituallity...especially with kids. I think the main reason is that I want to be absolutely sure that I'm not trying to convince these kids of anything. This whole Christianity thing is a HUGE deal. It's something that i want them to CHOOSE, not be talked into. I want them to come to this choice (if they do) completely on their own...so it completely belongs to them. So they know exactly why they are making any decision in regards to Jesus.

Maybe that's my place. Maybe it's perfectly fine for me to be the doubter guy that lets them choose this stuff on their own. The only way that I feel like I can share the whole Jesus thing with them is through actions. Man that sounds cheesy! I consider myself a pacifist and try to take that to the extreme. Not only do I not physically want to impose myself anywhere, but ideologically I try to shy away from imposing my views. In any public setting, I will only engage in spiritual conversations if it is brought up by someone else or 100% appropriate (such as camp or church). It's about letting people come to their own conclusions on their own terms. I'm pretty sure that alot of other leaders and parents and other folks who work with kids, see the way I interact with the kids, and wonder if I'm actually doing my job. Apparently they think my job is to convert these kids: to make sure that they are perfect little Christians.

Unfortunately, I don't have any conclusion to this.

I might have a fun idea!

2007-04-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the Senate on C-Span right now. They are discussion medical insurance companies, drug makers, and how their relationships and competition makes drug prices cheaper for the American people. The arguement is whether or not to allow medicare to negotiate prices directly with drug companies or whether it's best to let private insurance companies negotiate their prices. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says that "competition works" so if we let medicare negotiate prices we will undermine the market by interfering with the natural competition of the medical market. John Kerry (D-Mass) says that by not allowing medicare to negotiate their own prices the tax payers are paying higher prices for drugs through a federal program. I have an opinion on the matter but it doesn't matter.

What I see in this, is a deeper arguement of whether or not America should create a universal medical insurance system or the private companies should continue to have the upper hand. Congress seems to be passing all sorts of legislation regarding healthcare that is beating around the bush on the issue of universal healthcare. So, what do the American peole think? I don't know what polls say. But I do know that behind any issue like this there is a massive amount of money going into lobbying our Congressfolks. Does a poll on this matter even have any leverage here? Probably not...I can't make a poll and get an accurate count of what people think, but someone with money can. And there lies the issue that brings me to my point. Our relationship with Congress is based on money. Whoever has the most money has the biggest voice (in most cases).

All of this leads me to this thought - How would it work if there were national issues attached to the presidential elections every four years that gave the people a voice. If a national election could be held, not to pass legislation, but to let Congress and the President know how we stand on issues. For example, the congress passed a non-binding resolution that told the President their stance on the war in Iraq. There would obviously have to be limits on something like this. Maybe that would look like a certain amount of issues (i.e. gay marriage, universal health care, limits on abortion). They would be the most pressing issue surrounding the presidential election. The problem would be figuring out who got to choose what went on this list. Would it be Congress? Would it be a committee set up? Would it be the cabinet with approval from the current President?

Sure, this comes out of my distrust of Congress. I think that too many representatives don't actually pay attention to what their constituency wants and only play attention to who donates the most money to them. I don't have any answers, but if anyone out there wants to put in their own two cents on the idea i've proposed, it would be appreciated.

I Finally Won Something!

2007-04-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

I had one of the most interesting experiences I’ve ever had tonight. About two months ago a professor of mine brought in some flyers for an essay contest to win a scholarship of $1000, toward a trip costing $1500, in which a group of people from across the nation bring medical, educational, and other types of humanitarian aide to the people of Cuba. The point of the trip is to protest the blockade that the U.S. has imposed against the Cuban people since the early 60’s. It’s required by federal law that anyone bringing aide to Cuba must acquire the proper permits to do so, which limit the amount of aide being taken to Cuba. We don’t apply for the permit and refuse to pay any fines that are then given to us.

So, tonight we had a dinner to celebrate community heroes who are active in Latin American affairs both abroad and domestically. I showed up to help set up and was eventually told that I was the winner of the essay contest. After a number of speeches I was introduced by Congressman Sam Farr. He read a little bit of my essay to the crowd then invited me up to accept the check and make a short speech…I wasn’t expecting to have to do this so I had to come up with something as I began to talk. I simply said that with all of the inspiring speeches made tonight I wasn’t going be able to say anything insightful, so thanked the 150+ people there for their support in the community and for helping people like me and the others like me to have the chance to stand up against the government and say in a voice of solidarity that their embargo is immoral a just plain wrong.

The Congressman praised my writing ability (something I generally don’t feel is too incredible). He was briefly heckled by the crowd to hire me on his staff… that was fun.

I was then invited to a little after party by the organization that put the contest on. These are all people in their 60’s to 80’s. We sat around until midnight discussing the various policies of our government and the different ways that they have worked to change things and how we could change things in the future. These people are very well connected people. People who know House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a first name basis. It was a new thing to sit around in a group of like-minded people discussing things that we all have a good amount of knowledge about. This one guy who has been involved with Cuba and Nicaragua and other Latin American countries was talking about his experiences in the 80’s in working with the Sandinistas and contra groups in Nicaragua trying to fight the coups the Reagan administration was supporting. Crazy stuff.

Listening to some of the stories these people told I became aware of how very few people can make a huge difference. Though I often have conversations with one of my roommates about direct action like protesting and marching do make a difference, I don’t always believe it. Tonight gave me a new way to look at this stuff. The fact that I was presented an award from a U.S. House representative (one of the richest I might add) made me realize that I was closer to the action, to making a difference, than I feel most of the time.

So, in July I’m going to Cuba! This is going to be a tiring trip but meaningful. I don’t get excited about much but I’m excited about this. The people who gave me the scholarship told me a few things they want me to look into while I’m there. They want me to break away from the group to investigate things like the hospital and prison systems so I can write about them and hopefully spread the message to the American people that our policy in Cuba is ridiculous. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to do that, but this whole thing is going to be fun!

Forty Days of Worthless!

2007-04-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Monday) marks the beginning of my anti-lent. If you want to know more about my anti-lent, scroll down to read my post about it. I decided to create a new blog for this endeavor because I want the students I work with to read the stories if they want, whereas this blog is for regular people. Also, I wanted to make it so my regular blog could just be completely separate to make things easier, since there will be so many posts. It's called 40 Days of Worthless. I've made a link to it underneath this blog title so you can easily access it. It's probably going to be a lot of fun, you should stop by and check it out.

Nastolgia

2007-04-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

I was driving home from the youth group that I lead tonight. I'm not sure what I was thinking about but completely zoned out. I finally came out of my daze and had no idea where I was but I knew that if I kept driving i'd end up somewhere I knew. I felt like I had been in my car for hours but it was really only about a minute or two. As I looked around it reminded me of the time when I went on tour with a band I was in. There were three of us in a van driving all over the western half of the U.S. We would drive all night so we could hang out the next day with other bands and then play our shows, get a free meal, hang out for a little more, then get on the road again.

There were a ton of times when I had been driving on some back ass country highway through New Mexico or Colorado and had no idea where I was. Sometimes we'd stop into a small town store that was open late at night and get looks from creepy locals who just happened to be hanging out in the store at 3 or 4 in the morning. This intense nastolgic feeling came over me. There's something I really enjoy about having no plan or idea of what's going on. So...

this summer I'm planning on going to Cuba on a humanitarian/protest trip. This whole zoning out nastolgia thing gave me a great idea. I come back in to Texas on July 28th. If time and money allows, I think I'm going to try to make my way back to California very slowly. It would be fun to just catch buses from city to city and stay in hostels nights that I'm not sleeping on a bus. There's something comforting about not having a plan or being bound to any time schedule. Plus, it will be a good way to take some pictures of fun things and meet interesting people. Maybe I'm looking for some sort of spiritual experience but I don't think that's it. There's those commercials from my childhood that had some messed up guy getting chased by a cop then an announcer says "Nobody says, 'I want to be a junky when I grow up'." I don't want to be a junky but I do wish I could be homeless and drunk most of the time. That would be way better than having a job and having to care about people. So minus the drunk part, i'm gonna try to live that as close as I can for about a week this summer...hopefully.

Done and done.

My Anti-Lent

2007-04-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

I think lent ends in a week. I'm not sure if l(L)ent is supposed to be capitalised or not, so I'm gonna go lower case just for consistancy's sake.

Once again I didn't give up anything for lent this year. Well I did give something up, but not specifically for lent. Anyways, I missed the beginning of lent and I didn't want to start late for some reason. But I was thinking about how an ex-girlfriend's dad did lent. He would give up hard liquor and beer. He liked wine, but was a wine snob so drinking enough wine to get drunk would cost him a lot of money...he was also (probably) an alchoholic. So he decided that he could drink brandy since it was made from grapes, just like wine, and would be in the clear. This is really the first I had ever heard of lent.

In my thinking about lent it occurred to me that most people I know who practice lent, don't spend the time that they would have been doing the particular thing they gave up, with God... which I think (though I'm no expert) is one of the points for modern lent observers. So I decided that I'm going to practice an anti-lent of sorts. That 'anti' isn't to be interpreted that I don't like or support lent. It's just to say that instead of not doing something I'm going to do something. After all, my god is a god of action and he probably wants me to follow suit. Although I will admit that this little exercise that I will embark on doesn't really get me closer to God in any way. Unless of course one of my gifts is writing and I am honing the skill for the betterment of his kingdom, but i doubt that's the case.

So...the Monday following Easter will be the beginning of my anti-lent. I will publish on my blog one short story per day. I tried to think of something meaningful to do on those 40 days, but I really couldn't come up with anything that wasn't super cheesy, so this is what you get. When the time rolls around I'll post the web address for the new blog that is dedicated to my stories.

Place your votes!!

2007-03-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

The 2008 elections are on there way and the candidates are beginning to campaign. When the candidates speak, it's important that they know what to and what not to do with their hands. Some candidates point with their index finger. Bill Clinton for example made the letter A in sign language then turned so the thumb was on top and would wave his hand on the left side, then the right side and settled in the center with the thumb point. Hitler had his entire right arm extended. That one's pretty much off limits to American candidates...same with the mustache.

So, here's the contest: Either pick a hand guesture that will be most popular regardless of candidate or if you're feeling really ambitious you can pick what candidate is prone to do which guesture.

Mine...Barak Obama will have the thumb and index signal. When he pounds on his podium he'll do so with his pointer and thumb extended over a fist. He wont point it directly at anything. It will often look like he's measuring something or in honor of Seinfeld, squishing someone's head.

Tickets to the gun show anyone?

2007-03-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

I know this is a little morbid that I would get a kick out of it, but rarely do I get episodes like the following.

I pulled up to the house where I lead a middle school youth group (WyldLife) tonight. I was fine tuning the talk I was to give and looked up for a moment of thought. Right then, a car that had just passed by jammed his brakes. As the tires half rolled and half skid, I saw a creature come out from under the right front tire. I know... it's sad.

So, the guy sits in his car for a second. Puts the car in reverse, backs up to where he had hit his brakes as if he could rewind time. He sits a little longer. Then he finally gets out of his car. He looks around to see if anyone saw what happened. He was probably hoping he could just get in his car and drive away. Then he spots me. He looks at me. I just shrug. By this time, the cat had run from under the car with an interesting sideways limp, like it just had it's ass skid accross by a car. The guys starts to go to where the cat is, then decides it's not worth his time. He starts to walk to the house on the other side of the street, then stops and turns back to his car. Then the cat ran across the road again toward the house he had started to walk to. Then he looked at me. I shrug. He stands there for a few seconds trying to figure out what to do. He looks at me. I shrug. Then he gets in his car and leaves.

During the whole thing, I just had a fun feeling that this whole thing was like a show for my enjoyment only. I know there's nothing fun about a cat getting run over...as my mom puts it, "Oh no, somebody's baby!"

Thanks God, thanks for that little bit of morbid joy.

When the wind blows, it spooks the horses!

2007-03-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

The subject line is the comment I made to my roommate yesterday. I went on to explain that 'the horses' are me. For some reason, when the wind blows I get all wierded out, don't want to leave the house, and I get anxious. And it's not because there are any trees that might fall on my house. I've been this way for as long as I can remember. Just thought I'd let you all know that fun little Rob fact (all 1 of you who read my blog). Thanks for your time, and good night!

F#@k the kids!

2007-03-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

The title here is just to get your attention. Post number two in a single day...wow, this is a record for me.

It's really exciting to see what's going on with kids today. On March 18th the NY Times reported about a student whose case has made it to the Supreme Court. The student was forced by a school administrator to take down a sign that that read BONG HITS FOR JESUS . The students case is an example of a violation of free speech. Another case is that of a California girl who, with the help of a SF law firm and the California ACLU, is filing a case against her school district because she has been held to dress code violations such as wearing knee high socks of Whinnie the Pooh and once being sent home for wearing a drug prevention shirt! My guess it was a DARE shirt and since it has the color red on it, was considered gang paraphernalia. Another example is of Zach Hunter who, as far as I know, was somewhat the inspiration behind the making of the recent documentary "Amazing Grace".

ADULTS!! Take notice of how effective kids can be...don't be lazy! Good job kids, good job!

Congress v. the People

2007-03-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post, I put link to make it easier for anyone who stumbles onto my blog to write a quick letter to their representatives in Congress voicing their opinion. Sometimes it feels like that's about all I can do, so it's a little comforting to write a little email and send it on its way. Rousseau write a lot about 'collective consciousness' (as do many western philosphers) an idea we base our representative democracy on...republic. We elect leaders who in theory vote the conscience of their constituency. I'm not sure if congresspeople have ever really voted based on what their district wants, but they sure don't seem to now. The more I pay attention to Congress i realize that our elected officials take the role of protectors...that meaning, they know what the people think they want, but it's up to the representative to choose what is actually best. Why? Because they are smarter or better educated? I don't know if it really matters. What matters is that our representatives need to represent the consciousness of the people.

Reading an article in the NY Times today, this becomes clear that there's a good chance we may not have full representation of our beliefs from our Congressmen. The article by Jeff Zeleny is about the struggle between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of creating a deadline for funding, essentially for withdrawl, of our troops in Iraq. In the article it discusses two representatives specifically who have changed their vote from supporting withdrawl to now not supporting it. Dan Boren (D-OK) and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH). Both originally followed their party line but after trips to Iraq to witness, first hand, the absolute mess it is, they changed their mind. So maybe they see something that we don't. Maybe they had some experience that softened them and that sympathy caused them to decide that we need to stay and help these poor people. Does that mean that we're wrong here in the states? Is it wrong that we sit in our comfortable living rooms and have the ability to detach ourselves from the reality of what's going on in Iraq? And if so, is our being wrong an excuse for the representatives of our will to vote different than what we feel?

I'm going to say no, it's not fine for them to choose their own vote just because they've seen something first hand that we haven't had the chance to. Some of us are morally opposed to war and violence under any circumstances...is our voice then obsolete? Some people may not understand the whole concept of how pulling our troops out of Iraq may effect the stability there. Does their opinion not count? I don't know what official polls say about the American public's stance on Iraq, but as Dennis Kucinich is quoted in today's article, "we used the war to help us [Democrats] win control of Congress." This tells me that the American people want our troops home and want to stop spending money on something that we think is futile.

Things are already in utter chaos. There is already immense instability in Iraq. There are already signs of genocidal tendencies on the part of religious sects. Things are falling apart regardless of our presence there. If we are to continue in Iraq, we would need political support from the majority of countries in the region and worldwide. Until we pull our troops out and let things fall apart, we wont be able to achieve the political solution that needs to take place for stability in Iraq because everyone is pissed off at us. If that's what the public thinks, then that's how our Congress needs to vote. It's our consciousness, not there's. And, if they do think that our minds need changing, then come to our towns and our districts and present your case, instead of to an empty chamber on C-Span.

DAMN YOU BLOGGER!!

2007-03-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

I spent the last half hour typing out a new post in which I discussed the impersonal replies from my Congressional representatives to letters I had written to them at the beginning of last month. Somehow in the process of posting it, an error occurred and my post was gone forever. Here was my concluding point in fewer words... go to the text of Senate Joint Resolution 3 of the 110th Congress read it over. If you agree that it should be revised for more immediate action and also reworded to specify the use of remaining troops in Iraq after the withdrawl mandated by Congress, write a letter to your Senators and let them know your opinion. You'll probably just be as frustrated as I was when it took one of them 38 days to get back to me but it might make you feel a little better.

Sometimes I really hate church!!!

2007-03-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Today at my church, we had a guest speaker. He was a man from the higher up part of Covenant denomination who has been involved with helping our congregation coordinate a property renovation project. The campaign is called Generation to Generation (G2G) and is going to update the facilities we currently have as well as build new ones and improve our property overall. It has been stressed throughout the whole process of introducing the project to the congregation that the project itself is meant to expand our ministry and that part of the funds that we raise for the project will go towards a church plant. A church plant in the Watsonville area sounds like a really great idea as does the concept of being responsible with what the church has been given, along the lines of property and buildings.

First of all, I have to admit that when a sermon (or speech in this case) on giving to the church happens, I turn cynical and shut down. I say this so no one will think I'm trying to hide any bias I have. I think it comes mainly from the fact that I don't support the church as an official institution. I like supporting my community of believers but once the concept of that as an institution arises I am immediately resentful.

Our Guest Speaker
He dives right in to the fact that he's going to be talking about giving. Good...at least he's not trying to hide it. His point was that God calls us to give. He was using an example of the lady who dropped in two coins after all the rich people had dropped a lot of money into the offering plate. He presented the notion of equal sacrifice, not to be confused with equal giving. I like that...it's fair. I believe he is right here. God calls us to sacrifice ourselves and some have more, so they should give of themselves what is due to God's Kingdom.

In much detail he explained exactly how God is putting it on our hearts to give. He had a lot of backing from scripture, but I couldn't help but think that anyone who is asking for money in a church would pull those scriptures out of context to support their claim. Then he says, "Some of you need to grow in the grace of giving" in reference to people who may not want to give to this project. If I'm not mistaken he even pointed his finger. He then proceeded to say something along the lines of 'after you write that $30 check, you have communicated with God...'. What I heard here and other times in his speech was that giving money is the best way to communicate with God. There were a number of times that I couldn't help but cringe or even laugh at some of the things he said.

I was waiting for him to bring Satan, the Devil, the dark force of sin into the lecture. Sure enough, it came is the form of "the adversary"...that, in this coming week 'the adversary' would be working in our lives to keep us from giving 'over and above'. He would break our car, ruin some relationship, or various other things so we don't help grow the Kingdom. I personally do believe in a spiritual struggle between God and the Devil in whatever form they exist in that struggle. To be fair, he did say that he wasn't saying this to scare anyone, only to point out how real the threat is and not to be discouraged. But now, anything that happens in the next week is going to be blamed on the adversary. The reason I have an issue with this, is that people now have a tool to take the blame off of themselves. This is a free ticket to take personal responsibility in one's problems off of themself and blame it on a dark force...then to feel better, give money to prove their resistence to that dark force. Also, when something bad happens this week they'll say it's the devils work. Then they'll instantly remember what our speaker said and be coerced by this well crafted logic sequence into giving money to this G2G campaign...not out of desire to give to God or desire for this campaign to be successful, but because they think that what they experienced is truly the work of the devil and that this guy was right.

Last week at church, it was announced that this guy was going to come speak to us. I was under the impression that he was going to be talking about how part of our money from the church plant proposal in Pajaro/Watsonville and how awesome that is. It was barely mentioned. I was excited that he was going to talk about this because I like the idea that we are going to do something with our money that helps a less fortunate community. My roommate put it well when he said that $25 will go a lot farther in Pajaro than it would in Scotts Valley. Our help there is much needed and is truly something to celebrate. Instead of speaking at length about this or other church plants, he explained that it is our duty as part of "the face of the Covenant" to give money to grow this demonination.

In conclusion, I saw a number of new faces in the crowd today and was thouroughly embarrassed that visitors would be welcomed to our community on a Sunday like this. Hopefully these new people have actually been going to our church for a while and I just haven't noticed them. Though this would speak poorly of my welcoming newcomers, it would make me feel better knowing that their first impression of our church was something other than this impersonal speech on stewardship.

For the record, I am in support of our church doing this remodel and expansion thing. It's great that we want to make our facilities better serve the community as a long term goal and it's great to see that in raising the money for this we are essentially raising money that will directly benefit our community. There are some aspects that I think are unnecessary, like the outdoor theater, but the congregation approved it so it must be part of the collective conscience. With that said, I need to say that I am very unimpressed with this recent portion of the fund raising aspect of the project. To have such a impersonal approach to such a personal subject was not a good idea. If he was going to talk about the benefit in regards to planting a church and getting people excited about that idea, that would have been great. I don't know what I expect out of writing this, I just needed to voice my opinion, and probably what is the opinion of any new people who were at the church today as well as other people who think the same as me but wouldn't take the time to write it out like this. There's a lot more that I could add, but I wouldn't be able to make a very good case unless I could hear the audio...maybe my roommate Mike will do a better job when the audio of the speech is posted on the church website.

God of Rob or God of Chistendom?

2007-03-16T22:21:00.002-07:00

I know this sounds pretty damn self righteous, but here it goes...I am becoming more and more convinced that I believe in a different god than most Christians. I do call myself a Christian because my belief is that Jesus died for my sins and created a new world in which his example is the model way of life, so I feel that I shouldn't be bashful about proclaiming my faith in his work. Many Christians now days say, "I'm not a Christian, I'm a follower of Christ", or ,"I'm not religious but I am highly spiritual". Here's how I explain this... too many people confuse Christianity with Christendom, which is where that shame of being labelled as a Christian comes from. Most people will probably say that Christendom died with the Roman Empire (which brings up a whole other issue of how much of the "Roman Empire" still exists...as far as ideology goes), but I think it's safe to say that Christendom is alive and well, and continues to be as much of a threat to the Kingdom of God and teachings of Christ as it was during the time when it was controlled and constructed by tyrannical emperors and popes.

There's more to come as far as my case for what Christendom is and how it is still with us today...it'll be a short comparisson between the history of the old church with today's church. I just thought this would be a good start.

Amazing News Story!!

2007-03-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

There was a short news brief in the NY Times today that described a 50-50 divorce to the extreme. A man in Germany measured his house, then proceeded to cut it in half with a chain saw. When he was done with that, he picked his house up with a forklift and drove away. HOLY CRAP THAT IS FUNNY!!! The man's comment was that he was "just taking his due."

If you hate masturbation then you hate hands!!

2007-03-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

I was watching a news program that was talking about the growth of Muslims in Europe. A Scotish Muslim leader was on T.V. saying that he is sad about the Muslims of South Western Asia hating Europe. He explained that for him, Europe is his homeland and "if you hate my homeland then you hate me". STOP SAYING SHIT LIKE THIS!!! It's too easy to use language like that. It can be used by any dumb asshole. It takes no level of creativity and it doesn't get a point across. The guy could have said something like, "Europe is my homeland and I am proud of that. For people to hate Europe as a whole is saddening for me because these people who say this are my brothers in faith, and it's not my continent that is doing harm to them, but the ideology of the modern west." To me, it's a sign of a simple (or dishonest) mind in people who use rhetoric like that.

I'd imagine that members of PETA might not agree with the use of cow leather for wallets. With the same logic that this man used, a cow might say, "if you hate leather wallets then you hate me". It doesn't make a damn bit of sense. First of all, in this case, it's better for the cow that people don't like leather wallets...that's ovbvious, I know. Second, PETA would hate the leather wallet because of what it stands for. In the same way, the Muslims of South Western Asia probably just hate the "western ideology" of Europe, not necessarily everything or everyone in it.

The other part, is that any statement like this carries with it at least a little bit of hypocrisy. It's just a matter of exploring the claim and who's making it in order find the hypocrisy. This same rationale President Bush used at the beginning of the war on terror. The President laid down the doctrine 'if you're not with us, you're against us' as a basis for all policy domestic and abroad. He said at one point that any states that harbors terrorists are terrorists themselves. Here's the hypocrisy... a man named Luis Posada and another named Orlando Bosch are well known terrorists among the conflict with past few decades of conflict with Latin America. They were both involved with a bombing of a passenger plane that killed 73 people, among other attrocities in Central and South America. Orlando Bosch, by request of Jeb Bush was granted a presidential pardon by George H.W. Bush. Luis Posada, who has been officially convicted in more than one country of terrorist acts, is being held in a U.S. jail for an immegration violation. Despite the request of one country, I believe Columbia, in which he was responsible for many deaths, we continue to hold him essentially granting him asylum. As further display of hypocrisy, the U.S. House of Representatives will be deciding soon on a piece of legislation that states what the U.S. will only begin to consider relations with Cuba if they release William Morales who was involved in some of the same activities as Bosch and Posada.

Here's the point. Be better than people who use this kinds of rhetoric and logic. Do this by stating the real problem and not by using feelings of nationalism, patriotism, or loyalty of any kind to manipulate other ignorant people!!!

I LOVE FAMILY GUY!!!

2006-03-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

WOW!!! Quote of the night from Family Guy.
Scene: Two incredibly butch dikes walk in to a sperm clinic.

Dike 1:
"Me and my partner want to have a baby, and we want an applicator that looks like Jodie Foster's nuckles."

Marketing for Christ - I'm sure he wont mind

2006-03-18T18:13:00.001-08:00

I remember this scene from the bible where Jesus goes into the temple and turns over a bunch of tables and drives out all the vendors. I'm no pastor or theologian but I'm pretty sure at least one of the points of that story is that God doesn't want people making ass loads of money by using his name. So I went to Borders today and took a picture of some books by Lee Strobel that are titled A Case for Creation, A Case for Christ, A Case for Faith, and even A Case for Easter!!! Sure, these books may have some great info and insights, but if that's not a marketing device I don't know what is. Man what a douche bag. This seems to happen a lot now days among Christian writers. Click here for another example...If you scroll down enough you'll realize that you can get two books because they're "better together" for the low low price of only $20.78. I think it's retarded. That's it.

Bad Words

2006-03-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

I scared myself yesterday. I'll preface it with this: I was in deep thought about a conversation I had with a roommate of mine. The conversation was of a political nature and it had to do with war. I was absolutely dumbfounded that he would not or could not begin to accept the possibility of a nation not using violence...he believes that in order to keep things going economically and politically speaking, violent things have to happen. Quoting from a Zinn book here, "In 1972, the general who was head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command told an interviewer, "I've been asked often about my moral scruples if I had to send the planes out with hydrogen bombs. My answer is always the same. I would be concerned only with my professional responsibility.'" This man leaves no room for moral judgement in is line of work.

I was having such a hard time accepting that some people are incapable of contemplating a world that isn't run by greed, capitalism, and war. The thought crossed my mind "it's easy for me to make decisions about things like this because my own fundamental values are simply that I don't have any loyalty to the government or any authority figure other than Christ." WHOA, there it is!! That word fundamental. I know it's not necessarily a negative word, but i've never associated that word with my own beliefs. Just like when the word popped into my mind yesterday, I'm speechless. I can't come up with any words to describe how that scared me. This is a wierd feeling. Well, at least I'm not the militant type.

PACIFISM...A CONVERSATION FOR FRIENDS

2006-03-12T00:40:00.000-08:00

There's an old man, an old folk singer/political activist named U. Utah Phillips. He was an enlisted soldier in the Korean War who became an opponent to war in general. More often than not, I don't sympathize with enlisted men who complain about the battles they were in and the friends they lost, only because I figure if you're dumb enough to enlist you have to man up to the consequences you brought on yourself.

After the war, Utah spent years as a drunken vagabond traveling on trains throughout the country trying to forget as best he could the things that happened in the war. After years of this he finally settled down in a recovery house in SLC founded by Joe Hill, the old legend from the Catholic Workers Movement. This man's name was Edmond Hennessey as I remember the story going. He was one of the old Catholic/Anarchist/Pacifist men sprouting from the ministry of Dorthy Day (or however you spell her name).

Utah, being a drunk with violent tendencies and all that jive, was confronted by Edmond one day. Edmond said something to the effect of, "You need to be a pacifist"

"What's a pacisfist," says Utah.

"Well, it's kinda like being an alcoholic. You have to sit down with people who will really listen and instead of saying 'my name's Chuck, I'm and alcoholic', you say, 'I'm Chuck, and I admit and accept that I have a capacity for violence'."

If we claim to be pacifists, we need to be able to sit down and admit our violent tendencies, no matter how small they are. We need to get ourselves to a place where we at least realize that even killing an ant may have the possibility to make some species of life bitter at humanity, thus making the circle of "KARMA" keep rotating. It's not easy, as far as I know, only Jesus has been able to do it, but instead of copping out and being defeated by it, we can try. I suppose that's step one...TO GENUINELY CARE!!

Hiding The Sun

2006-03-12T00:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote this poem during a period when I wasn't drinking. I was actually drunk when I wrote it. I was talking on the phone with someone who thought that I was sober when I wrote it. Ironic I suppose. Whatever, suck my balls!!

I know the truth
I know that you'd pay any price to have it
I know you'd choose
Who'd be the one to have
The one to hold on to
The lies you keep so close
And hold as their your own
Nobody knows
Nobody sees
You Crumbling
But I know the truth

I've seen it too
I've seen it in your eyes but I can't help it
I've seen in you
Things that you tried to hid
The things that keep you
Down in a place no one can find
You hold it as your own
Nobody knows
Nobody sees
You shuddering
But I've seen it too

I hide it too
I hide the sun so I can make sense of it
I hide for you
The things you bring to light
The things that kill you too
And I've never been so cold
But when I'm here all alone
Nobody knows
Nobody hears
Me whispering
'Cause I hide it too

Faith in your government?

2006-03-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

I had a friend mention today that one of his most recent struggles is putting faith in our government, that he has trouble trusting our leaders because it seems like all they do now days is lie. For some reason this struck me as an incredibly ignorant statement. But all too often is expressed in one way or another. The reason it seems so dumb to me is that he feels as though he is supposed to have faith in our government. For some reason I've never been a person that felt like I am obligated to be loyal to things. I never cared about my school colors or mascot or alma mater, from the time I was young I thought that the idea of enlistingin the armed servicves was a ridiculous idea, and from the beginning of my interest in politics I've never felt that I should support someone just because they are republican or democrat.

Mark Twain, in the midst of high political tension due to a war in the Philipenes, was called unpatriotic because he, as merely a writer, an artist, felt that it was okay to speak out against the war and against the government. He replied by saying something to the effect of: Loyalty to one's country does not mean loyalty to it's institutions. The country is the eternal thing, the living thing, the substantial thing. The country is the people and what they stand for. The institutions are simply clothing. Clothing can be tattered and worn by harsh conditions, it can cease to protect us from the winter cold, from disease, and from death. To have worship rags, to have loyalty for rags, is a loyalty of unreason.

I like that. It's simple point made on a rather complex issue. I read a quote at my office the other day by C.W. Ceram that said, "Genius is the ability to reduce complicated to the simple." Good job Mark Twain.

Angel in the outfield

2006-02-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

When I was in elementary school tetherball was the most popular sport to play during recess. Kids would stand in line the entire lunch recess just to play one round of tether ball. At one point there was a formal tetherball tournament organized.

I was in the group of kids that didn't like tether ball. There were two reasons i didn't like it:1) I've always had bad circulation so when it got cold hitting the ball would hurt my hands. 2) I couldn't even it a baseball off of a tee in teeball. The bat ball coordination was just not there.

Ok, while this tournament was going on the group that didn't like tetherball played different games. On the last day of the tournament the big game was down to Angel Cornejo and Corey Frank. It was the most intense game I ever halfway paid attention to. The only part I really paid attention to was after the game was over. Angel has risen victorious, then the entire school (that was out on recess at that point), excluding the group of us who didn't play the sport, chased Angel around the school field.

Just imagine a giant fat mexican kid being chased by about 70 small skinny white kids. To this day, me and the friends who still remember this don't know why they chased him around. They didn't beat him up, they didn't hoist him on their soldiers, they didn't even dogpile. The way it ended was that the bell rang and everyone had to freeze until the yard duty ladies blew their whistles. I feel like I re-live that scene in my head everyday and it never makes sense. I think maybe this is what is keeping me from greatness. Can you offer any suggestions to help me in my life quest?

Siren Song of the Counter Culture

2005-12-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

So here I sit, Monday night waiting to go to dinner with a friend. I've been watching C-SPAN2 for about 4 hours now, and finally come across something that is interesting. It's a presentation by the National Institute on Drugs and Alcohol on the current drug and alcohol usage trends among the population as a whole, but mainly focusing on youth. They're reporting that the decline in usage among kids who were surveyed four years ago is on average 40%. So why I wonder, are many kids deciding not to use drugs anymore and many choosing to never try drugs.
I have a few thories: 1) Kids have begun to use drugs at such and early age, that the age at which it becomes a problem and they realize they need to stop (or are forced into a situation where stopping is not an option) is in the high school years 2) The most recent pop-culture superstars, who come from a genre that historically has been associated with drugs and the stereotypical "rock'n'roll" scene, are now the main supporters of the "straight edge" (no drugs/alcohol/tobacco use) movement sweeping our young people. I'd like to think that the latter is the only true of the two, but the sad part is that both are probably equally true. Unfortuantely I think these are pretty much the only two options that there are...there are a few other theories I'm sure, dealing with national drug control policies and such, which may be somewhat effective, but the one we can for sure rule out is that parents are making a difference. For the most part, parents in the U.S.A. and probably all the other elite countries of the world are worthless. They're too busy buying shit and looking fancy to give a rip about their kids.
So, option one. The first time I smoked weed was in the 6th grade. The first time I did any hard drugs was in the 6th grade. I got expelled from school and arrested in the 7th grade for selling pot. At this time, other than the small handful of "bad kids" at school, I was one of the only kids at school who did drugs. Nobody liked me because of all this. In high school, when I didn't do that stuff as much, it seemed like the cool thing to do. Most kids in the school smoked weed, did drugs, drank, etc, etc. Now that I work with junior high kids, I notice the increasing amount of interest in drugs and alcohol at their age, along with the alarming number of kids who have tried or currently use drugs or smoke weed. I think kids are being exposed to these things at such a young age (those reasons take up a whole new essay) that they get hooked early. Often times in high school, kids are in recovery. On this report i was watching, it said that 12% of folks age 18-25 are recovering alchololic/addicts. What I'm concluding, is that the reason for the decrease in the use of drugs among young people is that we're becoming addicted earlier thus recovering earlier...no more drug/alcohol use.
Now, the one that I like. This one is less disturbing. In the 1970's punk rock was born. In the 1980's punk rock took on an image of extreme drug use, partying, and reckless behavior. In that same decade metal arose and had developed the same image. Finally, in the late 90's and early 21st century, the two genres have merged. Bands like, My Chemical Romance, Atreyu, Trice, and countless other who have become our youth's idols, are promoting and living the straight edge lifestyle. You see all those kids who dress in black, paint blood streaming from their eyes, and wear makeup...yeah, those are the kids who like these bands. Here's the thing, these kids don't just dress and listen to these guys, they think they are God. These kids will do anything that these guys do. Of course there are always exceptions, but by and large these kids are following they're straight edge and anti-sexist ways.
I just think it's rad that something that only a generation ago was considered satanic and problematic has now evolved into something that is beneficial for our kids today. Kids are getting and staying off drugs because of loud angry music. I think it's a sign of a generation that even though we seem stupid and irresponsible, we're learning. And no thanks to all those fuckin parents out there working their six figure jobs who didn't want these kids in the first place. Alright, I'm done...stick that in your smoke pipe and peace it.

Gold Dome

2005-12-18T12:46:00.000-08:00

So I finally decided today to go to a church that I've meant for a long time to visit. It's the orthodox christian church in B-Lo. First things first, I get there right as the service is supposed to start and there are only four other cars there. The friend who I was supposed to meet there, one of the regular attenders, wasn't there yet. I stood outside for a few minutes and waited for him to show up. As I stood there, I kept seeing people walk out of this door on the side up the building, look in the window to the sanctuary, then walk around back and go up a set of stairs to and alternate entrance. Now, my assumption is that everything at this church is symbolic of something...every action, every word spoken, everything. If you don't do these things by the book, their God will strike you down with lightning. While I don't agree with religious traditions, I don't want to be disrespectful to what these folks do. So, I'm way confused at this point as so why these people are going through another entrance. I thought maybe only the priest and deacons or something were allowed to walk through the front doors...only people chosen by God. So finally, my friend shows up and says, "I gotta do this candle holding thing, I'll see you after the service." Now, not only do I not know what is going on, but my guide just ditched me. Fortunately his little brother walks around the corner and shows me in through the front doors.
Now I come to the conclusion that it's not only divine people who get to walk through the doors. When I got inside, I heard a very bland, monotone voice, half singing half speaking words that seemed to be english, but were so fast and echoey that you couldn't make them out. As soon as he got done with a sentence, a choir of people would recite some other thing. It turns out, all those people walking to that back door were in the choir...now, I'm a little more at ease. The first thing I do is try to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, do I sit or stand? Do I pretend like I know what the choir is singing and try to hum along with them? Am I supposed to be praying? Some people are sitting, some are standing maybe the people standing have already done something like a traditional prayer to allow them to stand, but then again maybe the people sitting have done something to allow them to sit. I chose to sit because I figured if sitting was wrong, someone would correct me and I'd know what to do. I also chose not to pretend like I knew what in the world was going on. But I did pray really quick just for God to let me meet some people and learn something about this church that made me a little less skeptical. I had a funny feeling that these people might actually be human beings underneath all that religious bull shit so I wanted to give them a chance.
Finally my friends mom walks in and hands me a guide to the litergy. I haven't ever heard of a litergy before so I assumed it was just this written ceremony they do every service. I thumbed through it to figure out where we were and tried to follow along. They didn't go through the litergy page by page, they would skip around a little bit. Also, every now and then what the people were singing didn't come from the litergy booklet at all, it came from a second hymn book that I later found. It was hard to figure out where to look, because all the people who were there knew this service like the back of their hand so i couldn't just look at someone else's book to see what page they were on.*
Finally I stopped looking around and looked forward to see three men in fancy robes with their backs to the congregation huddling around a shrine of sorts. As I was reading the litergy, I noticed notes of what these men up front were doing. They were reciting little prayers and every few minuites, the one in the middle would hand something to the guys on the side and they would kiss his hand, kiss the thing, pick it up kiss it again and hand it off to someone else who as far as I knew, with all the kissing and what not, took it in the back room and fucked the shit out of it.
The little men up front started taking turns facing the congregation and singing something that would get a reply song. At one point as the congregation went into a hymn, the priest, Father Andrew came out began talking to all the paintings of saints on the walls. The look of pure boredom** on his face mixed with his noiseless talking made him look like one the the craziest guys I've ever seen. Words can't even describe how insane this guy looked...it was as if some demon was about to pop out of his mouth and swallow the whole church.
After a while I figured out that we were about to take communion. Three boys in white robes(one of which was holding a really tall cross) followed by the men in the fancy robes began to walk around the church. everybody walked to the edge of the pews as is they were getting ready to follow out behind them. I was stoked that we were going on a field trip. Then, I saw a lady bend down, touch Father Andrew's robe, kiss her hand and do the father, son, holy spirit cross on the chest*** thing. Then a small girl ran up and did the same thing. People kept doing this as if they were getting some holy healing power from his robe, like that bleeding lady in the bible. It seemed to me that these people thought the robe the priest was wearing was dipped in a holy sauce and kept in God's personal closet. Seems like a little to large a pedestal this priest guy is put on.
After the service, my friends mom walked me around the sanctuary and introduced me to the deacons and priests, they all offered to have a sit down question/answer time with me if I wanted to. Then we went into a room where there was good and drinks and lots of people standing around talking. I was the guest of the day, everyone wanted a chance to talk to me. The only person in that room who didn't talk to me was a man who stared at me when I first walked in and occasionally turned around and stared at me during the service, and each time he did this I made eye contact with him and held it until he looked away. I'm not sure why he was staring at me, but I didn't like it, so I figured I'd piss him off in a sort of passive agressive way by not backing down. I think he's an asshole. Eventually one of the priests came up to me and kept asking questions trying to figure out what I thought of their religion. Finally I started asking him questions like, where does the whole relationship with God and Jesus thing come into play? Who wrote the litergy and why do they think it's important to hold strictly to it since it came from hand of a man, not God? It felt like I was talking to one of those Jahovahs witness people who basically just recite some bullshit they memorized out of the pamphlet.
It seemed like everyone who talked to me was like this, except for one lady who was telling me about her daughter coming home from Young Life (and outreach organization I work with) asking questions comparing our protestant views versus her Orthodox views on God. She said that the girl was in San Diego at a protestant college then joked that they dissowned her only two weeks ago. She seemed to see right through me, it was like she knew exactly what I was thinking about here church...that they thought they were right about everything and didn't accept any other view. She made me feel a little bit better that there was some humanity to these people.

* When people recite things year after year, especially things of this length, there is no way they think about them anymore. That they think about the importance of what they are really saying. At least that's how it seems to me. Maybe that's just a cop out, maybe I'm just lazy and don't want to have to remember anything.

** As I looked around the church, I noticed a few things about the physical appearance of everybody. First of all, all of the age groups looked exactly the same...the old men were fat and wore glasses, the old women looked like dykes, all of the young adult types looked really pissed off and kind of creepy, all of the high school kids didn't give a rip, and all of the kids just wanted to be kids. Second, everyone looked bored out of their mind. Even the priests. It's like they were doing all of this in a zombie like state. Third, every person over the age of about 18 looked very tired, dark around the eyes, and that part just underneath the eyes is all puffy.

*** Everytime the words "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" were uttered, the whole congregation would do that cross thing on their chest. It seemed to happen every two minutes or so. Sometimes folks would do it for what seems to me some completley random reason. It's as if this is one of the ways they convince everyone that they are a good follower of Christ.

There's a lot I'm leaving out I'm sure, but I plan on attending a few more times so can add more later.

This is gay

2005-08-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

I think blogs are stupid but a friend reccommended I get one...I didn't spell reccomend right. Dammit, there we go again. Curse you Mike, curse you!!!