Entries from February 2005 ↓

“I am the boy who can enjoy invisibility.”

Joyce wrote those words, but I have been singing them lately. Yesterday, as I walked around all day in Manhattan, from subway to library to park, I got the sense that maybe I was invisible.

People walked into me several times and none said anything. I was whacked with bags slung over arms, and time and again, nothing was said. But I could hear what was going on around me.

In Grand Central Station, a middle-aged rich-looking white woman said upon exiting a gift shop, to no one in particular, “Mag-ne-tic po-ih-tree. Hmmmmm. How about that. Magnetic Poetry.”

Some young woman swung a taxidermied skinned fox in my path (only she did not see it was my path), and her colleague shouted loudly in the direction of my ear, ostensibly to those behind me, “Don’t buy fur!” I never would, but I also really did not need to see a skinned fox. Oh well, maybe someone else did.

Two other young women were walking up 34th Street past a newsstand, and one of them said loudly, “Carrie Bradshaw always buys her cigarettes from a place like that.” Indeed she does.

Later, I went to see The Gates, in its last twilight afternoon. And all kinds of people were walking and talking in Central Park, and having the kinds of conversations they’d usually have (if they walk in parks usually). Only they were having them as they walked under “saffron” panels, flickering gently in a light wind on a cold February Sunday. The panels reminded me of three things:

1) Saffron robes (but, strangely enough, not as worn by Hare Krishnas),
2) Sunshine, and
3) The curtains which nurses pull around hospital beds.

A gay daddy pleaded, hopelessly, with one of his charges, “Christian, don’t go in the muh-hud!”

A little Latino kid called not-too-loudly to his mom, from a distance, “You are f***ing lucky!” before he darted off over a hill. I don’t think she heard him. I hope she didn’t, for his sake.

And as I walked, the invisibility continued until the sun was nearly setting.

Then suddenly, two young beautiful J. Crew-ed young things on vacation asked me to take their picture, and I knew I was visible again. (My heart was warmed that they were not afeared I would run away with the fancy photographic apparatus.)

I myself had only the most pedestrian of camera phones, with which I attempted to snap a few pictures, which will inevitably pale in comparison with those you’ve seen on the news.

Before I went to walk under Christo’s Gates, I was skeptical. I guess I still am. Was this a good use of $25 million, all things considered?

Maybe. Probably not. But…

It’s kind of like someone bought New York City a bouquet of flowers. We didn’t need it. In fact, lots of us could have used something much more practical. You can’t argue with that.
But who doesn’t like flowers (saving the allergic)? And Christo’s the kind of boyfriend who would not have bought us something else that we needed. Even if his girlfriend could have used a nice roasting chicken or a dozen eggs instead. He just brings flowers.

And, as far as practical value goes, well, this is a lot better than a tropical island wrapped in pink cellophane.

And it certainly got a lot of people, all kinds of people, out and walking around the mud-slick paths of Central Park.

Today they’re gone, and a nor’easter blows. Too bad. It would have been nice to see The Gates in a snowstorm.

Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty International, has died at 83. He started the group when he was outraged after two men in Lisbon were arrested and imprisoned for drinking a toast to liberty, in 1961.

‘Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government. The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.’

‘When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: Better light a candle than curse the darkness,‘ Benenson said.

I started volunteering for Amnesty International in high school. The concept seems almost too simple–the idea that people around the world writing letters on behalf of tortured people could make a difference. I believe it does.

In high school, we wrote to express concern for the treatment of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie. Only a few years later, he’d be running South Africa.

Funny how fast things some things change.

Sad how most things don’t. Or haven’t yet.

Countries and territories which retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes:

AFGHANISTAN, ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELIZE, BOTSWANA, BURUNDI, CAMEROON, CHAD, CHINA, COMOROS, CONGO (Democratic Republic), CUBA, DOMINICA, EGYPT, EQUATORIAL GUINEA, ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, GABON, GHANA, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, GUYANA, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KAZAKSTAN, KOREA (North), KOREA (South), KUWAIT, KYRGYZSTAN, LAOS, LEBANON, LESOTHO, LIBERIA, LIBYA, MALAWI, MALAYSIA, MONGOLIA, MOROCCO, MYANMAR, NIGERIA, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, PHILIPPINES, QATAR, RWANDA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER & NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES, SAUDI ARABIA, SIERRA LEONE, SINGAPORE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SWAZILAND, SYRIA, TAIWAN, TAJIKISTAN, TANZANIA, THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, UGANDA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES,

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

UZBEKISTAN, VIET NAM, YEMEN, ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE

(I apologize for the capitals, but I wasn’t about to try and re-type that.)

Many countries who we in the US might consider to have less-than-stellar human rights records don’t routinely execute their own citizens. Some of them appear in this list.

Japan and the US are the only “Group of Eight” major industrialized nations to still use the death penalty.

I think I was always instinctively against the Death Penalty, but Amnesty International taught me lots of practical reasons for being against it–the kinds of reasons which help convince people who do not reject it on principle. Like the fact that in the US, it costs more than life imprisonment. Or the fact that there’s no proof the death penalty deters crime more than other punishments do. And, as Amnesty says, “The death penalty is discriminatory and is often used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. It is imposed and carried out arbitrarily.” In the U.S. we see how the racial imbalance–as well as a socio-economic imbalance–plays itself out in this arena.

But for me, it always comes back to, “it’s just wrong.”

One after another, British Prime Ministers of the last 40 years offered Peter Benenson a knighthood. Each time, he’d write back to them, detailing the human rights abuses Amnesty was currently fighting in the UK, and asking them–if they wanted to honor his work–to make things right. He did good work.

As the tribute on the Amnesty home page states,

In an age of self-aggrandisement, his modesty was almost hard to fathom. He never went forward to receive the numerous accolades showered upon Amnesty, known universally by its candle in barbed wire. His mind was always fixed on what had not been accomplished and the countless victims still to be rescued.

“The candle burns not for us,” he declared, “but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who ‘disappeared’. That is what the candle is for.”

I don’t usually post these things, though I often enjoy reading them on others’ blogs. They are like the quizzes in women’s magazines, only interesting. So here’s a good one that I found on The State I’m In, and Brian in turn found it elsewhere:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

“Let’s eat, drink, and be merry. You have cause for celebration.”
“What cause?” he argue. “We had a good relationship before.”
“But not on equal terms. From now on we live like friends, not master and servant.”

Samuel Selvon, Moses Ascending. (Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series, 1975), p.123.

Okay, see that’s why I usually don’t do them. Now I remember: it’s because the thing that comes out is never the interesting part.

But I still want to see yours. Go on! Make me happy!

Wow,

My password somehow got mucked up and it took me a few days to figure out how to get back in here again, thanks to the Wordpress “forgotten password” function, which does not work. And which fails in not one but two fabulous ways: either giving you and error code and not sending you a new password, or sending you a new password which does not work.

That’s two very special, very different kinds of annoying.

I have to stop being such a ditz, right? Because ultimately, somewhere, I did something wrong. (I think.)

Anyway, it does not look like I have missed much.

Re: Sideways: spoiler alert! Do not read if you do not want to hear something about the ending of the movie. You have been warned.

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Okay.

I just saw it last night (after all, I could not blog). And I liked it, it was fun.

And then the Sicilian told me that when he saw it, he thought the ending was ambiguous: “VC, did you think the ending meant the guy got back together with Maya? I thought maybe it meant they were going to be friends.”

Hmmm. Yes. I did think that was the point. I mean, he got a phone call saying she had thought long and hard before calling him, and that she loved his writing, etc. etc. And then he got dressed nicely and got in the car to take a 252 mile drive to her door. (I checked mapquest for the driving distance from San Diego to Los Olivos.)

Is this ambiguous? If you had a falling out with someone and then reunited as friends, would you likely call them in advance of going to their house? This ending implied something more serious to me–him turning up at Maya’s doorstep and declaring undying love. Which, truthfully, he ought to–having found a woman who is lovely and smart and loves wine and puts up with him (which seems like a major factor for this chap).

Or do I, ever the hopeful romantic, just want to see the ending this way?

Something else bothered me–the theft of money from his mom’s Ajax can. That really spun him to a different level of loser-hood, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with being a nice, semi-depressive, anxious wine-lover who can’t get his masterpiece published, and who hangs around with his frat-boy-jock-womaniser freshman dorm roommate. But did they have to throw in “steals from 70-year-old mom” too?

Why do I keep saying “him”? Because less than 24 hours later, I cannot remember his name. I have not had any caffeine today, you see. I had better go and remedy that.

A very interesting analysis of blog humor from Pish Tosh, by way of Bitch PhD.

And then, for something completely different, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, set to Dub, by the Genomic Dub Collective. Listen to mp3s here.
Wow. That leaves me speechless. Which as you know, Dear R., rarely happens. Enjoy!

When you set it to play songs randomly, does your iPod play certain songs or performers over and over, out of proportion to their presence in your music library?

The question of whether iPods choose songs in a truly random fashion, or not, has been much discussed of late. Though Apple engineers have claimed there is nothing but pure randomness at work, many iPod owners, like myself, are quite skeptical.

Even within a playlist, it seems to select certain songs over others. When I set the thing to shuffle my “five-star songs,” it comes back time and time again to “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” by the Beatles, “Bizarre Love Triangle,” by New Order, and Louis Armstrong’s “Mack the Knife.” On the other hand, it never, ever plays Lotte Lenya’s “Moritat von Mackie Messer,” from the same list. What’s with that? It loves “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground. (I never did hear another song by that band, so help me. But no girl with a Fender bass in her closet could resist that bass line.) All of these choices are ones I approve of–except I like the German “Mack the Knife” better. But it does make me wonder what this thing is up to.

I was thinking about posting this as I walked from the bus this morning, and I was going to say, “Damn, why won’t the thing play Linton Kwesi Johnson?!?” And then, like magic, LKJ came on, singing “Lorrain.”

I am not a techno-snob, or a materialistic person (just a Mac-junkie), so I did not mean to direct a posting at iPod owners. But if you do have one, or if you use iTunes to listen from your computer, I’m curious to hear what songs it wants you to listen to, when it’s doing the driving.

My cat loves to sit on a cliff next to a waterfall:

The Shoe Doctor / Computer Doctor shop on 33rd Street in Manhattan.

(In case you break a heel while carrying in your motherboard, I presume?)

This isn’t the first time shoppers at Ikea have come to blows.

It’s not pretty, people threatening each other with mallets at an Ikea opening. Four people were injured. But you know what? Ikea’s opening night special: a three-seat leather sofa for £45 (around $70), or a £30 double-bed frame, is insane. So 6,000 people surged through the doors at once to scoop up these deals. At those prices, it’s practically looting. No wonder people get excited.

We love us some Ikea here in the Tri-State area too. But maybe there should be non-violence training before they open the doors.

And then there was the huge cement mixer I saw twirling its cement down Queens Boulevard last week. It was white with enormous magenta, kelly, midnight, and red polka dots.

Like a dream.

Story number one:

So on Sunday I was waiting for the 7 train to Manhattan, and a woman and a man in their late 20s or early 30s came on to my platform. They were talking loudly in that confident way people do when life is pretty good. And she was giving him what one suspected might be a little well-deserved trouble: he said something she said something he said something and then she said, even more loudly, and in a very skeptical tone,

“Are you sure you aren’t sleeping with anybody else?”

He did some protesting, and then said, even more loudly,

“Alright, alright. Is everybody here? (looking around at those on my elevated platform and the one opposite). Okay. (He steps back away from her bench, to the edge of the platform.) Everybody needs to hear this. I love this woman. I say I love this woman. Did everybody get that? What more do you need, woman?”

At this point, everyone is laughing, and the dorky middle aged white guy across the platform, and dorky me, are clapping. He apologizes to us for the disturbance (nobody minded), and she is laughing.

It was a nice wee spectacle, but you know what? I thought afterwards that the same sentiment expressed another way might be more convincing. He never answered the question. Instead, he distracted her away from it. Instead of a nice little Valentine’s tableaux, I was left wondering if I’d seen a player getting away with something. But you know, that chick was so skeptical, I know she’ll be alright.

Story number two:

Tonight I was on the 7 again, but going in the opposite direction. Another woman who I don’t know and I were crammed in above a sitting woman, who was shuffling papers in a folder, including a local community college’s schedule. She settled in quickly to what was probably algebra homework due tonight, since she was heading in the direction of the community college in question.

The other woman and I were glancing down at her algebra work, and we smiled at each other, smiled at her, and she smiled back. I saw some problems I could remember how to do, and then some I would have had to work at, if this were the GRE all over again.

And then, as the sitting woman worked, the other standing woman leaned down and started giving her tips. She must have seen her make an error, because she pointed at the different parts of the equation (you know, all those parenthetical sets) and showed her something like “multiply this one by that one, then this one by that one, then add these” sort of thing.

The sitting woman was lit up with recognition for a moment, and then worked through the problem a little more enthusiastically. I couldn’t hear the advice she was getting, but the standing woman showed her a few more moves, explained a few more things, and then saig goodbye and jumped off the train and hurried down the platform.

You sometimes get these impromptu conversations on the subway, when someone has the same unusual bag as someone else, or when Michael Jackson’s noseless on the front of some paper and someone makes a snide joke which elicits more from another. (Not for nothing–I am not in the habit of mocking the noseless, but Jacko is a bit of an easy target.)

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone spontaneously tutor a stranger on the subway before. And the unsolicited tips were given so kindly and swiftly, and received so appreciatively, it was really something beautiful to behold.

There’s a new idea: set up a tutoring car on the subway. It may sound nutty, but then I read about 3-4 months ago about a local teacher who had set up a tutoring and read-to-me program for kids in an inner city laundromat. She did it because she saw kids spacing out, running wild, and playing expensive video games while their moms were occupied and tired. And she offered to read a kid a story and the kid loved it. She got a corner and a pile of books and read to kids, who were mesmerized.

Now several more stores in the chain have invited her to organize tutoring / reading there too. She’s got storybooks and now student teachers from Brooklyn College to help her at each laundromat. Each one teach one.

This song is completely offensive (inappropriate for children, prudish mums, and other sensitive types), hosted at a site with a suspicious URL (http:www.backingblair.co.uk) and worst of all is anti-worker.

It’s also darned funny, and appears to have been recorded for a charity. Check it out!

I have heard about this multiple times, including Radiohumper’s site. I have finally gone there and started reading some of the listings for units and what they need. Reading them is compelling–I had not realized before I did so that I’d heard so few stories directly from soldiers, of what it’s like over there.

And the soldiers’ needs are so sobering: they don’t have the basics of food, hygiene, clothing, let alone safety. Bring the Beef is doing a collection for kevlar blankets, which will save lives, by protecting the bottom of a Humvee from explosives and landmines. If you’re broke, write some letters, like Radiohumper is.

Yes, I am a pacifist. (For the confused, yes, that started about eight years after the time I shaved GI Joe in the bathroom.) What does a Quaker say to a soldier serving in Iraq or elsewhere? Well, for starters, I’m sorry you’re there, and I hope you all come home real safe and real soon. Here’s some Ramen, t-shirts, and tampons, which I hope help just a little, ’cause I heard you ladies were roughing it real bad.

And here’s what I probably won’t say: I believe we should not have gone to Iraq. I believe we should not be there now. But supporting the people my government has wrongly sent over, and giving them the most basic necessities for health, sanity, and safety? What kind of pacifist doesn’t believe in that?

I have now changed my commenting feature. Comments are no longer moderated–this means you should see them right away. I have installed a blacklist (which I previously had trouble with), and am hoping this will do the trick.

This is not a very exciting moment for you, to be sure, but since I have used up virtually all my blogging time on that today, this is it.

Would it make things better if I include a picture and a fun scientific article?

Here’s a mole that just can’t eat fast enough. Yes, that’s his nose.
I think I may once have dated this guy…

Not having told someone off last week, this week I ran into a fellow on 42nd Street with another creative panhandle: “Bad Advice, $1.99.” He was standing right next to a Verizon store, looking in, while holding the sign towards the sidewalk.

I wish I had photos of these signs, but something in me does not want to take a photo of someone without their permission, and I did not really want to negotiate a fee.

I think this bad advice service is slightly less useful than telling someone off is (at least you can let off some steam). But then we might expect someone who gives bad advice to devise a bad money-making plan.

I then came home and logged on, only to find a rather exciting Hasselhoff photo. Now, I am not a prude, but this was a tasteless photo to have hanging in a posting about even a fictitious soldier-kidnapping. (It was also quite nausea-inducing, because it was an animated photograph, and Hasselhoff’s crotch kept zooming in at an alarming speed.) I linked to the google cache here, because the photo was so funny, but it has gone down now.

Everyblog is doing this to death, so I will not comment at length, except to repeat the oft-repeated question: Why didn’t anyone at the AP think this photo looked a little funny?

It would help, of course, if they’d seen him in his original packaging. Or looked at the head close-up.

(Note: apology to readers who saw obscene David Hasselhoff picture in this location; I will not link to another site’s photo again–except the one from the legitimate news outlet above. I did not anticipate such a result. I take it this is a no-no. My Bad.)

When I was young, my brother handed-me-down one of those white GI Joes with the “real” hair buzzcut and beard. I added it to my doll collection, along with the other army guys, Aquaman, and various trucks. (Aquaman, now he was cool.) And when I got older, and did not play with them anymore, I thought it would be fun to try and shave his beard. It worked, if it was a bit of a rough job. But he was a butch guy, and I don’t think he minded looking rough.

In December, Bill Moyers, after receiving the Global Environment Citizen Award from Harvard Medical School, gave an amazing speech, which I’ve somehow not come across until now.

In it, he puts his finger right on the button, to mix an old Cold War metaphor, of what’s wrong with American policy today: the Rapture Index. Basically, the idea is this: an enormous number of Americans (some say 1/3) are living like there’s no tomorrow–because they believe there won’t be. The idea of the Rapture, when they believe Jesus will come and take the devout away with him, is a rationale for not giving a rat’s arse about the environment. Moyers describes the difficulty of working to solve our environmental problems in such a climate:

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge – to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its ‘biblical lands,’ legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

And from the George Monbiat article published in the Guardian on 20 April 2004:

By clicking on www.raptureready.com, you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debating its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the South Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the Antichrist (both of which score only two).

Actually, that was almost a year ago. The Rapture Index today is 154. Anything over 145 is described in the key as “fasten your seat belts.” (Odd, that, since the bumper sticker I refer to in my title implies that the Raptured will float upwards from their cars.)

Sometimes it is easy for us progressive folks to talk about how stupid fundamentalists can be. (Of course, it’s only really PC to diss Christian fundamentalists.) Harder than dismissing them, though, is trying to figure out how they got to their beliefs. And in the same world in which I got to mine, as a lefty Quaker, and you got to yours, as a liberal athiest, and how he got to his, as a progressive Muslim, and so on.

It’s easy to say, “what idiots.” Harder to figure out how to convince them to care about our agenda. Do we say, “Yes, I know you believe the Rapture will come and we (me and my ilk) will all be left behind, and who cares what happens to sinners. But do you mind taking out the garbage so those of us left on the planet to rot after you’re gone can survive a little longer?”

See, it’s hard. I could not think of what to say that wasn’t snotty.

You know, I want to ask how they believe their God would want them to ignore the destruction of earth. And what if the Rapture comes later rather than earlier? Do you want your kids to get asthma and skin cancer and live under global warming and never see a whale?

And then, I also get creeped out how the whole “legions of the anti-Christ will attack Israel…” prediction plays right into both Israel getting the rest of its Biblical lands back, as well as a middle eastern war that destroys the new Israelites. And then the Rapture. So anything we can do to hasten mayhem in the middle east is going to bring the Rapture all that much faster. (And, Hello, Israel, are you listening? Fund-y Republicans only want to help your land increase as they wait for your impending wars, after which you will have to become Jews for Jesus right quick, or be destroyed. Does that really fit in with your prophecies? Doesn’t that piss you off? Aren’t you starting to feel a little used?)

And you know, the more people that are looking forward to Armageddon, the more likely it is to happen. Nothing to do with God; it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. But then, I am dealing in cause and effect here. And you know where I learned about cause and effect? In science classes. And you know those ain’t popular with religious fundamentalists.

But there I go again. Fundamentalists are not evil, they’re just like you and me. They’re my cousins, in fact, and some of them are the salt of the friggin’ earth. But in this area, misguided. They’re reading something literally that we’re not. I am not surprised there aren’t more fundamentalist English professors, ’cause you have to be able to see language as figurative, not only literal, in my world.

Those guys in the Old Testament may well have lived, but they didn’t live to be literally hundreds and hundreds of years old. We may have descended from a bloke in a fig leaf, but he may in turn have descended from tadpoles. It doesn’t all have to be mentioned in the text. “And then there was light,” “and on the sixth day he…:” all of it can be figurative. There can be a God, but it probably ain’t an old man with a long beard. And his son did not look like Errol Flynn. You have to have some imagination. (I learned that from PBS, that hotbed of evil, as a kid.)

What’s figurative can be true. And words can be true without being literally true.

I can deal with this; did reading poetry and stories teach me that?