America the Buttiful

You Have A Glow About You

2011-04-06T20:14:00.001-07:00

Hey! What's going on?

Here's the latest from the beautiful West Coast, where we luxuriate under high-up clouds twinkling with plutonium, plutonium in every lung. It's OK. It's nothing!! They said. But they said that about the BP oil spill too. Remember? "Oh, nothing's coming out. Just a few barrels." Just a few. And it's safe now. What a bunch of assholes. And this made me even more mad (because no one's talking about it except online): (so I wrote these up for the newswire.)

>>Radiation Measured At 180 Times Safe Levels At Berkeley

(Berkeley, CA) - Radiation from Japan's mile-high nuclear explosion was measured at 180 times safe levels in Berkeley, California, and the EPA hasn't released any California results for rainwater since then. That measurement was taken March 23rd. Last week, the organization promised to have current data by Tuesday; on Tuesday they promised to have it by Friday; on Friday they promised to have it by Monday. The public is still waiting, says the "Bay Citizen." Nonprofit group "Food and Water Watch" sent a letter to Barack Obama urging the EPA to improve its testing and reporting of radiation. A particular concern is that the radiation will be harmful when it gets into the food chain, if not harmful at the immediate moment. A "Food and Water Watch" spokesman said the government has been telling us it's safe, but they have not dealt with the issue of how radiation will affect food and water.

>>Nuclear Policy Lecturer Calls For Action Against EPA's Delay Of Radiation Data

(Los Angeles, CA) -- A lecturer on nuclear policy at U.C. Santa Cruz says the US government is far too slow in sharing data about the radiation that is moving across the country from a nuclear blast in Japan. Daniel Hirsch said elevated levels of Iodine-131 in rain are a "red flag" for public health, reports the "Michigan Messenger." He supports legal action to get the government to share the information it's been gathering, and is calling for a Congressional investigation. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is monitoring radiation levels in air, rainwater and milk, has not published results from California since March 24th. The EPA promised last week to give updated results, but has postponed the release three times, with the numbers still unavailable.

I am burned out. On the news. I hate it.

But I hate not knowing what's going on, more. So here I sit in a studio in a death-embrace with my computer for 8 hours. My whole life goes into this. My brain has no place to flop around--it's in the straitjacket of current events.

Could be worse, though, for sure.

I'm mostly posting over here lately...drop by if you wish....

a time and place

2010-12-29T03:42:00.000-08:00

this be the time and this be the place
and this be you all over your face,
the more you hide it the more
you confide it in everyone
you meet, you sittin in
the seat of here and
now like it or not,
you can lay your
ass down or go
forth at a trot.

santa johnson

Exxon Valdez Judgement Not A Good Sign For Gulf Residents

2010-08-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Remember the Exxon Valdez?

One Amazon customer reviews a book by John Keeble regarding this 11-million-gallon oil spill.

Newspaper stories about the oil spill created the impression that the cause of the accident was simply that the captain was drunk. This book shows that the real situation was far more complex. The captain was definitely not drunk. He did have a few drinks, which is against regulations. Even after all the analysis it is not clear what exactly went wrong. The fact that the captain had a few drinks was not the only breach of regulations. None of the officers had a six-hour off duty time in the twelve-hour period before departure.

The ship was single hulled instead of double hulled as was foreseen when the oil terminal was built.

When Congress granted permission to build the pipeline and the terminal one of the conditions was that there would be a state-of-the-art contingency plan for oil spills. There was nothing of the sort.

A Vessel Traffic Services station was supposed to monitor the movement of the ships through the strait. Due to cost cutting measures the station was unable to monitor the movement of the ship.

A major cause of inefficiency in the clean up was the lack of clarity about who was in charge, the Coast Guard or Exxon.

It is not just the captain that acted irresponsibly, so did all parties concerned. This is described in one part of the book.

The second part of the book describes the impact of the oil spill and especially of the clean up on the communities affected. Each of the communities split in the middle. Half of the members took the position of trying to squeeze as much money out of Exxon as possible whilst the other half did not want to have anything to do with Exxon.

Exxon did not succeed in engaging the communities in a positive way.

The third part describes the nature in Alaska. These descriptions are wonderful and make you want to go there. These three parts are interwoven.

The advantage is that the reader gets a three dimensional understanding of what happened: the responsibility for the disaster and the clean up, the impact on different members of the community and the impact on nature.

The author places the ultimate responsibility on the consumer. He writes,

"the American population prefers to live in a fog and is willing to accept almost anything in return for the opportunity to keep its gas tanks topped up" (with cheap gas).

The reviewer concludes:

The combination of corporations maximising short-term profits and consumers closing their eyes to the consequences of their behaviour makes one worried. There must be a better way.

The book is here:
More reviews of Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill In Prince William Sound.

NOW that we've been warmed up.

Some observations:

1st. "Spill?!!!!"
words are powerful and this word is propogandy fer durn sher.
rupture? volcano? nightmare? toxic plume?

Please.

2nd. This toxic oil catastrophe was only the 53rd largest in history, says Wikipedia.

3rd. What happened afterward.

This is why Gulf residents are in for a sucky time.

The Exxon toxic plume savaged Prince William Sound in 1989.

In 1991, a jury recommended a 900 Million penalty for Exxon.

In 1994 a judge added a 5 Billion punitive judgement against Exxon.

In 2008, SCOTUS slashes the award to 1/10th of its size: 500 million
to the residents of Cordova, Alaska.

But what else was going on with Exxon in 2008?

Well, they had the BIGGEST PROFITS of ANY U.S. COMPANY IN HISTORY!!!

That's right.

The very same year the Supremes reduced Exxon's cleanup cost obligations for this most horrific, toxic event, Exxon reported record profits for the previous year -- 40.61 Billion, or 1,300.00 per second, during the year 2007.

Congratulations, Exxon.

Also, by 2008 the price of gas had skyrocketed 60 per cent.
Cordova residents found themselves gouged coming and going just
for wanting to drive their petrol-guzzling conveyances to work and
wherever else they needed to go. Because what else do we have, Mr. Keeble?
Without reliable mass transit, is it really so much about
consumers driving the economy? Or maybe Mr. Keeble should read up on the history of the highways, the auto makers, and the development of cities, and then tell us
just how much our car-centered infrastructure is the fault of people who are in a fog.

I'll agree about the fog, but not the fault.

Here's a glimpse of how long oil stays stuck in all the trillions of nooks and crannies that it can get stuck in, in ocean habitats. This is the Exxon Valdez spill, 20 years later, as documented by National Geographic.

20 Years After The Exxon Befoulment.

AT & T Customer Service Rep Comments On Job

2010-08-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

Comments from an AT&T customer service rep:

clarencebiggs
August 30, 2007 5:03 PMModerate |Flag for review

There is nothing shocking or secret about the AT&T customer service policy. The policy was put together years ago by a platoon of lawyers in order to protect AT&T and the customer (believe it or not.) I know because I have been a Service Representative with AT&T for over 20 years. What I have seen happening in those years is this: what was once a true Service oriented mentality has become a Sales oriented / bottom line mentality. Within the company, Sales and Service are synonyms. One is said to be servicing their customer well by causing that $20 monthly POTS line account to become a $150 - $300 monthly bill by adding "Bundles" (which the company claims the customer wants, when in reality they don't), second and third and fourth lines, adding Cellular, Dish Network or U-Verse, DSL, or whatever else they can possibly think of to cause that customer to be paying as much as possible on a monthly basis. But there is still nothing particularly "wrong" with that either. AT&T is a publicly traded, for-profit company. The real problem is the people who work there. From the CEO down to the lowly CSR. With few exceptions, their sole motivation is the bottom line. How many DSL's, Dishes or Packaged services got sold that day? AND THEY DONT CARE HOW IT HAPPENS. If the numbers are good, you might get lucky and have a great experience with your CSR on a given day. But if the numbers are bad, and the Division President is coming down on his GM's, then the shit trickles down from the GM to the Sales Managers to the Team Leaders down to the CSR's whose performance numbers may not be that great. Threats are made. Insults hurled. Pressure is brought to bear. Then you hear that saccharine greeting on the other end of your phone..."Thank you for calling AT&T, how can I help?" YOU are toast. In many cases, like it or not. I cant tell you how many customers I have talked to...angry customers. YOU will be lied to. YOU will be presented with promotions and gimmicks that either don't exist, or are "embellishments" of actual promotions. In many cases, the CSR is acting on orders from his/her Manager, who cant get chewed out again by their Sales manager or the GM again. In other cases, its the CSR's lack of Training that is to blame, as AT&T views training as a drain on the system, and would not do any of it unless the Unions which represent the CSR's and Technicians insisted upon it. But there are still other cases of simple greed. CSR's get a nice commission in addition to their excellent salary. Any method that can be used to boost their bottom line while not getting caught is OK with them. And if you make your numbers reliably, Management has been known to turn a blind eye to questionable, sometimes highly questionable sales practices, in spite of the multitudes of customers, many of whom have been loyal to the company for decades, calling in to the Customer Care Center 3, 4...8 times to have some package removed that they didn't ask for, or were unaware they had alternatives to because the CSR never offered it to them. You donut offer the most affordable plan to the customers; you offer the plan that costs them the most so we can collect $600 a year for a service that costs the company $10 a year to maintain. Multiply that out by the millions of customers AT&T has and what do you get? Then imagine all the other customers...the ones who donut call us. They just assume that we wouldn't steer them wrong and they pay their phone bill for months...years...decades...never realizing they are paying for services they donut need, donut want or donut even know that they have because they donut read their bill. You may be thinking that I'm shilling for the Unions. Far from it. The union spends all of the dues it collects from me and all my "Brothers and Sisters" defending and in many cases, getting fired employees who were fired with good reason, back on the job. Why? Because the company has to make a case against the person they want to fire. And if they messed up some minor detail of that case, they will lose their Arbitration hearing to the Union and the CSR who paid for his brand new Escalade with the money he made from lying to you over the phone, gets his job back, in many cases, WITH BACK PAY. In the meantime, the people who go to work everyday and bust ass and remain ethical are lost in the morass. The union is obsessed with this kind of bullshit, while the rest of the employees are forced to work overtime, which is a clear violation of our Union contract. But because the union thinks it ensures job security, they donut put up a fight. But I digress...Ultimately, if AT&T ever ACTUALLY put their own policy into effect, they think they would lose profits.

source: comments

Staring Into Screens Replaces Actually Living Life For Millions

2010-08-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

The Average American Adult Spends 8 1/2 Hours a Day Staring into Screens
Author: Mark Alvarez 31

The average American adult spends eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, whether it’s on a computer, TV, mobile phone or other gadget.

Users who spend the most time in front of a screen are those in the 45-54 age group, who dedicate nine and a half hours to this per day.

These are the results of a new study by the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence (CRE) and Ball State University’s Center for Media Design (CMD).

TV is still the main media activity, followed in descending popularity by computers, radio and print media.

The report finds that the average American spends 142.5 minutes daily in front of a computer, which is dwarfed by TV’s 353.1 minutes. PC users spend almost as much time working with software (46.1 minutes) as they do on the Web (48.8 minutes).

The report doesn’t make clear if the software is installed on PCs or in the cloud.

The biggest computer users are those between the ages of 35 and 44, who spend a half-hour more than any other group in front of the computer, 199.3 minutes.

While the report doesn’t focus on social networking per se, you can see its influence, especially on younger users.

While those in the youngest age group, 18-24, spend the second-highest amount of time on the Internet (67 minutes), their email usage of 20.3 is significantly lower than the average of 37.4 minutes across all age groups, and is only higher than one group, adults 65 and over.

Since we’re in the middle of a paradigm shift in advertising, and are concerned that all the old models are breaking (or have broken) down, it’s fascinating to see CRE report that, despite DVR and channel-surfing, the average American adult watches 72 minutes of TV ads a day.

The CRE study is most interesting in its methodology and what it might have revealed about the accuracy of survey-based studies - it observed users and reported their actions at 10-second intervals, and found that users’ habits were different than what the users themselves reported.

One of these findings flies in the face of most reports about the increases in computer video watching, as it found that the average American does this for a little over two minutes a day, or just a few seconds more than they text.

Of course, Ball State has admitted members of my own family as students, so you might want to question the intellectual standards of the institution behind the report, though they’re surely higher than Purdue’s. To this we should also add: Go IU!

Source

and comments--one from someone unknown and the latter is by me.

Like A Population of Over-Stimulated Newborns | Rich Harris
June 10th, 2010 at 8:19

[...] The average American adult spends 8 1/2 hours a day staring into screens. We have gotten down on our knees and ripped the faucet off the water main of information with mouths and hands wide open. By majority, we are a culture of people in a constant state of waiting for the next thing to do, the next thing to react to, to eat, to drink, to socialize, to attend, to take care of, to engage on whatever level enough to prompt us to feel like we know what we’re supposed to do next while we are awake. I truly believe it’s NOT human nature that we are control freaks with how much idle time we allow. I believe we are taught by our environment how to, and why we should limit our solitude, deviate from it, stay misinformed on how to leverage it for personal growth. We do this out of fear. To us I think deep down we know that solitude is the ultimate place of vulnerability, where we are forced to face the truth, ourselves, with no distraction, and it’s uncomfortable. [...]

Burkey
August 3rd, 2010 at 20:39

Silence, slowing down, refusal to admit advertising into my personal space, and hours of the day spent not staring into screens, but actually doing and experiencing things—rather than observing life through the screens–has become my main objective.

It’s lonely here in the actual world, though. I’m amazed to even find this article. There is so little material on this phenomenon. During my 40-hour work week I am chained to the computer. That is where I am right now. This is the “land of the free,” right? But I’m not free to not use computers.

Computers have really messed up my sense of time, space and physical focus. I appreciate the flow of information. But I fear the cost is too high, for me, personally, anyway. I get a lot of crap for this. But after my 8 hour day where I am only virtual—all my skills used in my job come from my head and through the computer –I am more and more feeling disembodied, unreal, and I fear I will have to quit my job, because I don’t know how long I can take it.

I am also very tired lately and have been sleeping far more than I used to. I have never had to interface with machines so much. Plus all customer service is on the phone. Little to no human voice contact. Very unnerving. I honestly don’t know how people aren’t going mad.

Letter to President Barack Obama, 07.30.10

2010-07-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

07.30.10

Dear Mr. President,

Please forgive my abruptness. I literally feel deserted by you.

"Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to bring change to Washington. "I don't want to just end the war," he said early this year. "I want to end the mindset that got us into war." That is going to be very difficult if Obama employs a foreign policy team that was central to creating that mindset, before and during the presidency of George W. Bush."

Click here to read article, url is included in letter to the President.

We deserve an explanation. That's what it will take to be here
for you. I am really struggling with this.

Cynthia Burkey

EARTH AND SUN AND MOON

2010-07-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

(Moginie)
In the morning we will wake up and take to the air
Look back at the planet - I'm glued to my chair

Southern half is burning as we climb through the sky
Sea-birds softly falling, smoke way up high

There's the contours of the mountains, the deserts and the plains
And a hurricane is blowing, and it turns once again

Now there's oil spills in the water where Columbus once sailed
And there's history and mystery and it's rolling away

I wish you could see this great mystery
Earth and sun and moon human tribe, thin blue line

Eath and sun and moon will survive
Sediment is plowing from river to sea

Now where are the mighty nations, no lines to be seen
An axe upon the broken ground, the sigh of the trees

And its floating in the ether, it brings me to my knees
Too messed up to care,

Anyone got a wing and a prayer,
In the blink of an eye

Thank you and good night
Earth and sun and moon human tribe, one thin blue line
Earth and sun and moon will survive, will survive, we will survive

Midnight Oil

More Than Plenty of Reasonable Doubt

2010-07-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

I think the police focused too early on Scott Peterson, that’s my opinion. They didn’t follow up on any other leads. I also want to say that there are people walking the streets today who’ve had their convictions reversed,
and their cases were investigated by police also.

--Matt Dalton, author of Presumed Guilty: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson's Murder and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be On Death Row

Hallelujah--Kurt Nilson, Espen Lind, Askil Holm og, Alejandro Fuentes

2010-06-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Since I can't embed it here, I must ask you to go to Youtube and watch and listen.

I used to love music so much and take so much comfort from it every day. Once in a while I hear something like this and it reminds me of how powerful music can be. It really reaches places that words and otherwise unmusical thoughts cannot. The only times in my life I've really believed in god were when listening to music.

The link is right here below!

Hey man. Whatever you did to the template, it's all fucked up now. You go away forever, never post, then change the template all of a sudden. WTF?

so go here to Youtube and watch these guys sitting around in chairs and transforming the energy around them into transcendence.

It's really something else.

Woodchip Gazette -- found blog

2010-06-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

I always like to find an interesting voice. Plumbing layer upon layer of cyberspace I am always amazed at how many sane, sensible, articulate voices out there. (Which makes it all the more amazing that George W. Bush was the President, a reality I still have not accepted even as I recognize that it is now historical fact).

The internet is freaking me out lately. Majorly freaking me out, to use an 80's term. It's nothing but writing on the wall, on walls that might never be seen by anyone. What exactly do we think we're doing here? Are we going to change the world by writing on the wall?

True, only now that we have the internet do we have real-time wall writing made accessible to everyone. But has the internet changed our civic life at the core?

What if what's really happening is that with every minute, hour, day, week, month, year that we fix our eyes on screens and our hands on keyboards, rather than elsewhere, we are getting more and more accustomed to doing nothing but typing to address our concerns? It's a three-dimensional world. Are we hypnotized by the idea that what we write here makes a difference?

These are the questions I ask myself lately, especially after whole days go by and my mind spends so many hours in a space that has no physical relationship to any reality that I know. It's the dark mind-space where all our thoughts go as we communicate here. But it is a different place than the three dimensions in which I live and breathe and move and walk and ....

OK, the Pres. is talking, and I'm going to listen. But first a found blog..

Sunday, December 6, 2009
The Fetish of the Health Care Product

To: Truthout
Re: Health Care Should be driven by Mission / Phillip Casper MD,
___describing the corporatization-for-profit of health care in the U.S.

Although Dr. Casper falls into the prevailing habit of describing phenomena in their moral aspect, he is not romanticising anything. At bottom, he is simply describing the effects of what Marx called the Fetish of the Commodity -- i.e., the way in which the capitalist exchange system perpetuates itself by becoming a mental fetish.

Not only do people (including Obama) believe a whole bunch of ridiculous mantras -- such as the "magic of the market place" and the like -- they actually see the world as a matrix of for- profit exchanges and they actually believe that this perception emanates from an unalterable objective reality. Last but not least they believe that this system -- the object of their beholding -- is capable of producing goodness and joy.

The Catholic theologian Von Balthasar went deeper and attributed our moral dysfunctionality to the ruthless reductionism of Cartesian thought, which his mentor, Pope Benedict has written produces pathologies of thought which end up being both unscientific and immoral.

Alas the American mind (such as it is) is incapable of grasping anything larger than a pea. It thinks it can "fix" health care "within the system" without revolutionizing the system of which the broken health care "product" is a manifestation. This atomization of thought produces little more than political heteronomy in which everyone chases willy-nilly after his or her object of desire and personal-validation issue without grasping or dealing with the whole.

By the time the country figures anything out it will be far too late. The US has become a colossal, obnoxious, boring failure. The sooner it self-destructs (which it is doing) the better for all concerned.

from this guy's blog

thanks for keeping the fire going...

2010-06-11T01:38:00.000-07:00

I've been going crazy in kim world. these two weeks are full of high school summer music camp, college rock history, negotiating a better job at the latter gig, getting ready for a major theatre show week after next and personal daily swim/stop eating marathon.

and, frankly, I've been so addicted to Facebook many of my on-line hours have been spent there.

but I'll try to be a better blogger. really nice public awareness stuff here. I always adore Noam. he thinks like I do only he says it a LOT better than I do and has the international stage. every time I hear him or read his work I bemoan the fact most people Arent listening and seeing through the pristine prism he uses to grasp the truth. I literally believe Everything he says cause it just makes too much sense to believe otherwise.

Noam says it, I believe it, that settles it!

Wikileaks Soldiers Apologize And Call For Dialogue On Iraq War

2010-05-21T21:46:00.001-07:00

Just read this:

Editor's Note: The WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" video shook an apathetic and misled public awake with images of civilian killing in the chaotic streets of Baghdad in July 2007. US forces wounded two small children and killed over a dozen people including members of the media. Two soldiers from the company involved in the shooting incident have written a letter of reconciliation and apology to the people affected by the incident, which is published below. -Matt Renner.

An Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People: From Current and Former Members of the US Military
Peace be with you,
To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the "Collateral Murder" Wikileaks video:
We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.
We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.
There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize what we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.
We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of "god and country". The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the values of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won't lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation's importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation's leaders, and to extend our hands to you.
With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.
Solemnly and Sincerely,
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army

Truthout.org

Defense Companies Sap Taxpayers, Spread Culture Of Death

2010-05-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, the inimitable Noam Chomsky (not the most electrifying speaker in the world by a long shot, but a smart and articulate elder and scholar well worth respecting and listening to.

Thanks to MrInformationMan;

"Chomsky launches a savage, two-pronged assault on national economic policies and efforts at global domination.By now the stakes are so high that issues of survival arise, says Chomsky.

The basic principle underlying our current economy is to make rich people happy and make everybody else frightened. Chomsky lays particular blame for this doctrine on Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan-- Saint Alan-- who claims the economy is working well because of private entrepreneurial initiative and expanding consumer choice. Chomsky disagrees. He claims that in the last 30 years, it has been public spending on such technologies as computers, satellites, the Internet and lasers that has fed the economy. And the wealth derived from these technologies has gone primarily into the hands of corporate masters, who represent a fraction of the American people. The government has used a succession of bogeymen—the Soviets, Communist insurgents around the world, and now global terrorism—to scare taxpayers into supporting core defense programs whose technologies ultimately spin off into private hands. The current administration advocates not merely controlling space, but owning it, with a new missile-based system and satellite-guided unmanned drones. This expensive strategy, combined with the doctrine of striking first at perceived enemies, may well bring global calamity."

Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes In The Gulf

2010-05-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

One commenter wrote:

"If anyone thinks the oil industry actually cares about the environment, they are a fool. The drunken greed for monopoly and power is the very reason all the "new" technology never came to be these last 40 years. Promoting societies addiction to fossil fuel was intentional. This article pulls back the covers and exposes the true intentions of this evil industry. This is not an accident, this is a clear example of willful negligence that 'allowed' something so horrific to happen, that it should fully illustrate the insanity that is going to destroy us. If we destroy our oceans, we are DONE!!!!!!!And since we do have options (but if we don't get our act together now, we wont) this whole offshore drilling issue should be dead in the water, for good! We have a big and complex problem that has only one answer, we have to get serious about alternative energy and maximizing every drop of oil we currently use, and at the same time, we have to require strict responsible standards for the industries presently in place. Because on-shore practices in other parts of the world by these same companies would make you extremely sick when you see what happens when operations are allowed to happen without any responsible standards. And you thought this was bad?"

I like this article so much, I'm going to re-print it here, in its entirety. Jason Leopold is very cool.

A former contractor who worked for BP claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents obtained by Truthout.
The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.
It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to oversee the company's databases that housed documents related to its Atlantis project, discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.
BP's own internal communications show that company officials were made aware of the issue and feared that the document shortfalls related to Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator error" and must be addressed.
Indeed, according to an August 15, 2008, email sent to BP officials by Barry Duff, a member of BP's Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Atlantis Subsea Team, the Piping and Instrument Diagrams (P&IDs) for the Atlantis subsea components "are not complete" and "there are hundreds if not thousands of subsea documents that have never been finalized, yet the facilities have been" up and running. P&IDs documents form the foundation of a hazards analysis BP is required to undertake as part of its Safety and Environmental Management Program related to its offshore drilling operations. P&IDs drawings provide the schematic details of the project's piping and process flows, valves and safety critical instrumentation.
"The risk in turning over drawings that are not complete are: 1) The Operator will assume the drawings are accurate and up to date," said Duff's email to BP officials Bill Naseman and William Broman, the existence of which was revealed three days ago, but is being detailed here for the first time. "This could lead to catastrophic Operator errors due to their assuming the drawing is correct. Turning over incomplete drawings to the Operator for their use is a fundamental violation of basic Document control, [internal standards] and Process Safety Regulations."
BP did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story. Despite the claims that BP did not maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis, federal regulators authorized an expansion of the drilling project.
Last May, Mike Sawyer, a Texas-based engineer who works for Apex Safety Consultants, voluntarily agreed to evaluate BP's Atlantis subsea document database and the whistleblower's allegations regarding BP's engineering document shortfall related to Atlantis. Sawyer concluded that of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval.
Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week.
In a report Sawyer prepared after his review, he said BP's "widespread pattern of unapproved design, testing and inspection documentation on the Atlantis subsea project creates a risk of a catastrophic incident threatening the [Gulf of Mexico] deep-water environment and the safety of platform workers." Moreover, "the extent of documentation discrepancies creates a substantial risk that a catastrophic event could occur at any time."
"The absence of a complete set of final, up-to-date, 'as built' engineering documents, including appropriate engineering approval, introduces substantial risk of large scale damage to the deep water [Gulf of Mexico] environment and harm to workers, primarily because analyses and inspections based on unverified design documents cannot accurately assess risk or suitability for service," Sawyer's report said. He added, "there is no valid engineering justification for these violations and short cuts."
Sawyer explained that the documents in question - welding records, inspections and safety shutdown logic materials - are "extremely critical to the safe operation of the platform and its subsea components." He said the safety shutdown logic drawings on Atlantis, a complex computerized system that, during emergencies, is supposed to send a signal to automatically shut down the flow of oil, were listed as "requiring update."
"BP's recklessness in regards to the Atlantis project is a clear example of how the company has a pattern of failing to comply with minimum industry standards for worker and environmental safety," Sawyer said.
The oil spill blanketing roughly 4,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed eleven workers, was exacerbated, preliminary reports suggest, by the failure of a blowout preventer to shut off the flow of oil on the drilling rig and the lack of a backup safety measure, known as a remote control acoustic shut off switch, to operate the blowout preventer.
Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent a letter Thursday to BP Chairman and President Lamar McKay seeking documents related to inspections on Deepwater Horizon conducted this year and BP's policy on using acoustic shut off switches in the Gulf of Mexico.
The circumstances behind the spill are now the subject of a federal investigation.
Profits Before Safety
Whether it's the multiple oil spills that emanated from BP's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope or the March 2005 explosion at the company's Texas refinery that killed 15 employees and injured 170 people, BP has consistently put profits ahead of safety.
On October 25, 2007, BP pled guilty to a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and paid a $20 million fine related to two separate oil spills that occurred in the North Slope in March and August of 2006, the result of a severely corroded pipeline and a safety valve failure. BP formally entered a guilty plea in federal court on November 29, 2007. US District Court Judge Ralph Beistline sentenced BP to three years probation and said oil spills were a "serious crime" that could have been prevented if BP had spent more time and funds investing in pipeline upgrades and a "little less emphasis on profit."
Also on October 25, 2007, BP paid a $50 million fine and pleaded guilty to a felony in the refinery explosion. An investigation into the incident concluded that a warning system was not working and that BP sidestepped its own internal regulations for operating the tower. Moreover, BP has a prior felony conviction for improperly disposing of hazardous waste.
In 2007, the Department of Interior's federal Minerals Management Services (MMS), the agency that monitors offshore drilling practices, fined BP $41,000 for not properly training employees in well control management related to a near blowout due to a rise in gass pressure on the Ocean King Rig five years earlier that forced the evacuation of all 65 workers for two days and halted drilling for a week.
According to MMS, Diamond Offshore Drilling, operator of the rig, and BP did not know that the critical safety procedures they employed to try and stop the increase in gas pressure on the Ocean King Rig could also have caused a blowout.
"Operator failed to verify employees were trained to competently perform the assigned well control duties," MMS said. "Additionally, they failed to have a remote-controlled station that could operate the valves in the flow and vent lines of the diverter. These violations contributed to a loss of well control event on November 14, 2002. There was no pollution or injuries."
MMS also cited BP and contract workers in the incident for what they said was a 'lack of knowledge of the system, and lack of pre-event planning and procedures."
Additionally, MMS fined BP $25,000 in February 2004 for another incident that took place a year earlier on the Diamond Offshore drilling rig. MMS said "the rig's Gas Detection System was bypassed with ongoing drilling operations being conducted."
In July 2004, BP was fined $190,000 by MMS due to a fire that occurred two years earlier "involving the as-built diverter system [on another rig] leading to damage to property and the environment."
"The diverter system was not installed as in the approved plan, had inadequate supports, added right angle turns at the ends, and did not provide for downwind diversions," MMS said.
In 2003, MMS fined BP $70,000, this time due to inadequate water pressure on the fire protection system on one rig. BP racked up a separate $80,000 fine that year as well for "bypassed relays for the pressure safety... for four producing wells."
That's similar to "what caused the near-blowout in 2002," according to environmental publication Clean Skies.
And the list goes on.
BP was also fined $25,000 in 2003 by MMS because a drilling rig operator "failed to conduct crane dismantling and removal operations in a safe and workmanlike manner, resulting in the crane falling into the Gulf of Mexico. Accident occurred due to failure to follow the procedures established in the Job Safety Analysis (JSA)."
Finally, BP was fined $20,000 by MMS the same year because a "surface-controlled subsurface safety valve...was blocked out of service."
The incident involving Deepwater Horizon, now the subject of a federal investigation, may end up being the latest example of BP's safety practices run amuck.
The issues related to the repeated spills in Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere were revealed by more than 100 whistleblowers who, since as far back as 1999, said the company failed to take seriously their warnings about shoddy safety practices and instead retaliated against whistleblowers who registered complaints with superiors.
In September 2006, days before BP executives were scheduled to testify before Congress about an oil spill from a ruptured pipeline that forced the company to shutdown its Prudhoe Bay operations, BP announced that it had tapped former federal Judge Stanley Sporkin to serve as an ombudsman and take complaints from employees about the company's operations.
That's who the whistleblower complained to via email about issues related to BP's Atlantis operations in March 2009 a month after his contract was abruptly terminated for reasons he believes were directly related to his complaints to management about BP's failure to obtain the engineering documents on Atlantis and the fact that he "stood up for a female employee who was being discriminated against and harassed." The whistleblower alleged that the $2 million price tag was the primary reason BP did not follow through with a plan formulated months earlier to secure the documents.
"We prepared a plan to remedy this situation but it met much resistance and complaints from the above lead engineers on the project," the whistleblower wrote in the March 4, 2009, email to Pasha Eatedali in BP's ombudsman's office.
Federal Intervention
Additionally, he hired an attorney and contacted the inspector general for the Department of the Interior and MMS and told officials there that BP lacked the required engineer-certified documents related to the major components of the Atlantis subsea gas and oil operation.
In 2007, MMS had approved the construction of an additional well and another drilling center on Atlantis. But the whistleblower alleged in his March 4, 2009, email to Eatedali in BP's Office of the Ombudsman that documents related to this project needed to ensure operational safety were missing and that amounted to a violation of federal law as well as a breach of BP's Atlantis Project Execution Plan. The ombudsman's office agreed to investigate.
MMS, acting on the whistleblower's complaints, contacted BP on June 30, 2009, seeking specific engineering related documents. BP complied with the request three weeks later.
On July 9, 2009, MMS requested that BP turn over certification documents for its Subsurface Safety Valves and Surface Controlled Subsea Safety Valves for all operational wells in the Atlantis field. MMS officials flew out to the platform on the same day and secured the documents, according to an internal letter written by Karen Westall, the managing attorney on BP's Gulf of Mexico Legal Team.
But according to the public advocacy group Food & Water Watch, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, which became involved in the case last July, BP did not turn over a complete set of materials to MMS.
"BP only turned over 'as-built' drawings for [Atlantis'] topsides and hull, despite the fact that the whistleblower’s allegations have always been about whether BP maintains complete and accurate engineer approved documents for it subsea components," Food & Water Watch said in a 19-page letter it sent to William Hauser, MMS’s Chief, Regulations and Standards Branch.
During two visits to the Atlantis drilling platform last August and September, MMS inspectors reviewed BP's blowout preventer records. Food & Water Watch said they believe MMS inspectors reviewed the test records and failed to look into the whistleblower's charges that engineering documents were missing. The blowout preventer, however, is an issue at the center of the Deepwater Horizon spill.
An MMS spokesperson did not return calls for comment. MMS does not have clean hands when it comes to its oversight role. The agency was embroiled in a scandal when a 2008 report by the Interior Department's inspector general found that regulators "had inappropriate relationships with industry that could compromise their objectiveity." Those relationships were sexual and also included sharing drugs, such as cocaine, with industry personnel.
Last October, Food & Water Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for expedited processing, seeking documents from MMS that indicate BP "has in its possession a complete and accurate set of 'as built' drawings ... for its entire Atlantis Project, including the subsea sector." "As-built" means lead engineers on a specific project have to make sure updated technical documents match the "as-built" condition of equipment before its used.
MMS denied the FOIA request.
"MMS does not agree with your assessment of the potential for imminent danger to individuals or the environment, for which you premise your argument [for expedited response]. After a thorough review of these allegations, the MMS, with concurrence of the Solicitor's Office, concludes your claims are not supported by the facts or the law," the agency said in its October 30, 2009, response letter.
In response, MMS said that although some of its regulatory requirements governing offshore oil and gas operations do require "as built" drawings, they need not be complete or accurate and, furthermore, are irrelevant to a hazard analysis BP was required to complete.
Unsatisfied with MMS's response, Food & Water Watch contacted Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), a member of the Committee on Natural Resources and chairman of the subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, about the issues revolving around BP's Atlantis operations and provided his office with details of its own investigation into the matter.
"Unsubstantiated" Claims
On January 15, Westall, the BP attorney, wrote a letter to Deborah Lanzone, the staff director with the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, and addressed the allegations leveled by Food & Water Watch as well as indirect claims the whistleblower made.
Westall said BP "reviewed the allegations" related to "noncompliant documentation of the Atlantis project ... and found them to be unsubstantiated." But Westall's response directly contradicts the findings of Billie Pirner Garde, BP's deputy ombudsman, who wrote in an April 13 email to the whistleblower that his claims that BP failed to maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis "were substantiated" and "addressed by a BP Management of Change document." Garde did not say when that change occurred. But he added that the whistleblower's complaints weren't "unique" and had been raised by other employees "before you worked there, while you were there and after you left."
Westall noted in her letter that "all eight BP-operated Gulf of Mexico production facilities" received safety awards from MMS in 2009.
"Maintenance and general housekeeping were rated outstanding and personnel were most cooperative in assisting in the inspection activities," MMS said about BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling facilities. "Platform records were readily available for review and maintained to reflect current conditions."
Westall maintained that the whistleblower as well as Food & Water Watch had it all wrong. Their charges about missing documents has nothing to do with Atlantis' operational safety. Rather, Westall seemed to characterize their complaints as a clerical issue.
"The Atlantis project is a complex project with multiple phases," Westall said in her letter to Lanzone. "The [August 15, 2008] e-mail [written by Barry Duff, a member of the Atlantis subsea team] which was provided to you to support [Food & Water Watch's] allegations relates to the status of efforts to utilize a particular document management system to house and maintain the Atlantis documents. The document database includes engineering drawings for future phases, as well as components or systems which may have been modified, replaced, or not used."
But Representative Grijalva was not swayed by Westall's denials. He continued to press the issue with MMS, and in February, he and 18 other lawmakers signed a letter calling on MMS to probe whether BP "is operating its Atlantis offshore oil platform ... without professionally approved safety documents."
Grijalva said MMS has not "done enough so far to ensure worker and environmental safety at the site, in part because it has interpreted the relevant laws too loosely."
"[C]ommunications between MMS and congressional staff have suggested that while the company by law must maintain 'as-built' documents, there is no requirement that such documents be complete or accurate," the letter said. "This statement, if an accurate interpretation of MMS authorities, raises serious concerns" and requires "a thorough review at the agency level, the legal level and the corporate level. The world's largest oil rig cannot continue to operate without safety documentation. The situation is unacceptable and deserves immediate scrutiny.
"We also request that MMS describe how a regulation that requires offshore operators to maintain certain engineering documents, but does not require that those documents be complete or accurate, is appropriately protective of human health and the environment."
On March 26, MMS launched a formal investigation and is expected to file a report detailing its findings next month.
Zach Corrigan, a senior attorney with Food & Water Watch, said in an interview Thursday that he hopes MMS "will perform a real investigation" and if the agency fails to do so, Congress should immediately hold oversight hearings "and ensure that the explosion and mishap of the Horizon platform is not replicated."
"MMS didn't act on this for nearly a year," Corrigan said. "They seemed to think it wasn't a regulatory or an important safety issue. Atlantis is a real vulnerability."
Editor's note: On Monday, May 17, BP issued a statement revolving around claims the whistleblower had made regarding Atlantis. The whistleblower, Kenneth Abbott, revealed his identity on 60 Minutes Sunday and recounted many of the allegations about Atlantis covered in this story.
BP said in a statement Monday in response to Abbott's claims:
BP today rebutted allegations that its Atlantis platform in the Gulf of Mexico operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents.
Responding to claims that flawed or missing documentation posed a threat to safe operation of the platform, recently made in various news programs and print media, BP said it had thoroughly investigated these claims when they were first made by a former contract worker in 2009 and found them to be without substance.
The investigation found that the operators on the platform had full access to the accurate, up-to-date drawings (topsides, hull and subsea) necessary to operate the platform safely.
A second investigation of the same allegations by the Ombudsman’s office focused on project document and filing procedures and had no bearing on operating or regulatory issues. After this review BP made some procedural changes in the project execution plan, but these likewise had no connection with the safe operation of the platform.
“As CEO Tony Hayward constantly makes clear, safe and reliable operations are his number 1 priority for BP and the company has a very strong record of safe and reliable operations in the Gulf of Mexico,” a company spokesman said. “It is completely erroneous to suggest that the minor internal process issue we identified and immediately amended last year on the Atlantis platform suggests anything different.”
The design, construction, installation and operation of Atlantis have received a high level of oversight by both the US Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the US Coast Guard. BP has and will continue to work with the MMS or any other regulator when concerns are raised about any aspect of our operation.
The Atlantis field has been in service since October 2007 and has safely produced many million barrels of oil. The platform was successfully maintained through the course of two major hurricanes in 2008. Its safety, operations and performance record is excellent.

*This story has been updated and reposted since it was first published April 27 to reflect information obtained from MMS.

Payday Monsanto: Everybody Knows

2010-05-14T17:00:00.001-07:00

Michael C. Ruppert

2010-05-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

Bush Administration Foreknowledge of 9/11?

The documented pre-Sept. 11 insider trading that occurred before the attacks involved only companies hit hard by the attacks. They include United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Axa Reinsurance, Marsh & McLennan, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance, and Citigroup.

In order to argue that the massive and well-documented insider trading that occurred in at least seven countries immediately before the attacks of Sept. 11 did not serve as a warning to intelligence agencies, then it is necessary to argue that no one was aware of the trades as they were occurring, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies of most industrialized nations do not monitor stock trades in real time to warn of impending attacks. Both assertions are false. Both assertions would also ignore the fact that the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for enforcement is David Doherty, a retired CIA general counsel. And also ignored is the fact that the trading in United Airlines stock -- one of the most glaring clues -- was placed through the firm Deutschebank/Alex Brown, which was headed until 1998 by the man who is now the executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard.

One wonders if it was a coincidence then, that Mayo Shattuck III, the head of the Alex Brown unit of Deutschebank -- which had its offices in the WTC -- suddenly resigned from a $30 million, three-year contract on Sept. 12, as reported by the New York Times and other papers.

The American exchanges that handle these trades, primarily the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and the NYSE, know on a daily basis what levels of put options are purchased. "Put options" are highly leveraged bets, tying up blocks of stock, that a given stock's share price will fall dramatically. To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market."
It is hard to believe that they missed:

- A jump in UAL put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack. [CBS News, Sept. 26]

- A jump in American Airlines put options 60 times (not 60 percent) above normal on the day before the attacks. [CBS News, Sept. 26]

- No similar trading occurred on any other airlines. [Bloomberg Business Report, the Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), Herzliyya, Israel citing data from the CBOE]

..."tell me that one again about how the 19 goatherders outsmarted NATO?" (anonymous comment)

Rachel Corrie

2010-05-10T18:44:00.001-07:00

The investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who stood up to bulldozers razing Palestinian homes, who was bulldozed.

She was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket.

from wikipedia:

Joe Carr, an American ISM activist who used the assumed name of Joseph Smith during his time in Gaza, gave the following account in an affidavit recorded and published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR):

Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day... When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer... Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer’s blade, and the bulldozer driver and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the driver continued forward, which caused her to fall back, out of view of the diver. [sic] He continued forward, and she tried to scoot back, but was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer. We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted; one activist with the megaphone. But the bulldozer driver continued forward, until Rachel was all the way underneath the central section of the bulldozer.[24]

On March 18, 2003, only two days after Corrie's death, Joe (Smith) Carr was interviewed by British Channel 4 and The Observer reporter Sandra Jordan for a documentary that was aired June 2003 on Channel 4 titled The Killing Zone.

"It was either a really gross mistake or a really brutal murder"[25]

According to the Seattle Times, "Smith, who witnessed Sunday's incident, said it began when Corrie sat down in front of the bulldozer. He said the driver scooped her up with a pile of earth, dumped her on the ground and ran over her twice."[26]

Smith also observed:

"We were horribly surprised. They had been careful not to hurt us. They'd always stopped before."[18]

British ISM activist Tom Dale, who was standing yards away from Corrie, told journalist Joshua Hammer, Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek:

The bulldozer built up earth in front of it... She tried to climb on top of the earth, to avoid being overwhelmed. She climbed to the point where her shoulders were above the top lip of the blade. She was standing on this pile of earth. As the bulldozer continued, she lost her footing, and she turned and fell down this pile of earth. Then it seemed like she got her foot caught under the blade. She was helpless, pushed prostrate, and looked absolutely panicked, with her arms out, and the earth was piling itself over her. The bulldozer continued so that the place where she fell down was directly beneath the cockpit... The whole [incident] took place in about six or seven seconds.[5]

An individual giving the name Richard, who stated that he witnessed Corrie's death, as recorded by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

There's no way he didn't see her, since she was practically looking into the cabin. At one stage, he turned around toward the building. The bulldozer kept moving, and she slipped and fell off the plow. But the bulldozer kept moving, the shovel above her. I guess it was about 10 or 15 meters that it dragged her and for some reason didn't stop. We shouted like crazy to the driver through loudspeakers that he should stop, but he just kept going and didn't lift the shovel. Then it stopped and backed up. We ran to Rachel. She was still breathing.[27]

British ISM activist Richard Purssell gave the following account, in an affidavit made in a manner similar to Carr's:

As the bulldozer reached the place where Rachel was standing, she began as many of us did on the day to climb the pile of earth. She reached the top and at this point she must have been clearly visible to the driver, especially as she was still wearing the high visibility jacket ["orange fluorescent... with reflective strips"]. She turned and faced in my direction and began to come back down the pile. The bulldozer continued to move forward at [5-6 mph]. As her feet hit the ground I saw a panicked expression on her face... The pile of earth engulfed her and she was hidden from my view.[24]

Advance Warning Of 9/11?

2010-05-10T17:29:00.001-07:00

The Strange Case of Delmart Vreeland

Ain't it funny how I never heard of this guy before today?

Either he's a crackpot's crackpot, or it's a major fucking story. What say you?

Unpopular Questions Department

2010-05-10T17:15:00.000-07:00

Hedy Epstein on a question I have wondered about: What were the aftereffects of the Holocaust? Is it possible that Israel is perpetrating oppression against Palestinians?

Hedy Epstein: They tried to intimidate me, to silence me, hoping I would never come back. Though momentarily they may have succeeded, ultimately they did not. To quote General McArthur, an American army general, who said "I shall return", I have returned four times since the January 2004, event at the Tel Aviv airport, on my way back from Israeli occupied territory, and will continue to return. They will not be able to stop me. And, so, I plan to aboard ship to Gaza in a few months.

Silvia Cattori: Was it not too traumatic for a sensitive person like you to go back to the West Bank and see the Isreali soldiers humiliating, threatening, killing, and destroying Palestinians lives and properties?

Hedy Epstein: As an American I am a privileged person. I am very much aware of this and feel uncomfortable wearing this cloak, especially when I am in Palestine, conscious of the fact that I can come and go any time I want to, a privilege denied the Palestinians, who have great difficulty in moving from one place to another, restricted by road blocks, check points, the imprisoning 25 foot high wall, by young Israeli soldiers who can decide who can pass and who cannot, who can go to school, to the hospital, to work, to visit family and friends.

I have seen the long lines of Palestinians at the Bethlehem checkpoint. I spoke to a 41 year old man, who told me he works three days a week; in order to get to work on time, he gets up at 2:30 A.M. and arrives at the checkpoint at 3:15 A.M. to wait in line, a long line, with others, for the checkpoint to open around 5:30 A.M. He has to come this early because many people line up. Sometimes the Israeli soldiers allow no one to go through. He would like to work full time, but there are no jobs in Bethlehem.

During each of my five visits I have spent some time in Jerusalem. I have been painfully aware how increasingly its current size and boundaries share very little with the city's historic parameters, Israeli only settlements, such as Har Homa and Gilo are referred to as Jerusalem neighbourhoods. East Jerusalem is dotted with Israeli flags flying from homes from which Palestinians were "removed," thus judaizing the area more and more.

During my last visit, in August 2007, I only had time for a brief visit with my dear Palestinian friend, and her husband in Ramallah. During prior visits, I and some of my American travel companions were their houseguests for several days, basking in their hospitality, typical Palestinian hospitality, which is unlike any other I have ever experienced anywhere. The wife, ever cheerful in the past, seemed downcast, though she did not complain, simply stating "Life is more difficult since my husband is no longer working." In a conversation later, alone with her husband, he stated that he left his job in order to go to school and study. There is truth in both statements, but the husband's comments reflect an effort to salvage and maintain some of his dignity.

I also visited and stayed overnight with my Palestinians friends and their children in Bethlehem. The TV, which is always on, at one point caught our attention. There was a story about Jews from all over the world, immigrating to Israel. There were many small Israeli flags waving and welcoming the new citizens of Israel arriving at the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. A big banner in the background spelled out in English and Hebrew "Welcome Home".

As the story continued, we all stared at the TV, silently. Then one of us, I don't remember who, broke the heavy silence, asking no one in particular "What about the return of the Palestinians?"

At the regular weekly non-violent demonstration in Bi'lin, as the teargas tossed at us by young Israeli soldiers, choking us, as we all ran to get away from it, I overheard a conversation between two Palestinian boys, one saying to the other "I don't want to die" "Nor do I" said the other. Their fear has stayed with me. What will happen to them? What is their future?

Liberal Vs. Conservative

2010-05-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

I have a cool internet friend. We met randomly and started talking to each other. We email almost every day and sometimes talk on the phone. We both like to write, and devote time to it. She lives in Pennsylvania, one state over from my early-years stomping grounds in northeastern Ohio. Attitudes are very conservative there, and her ideas on things are pretty enlightened for that part of the country. She's able to think for herself without apology which is one of the reasons I like her. She also is a good communicator.

Anyway, here's part of a letter I wrote to her. Someone was saying how NPR is "liberal" and she overheard it. I found that to be a laugh.

Don't get me wrong, I think NPR still does some of the best reporting around. The problem is that they fall into line with everyone else on what topics are OK to report on. They'll give you facts, but maybe not the ones you need. For this reason I fell out of love with them (in addition to their solemn and momentous, *unquestioning* coverage of the Iraq war, one of the most evil things our country has perpetrated in the last decade).

So is NPR "liberal"? Ha. I guess I think anyone who thinks that is listening to what right-wing talk radio hosts say about NPR's politics. And you know how reliable those commercial talk radio guys are.

Anyway, here's my letter.

When it comes to political parties, ie dem/rep, they are all part of the same corrupt garbage. There are good people of both parties. However the deregulatory policies pushed by republicans have had a devastating effect on the economy. There has to be rule of law for both the powerful and the not so powerful.

If wanting rule of law for ALL citizens is liberal, than I'll accept the label there. Since Liberal is an epithet spoken by idiots, I generally welcome it anyway. I don't know how you manage over there in PA, it is a different universe from California, very very conservative.

If it's liberal to believe that the 1996 telecommunications act destroyed the already-tenuous local business of radio and TV, then I'm liberal. If it's liberal to believe NAFTA was a disaster, then I'm liberal. Al Gore was all for NAFTA and he was dead wrong. Perot was warning about the sucking sound of jobs going across borders and it has only gotten worse since then.

If it's liberal to believe in representative democracy, then I'm liberal. If it's liberal to believe what Thomas Jefferson said about how banks would destroy the economy if given the power, then I'm liberal.

This is what he said:

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

Abraham Lincoln tried to restore issuing power to the people, and was shot. Kennedy tried the same thing and was shot. Coincidence? You can look that up if you want...or I will supply links. But what it shows is how damn easy it is to shoot a President. Obama is rightly scared from his mind. He is a good man, though an innocent one who's been engaged in losing that innocence these last two years. I would have voted for McCain if he'd stood up to the bailouts. Neither of them did. Which admitted to me how entrenched in the current, corrupt system they both are.

Who's running things? And what does it have to do with conservative or liberal?

People who believe the two parties stand for different things are kidding themselves. Our two-party system is thoroughly corrupt. There are a lot of people today who believe that the enemies of our country are people who differ on policy positions (liberals). This is a dangerous lie propogated by talk radio hosts and television personalities like Sean Hannity. The enemies of our country are those who would suppress the voice of the people, and I certainly count corporations, with their ill-gotten status and power, among the enemies. The enemy is systemic. It is ignorance. The real enemy is in each person, at the point where that person's mind closes down to new information. The real enemy is the point at which people begin to believe that violence and acrimony is the only source of power. This is power over others, rather than power in collaboration with others. These are two very different things.

Many conservatives I have known believe that the only real power is "over" others. And that everything is determined by who you have power over, or who has power over you. The idea of self-governance relies upon the value of collaborative, representative government. But this requires an informed populace, which we largely do not have.

I differ from most people I meet because I have an attitude they consider condescending. My attitude is that most people are badly misinformed.

I don't think I'm especially smart (otherwise I'd have figured out a lot more stuff at this point) but what I do have that I count as a value is my curiosity and open-mindedness. And I do look down on people who don't have those two things, because I think at the point where you limit your learning, you make life dangerous for everyone around you. I chose communications as my field, in part because I wanted to try to make sense of the world. I chose NPR because it was the best in the business (despite the fact that so many people genuinely don't even have it on their radar--including some people I consider friends). I spent eleven years saturated in NPR news all the livelong day, and not just when I was at work. I learned some stuff. If you quizzed me, I wouldn't be able to do very well. My brain cannot retain facts. However, if you watch for long enough, you can easily see the difference between commercial news reporting and NPR-style journalistic engagement. And continuing to watch as the internet makes information available, it's more starkly clear than ever that the vast majority of media is limited to a certain number of stories a day, news cycles following each other relentlessly, with extremely important stories, and viewpoints, being left out of the coverage. I have seen this for far too long to have any respect left at all for television news. I genuinely think people like Dan Abrams and whatshisname, Anderson Cooper, are highly-paid knuckleheads who are trained monkeys in their profession, which is talking on camera. They are far too steeped in the culture of mainstream TV to actually have any idea what's going on.

Both of those guys have infinitely more power and money than I do. They reach into people's minds and take up residence there because the news machine supports what they do. I, on the other hand, don't even have a radio audience anymore. That doesn't change the fact that I have no respect for them. They are part of the problem, and it's really that simple. Anyone who is not pushing the envelope, pushing against the establishment, is a part of what gives the establishment its ill-gotten power. Anyone who thinks journalism can happen without subversiveness is just on another planet entirely. And those guys certainly qualify. They'll color within the lines, and they'll genuinely believe that's OK. The old farts who run things and allow them to talk on camera and make all that money will continue to allow them to do it, as long as they don't try to cover issues not vetted (censored) by the suits.

The establishment MUST be relentlessly questioned. Otherwise, we live in an authoritarian society. In our society, those who question, today, are called "traitors" "truthers" or "tin-foil hat wearers." People are scared to be seen that way----so they don't speak up too loudly if their views are controversial. That is the opposite of democracy.

Closing one's mind around a subject and then allowing violence to happen around those beliefs *in any way* is unbearable to me, and I no longer can be around people who do this, like that man at the American Legion. I am a fully dedicated peacenik. Unfortunately, people are angry and hurting right now, and want to blame someone. The very people they should be blaming are still running things. It is not the poor we have to fear, but the rich and powerful.

Conservatives tend to believe we should venerate the rich and powerful because they must be smart, having figured out how to take a bunch of stuff for themselves. I can understand this inclination, but when they accept propoganda that tells them they have immigrants to fear, that they have to fear the least powerful elements in society, then these people become dangerous, their ignorance supports the corruption and ensures the establishment's continued power to break the law, not pay taxes, not follow regs, pollute, kill, gamble away hard-won pensions, etc.

The law in arizona is just the tip of the iceberg. There is real hatred of immigrants right now. It is boiling over on the internet. It frightens me, because it's a complete distraction from the real problem. The real problem is the new slave labor tradition in the marketplace. Who decides that? Not the slaves.

CB

more from the Joe anti-Anderson thing below

2010-04-30T00:26:00.001-07:00

"Trade is the road to peace. Commerce and business know no national boundaries. They link nations together on productivity, creating jobs and peace across the world."

It sounded good at the time. Who would have thought that the people enjoying all this harmony and peace brought about through globalization would be enjoying it in a one big happy planetary work gulag?

. . .

I like the way Joe thinks and certainly concur the talking puppet syndrome we live with. plus his thought above re: nafta, world trade, etc.. 15 years ago I would have likewise said "Global economy...cant stop it!" but that was before I realized the crushing potential of job and industry exportation. before I realized the depth to which huge companies would stoop to satisfy their greed. I really had No idea they how effortlessly they would screw their employees and how completely unimportant things like moral compass and humanity were.

I truly did not know enough about ego and business "savvy" and how it would betray EVerything America is supposed to stand for in the name of wealth and winning. Scum is far too generous a category for these guys. self esteem is nothing more than a fake rolex to these turd brains. not having to pick up a check for a $1000 lunch is enlightenment. Screwing the competition while causing hellish suffering on those who work for you because every penny in the budget is more important than Any given worker down the line...it's too horrible the whole lot unthinkable.

but there it is...me me me me...fuck you you you you and you. I win. I only wish I was a super hero with a cloaking costume I could spend everyday zooming around catching these guys in the act of making their demonic calls in the boardroom or in their limos and watch them die the slowest most painful deaths I could muster till their population numbers were reduced to a manageable few. I believe it emphatically...some people do Not deserve to live.

Vengeance Against Gayness

2010-04-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

NOT.

in fact, when it comes to reasons for living, finding someone gone yet still logged on was one of the most joyful imaginable. I already liked you a lot and targeting you in such a scam was my way of showing you affectionate attention. I wanted to include you in my little joke in pure prankish fun.

I remember that evening very well...about 7...looking into Abby's darkened office and seeing she was still on yet I'd just said good bye to her. "gotcha!" seems like I was able to sting Karen and Chris, too. the rules were clear: if you left without logging off you were fair game. there was no assumption I had a chance of not getting "busted". the final revelation of what had happened was part of the game.

anyway, I'm sorry if that episode upset you. for me it was pure office shenanigans theatre of the absurd and that incident was a glorious victory in the genre.

as far as the rest of it, I never realized how sinister the adult rites were and how infected the place was till I was fired. countless times I said, "you have to kill someone to get fired here." which spoke of my overly optimistic feeling of family and belonging. how can you fire your eccentric goofy uncle? he means you no harm.

but the commercial virus had entrenched itself to fatal levels. they had become the enemy.

as you say it would Seem the kind hearted 'family' would protect itself against the virus of the few, would itself purge the poison in public radio. but no...they're too far gone.

and as far as the remnants of the family are concerned they know the loose fabric of commercial radio ethics. they know how radio gypsies move from one job to the next like migrant workers. they know administrators make inhuman decisions based on inhuman often power politics that have nothing to do with skill and heart. so the gypsies do what theyre told and avoid the ax till there's no other choice. they submit with the understanding of their own weakness.

it used to kill me that a radio great like glenn mitchell was under the thumb of relatively worthless administrators and their arbitrary hiding skirts of ratings and executive decisions. ludicrous, insanity, the opposite of justice and logic like some super athlete confining his/her movements to what the boss's son advises cause he plays a mean Madden '06.

and it keeps me off the radio horse. I'm not going back in there knowing what I know about the relationship between idiot management and the talents they squash as a daily matter of course.

A Lesbian Fling With Abby Goldstein

2010-04-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

When email was young..

Early 1990's, I had just come to work at KERA 90.1, in Dallas, Texas. Out under that big southern sky, one radio station out of all of them was gentle on the ears, playing the salt of the earth and the wailing winds and the African blues and Jaco Pistorius and the ringing bells of the Roches' voices and wandering esoterica late at night, while the commercial stations blasted away with their big mixes and most music and the same fifty songs that get killed over and over again on the radio today, as they did then. One station had the Kronos Quartet, quiet between the voices, unpracticed jocks without scripted liners, and even some French bluegrass. A room wall-to-wall with vinyl, rattling sliding walls of compact discs, and decades-old carpet and equipment was the source of the sound. It was part of the shack that once stood where now the impressive public broadcasting cellblock houses sleek studios with blondwood floors.

Back in the days of the shack was when I came to work for One of A Kind,
KERA, 90.1; And it really was one of a kind. Everyone dutifully repeated those words, but they weren't really needed. KERA needed no slogans.

I found KERA because the "creatives" at the ad agency would blast it at full volume in the back room when Sam Phillips or Lyle Lovett played. It was the little radio station that commanded wide respect in the boring wilds of cosmo Dallas. When it was on, you had the feeling that while you were listening, others in the city were listening too, others you might want to meet or hang out with one day. The lame attempt at branding did not harm the coolness, and the station reminded any and all lonely artists that other artists were out there, creating; and they were creating outside of the primary colors and primary-school ideas that saturated other media.

That such a station existed was the end of the line for me. There was no more job search.

I ended up fired from the ad agency. I only had one friend there anyway, a guy named Jim Branstedder who had a cool loft downtown where we one night sat on the roof and looked at the city. He had the craggiest, most impossible face ever on a guy, and for that I liked him. His teeth were crooked, but he had a cute smile. He was the nicest one of all of them.

I worked on a letter to KERA's PD, Craig Allen. I drew a pencil rendering of my own hand in light, fine lines, and filled the edges with a soft bright yellow from an old colored pencil. Upon this I laid down black words with my electric typewriter explaining why I had to come work with ya'll. I know you had your issues with Allen (but I can barely remember why, except that it had to do with pointy-headed middle managementism) but he liked my letter and it hung up on his wall for some time.

He didn't mind that I also worked on Saturday nights deejaying at a commercial classic rock station. It was besides the point. Or maybe it wasn't.

Because I learned later that there was a push to sound more "commercial," which was actually what I was escaping from, when I came to KERA. I vaguely remember something about wanting to sound smooth and incorporate little slogans and stuff into the announcing. Whatever. I was a trained robot and took all that for granted. What was interesting to me was the music. KERA had no formal playlist.

It was one of the last stations in the country without one. Radio programmers had jumped into computer-generated song machines as if they were the absolute only possible way to pick music. Most people never knew their radios were being taken over by computers. Visions of disc jockeys a la' WKRP happily filled the heads of those whose listening was invisibly invaded by the grind of payola and perks and market research jerks. If at some point people began to realize that they were hearing the same songs over and over and over again, they never mentioned it. And who would they tell, anyway? Maybe they changed the channel to where a slightly different tightly-wound playlist circulated according to a different clock, wearing out the almost-invisible hairs on the inside of the inner ear that, when triggered, catch on something in the heart and cause an explosion of awareness and awe.

The unexpected was no longer to be found on our airwaves. The sensibilities were silently flattened and if life seemed a little more pedestrian and forlorn, who could blame a program director at a radio station? His boss said it wasn't about the music, it was about the money. And his boss was The boss. And so forth. And so the day the music died was more than just one day. It was decades of death to music, without a goodbye, without a drop of sentimentality.

The computer decided what songs went where. It was all done for you. The disc jockey didn't even man the turntables. He or she plugged in carts, like 8-tracks, and then pulled them out. They re-cued themselves...save us the trouble..isn't that nice? Let the machines do what we once did. An artificial arm, a little less trouble, and they were set to fire off automatically, too.

So being a dj in the early 90's meant, first and foremost, you followed rules. Make your arm go back and forth. Make your arm go back and forth. All day long.

I came to KERA to get away from that.

But you guys didn't know that, either. So you were pretty surly to me for a while. I remember you even called me "conservative" once. I think it was because I had gone to Baylor and didn't wear birkenstocks. And we had that new computer installed in master control and we could type emails to each other on the in-house system. Remember MS DOS? That was my very first email account--the in-house account at KERA. And I'll never forget the email I got from Abby.

I hadn't been at the station all that long and had met everyone, thought everyone was cool, and was just discovering that though there was a computer-generated playlist, nobody used it. It was there to make the suits happy, but in actual fact each and every song got crossed off from where the computer put it, and the actually chosen song was hand-written and squeezed into the spaces that were left. The playlists were filed at the end of the day, dense with scribbles and doodles, and that was it. The software churned out dismal bloopers like the same artist and song every evening at 8pm several times a week. I was just discovering (from you, probably) that it didn't matter. As long as I played four of the new records an hour, the rest was up to me. My gig was to engineer Karen Dennard's talk show at 7 and put callers on the air, and then I had four great hours to play music for Dallas/Fort Worth/Denton.

The email was sort of shy, sly and sweet at the same time. It was a couple of paragraphs long and chatted about how nice it was to have met me and how she liked my show so far. I didn't know Abby well and thought she was funny. She was sitting in master control one day with her feet up on the console, sitting across from whoever was on the air. She had sneakers on with no socks. "I like those socks," someone said. "They're the same color as my underwear," she replied without a blink.

She said she liked the songs I was picking and thought the station sounded good with my show and would I like to get together and maybe have coffee sometime? I thought that was a nice, neighborly offer. Let's welcome the new kid in town. Maybe we could go for spinach enchiladas with sour-cream sauce down at the mex joint, near the ad agency over by the Crescent building. Or we could catch a show together sometime. She hoped it was OK to let me know that she really liked the way I dressed. However I picked out my clothes it somehow seemed to work.

OK, maybe she should just come right out and say it, and please don't be mad at her or feel awkward or whatever. It's just that she really thought I was cool and liked me so much and hoped it was OK if she took the direct approach: she was really attracted to me. Please don't get upset! This might not be the right thing to do, but she just had to let me know she had thought about kissing me already, and if I wasn't interested, pleaassse just tell her to shut up and she would go away. Could she get in trouble for writing this? Maybe, so please keep it to myself, she just felt I was a really special person and had to take a chance to tell me.

I printed out the email on the dot matrix printer, folded it, and tucked it into my purse, where it burned a hole all night. The letter came on a Friday evening and on Saturday I pulled it out again at home and examined it. She had included her phone number. She wanted me to call so we could have a conversation so things were less awkward, because I might feel weird after getting her email, so please, please call her so she could be sure I wasn't all freaked out, because it was NO big deal, she just liked me and thought we could be friends, or more.

My hand hovered over the phone. I picked it up, I put it down. I put the letter back in my purse. Later that afternoon, with the shadows growing longer and my boyfriend over at his parent's house watching golf, I took it out again. I put it on the table. I poured a glass of wine. I thought about joining my boyfriend and his parents and rejected it out of hand. I called Abby.

She seemed delighted to hear from me. I asked her how she was doing, what she was up to. Everything she said sounded like blah, blah, blah, to me. I was nervous. I cared more about how I sounded than what she was actually saying. Through layers of self-consciousness I realized she had asked me a question. "What email?"

"You know, the email," I said. "The one you wrote me."

"Did I send you an email?" she pondered.

Then she said, "Shit!"

And she said, "Read me the email!!"

And you, Kim Corbet, were busted.

"I left myself logged in at my desk the other night!!!" She told me. "I didn't write that love note. Kim Corbet wrote that love note, during the overnight, when he was wandering around and found my computer still logged in. That's how it looked like it came from me, son of a bitch. But look, it's all true. I still think you're really cool and all, but I'm not a lesbian."

"That's good, because I'm not either," I said. "But it's one of the nicest letters I ever got."

It's Anderson Cooper's Fault (Joe Bageant)

2010-04-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

I love Joe Bageant. He doesn't mince words. Here he lets it fly at Ol Coop, who richly deserves it.

Here he explains why the Media Complex sucks.

_______________________________

And for that I blame Anderson Cooper. That's right, CNN's boyishly good looking, sincere faced, Emmy Award winning Anderson Cooper. Let me explain.

Between the corporate and financial elites and the slobbering masses stands the American Information Class -- the reporters, talking heads, news anchors and pundits. In short, the entire gaggle of meat puppets and journalism hacks who have been cultivated and bred to be clueless by the university industry and others serving our corporate empire. In other words, serving global capitalism, and the national fictions it maintains, including that sizable piece of corporate feudal turf known as America. And that fiction is maintained through la danse des marionnettes de viande.

Not that these meat puppets are to be pitied for their cluelessness. Lordy no! When your employer is throwing celebrity and money at you faster than you can suck up the adulation or blow the bucks, why would anybody pause long enough to get a clue. I sure as hell wouldn't. I'd pull a Bill Clinton, buy me some Cuban cigars and tell the secretary, "Under the desk, baby! And crack open a bottle of of Jack Daniels for me on your way down."

It's certainly an easy gig. Move your lips like a reporter, wear a black shirt and a $600 bush jacket in disaster and war porn spots as Anderson Cooper does, and make at least 4 million a year base salary (plus a few hundred thousand more a year in speakers fees for canned talks. Cooper's agency will provide the list). Anderson's basic message is that the world is a horrific place filled with miserable inferior lives, ridden by want, African machete amputations and the like. The guy in front of the flat screen in Cedar Rapids, Iowa doesn't even have to stop and think to draw the corpo-state approved conclusion Anderson delivers. It's instantaneous into his deep reptilian brain: "Hatians fucked. Iraqis fucked. Greeks fucked. Me live in best place of all."

Attractive, serious and sincere looking, and presented as calm and rational against the backdrop of world terror and misery, Anderson is the perfect robotic mouthpiece, easy on the eyes, poised in the "Anderson Cooper suit," (actually, it's Ralph Lauren, the gay aesthetic goes a long way in his business). And most importantly, despite what he's seen first hand, he remains clueless about the world. Bullet proof to reality. Robot. Then again, that's a job qualification in the entertainment business. American news is first and foremost entertainment. If you happen to stumble onto some accidental truth, be assured there will be a correction in the name of Republican sponsored "fairness and balance in media."

Now this may be a stretch for some more open minded readers, but to my mind, anyone such as Cooper, who actually believes he is worth 4 million, and can put it in the bank without dying of shame, has no idea what's going on in this world -- no matter how much he or she is paid to look like they do. In fact, anyone doing so for over $50,000 is in the same category. Which includes everyone you see on your television screen. It's all just self-absorbed celebrity preening. At the local level the rubes watch you on Keokuk Cable. At the national level, an indoctrinated people read Vanity Fair's writers going down on you, telling you what a brave and saintly journalist you are. And the internet dedicating hundreds of thousands of word to your choice in suits.

There is no way out of our culture manufacturing machinery. We're not in charge. It would be bigger than any one of us because it consists of all of us. It tells us all we are individuals supremely worthy of our silliest notions and desires, thereby making us soft and lazy, infantilized an incapable of truly effective solidarity as a people. Instead, we are fed Tea Party drivel. Even if CNN decided to send Coop to Guiyu to cover the blood poisoned worker women with the deformed children, the result would be the same. The guy in Cedar Rapids would see further proof that "Me live in best place in world. Got Cheetos." Or perhaps a nice Cotes du Rhône if you are a member of the commodity drugged educated faux middle class.

And I wanna say to them: "Not for much longer, buddy. Not much longer. And you can thank Anderson Cooper and a helluva lot of other people like him who do not have a clue, but nevertheless inhabit your very mind, for that."

source

no go for explorer

2010-04-20T02:53:00.000-07:00

I installed the latest explorer for mac, downloaded the page which included the 13.7 Mg soundfile and it crashed both times I tried. something aint liking my little mackie.

Joe My God: Gays In The Military

2010-04-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Joe My God

Great article. Read it not so much for its content as for the hilarious entertainment of the comments section below the story.

The Tragedy Of John McCain

2010-04-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry if you can't hear this. If you open the window in explorer it has a chance of working. It might be a plug-in issue. But I haven't had time to figure it out yet.

article linked here

Here's another good link found today.

Some things help me understand, some sound like nothing but sound and fury. God help me but I don't get those teabaggers, I really don't. How do they give a pass to everything the right has done to fuck things up? They seem basically insane.

The Voices In The Machines

2010-04-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

It's the machines calling me up that have pushed my mind to this place. The sales calls were at least from people---though in recent years they are from people assisted by machines. You pick up the phone, you hear nothing. Maybe some chatter in the background. You know to hang up if you say "hello" and there is a pause before you get a response. If you stay on the line, someone will mispronounce your name, and try to sell you something.

If you don't want it, they will insist, and keep talking loudly.

So you just hang up the phone during that moment of silence.

But, one more time, it's a reminder that your phone line is not your own. People can call you out of the blue. The phone ringing may not be a signal that someone you care about is trying to reach you. Instead, it means someone has your number, and wants something that you probably don't have--money.

So the ring of the phone brings an uhnappy reaction. I don't want any--I think. I can't take it right now--telling someone no thanks. I just can't go there.

Email was great at first. I remember the first email I got was spam. When I fired up sendme@earthlink.net in the 90's, the first thing in my box had a header consisting of mysterious symbols. "I got an email!" I announced to the helpful person at earthlink, who was setting up the account. "Oh, nevermind," I said. "It's not from anyone."

The spam filters help, but they don't keep out all the noise. And you still have to look in your spam box just to make sure you're not missing something important. So you see all the spams anyway. And that's not including the flood of email you get from anyone you've given your address to in a foolish or consumer-oriented moment.

The machines are calling me now. They're just machines. The first time one called, I hung up on it in a panic. The message said, "This message is for (my name, garbled by the computer). If you are not (my name, garbled), please hang up now."

I hung up even though it sounded enough like my name. I don't know what I'm signing up for, by listening to this message, I thought. I thought of a registered letter coming to my best friend, from an unknown sender, which informed him he had to pay a traffic ticket issued by a private corporation, for rolling through a stop sign in a deserted state park area. He had to sign for the letter, and did so even though he felt apprehensive. What happens if I listen to this message? Does it legally obligate me to something I don't want to do?

So I hung up.

The machine called again soon after. This time, it left a message on my machine. Since it was a recorded message, I didn't hang up this time. The computerized voice told me to call CMRE Financial Services to talk about a bill they wanted to collect on behalf of UCLA Medical Center.

It gave a number. At no time did a live voice come on the line.

So they couldn't even be bothered to have a live person call me to work out what they said I owed. Their machine just called me, instructing me to make the call myself and navigate through their phone tree.

The machines are on their side, and they are everywhere. They are not people--they are companies. And the people at the companies don't care. They have a script. They are programmed, as surely as if they were bots. They don't respond when you ask logical questions, they don't laugh when you throw up your hands in frustration, they won't ever see you, ever know you, or ever have to talk to you again. "No, we can't lower your APR from thirty per cent." "Our records say you still owe this amount." "I'm sorry, but there is no supervisor you can speak to."

The worst ones are the ones who lecture you for your bookkeeping errors or carelessness. I admit I have become careless. I am traumatized by numbers and machines. I need the machine to talk to anyone. And the talk comes in text on a screen, not in human inflections. My bosses don't even want to call me anymore to tell me things. They would just as soon not be bothered. Why shouldn't I keep my machine on waiting for emails? That's what everyone does these days. I should do it too.

And why should I be weirded out by all the people walking around talking to their pockets these days? People on the street, or in the waiting room at the doctors, or at the supermarket, don't look at you anymore. They are looking at hand-held mechanical devices used for communication. They are always communicating with someone who is not there. Their presence is diluted by their absence of attention--they are halfway there, or hardly there at all. On the road, they smash into each other because communicating with someone who is not there is more important than carefully tracking one's trajectory in the physical space occupied by the vehicle. A train engineer was the first of 25 people to die last year, texting a friend as he blew through a signal light burning bright red for him to stop.

Our stream through life is handled by machines every step of the way. We have to find each other through the machines, and just when we think we have made human contact, we discover that the machines have taken away yet more of our ability to connect on a human level. We can get any question answered by typing into a box, but what to do with the answers? And what about all the different answers out there? The people alone on the other ends of the machines (because each of us is alone with our keyboard, that's how it's set up) disagree on what's real. And without seeing each other face to face to explain it, we marinate in our fury at our ineffectualness. We drink and type, we mutter with our friends about how the world is going to hell, and we are so conditioned by the machines, so constrained by them and by our need to satisfy all the entities that want a piece of our earnings, that fighting seems distasteful. It's unchoreographed. It's unpredictable. The machines are unpredictable, too, just when we think we've figured them out.

For one thing, the machines that brought us music changed, and kept changing and changing. CDs were so much better than records (even though you now have to squint to see the art on the covers). And then there were the hours and hours spent transferring all those CD's to Mp3 format. What next? Every camera, every device for capturing that which is human----it all becomes obsolete in the blink of an eye. Browsers are phased out, and the new ones have bugs. Computers download and install things you don't know about or want. The machines do things to us that we don't even know about. Do cell phones cause cancer? There's a significant body of research saying they just might. But you won't hear about it on the machines that dictate popular opinion, the television and radio machines, because those machines are owned by companies that have an interest in you not knowing anything that might threaten the revenue streams of the powers that be. And they all own each other now. They are very powerful in dictating opinion. Even intelligent people often believe that if a news story were potentially very important, television news will cover it, and cover it with some degree of accuracy. They have faith in television which is far too trusting.

And, so, anything that might threaten the flow of money to the war machines, that, too, is silenced. The television keeps reality from our minds as effectively as any hypnosis. The people in the machines help make this happen. This is because they work for the machines, not the other way around. A popular newscaster must not say anything too controversial, because he'll lose his job--even though news is controversy by its very nature. Controversy grabs people, though: and that's why it's one of the main products of television and radio. Just as long as it's controversy that favors those in charge. If an opinion targets those in charge, it's few and far between, and often presented in the form of a weak-appearing or otherwise unsympathetic type of person, surrounded by those who argue forcefully for the other side.

pix

2010-04-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

I've seen and of course remember about half of these. I think many appeared in the gold spiral book you sent me. I need to find that, I'm sure it's still in the packed books in the garage. I almost never pick up books any more...that's a shame, sorta.

seriously considering getting the ipad though I may wait till the 2nd generation. everyone I've heard who's looked, touched, smelled has nothing but good things to say. I've been waiting for such a device, not sure why. I Do think it's a game changer. it's all in the touch.

playing for poets tonight and I'm working really hard on a new music set up I'm debuting next saturday at the bath house. tonight I think I'm only taking my toy banjo sample player and improvise really short goofy hillbilly songs.

if I were there right now, one might be:

saw me a girl one bright day
she saw me first and done
run away...she one bright
girl, one bright girl...she
saw me first and she
done run away.

(play a banjo lick)

one bright girl,
one bright girl...

(banjo lick)

I have three slots with lots
o time in between. no prob.

might take a kitchen appliance
or two to use as a turntable device.

oh...so kristen just bought a sewing
machine that embroiders. so I've
commissioned her to make a few
Jampact shirts with Jampact on
the sleeve, a personal mascot on
the back shoulder and a band
name over the pocket. this
afternoon I became "Poppa Fly"
and my mascot is a snail named
"slugger" with a big goofy grin.

cant wait to see it for real.

Media Reform: Why We Need It

2010-04-08T18:28:00.001-07:00

This is a good place to start reading about why the system is so fucked, if you want it without swear words.

What If AT & T Prevented You From Reading This Article?

2010-04-08T18:19:00.001-07:00

Here's a really good article about the net neutrality fight.

To quote Tim, "to lose net neutrality would be like Rupert Murdoch owning Youtube."

We can't lose it, can't lose it can't can't can't. The net is all we got...the only place to put our heads together and no matter what anyone says, it's an information miracle. I used to feel like I could never find out the real story about anything because I didn't have the time or the patience to go to a library and research and use the dewey decimal system day in day out to find reference material. Now it's a click away. No matter how you slice it, that's a beautiful thing.

But the more I've learned, the more opinionated I've become. I admit to having become very intolerant of stupidity, maybe more so than ever before. I always liked to think I was more tolerant than anyone, just a mellow go-with-the-flow kind of gal, saving my energies for the battles that seem to deserve them.

It's just that all that niceness has gotten me exactly nowhere and so I've become, I think, less nice. Or maybe nice is not the right way to describe what it is that causes a person not to speak up and say what needs to be said. That might be called passive-aggressive. Well, mabye I've just become aggressive-aggressive. But at least people know where I stand.

I have talked to a number of people from K-Krazy over the past months and that's why I'm thinking so much about radio and all that stuff. I have a good story about you and Abby that I want to write up. Coming soon. But read that net neutrality article. It's a great snapshot of what propoganda fights look like in their blooming stages. This has been an issue for a while but is a real danger.

artwork created at kcrw

2010-04-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

I have a large number of drawings that were created during the years I ran the board in the afternoons, before there was anything to produce (after 2000, I was news hostess with the mostess). So I am going to put some of them online. They were pen and ink drawings and I had plenty of time to listen to the broadcast and do the repetetive pen strokes that filled them in. One of the volunteers said to me once, 'hey, they have medication for that, you know." Pretty funny. I actually got some offers to buy pieces and people thought I should do a show. So here's my show.

Click here to see what I've got up so far.

the two sides of hip

2010-04-03T01:14:00.000-07:00

well, let's put it this way...if you think youre hip youre not.

same goes for slick and cool. your coolness level comes from the amount of blues you've lived through, from the storms you've survived. if you think youre cool or hip and dont have the dues credentials, sorry...come back when life has thrown you enough hardballs and you've ended up in a walking coma for a few years. only people humbled by life need apply.

the other side of hipness is eccentricity. a total lack of desire to fit in any system or accept authority or submit to bullshit. to Know most of what human beings call social norms and self-imposed pecking order hierarchies in the name of progress and productivity and the requisite wardrobe is absolute bullshit.

under those definitions we both qualify.

those who dont qualify are people who spend an inordinate amount of time becoming beautiful looking to get into beautiful clans, constantly talking about how to be chic and fashion savvy, those who judge eccentrics and unfashionables to be cluelessly inferior.

they live their lives thinking they have to look like supermodels, become socialites and obsess over achieving the perfect lifestyle (and they would gladly stab their so-called friends in the back if they could get closer to it).

integrity means nothing to them. they wouldnt know morality if it came standard on their beamer's dashboard. to them art is a bore and real people are peons.

Steveaux

2010-04-03T01:02:00.000-07:00

steve's stage face when things got especially fertive, fertile or futile

It Might Be Just

2010-04-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

that I don't think I could get any joy out of a life in which I wasn't insubordinate at a certain point of dignity. When someone asks me to swallow shit I just can't seem to fucking do it anymore. And I like myself better for it. I know I can shape my own destiny and no one but me decides what that is---unless it's the great God above doing the shaping of my fate.

Once you get a taste of refusing to accept tyranny, it can be damn hard to accept it beyond a certain point even though that might look weird to other people. Power trips are the worst asshole trip on the planet when it comes to "do I have power over whether you remain a part of this community." It's an awesome responsibility to have to your subordinates.

But that idea of responsibility going both ways is another controversial one. I happen to believe human beings have human and moral responsibilities toward each other. And the Nth commandment on my tablet says "THOU SHALT NOT BE AN ASSHOLE."

Because it builds a world of assholes, that's why.

Power to the People. Fuck The Assholes.

Something like that.

"I Don't Trust You Either"

2010-04-02T17:01:00.001-07:00

It doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing for you to say. Unless, of course, she wanted to play Master and Servant.

I thought Abby was cooler than that. I really did. It seems like some bosses can keep their perspective, Luchsinger was always totally cool to me. Chris was a cool boss, at least he's older than I am and had more power when he brought me to the station, or I came and worked on his show for a year. He did give me good advice, letting me know that traditionally, everyone must volunteer at KCRW. That's just how they liked to do it. I thought that was a reasonable thing to ask, and would have done it anyway just to get to know different parts of the place. (I realize the concept of volunteerism is sort of lost on the commercial radio world. It's a form of apprenticeship that doesn't get enough credit in this day and age--volunteering for something, that is. But don't get me started on the "stand for something or be part of something" argument because some people don't hear that.

I'm trying to disgest a disagreeable conversation I had yesterday with a colleague who doesn't seem to have any knowledge of/respect for the kind of radio adventurous public radio people were trying to make, back in the day. I do think the old adventures are stale.. You can't ride on them forever. But it is an adventure to try to bring music to the world outside of the corporate stadium rock megaplex culture. Smaller venues, money not so much an issue. I dunno, seems worth it to me. So you do have people doing this, but they had to have sought it out, it had to have called to them. And some people it just didn't call to. I am amazed to find there are people who were just OK with music scheduling software taking the place of people deejays. By the time I got into commercial radio it already was like that, but there were clocks and you had freedom within the clocks. They weren't computer generated clocks is what I mean. You had to play one of the red dots, but you could play any track on the CD. Like that.

We played with clocks at my college radio station, where it all began for me, the little-hyped but incredibly cool KWBU. I don't know what's become of the station, but it had a rich history as college-run alternative station. One of the "real" alternative stations in the late 80's. Which is when I was in college and just discovering that there was more music being made than that which aired on commercial radio stations. It was a revelation that there was all this great music that had no exposure. I couldn't fricking believe it. If you guessed I had no plugged-in friends in high school, you'd be right, with the exception of one who finally rescued me from the musical wasteland of commercial radio and Phil Collins. (Who is occasionally OK.)

Hey, have you ever had a time in your life that you couldn't hear music properly and it depressed the hell out of you not to be able to get from music what you had previously gotten? I mean has there ever been a time in your life where you just couldn't hear it and so the world seemed cold and dead and distant to you? I went through a period of not being able to hear music when I moved to California and there I was surrounded by some of the coolest music on the planet. At the heart of a real resource for music. And I couldn't hear it. I told my therapist this and she found it interesting. She said I was totally fucking depressed. She suggested medication. I apathetically said that I would try anything once. It happened to work. Was amazing in fact, the meds. And they helped me hear music better, too.

I'll tell ya more about that conversation I had yesterday, later. It was a real bummer.

I don't even know if I respect people who genuinely have no idea how cool public radio is, was and could be. Who don't listen to or have use for it at all. Well, that's not true. I can respect people as long as they respect me. I felt disrespected in that conversation and that's the heart of my irritation. I also felt like someone I like was being disrespected and that's my real problem. But about public radio, that some people genuinely don't feel even remotely interested in listening, that's weird to me. It's like Ross Perot saying he never had listened to "All Things Considered" and my boss at the ad agency said, doesn't that sort of show how uninformed he must be, to admit he never listened to "All Things Considered?" And I thought it was a good point.

That's a whole segment of the population and it wigs me out, man. I don't know how people can just swallow the accepted loaves of wonderbread and nothing else their whole lives long.

Oh, and I hear you about having the other stuff that you do for creative outlet. I've got my mosaics and art and my blogs and if I relied on my job for my creative outlet, I'd be screwed, man, because that just isn't where it's at in radio anymore. At the same time I can completely enjoy being on in the way I'm on..reporting traffic. There was some dude in Escondido today, just walking along northbound in southbound lanes on the 5. CHP said it was causing a "traffic disruption." California, man!

Oh, and I do have thoughts about some other stuff you bring up. Liza looms large for me on that past horizon. She was always really fun and a real talent who's been tragically underutilized at K-crazy. But she also doesn't seem to remember I exist even though I sent her a really nice greeting on myspace some time ago. I mean, it was maybe 7 months ago, a year. Unless she just doesn't look at it and has an assistant or something. There's deniability when it comes to Myspace now. But nothing really hides that fact that this computer is a communications tool and it all boils down to communicating, and when people decide not to communicate with you, it's a drag. However, talking recently to other KCRW castaways, I've discovered that I am not alone in the phenomena of being considered deceased when I have ceased to share an employer with certain persons. But there are others who have remained friends----just a few cool ones. One of the cool ones was getting dissed in this conversation that I had and that's why I'm all bunged up about it. I'll try to explain it after I find some caffeine and sugar to goose my nerve endings.

Say Thank You

2010-04-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

to those who have made you life beautiful and who have helped you to see a world where you are loved.

On Appreciation

my new buddy

2010-04-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

Hip Chick Thing

2010-04-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

What, you saying I'm not hip? I thought I was pretty fricking hip. I mean I dated Steve Price. That's hip. Because he's definitely a trip. But, whatever. I always felt hip. Back in the days we hung out. Or maybe I should say, I felt like life was fun, and it didn't mean squat to me whether or not I was hip or not. But I had my sister to hang out with all the time then, because she lived with me and for a time she was not an asshole, but fun; however she got weird with me once Steve was in my life; and after that we were not friends; she would not discuss whatever was causing her to have a massive stick up her butt, and the only solution to conflict is discussion, unless one person refuses to discuss. And so that's what happened, she refused to discuss anything and it became unbearable to live with her. And around the same time Steve got that job offer from CBS, which was a really exciting idea to me---go to Los Angeles! Why not? I always dug California and I think I always would have come here, because there's nothing like it for laid back. But actually I had no idea of ending up here, I just wanted to go somewhere else and see what it was like. Moving is hard, so I stayed. And finally came to like this place after about 7 years. Anyway, we're all a village now online, or whatever. The fact remains that the people you see in person right in front of you do have an effect on how you feel. So it's really important that some people not be assholes.

Am I making any sense? I fear not, I'm tired and cranky and haven't yet written my Inland Empire headlines. And it's already 8.

What does hip mean, anyway?

very interesting

2010-03-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

as I understand it, I was fired for one real reason...I wasnt Abby's turd slave.

like you talked about on MySpace, the reason she gave was I wasnt paying attention, not connecting. which, in the final analysis, was true, but there was more to it than that.

I was engineering the talk show, fielding emails and interacting with the screener. at one point I looked around and the guest, one of the field reporters, was showing me 2 fingers, which I immediately interpreted as "cut 2" on "cd 1" since it was the first bite he had called for. so I played it.

afterwards he went into abby's office and complained I wasnt "paying attention" cause he wanted cd 2, track 1. in hindsight, I should have asked him on-air to clarify which track.

fate had other ideas.

when abby laid into me for it I told her it was really busy that day and it's impossible to keep all those balls in the air at the same time and not drop one now and then. but she didnt accept that. she started sending out emails about how we should all be perfect in the face of really obvious mistakes coming out of her office every day.

psychological rule #7: when you cant handle your job accuse everyone else of having the same shortcoming. she actually Said, "be perfect!" I remember how incredulous that was. I remember we'd have these little mental health meetings with HR where they said over and over, "dont hesitate to try things, dont let mistakes rob you of the reward of trying". then she turns right around and lays the 'be perfect' mantra on us. I couldnt believe what I was hearing and lost all respect for her. period.

later that week we had words over something else and she said, "I dont trust you" to which I immediately replied, "I dont trust you either". I saw it in her eyes...she was shocked at my insubordination. she was ready to fire me right then.

have I told you all this? anyway she needed a witness so she brought the exceedingly clueless yo who heard me jump at her bait of going over the talkshow "dissaster" to which I raised my voice saying "sometimes it gets hectic and the people giving me cues have to be very clear about what they want! we've been OVER THIS!" and with that she got yo and jeff to sign the death warrant.

it was a sham, but I was so disgusted with the whole scene by that time it became a mercy killing. not that it didnt cause serious serious psychological trauma and a financial sink hole. if I hadnt been a survivor I might have lost it completely. that is if I didnt have music and teaching, not so much for the money cause there I still went from 50G to less than 20 with a mountain of debt that doubled the next few years. but I had other things to live for. being on the radio was not my whole reason to get up in the morning.

Glenn offered to put in a good word other places which was very sweet. I was always an artist, not a journeyman microphone johnson. I was ready to hang it up. at least for a while.

then, over time, I realized how much my soul was worth as my self respect and music/education community respect blossomed. I feel like my priorities are right where they should be.

beyond all that...

2010-03-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

I appreciate the nice things you've said about me and I remember having too much fun talking with you and hanging out at the station. you were obviously one of the cool people among mostly radio goobs. and of course I had a crush on you cause hey...you were a smart cute chick on the radio. major draw. and you didnt have the whole liza socialite hip chick thing. not a major draw.

not that I didnt have a crush on liza. who didnt? and there in lies the problem. I have little use for truly popular anything or anyone. once someone becomes a "kiss my feet" celebrity I'm out.

you were real, humble, fun, devoted to the music and audience, easy to talk to in all the right ways. all good stuff. it's all good. soon after you left the foundation fell apart. it wasnt hell yet but it had the ice berg in its sights.

again...all of which is good cause I'm really living the mission life now without commercial interruption and, as we know, PBS is really struggling to keep their mission in front of them.

at least here. theyre producing more but it's either boring as hell or so amateur it hurts.

right here.

not too shabby

2010-03-31T05:37:00.001-07:00

I dont think I've used that expression since I did my last KERA weather forecast.

telemarketer prank

2010-03-31T05:30:00.000-07:00

not too shabby

I never pick up the phone

2010-03-31T05:17:00.001-07:00

in fact I've never given my 'new' home phone to anyone so I Know any telemarketing calls were sold to them by ATT and it started within a week of installing the line. jerkwads.

the only time I use it is to call out unless I'm pretty sure it's tory.

exception...when I feel like having fun with the poor sap calling from wherever. if it's a machine of course I just hang up, but if it's a real person I put on a voice and reeeeallly fuck with em.

I love pretending I'm a geezer who cant hear. "WHAT??? WHO'S CALLING??? JUST A SECOND, I DROPPED MY JUICE. NOW WHAT??? WHO'S CALLING???"

or I'm Mexican. "Que? Jose? Thees ees Pedro? Quando quando quando? Si, Jose?" I just keep going till they hang up.

or pretend I'm really interested. this is my favorite. "hang on a second, lemme get a pencil." put the phone down and pretend to be desperately looking, calling from a distance, "dont hang up I'll be right back..." one time I kept that up for 30 seconds came back to the phone and asked, "still there? now who is this again? can you spell that for me?" keep it up till theyre frustrated as hell, then say, "shit, that's the other line, can you hang on?" mute the phone and walk away.

give those assholes something to talk about on break.

Photos From the Archives

2010-03-30T18:54:00.001-07:00

It's the Machines

2010-03-30T15:36:00.001-07:00

that always call me on the phone, that have finally begun to freak me out. "This is your Rite-Aid Calling." "This is the office of Doctor Bwah Bwah Bwah Bwah Bwah Bwah Bwah (Charlie Brown bus driver voice) calling to confirm your appointment on (pause) Thursday (pause) March 20 (pause) at (pause) 11-thirty ay emm." "This is AT & T calling with a customer satisfaction survey. If you have time to take the survey, please press one. If you were satisfied with your customer service call, press one. If you wanted to reach through the phone and kick the agent's ass, press three." Seriously. And then there's the ominous ones, like the computer voice that told me that the call was CMRE financial services (the organization that UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center sics on patients who don't pay the inflated and improper bills they send to you instead of to your insurance company. That's a whole other story, but the bottom line is that I am all paid up with UCLA, but this CMRE keeps calling me anyway. And they can't even have a person call me---it's this machine. The first time I got the machine I hung up on it because it freaked me out.

"If you are not (pause) Cynthia Birdy, please hang up. If you stay on the line, you certify that you are (pause) Cynthia Birdy." I thought, shit! What am I getting into if I stay on the line? I hung up the phone.

But the machine called again and said the same thing to my answering machine. Realizing it was my own answering machine playing the message for me, and that by listening to it I was not necessarily "certifying" anything, I went ahead and listened. The message told me to "call CMRE Financial Services" about my "account". But the whole thing left me tripped out and pissed off. They can't even do me the courtesy of having a human being call me. It's all reduced to machines, dealing with customers via machinery, and now the machines are even calling asking for money on behalf of a client that has no business with me at all. And they want ME to call THEM!

So I don't pick up the phone much anymore. And I certainly don't carry a phone with me. I keep one in my car in case of emergencies. But I regard the phone as an intrusion, which is how Steveo always dealt with it. I'm afraid I see it the same way. Now I was delighted to get your notes via your phone last night. That's the wonder of modern technology, that I can be comforted by someone sending the very words and text that I'm complaining about. We all have these little boxes and glowing tablets we stare into, to get our human contact. My problem is it seems to be drawing people away from the present. But if the present is full of apathetic, distracted people who only want to stare into their phones, why do I want to be in it, anyway? I'll just go home and smoke a bunch of spice and be perfectly happy.

But thanks for writing to me, anyway. My ambivalence toward technology is typical of my ambivalence toward human contact in general. Much easier to be a critic than it is to engage. But when engagement is reduced to text on a screen, I get to feeling lonely.
I want to hear the sound of voices, but radio is a wasteland. Except for Randi Rhodes, who is a thorougly bitchen babe. She said today that NPR is conservative. And you know what? I agree with her.

Assholes You May Know

2010-03-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've got some writing here about engineering the board for Ruth Seymour during pledge drive at K-Crazy.

Thought you might enjoy it.

It also tells the story of my decision to shut down my facebook page for the time being. This was, oh I don't know, maybe two years ago or so.

I just don't really like it though. All those little white boxes, you know? And I would die without a theme song. It's just not the way I want to communicate with people. On the other hand, this is how people are communicating. Communication is being forced through text because everyone is doing it now. I just remember the phone fondly. But even the phone freaks me out these days.

let's go, O

2010-03-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

you know maybe after some success in the system the big O will come up to his election persona and re-collect that army that swept him into the big house.

it would be extra cool if all these predictions about the dems taking the boot next fall fell away and the repugs are left with their face in the eggs. THen maybe we'll have a peaceful revolution.

gotta get that army back in the saddle.

and check out the "new rule" video at...

2010-03-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.billmaher.com/

bill maher may be an overzealous eccentric, but it's really time for our liberal pop prophets (bill maher, michael moore chief among them) to put it right out there in no uncertain terms.

to paraphrase, "can we finally stand here and point fingers at the Real bad guys? here we go..."

as an arkaniac, I love it when he lays into the "hillbilly half of the nation".

check it out. it's worth a few clicks.

No You Can't (featuring John Boehner)

2010-03-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

Not crazy about the video but the song gave me chills.

At the same time, facial expressions are worth a thousand words.

healthcare stargate

2010-03-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping the healthcare bill survives for one reason...to start moving forward.

is this related to what we've been talking about? in at least one way: to prove to liberals and progressives that we Can make positive changes and move this country forward. now theyre talking about regulating the banking industry, then push education reform.

taken all together that will move the culture to the left in ways that protect citizens and create a more humane atmosphere and encourage people to believe theyre living in a more respectful and cooperative country than they did during the Reagan-Bush years.

THen maybe we can get back to the America we grew up in...not the belligerent war mongering world cop job exporting baby huey we've been since the 80s.

THen maybe people in public radio will get back to the reason it was created in the first place: a non-commercial, non-ratings focused, non-greedy ALTernative to commercial networks. then you and I and the rest of the population will enjoy true Public Broadcasting into the foreseeable future.

giving away the treasure

2010-03-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

same thing happened here. I offered many times to take the jazz library to smu so it could retain its integrity and actually serve the community. anti-christ craig a wouldnt listen let alone understand what an important thing an archive IS.

then the day came when the whole thing was in the hall, the kitchen, out into the alley. it had already been picked over. I loaded up the trunk and watched it trickle away. what a cultural waste. so the jazz collection wouldnt be lonely, the classical collection was right along side it.

cause youre right. I dont hate the corporate administration process lightly. it screws up the priorities and squeezes whatever humanity and cultural awareness administrators Might have if it werent for their job priorities...paper pushing, yes man no man, profit margins, worthless meetings, meaningless productivity goals...and all the goddam politics the environment demands.

I understand it less now than I did 25 years ago.

KCRW's Music Library Tragedy

2010-03-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

In the 90's when I was a dj at krazy-RW there was a weird thing happening which didn't get me all worked up because I was walking in a dream then. The politics at the place were such a sticky thicket that no one could see the forest for the trees, least of all me. So when the music library started overflowing, alarms didn't go off in my head (or anyone's, apparently). Here's the thing. That music library was a resource unlike any other I have seen in my life. Wall to wall music, a whole wall of world music, from every country and corner of the world. Himalayan bell choirs to French hip-hop. Then a wall of soundtracks. A Hallway of Jazz. A Classical Library. All stuffed into this ridiculously tiny space underground at Santa Monica College. And overstuffed. Teetering stepladders barely reaching the fourteen-foot ceilings, space-saving drawers, they did the best they could with the space, and another little nook was for the tabulating and quantifying of tunes, plastered with posters off to the side. But just not enough room. And not a priority to make more room for the ever-growing collection of phenomenal music that streamed in via special delivery from hopeful bands and promoters.

I'm sure CD did his best, but there was no convincing management to make expanding the library a priority then. And so music started to be given away. We got to pick our picks. Then, in a seizure of tragic insanity, they just started throwing the music out. Don't ask me who decided this--I only know it happened. There just wasn't enough room. And for years-----and years-----and years-----out went the music like a neverending tide, boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes, for years and years and years.

Here's the tragedy of that, OK. A music library unlike any other, a station renowned for pulling in cash from its wealthy Santa Monica surroundings, and the physical riches of the music library did not glow in the minds of management. If ever there was a reason KCRW knocked the socks off other radio stations in the world, it was the music.

It was nice to have the studios redone. Nice to be in shiny new studios, sure. But the old ones, despite being oiled with 20-year-old sweat and bedbugs, worked just fine. It sounded fine. We did not need new studios as desperately as we needed more room to store music. More physical space. But the new studios and the state-of-the art equipment were what happened. Regardless of the fact that the personnel and the unique resource of the place was the actual beating heart of the station. That which is not living has little value in the world of music, and those cds and records were like oil---life's energy compressed into coded form, bursting to life at the drop of the needle or laser. WE NEEDED TO KEEP THAT STUFF. But what to keep and what to throw away is not a distinction KCRW management has understood well over the years.

So, finally, a few years back, KCRW began to realize what a treasure it was sitting on. But the fact of the matter is that Ruth didn't much care about the music. She had her own picks that she promoted during pledge drives, and they were usually great. But I don't think she really ever listened to, or engaged herself in, the music aspect of the station. She just didn't seem all that interested. Will Lewis, on the other hand (you notice I'm naming names here, and I don't care anymore, someone should)was completely into all the station's programming. He would listen driving home after working a 16-hour day, and on the way to the Antelope Valley, he'd have the music on and turned up. He would compliment me on shows the following day, and I would go, "You were listening?" It's Will Lewis who pulled Chris's cassette tape out of a box of discards, when Chris sent in for the Morning Becomes Eclectic opening back in the early 90's. That was something Ruth told me herself. Why, I don't know, because she rarely told me anything. Will Lewis never took credit for anything, never was recognized, and kept a low profile. Now Ruth's retired and the woman who replaced her was basically her hatchet-woman. Because the music was cool, the hatchet-woman, who is hypersensitive to coolness, is supportive of the music, I think. But I don't know, because I mentally disconnected from the place sometime after 9/11. The world got weird then, and KCRW got weirder. In the years before I left I just drifted further and further from the political core of the place. I met Tim and my friends had all long since quit. The friends who hadn't quit became embittered and it was hard to talk to them because of the high resentment-level in the discourse there. There was too little oxygen in the basement, and too many things that were not as they seemed. Extreme stratification of power in a physically small and cramped space---which meant that there were too many conversations in hushed tones with darting eyes, too many lies, and too much energy into turf wars. As much as I miss the job I cringe when I think of the poisoned atmosphere and am amazed when people complain about the place I work now (because people will always complain) because this is a much, much nicer place to work.

The best way to be involved at krazy-RW is to do a show on the weekend, come in, bring your stuff, or come in late at night and turn the lights down low and crank the music and bring a roomful of friends. But even that was frowned on after a while. There was a great vibe for a while after hours, but then people got all wigged out about the idea of strange intruders (music people) coming in off the street. Some CD's went missing, but since it wasn't management throwing them out, that wasn't OK. So policies tightened and there was less spillover from the outside world into the studios. I remember when I was working on Chris's show (for about a year) an artist would come in and he'd be like, sure, come on down, just sit and be quiet but bring friends, whatever, and the whole room would be full of people watching and listening to the live performances. Or he would bring his kids in, sit them in front of the microphone and have them say something in their widdle baby voices, and jiggle them on his knee, Mieke would be sitting there hanging out, I'd get out the magic markers and we'd all make a big mess on the floor. That's a radio station with music---that's what radio should look like.

There's still hope for KCRW, because it still kicks other music stations all six ways to Sunday and back. But I hope like almighty god they understand that they're sitting on a Smithsonian of Sound.

Old KCRW tapes

2010-03-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

I've put some online here. Yeah, cassettes still work and I still love them. A while back they went around taking them out of the studios here at Metro and I snagged a double dubber and it's still sitting in my trunk. I've got a ton of cassettes that I've been dubbing to mp3 but many more still to do. And it makes me nervous because with the cassettes, at least there's a solid actual object I can hold in my hand. When it's all been coded into 1's and 0's and exists in the ether, I get nervous. Where's my music? CD's piss me off too, because they were supposed to be so much better than records, and the fact of the matter is they have to be handled just as carefully and they scratch all to hell if you're sloppy like me and tend to leave things in a pile after rooting through them for the right tune. But we had to have them, right. Even though it shrunk art and the whole satisfying experience of owning a nice large piece of vinyl, down to something that is, once again, shrinkwrapped. You should come out sometime and visit Ameoba with me. It's walking distance from my house and is pretty bitchen for vinyl. At least there's some appreciation of vinyl now that the shiny newness of cd's has tarnished somewhat with all the skippy players out there. Even the sound of vinyl is not so bad---I dunno. I'm a luddite who's given up my cell phone and I have never sent a text message in my life. So what do I know?

Anyway, I'm glad to have a place to complain, because it's one of my favorite things to do, and the fact that no one is complaining and screaming to high heaven about the lack of good music on the radio is something I find depressing as hell. Plus, you complain with such elegance. The music of people who understand what each other are bitching about is music to my mind's ear, anyway.

I'll go check out some of KERA's overnight stuff. Now are you talking about the new station that's started up? Or has it not gotten off the ground yet? The one you told me about on email some time ago?

balance

2010-03-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

well, it doesnt all suck over at K*&^. I was just listening to the overnight network stuff as I have before and there's some edge there...some coolness. so, it's not all crap. just sayin. the station has parked a bunch of their in studio stuff on line. I've listened to a few and, again, there's a lot of 'Great Value' brandology going on if you get my drift. it's good quality if you like white bread and peter pan. which I do on rare occasions.

every hour of every day? not so much.

the past, part 2

2010-03-24T01:20:00.000-07:00

yeah, I thought we did some very cool stuff. however it was those tapes you sent me from KC$# that I listened to over and over cause they were really drivin a vibe...takin it down the road and over the hill. great stuff. I run into it sometimes thinking I should put it on cd.

but it was the flow...the magical flow of a live dj doing what they do. which of course you cant DO if it's just a bunch of tunes in the computer randomly showing up according to some binary code. and of course the turd brains dont understand Any of that. why the hell do most of the people in charge of entertainment have absolutely no clue what the relationship is between performer, entertainment and audience? the radio system stinks.

when I moved a while back I found one tape labeled 'radio show' and the thing I put together of glenn's original bed music I recorded and one more I did for my overnight audience that I offered at pledge. who knows if they even play...cassettes...I mostly kept them for the cover art.

then and now...

2010-03-24T00:49:00.001-07:00

my lack of presence has been due to an amazingly productive and busy semester, playing more than ever with good players on really fun projects.

you know, I dont know how it's going over there at K&^% or whatever they call it. the little bits I've heard and heard about sound very generic and overly consistent. lots of, you know, singer songwriter, indie this and that, acoustic cafe, world cafe, carnage cafe, dont give a fuck cafe, people tryin real hard to sell their "Music to the (WAH)" slogan. lots of network shows that fit the Adult whatever format and I just cant do format music any more. it all smells like theyre tryin too hard to bring the damn pledges in. from their page: "I support K&^% cause it support the music I love!" you know what...Bullshit...it's slick crap from the sewers of the music biz and that makes me wanna kick it in the groin till my foot gets tired. eat me.

music was never meant to be a slave, a pet maybe but never a slave.

sure we 'used' music to create shows and 'tell our stories'. we never abused it. we never stuffed it in an shrunk wrapped industrial plastic pre-fab widget and made it do stuff it was not intended to do. at least the vast majority of the time. we had fun and I'd like to think the audience and the music we aired was having fun, too.

then I fucked up by trying to squeeze mySelf into a widget cause I thought security and money was too good to pass up. I like to follow the river and that's where the river was going in 1997-98.

well, at least those sacrificial 4 years gave me ranting rights the rest of my free life.

now I improvise music and teach according to my own desire and design...I work all of 11 hours a week plus god knows how many practice hours I put in, at least twice that, and I get by. it's a positive life that contributes to only good stuff. no commercialism, no slaving meat wheel, no time oiling the machine for turd heads spinning their brains in the service of other turd brains. there are no turd brains in my life. how many people can say that? it's almost like I've already retired. all the turd brains I see are on TV.

I have no interest in going back into radio as we know it. I've probably said this more than a few times cause it's been on my mind a while: my pleasant little dream is to get a gig in a tiny ass free form station when I'm 70-75 in taos and do my version of ken nordine plus a ton of cool music from the various corners of my life. there has been some truly kick ass music recorded these last 50 years. millions of tunes I would love to choose from while I sit and smile at what I just said to the few hundred night creatures eavesdropping.

they might think I've become a whacko in my old age. they wont know I've always been this way.

Good Times

2010-03-23T17:48:00.001-07:00

You know, those evenings at KERA were the best fun I ever had at a job in my life. Remember? We'd have wine and cheese, shoot the breeze, play some tunes, howl at the moon. Then one day one of your weird friends came ambling with a video camera to shoot your show and we all ended up sitting around til 5am, and then I moved to California with him. Why not?

You had a great show then, one of the best I've heard on radio, ever. Did you record any of those shows? I remember the long stretches of jazz mixed with esoteric ranting and rambling, the low notes strung through the hot August nights, the Dallas artists who dropped by and and dropped in and dropped jewels of information into the show, all in a flow that made sense, because rhythm is one thing you had, a sense of the movement of sound and the silence between sounds that decides so much about how sound echoes in the brain. The context, the frame of a sound, the pauses of listening, the pegging needles from laughter, the unpredictableness of a radio station where the suits were fast asleep in Turtle Creek and nobody cared whether things were irregular. Those were great programs and great days. Seven fifty an hour and loving every minute of it. Standing up at shows and kicking off the live music, what a kick. The kind of job that's not a job, that everyone dreams about. And the music was like a dream strung through my days and I have never since been able to surround my mind with music and rhythm like that. I've been searching for that world since I left it, but it evaporated behind me.

What's the latest with the new music station? Did they start up?

Any good?

That Hopey Changey Thing

2010-03-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Sarah Palin sarcastically asked an audience "How's that hopey changey thing goin' for ya?" At last the Democrats have answered her: "Just fine, how you doin' with fear and anger?"

(from the comments section)

Read Krugman's column for a rare slice of hopefulness.

Citibank Needs New 50 Million Dollar Airplane

2010-02-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

AAAAAh.

I get it. Now I see why CitiThugs wants its money from me so badly and in so many ways. Bend over, here comes CitiFlight!

Dear President Obama

2010-02-04T11:17:00.001-08:00

Everybody, come on. Whitehouse.gov.

Start emailing the man.

Things are Fucked.

Dear Mr. President,

Help!

I guess the Citicard Mafia don't really care that me and us other peeps out here gave them 300 billion in the Big Bail of 2008. Because today for no reason at all they jacked up my interest rate to 29.99 per cent. Not because of anything I did, mind you, according to the nice customer service lady I just spoke to.

Seriously, I've always paid my bills on time. Citicard's going to get their money. I pay my debts and I pay them ON TIME and always have.

Seeing as it's my money and my debt, as well as my taxpayer dough that's beeing squeezed out to feed these hungry monsters who apparently have us all in their clutches---doesn't it seem like, with me holding up my end of the bargain, these people should, too?
They've been flouting the law and making all of our lives hell since the great Bailout (in which they received 300 BILLION---BILLION! of our money) showed them they can Get Away With Anything.
Mr. President, you've got to stand up to this. This is the mandate upon which you came into office. That Peace Prize was a signal you are on the right track. But every time I hear you speak in public, you sound like you're on the defensive. Like you're not sure you really should be standing up for degenerates like me, who just take and take and take from society (this is what the bankers would have you believe regular citizens are, so that their own crimes go less noticed. For example, all those irresponsible people who shouldn't have taken out mortgages).

Mr. President, it is now 11:10 am on February 4, 2010, and I just received a call from a machine from the other Mafia, the Health Care Mafia. It was a call from a debt collector, and no human was on the other line. This debt collector, CMRE Financial Services, is calling on behalf of UCLA. The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical center is living up to its namesake's legacy by trying to extort outrageous amounts of money from me, because Blue Cross, contracted with my health insurer, AFTRA H & R, is denying their claims en masse. I have spent literally hours on the phone with these people and recorded all of it. I am on the verge of posting the calls online to display what they are trying to do----get money from me, that they cannot seem to get from each other, because these people who get 30 per cent of every one of my health care dollars apparently cannot figure out what to do with a pen and paper and computerized records.

Mr. President, I voted for you in full faith that the person who ran for President would be the same person who would be sworn in. YOU ARE DIFFERENT than you were. You had passion and outrage. Now you seem overwhelmed and scared. And that scares me.
We are behind you, but we don't know if you are in front of us, or leading us anywhere we need to go. We are wondering if it's not "yes we can't." Your books are moving and have a beautiful vision of what this country could be. But first there needs to be law enforcement, and it seems like it's just another decade of white collar crime in the making. We need you, Mr. President.

Sincerely,
Cynthia Burkey

These ladies at Citi were very nice people. I enjoyed talking to them, actually. Courtney is in Texas and has a smoky voice and an easygoing manner. She was the last part of the call, the highest-level I could get to before I had to go back to work here in the studio. The first lady, who I won't name because I don't want to get her in trouble, was actually very sympathetic and responsive when I spoke to her about how much trouble this is causing me, and when I pointed out that I've always been a good customer and never stiffed them.

If people at Citi are always this nice, I don't mind talking to them again. So I will call back and beg some more. I will keep calling until I get somewhere, even if I have to call the somewhat handsome Paul Galant, (paul.s.galant@citigroup.com 212-559-1000) who is a young sprout just south of my own age group who is the King of CitiCards.

Here are the conversations I had with the lovely ladies at Citi, who sit in front of computers all day just like you and me, and who have to talk to people like me who are frantic about what the hell to do.

If you call, be nice to the customer service people. They're people and it's not their fault their employer is forcing them to play their role in the robbery machine. The first woman sounded truly distressed and for that reason, I will never reveal her name. I'm grateful she spoke candidly and compassionately with me, she did not try to preach at all, which is what some of these people will do if the robots have taken over their brains.

These two women seemed human, which is all anyone can ask.

Mr. Galant, I don't know about him. But I'll be giving him a call, definitely.
I'm not a troublemaker and I have always, always been nice about conflict resolution. My problem is being too nice, being scared to speak up. This blog is my therapy.

On the second recording, C. tells me that since I have "two" balances and one started off at a promotional rate, she can't give me a deal to lower my APR. When I ask for an explanation, she doesn't have one.

At some point, I will reach someone who can explain things to me, but for now I guess I'll be back at this next week, talking to more reps and trying to see if I can figure out what to do. Or maybe Mr. Galant will talk to me. I hope he's as nice as these two ladies were.

Please let me know if the recordings are not working for you, readers and listeners.

The Healthcare Mafia

2010-01-29T17:25:00.000-08:00

One of my new year's resolutions is to deal with out-of-control instituationalized wankerism from faceless robots who want my money, but also a large amount of my time and energy to deal with their incompetence. God bless people who are happy with their insurance plans, like Captain Bob, Tim's stepdad, with whom I am impressed as I get to know him better. We spent a weekend there last weekend and it was actually pretty fun. I think we wore him out a bit, but he was really cool. Captain Bob is a retired Navy Captain. He commanded a diesel submarine. If that's not interesting, I don't know what is. I am curious about it and I questioned him about life inside what he describes as a "long sewer pipe" beneath the surface of the sea, manned by personnel listening through headphones and interpreting sound to navigate through the water, like bats in the night. Anything audio is interesting to me and next time I see him, I will have to ask him what all of that sounds like.

So Bob is happy with his insurance, USAA. No problems there. Can I get USAA? No, I don't think so...I'm not military. Would they take me? What if I begged? "Please, I'm a good girl who pays her bills, and even pays them on time. It's just that with all these companies and subcompanies and contracted amounts that I don't know about, it would just be nice to have no hassle. I can pay for it..really...I already do. Just be reasonable. Please..is it too much to ask?"

I mean, I'm actually pretty healthy. Mental health treatment is the one thing I've had all these years and I am grateful for that investment, because if you have good healers working with you, it helps. If you get shitty ones, which is entirely possible in psychiatry or any profession, they will fuck you up worse. So you learn to weed those out.

I had a psychiatrist who ultimately weirded me out. She had prescribed Lexapro (this was a few years ago) and it did something to me that I've never experienced before. After a week and a half, I guess when it started to kick in, I freaked out so badly that I literally could not move from my bed for three days. I started cutting myself----something I have never done, ever. It was the only thing that brought relief from the voices in my head, and yes, there were those too. Another new and interesting experience. Not an audio phenomenon, but the voices were real regardless. The negative emotional energy they generated was tremendous. She told me to keep taking this medication.

I thought that was an insane idea. I told her I absolutely could not do that. I stopped taking it. After three or four days, I was OK. But those three or four days were hell. And with an office right down the road, she did not call to check on me, did not say "come down and see me" or anything remotely compassionate. She was weirded out and mistrustful because I insisted on taking the powdered leaf material that has been an additional antidepressant for me, because the others don't always work. It's been a constant amount, works well if short-acting, and until an antidepressant med started working for me, I was not willing to stop taking it. She behaved as if whatever else I was taking, presumably the leaf material, was causing the problem. I knew this not to be true, because never before or since did I have this kind of head trip on the leaf stuff. But insisting I continue on the Lexapro seemed nuts to me. She wasn't having to live in my head, and could not witness or understand how hellish it had become in there.

I told her I had done some online research and had seen that some antidepressants have a dramatic negative effect. I said it seemed to be well known that there are bad reactions to them, and that in general the medication is best stopped, from what I had read.

She told me that she was the doctor and I was the patient, and to go to the emergency room if I needed to go anywhere or see anyone.

That was the last time I was her patient. I stopped seeing her and never explained. I could not believe how frightening the whole experience was.

My psychiatrist now rocks. I'll write about her soon. I have a great therapist too. So the insurance is worth it, but I have had some frustrating times this week dealing with the insurance mafia. So I wrote the following.

It segues in to non-insurance stuff. I just thought you might find it interesting.
It was a summary of a customer service call to my health plan through AFTRA.
Who I like, but the insurance isn't all that great in paying for medication. Nevertheless, they are very helpful and cool people.

OK let's see if I can get this right.
AFTRA H R
01.29.10
3pm end of call

Michelle at Aftra HR was very cool....tells me that Blue Cross is denying the claims that UCLA Pathology is sending them. Said it has nothing to do with me. AFTRA has Blue Cross in California, and will pay up to 400 dollars for a "regular visit."

ask

need to clarify whether a "regular visit" means the well woman exam or includes other office visits. I had a visit for my thyroid and it seemed pretty regular to me, but whether this would be what they call "regular" I do not know.

She says AFTRA paid out 110 dollars for 2009 (out of the possible 400)and I am not certain of this

(**ask**)

237 or some odd dollars for 2008.

She said UCLA could have collected more money from AFTRA, but instead billed Blue Cross (for exhorbitant amounts like 400, 500 dollars a pop, a number of bills listing different services with ambiguous titles like "outpatient." Different amounts, presented on a grid with various seemingly-unrelated numbers, which come separate from other bills demanding different amounts for the same date of service..you see where it starts to hurt my head.)

There is another claim I described to her, which went straight to collections because I refused to pay the outrageous 500, 600-dollar amounts the bills were telling me I owed, for various tests and results and analyses. None of this is stuff they ever used to bill me for. I've been using UCLA for years and have really started to feel betrayed by them, which is a shame because of the excellent treatment I have received for depression, from many competent mental health professionals who contract with them. I am on the verge of begging my primary doctor, who I absolutely respect and admire and like---to see me outside of UCLA. Is that ethical? Would it be insulting? Would she get in trouble? I'm afraid she could, which is why I probably wouldn't ask, without doing a lot more homework and research. But my impression is that people can and do retain doctors on a fee-for-service, person-to-person level. And maybe that's the way it should be. It would put the costs squarely where the market would price them, and not force us to wander for hours through recorded robots, menus, touch-tone hell and no-man's-land-hold with the shittiest music ever, and even advertisements that drill into your ears like rape ---(OK! It's enough that I'm giving you my business! Don't fucking sell me through a commercial, sell me with YOUR SERVICE......BUT THEY KEEP ON COMING...OVER AND OVER and over. )

I didn't mean to yell when I started this document.

She says I need to call Blue Cross and tell them to call AFTRA if they need help working it out. She says they denied a whole bunch of claims,(probably because the claims were bogus - that's what I'm wondering). Or possibly not. The claims certainly seemed extraordinary, like way beyond what might have been contracted between the parties, but I don't have much knowledge of those contracts. It's the sort of information you might not even be able to get, unless you have a customer service person cool enough to tell you, like Michelle at AFTRA.

She said I can call back Monday, she'll put me on hold, and call Blue Cross for me, if I want. I'm sort of curious as to what Blue Cross will say, so I might call them and then call her and have them talk if there's still disagreement. Of course, the customer service person could say there's agreement but there really not be. I tend to trust Michelle, but Blue Cross? Who knows what the hell's up over there? Until I see something in writing, nothing convinces me that these mail bombs won't keep flying out of my mailbox attacking my head.

When I was little and I learned of insurance and insurance companies, I literally could not believe it. Because doctor visits weren't ruled by insurance before. It made sense to me, you go in, you pay. You pay for medicine. It's generally something you can afford, at least my parents could. But then I remember the concept of insurance being described to me, and I was flabbergasted. Didn't get how it *could* work as a business model without major problems. And still can't.

I get the concept of insurance. But it also seemed so clear to me that it was an extremely bad way to do business---depersonalized it, when medicine is such a personal issue, between people in a community. Insurance has destroyed that community of people who work individually with doctors. Everything is disconnected, impersonal.

A hell of a way to do medicine, and it scares me should I ever get sick.

At the same time, what the insurance company actually does is cost the patient rather than save the patient. They say they're saving us from the horribly huge inflated costs that are now charged for medical care, costs far beyond the pocketbook of normal civilians who work an honest gig for slave wages. So here come the Insurance companies to save us. Ten dollars for a doctor visit? Awesome!

Never mind two hundred dollars goes into their pockets from you, every month, for me it got up to 400.00 on COBRA. 400.00 a month for three years while I healthily required no care at all (well-yearly exams, and mental health issues, which is the whole reason I had the medical insurance. But all of that went pretty smoothly, I must say.) Was it worth the money I paid? Didn't have a choice, frankly. Whatever the cost, if you've got mental health issues, you must get treatment. If you have clinical depression, you must get treatment, if you want to be in the world in a good way without being a total downer to be around. That sort of matters to me. So I paid for it. No regrets. But, Damn. That's 12 thousand, four hundred dollars. I was taking home around 26 thousand, four hundred a year each year. After taxes.

To a company that did nothing but push paper around, act impatient with me on the phone, and now are denying the claims and not letting me know why, or communicating with my insurance company, who could arrange to pay them what they're owed---this is all I get for those hard-earned dollars I allowed them to siphon off for all that time? Money I could have otherwise used? With all that customer service, why can't they have their customer service people do their jobs? What are they all doing over there? For all the dough they're paid, they're lousy bookkeepers, obviously, and something's got to give. They want way too much to generate all that paper and not communicate with each other or me beyond computer-generated bots and paper love bombs announcing their gouge amounts. It's total bullshit.

Their computers are out of control and just spamming out bills one after another, and ignoring the numerous letters I have been sending in response. Actually, they did not completely ignore them. They told the collection agency they had "adjusted" their claims downward. They didn't tell me that. I finally called the collection agency and paid off the reasonably-revised-downward claims. And lo and behold, what has been coming to my mailbox this month, but a bill for the very date of service I paid the collection agency. And it's reduced from the amount I paid the collector---80.00; this new bill says 47. Well, hey, that's great. Then they owe me money now. Supposing they got the payment I made to the collection agency. Fortunately, I have a tape recording of the phone call with the collection agency of my paying them.

Why would anyone want to work in such a bullshit industry, anyway? Shut the frigging insurance companies down, man. Because without someone at AFTRA or the occasionally customer service rep who really goes above and beyond to HELP you. Rather than browbeating you about your record keeping while you're getting raped by the bank's recordkeeping shenenigans, not to mention my own money baling the bastards out. You work for ME, I wanted to say. Literally. Me the taxpayer. Why don't you think about that, Ms. Update Your Register Every Time You Debit. The problem wasn't even that. It was the automatic debits that come out every month, and the merchant changes the days up on you so you never truly know when the amount is debited out. But now I'm talking about the bank mafia, which are arguably worse. They're worse because they lecture you when you're just trying to keep up with their methods of debiting and indicating debits in an increasingly-arbitrary and not-necessarily-current fashion for you to monitor. But that's another problem. For which I am about to find a solution. Some nicer mafia. More reasonable people. I'm sure it can be done. There's got to be someone nicer to manage my money. I certainly pay them for the privilege.

But back to the Insurance Mafia. For four hundred dollars a month (which is what I paid Black Nightmare of Death Cross during the COBRA years) you'd think you'd at least get a little loyalty. At the same time, what has been coming out of the UCLA Billing system and into my mailbox is so outrageous as to be like an attack of paper butterflies which have teeth and tear chunks out of my mind.

For a while I got so I didn't open my mail. My new year's resolution is to deal with my mail. And my bills. In a more immediate way. I pay my bills on time, but it's bills like the ones from the Medical Mafia that demoralize the crap out of me, because they come, and come, and come. I have a whole file full of letters and notes. Every time they would send me one of their outrageous bills (UCLA, that is) I would fire off a response and include copies of my insurance information. I did try speaking with them on the phone once, and it wasn't a very pleasant experience. A desire not to repeat that experience is the basis for my corresponding by snail mail with the vast warehouse of phone robots sweating under the constant audio surveillance of supervisors weilding obscure regulations and procedure changes. I feel bad for those people. They talk and listen all day. Wouldn't they like to say something of their very own, that's not scripted? Well, some of them do. I had one woman insult the hell out of me and then when I protested, tell me that I was being difficult. I told her I wasn't being difficult, she was being an asshole. And she hung up on me.

"They can do that," Tim said, "if you use profanity, because profanity is abusive."

I'm a pretty nice person. It takes a lot for me to call someone an asshole on the phone. My first instinct is to speak courteously and genuinely to people. My mother brought me up that way. She was direct and forgiving. If anything, she was too nice to people who ran her over until her spirit was literally and physically beaten to death. Yes, I have some issues about my mother. She died when I was nine, and watching her go down left a mark on me that is part of the fabric of who I am. So, how nice to be has always been a central issue for me. I have lessons I've learned about when to stop being nice.

Because sometimes being nice, and getting along to get along, equals not only cowardice, but a loss of control over your situation. I'm not 100 per cent for having total control over things, but when it comes to issues of sustenance and who I spend my days with, that's pretty important stuff. Being suddenly evicted from a place I'd grown comfortably numb (my old radio station) was a real cause for reflection.

And to the people who dis reflection and say "time to get over it and move on", my answer to them is that moving on isn't possible for me until I know what I want to do differently from here on, to avoid problems that came before. That whole thing about the unexamined life not being worth living, that I can get down with. "Move on" sounds suspiciously like "don't bother me with your problems." And that's OK. I didn't bother anyone who didn't ask about it. You ask, you receive. I'm just that kind of gal.

It's not that what came before was so terrible, I actually had a great time working at the place for a long time. But being disappeared and unpersoned by people I had done really good work for was a shock. I am pretty sure it's because I pushed back as much as I did. But I had to. If I'm going to be pushed off the brink, I can at least go down screaming and pointing fingers. ;) And hopefully land somewhere good, which is what happened. So it's all good and it's all worked out----but not without pain. And as for that, I'd rather feel it than not. What doesn't kill you really does make you stronger. I'm no longer afraid to be seen as not nice. It's not that I don't give a shit. It's that people who have agendas against you can get away with kicking over your sand castles, and as well-brought-up child of my elegant, gracious mother---I turned the other cheek and drove my bitterness inward. I should have fought. Why not? You either live in fear, or you fight for what you believe in. And for a peacenik like me, that's exactly what I feel I've done with my life--participated in things I believed in. So that's another reason it hurt leaving K-CRAZY.

Because I genuinely felt that the overall tone of the place had changed radically from what it had been, and what I signed up for when I came to California with a specific plan of working at that radio station. It was doing the kind of radio that I was doing. Different and interesting. Poverty wages but a social exaltment and excitement that is far cooler than cash, and the whole reason public radio is a different experience. One I should write about, I think. But maybe more on that later.

Someone Please Say Something

2010-01-28T21:39:00.001-08:00

Did I ever show you this?

Gosh, couldn't I at least do that anonymously, or something?

Is it just me, or is it really weird that "truther" is an epithet to describe whackos who just want to know what the hell happened? Seriously, the first few years after 9/11, I scoffed at the idea that there was anything to know that wouldn't be brought out and cleared up. I really, honestly, and truthfully thought there would be, if not honesty from the government, a little bit of pushback from media organizations. The weird feeling I started to get in the early part of this century, sitting at the control board of that radio station, just got weirder and weirder. The feeling of being an imposter. The feeling of claiming we were doing something extraordinary when in fact we were as craven as any old white house reporter begging for bones at Bush's door and swearing to follow the rules about what not to say. Don't want to be made fun of, do we? Don't want to be labeled as an organization that seeks...god forbid...the "truth?" Isn't it fucking weird that in "this day and age" seeking the "truth" is considered "whacko?"

Thankfully, lots of people have access to videotape from 9/11, and they're asking questions on ...Youtube. Public radio offering answers? Maybe a few isolated programs. I wonder if Ira Glass's show has poked around about 9/11. Probably not. You know what, I don't even give a rat's butt about checking that out, because I'm afraid of what the answer will be. And I liked that show, too.

...OK, I just looked. Googling "Ira Glass" and "World Trade Center 7" brought up exactly two entries. Way to go, Ira. Maybe once you get on the magic TeeVee, you don't want to mess up your success with any provocative probing.

On Youtube there are literally tens of millions of viewers watching and commenting on the documentaries being made about the World Trade Center, in particular building 7. It's just that no major media companies will touch it. And apparently not NPR stations, either.

Take away net neutrality and no one's going to be talking about this stuff. I mean---how a whole building could fall down in one fell swoop like that, just like a controlled demolition, no planes hit it, just goes down, boom, all that videotape showing the collapse from every possible angle....

and no one
says
shit.

Isn't anyone embarrassed by this?

sometimes I lose hope

2009-12-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

when I cant afford vitamins or floss,
when I look around and see the loss
of integrity, sincerity and priorities
of a once proud honorable country,
I wonder why we even stay instead
of merely fade away into the dark
recesses of history...the way of the
Romans and Greeks, the Persians
and links to our not that distant
past when those who died died
for a reason and they knew the
reason. they wore a flag that
stood for standing up when
there was need beyond greed,
beyond money driven old fart
egos and just because we can.

they didn't die to waste ammunition
so more could be made and wasted.
they didnt die for natural resources
or to stick our forces up other folks'
noses, to build our stations to build
their nations, to pay young punks in
Black Water shirts to lay waste to the
promise of other nation's dirt so we
can say we didn't do it, so we can
say we would never do it when
we did, we know we did and
everyone knows we did.

hey, it's embarrassing.

not to mention wrong,
dangerous and really
dangerously wrong.

Freddy Hirsch - Conspiracy

2009-12-21T15:50:00.000-08:00

I like this...go listen conspiracy- Freddy Hirsch

For You Amerigo

2009-12-21T15:36:00.001-08:00

go here, watch this
and don't forget to put it on full screen.

I agree with Everything you've said.

2009-12-17T03:58:00.000-08:00

down to the last xyz. so I wont repeat what you've said. just a simple "Hear Here!!!"

I heard on Fresh Air they finally nabbed a few Blackwater butt weasels who may go bye bye cause they killed over a dozen Iraqis for no reason whatsoever.

my comment on your post?

Corporate America, not all of course, but the big ass mofos who have so hidden their greed and vomitory policies, who wrapped themselves in bottom lines and logo designs, who think theyre doing God's work by being the infinite jerk, the ones who value their custom beamers over their loyal customers, who think competition means you bury your competition anyway you can, the assholes who have zero empathy for anyone but their golf partners and only if They drive their golden calves into your pasture...you get the drift...the guys who Gladly, Joyfully, OrGasmicly screw their moms and babies if it means one more "good job!" bonus from any place they can get it...those MBA savages who think Scrooge was a Saint and Madoff was an unlucky bastard and that's All he was...I would LOVE to see as many of those guys as can be rounded up taken and made part of an Guantanamo prisoner exchange program.

That's right...put the bastards in Gitmo, give them one can of alpo and a doggie bowl of water at tea time. and then give them credit cards to buy shoes with. Make them buy shoes and designer ties without the income to pay for it. run the cards up and watch them squirm when they see their bills go up and up and the APRs go up and up cause theyre rampantly overdue and soon they owe 6 figures then 7 with absolutely no way to get out from under.

no money, no food, no lawyer, no hope, no life, no way out.

and absolutely put up web cams Everywhere so the rest of us can enjoy the show. watch the ratings soar as we "let" Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld drop by once a month for conjugal visits as a matter of professional courtesy. then sit back and wait for sweeps.

An Ocean of Smarm

2009-12-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

I found out today that someone whose work amazes and inspires me, recognized my name and said I was funny. I frickin' love that. I cannot reveal who, where, why, or how, not on this blog. But I don't think there's a cooler feeling.

Anyway,

This is a grand idea. I went ahead and sent one.

What bothers me though, is that while I am proud of my brother's service
and have little doubt that he will be a force for good wherever he goes, I also feel that our now-neverending foreign wars have been a mistake. Guantanamo broke so many international laws, we are aggressors and thugs and the Iraq war is an illegal war
that killed the very soldiers which are so valuable. We have held prisoners without having to tell them what they are charged with. This is a total violation of the laws we afford our countrymen, and they are men who were defending their country when we came in and started dropping bombs and yelling about terrorism. Where is the proof that all that violence helped anything? Except for the bank accounts of revolving-door defense-whore politicians whose open agenda to sell us War Stuff is right there on the table? Is that the American dream?

I was looking at the troop responses and they always say "We do it for you." We know and we are grateful, at least, I am grateful for this loyalty and care to one's countrymen. But what kind of care is this if we go into the world and drop bombs on it all the time? Vietnam? Gulf war one? Iraq? Here's my problem...

Iraq war killed 600 thousand civilians....and left two million homeless. Can you imagine if someone came into * _our_* country and did that? Your mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, innocent children, killed, your homes bombed, your cities devastated, and this is "setting them free?" Is it any wonder they can't wait for us to get the hell out and have said so in front of the world?

We shouldn't be doing that stuff out in the world. And so I am mixed about my feelings about this. I would like to have had an option on that card to read: We adore you and miss you and your service is needed here at home. Please come home. We want and need you here. Our country is the one that needs help right now. Spiritually and on issues of trust. We need to know the answers about 9/11, not just go out and bomb countries to look like badasses. All those people dead, all those children dead, and all our men dead? And no mention of these numbers on TV ever at all? It's scary, there is no news left on TV, it's all about tabloid stuff or Scott Peterson or whatever. It's just bs. The real news is on youtube. Or Comedy Central with John Stewart. That's about it for credible mainstream news resources. If we lose the net neutrality struggle, Tim says, it will be like Rupert Murdoch having control of Youtube. The internet will come to be dominated by private interests who will control content and access.

This is not what we created the internet for...it was an answer to dreams in this country where our lifestyle demands that we live far from each other and drive cars and not get to see other human beings as much as we'd like or as much as may be healthy for us as a society. The internet is here because we desperately needed it and some good men made sure it happened. It has changed our world. We can talk to each other in a way never before known. We can get our truth from indpendent sources, look at who pays their bills and consider that agenda, and then consider who we trust. I trust the smaller noncorporate adventurous journalists ever time, true American heroes like Jason Leopold, who is actually acting in the interest of his society and yet is labeled "lefty." Enron was raping the State of California, which is We the People, and Leopold, the more he learned, the more he pushed Dow Jones Newswires (he ran the LA bureau) to publish stories that told the truth about the crap that was going on at that place. (Which was very cozy with powers that be, Kenny Boy being like glue at W's side all through the campaign, which made the White House palpably uncomfortable when Enron's activities were exposed.)

For his trouble, Leopold got set up on that indictment thing. He thought he had a story, and announced indictments of Carl Rove. Then within hours he was proved wrong. He had multiple sources, and provided them all. One of them denied talking to him, which can happen with journalists who publish controversial stories. Paul Krugman spoke up for Leopold, and Krugman has impressive creds. Someone must have needed to discredit him real bad. Why else trouble with an independent journalist who managed to piss off people half the time anyway? (I like Jason Leopold a lot. He's never pissed me off, but it sounds from his book like he pissed off people because he told on them when they did bad things, things that actually were subversive, and wrong. The people he pissed off are the kind that say everyone has to cheat, and everyone cheats, it's just the way of the world. Their rationale is that it is worse to make a mistake (gasp!) and be caught, than to turn away the temptation to play the system and eff over people you don't know, who've trusted you with their money. To them, the worst part is if they get caught, called out and punished. They don't see that the worst part is if they get away with it, and come to justify it more and more their lives, at the expense of others who they will never see or know, but who are real human beings who could work for several years and not even be able to afford the drapes in their front room.

But people believe the poorest and most helpless, disenfranchised people are the biggest threat to their money. All those weak, stupid people will drag ME down!
Fucking immigrants! Welfare Mommas. Lazy drugged-out stupidasses. Sponging off of everyone else. Meanwhile, the masters of the universe lounge high above us in the clouds, in their private jets, worlds away from anywhere they would have to mix with us, the great unwashed 'regular' people who most of us are. One woman I know of gets off her private jet and into her Prius. The weirdness of it makes my head spin. At least Schwarzenegger is honest and drives a monstrous vehicle that hogs the road and guzzles enough gas to insure that we'll be groveling to the Saudis for many years to come. Except when he rides his motorcycle with his kid on the back. That's cool.

But, back to our country and how it represents itself overseas, by our military and by the multinational companies that are made possible by airline flight and electronic data transmission. The military are there for us. These companies are there for profit, and to use land and resources (cheap slave labor without the oversight that would be required in the US). They don't represent us. The military should represent the interests of We The People, not the interests of corporations who want to make money and do a lot of bombing and reconstructing. Halliburton anyone? If the military represents us, they should decide for themselves where a patriot would be right now. Would he be fighting in a foreign land, or would he be fighting to inform himself against the deeply disturbing propoganda that's laid the way for our military to kill people overseas in the name of freedom?

Fuck it, take your oil, all you guys, we'll think of something here. We're creative and ingenious people who will be what keeps our country strong, not the corporate welfare queens draining the life out of our treasury. Or the private banks holding politicians by the gonads while controlling access to cash. Over and over and over througout history, and yet people always feel trust in and believe in the authorities, the aristocracy, the grey men who seem to shake with rage when they have to share power with anyone. Our country is not a kingdom. President Cheney is out of office. The mainstream is polluted and we don't have to swim in that ocean of smarm. There is another America out here, one where people know the founders' intention was that authority should not have a choke-hold over liberty. To have liberty, doesn't one really need to examine the assertions of those in authority? With great care and utmost importance, before going to far lands to rage with machines against someone else's machines? Or do men just like to fight? Because I don't understand it, I confess, and I'm tired of being polite about it. If you are dropping bombs for me, I don't want it. And I don't want anyone to tell me they know more than I do, and that I don't know what's good for me.

I've spent twenty years of my life now trying to understand what's good for me and for the country. I knew nothing going in. I only knew I wasn't comfortable with the fairy-tale Santa-Claus versions of history that have been commodified and sold to us. Why isn't Harriet Tubman recognized and revered as the American hero of the stature she should have? Why aren't the people who fought slavery, and who smuggled slaves through the underground railroad, THOSE were the men fighting for freedom.

OH, freedom for black people~! Who cares! We don't associate with them, they're black for god's sake.

You should care, because we are all people. And as you do unto the least of them, so you do unto me, is what Jesus had to say about it. Not that anyone who quotes Jesus these days quotes that one, or any of the really nice things Jesus had to say. "I come not to bring peace, but a sword!" Just don't forget what Jesus did in the marketplace. The money changers were chased out of the temple with alacrity. It was one of the few times in bible stories that I can remember Jesus really getting outraged. And yet a friend told me Jesus wasn't "really" mad and didn't show any "temper." How does he know? And, that I had to render unto ceasar, blah blah blah. Fuck Ceasar if he's got me bent over staring at the tiles, looking for the soap on a rope in the foot-fungusy shower at the gym. He can bite me. I earn my keep, and then some. Ceasar should start to look at the assholes stealing *my* money is what I say. I don't care if they drive great cars and live in high-rises. They're just pushing papers around all day in that big men's club in the sky on Wall Street. They go home, what's accomplished? More papers got pushed around, more dealings, more maneuverings. More men screaming at the stock exchange and shoving each other like the young turks in Boystown, like young male bodies bumping at the nightclub to the beat of money, money, money. The notches are carved in their battle implements, but where's the added value? I'm not seeing it. I just read "Den of Thieves" again recently and it got me really pissed off, again.

But back to the original subject.

We have to know the truth before making war in other countries. We must. Otherwise we will not be free, no matter how many bombs we drop on people and children and supermarkets and hotels. The truth really is what sets us free and it is the fabric that holds us together. Lies can only drive us apart. Please come home and help us win the peace.

Sorry for ranting, I hope it doesn't sound that way. If you look on youtube about the world trade center, there is a lot of underground journalism going on now on 9/11. A good one to start with is World Trade Center 7 The Smoking Gun parts one and two. Then go from there and watch some of the other videos. This video by CBS News shows what happened the day before 9/11----Rummy announced 2.3 TRILLION dollars is missing from the Pentagon. This is One Day before 9/11. Did we ever hear about that 2.3 Trillion again? Did we get actual answers about 9/11? How come no one has explained to my satisfaction the matter of WTC 7? This is the only credible journalism going on now and it is not on TV. But you can watch it if you want.

The problem with world trade center building 7, the Solomon Building, is that it was not hit by an airplane and it was not hit by falling derbris like some other buildings were. It was slightly apart from the other buildings and did not fall down with them. Watch the videos of WTC 7 collapsing, they show in the films how it looks just like a controlled demoltion. The official story is the building fell "because of fire." But no steel building has ever before or since collapsed from fire----ever.

Also, BBC reported that the Solomon Building fell 20 minutes before it actually fell. The WTC 7 documentary has the actual news footage of this and it is quite startling and incomprehensible. Who told the anchor that the Solomon building had fallen? Because you can see it right behind the other anchor's head as she stands in the window. But that footage can no longer be accessed from the BBC; seems they have "lost" all video files from that day and that broadcast. Hm?

But people in newsrooms and with access to those videotapes of that day, all across the country, are reporting their findings on Youtube. Millions and millions of people are watching, and commenting, there. One video had thirteen MILLION watchers. Pages and pages of comments and discussion, much of it out-and-out brawling between colorful characters. THIS is my country!!!! I am proud of all those people who decided to do the right thing and try to figure out 9/11 on their own. Because our government isn't doing it. Not a peep about WTC 7. No one on TV is covering it, though all these millions of people are watching. That is scary. Do you really need to know anything more about what news you DON'T get from TV?

Then there were some guys in England assasinated for reasons likely having to do with their protests of the Iraq war. One was an influential professor and another a journalist. But these stories can only be found online, never made it to our shores. TV doesn't have this stuff. They won't touch it, because they're owned by interests that want us to stay at war. The compannies that own them own defense companies. They are invested in our having wars overseas. That is what they want. The government has been their puppet, the corporations and the Federal Reserve (which is private, not federal in any way--it is basically banker guys who have the country by the gonads right now by withdrawing credit, which they have done on a regular basis throughout history) and we've got a country badly in need of civic involvement. But it has to be informed and knowledgable involvement, otherwise it just benefits the people who want the public to get up a blood lust for an unseen enemy, and then send their sons away to be killed. To kill people in far lands who just don't want us in their country----as we would not want them in ours. What part of this is hard to comprehend? Why do people still believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11? Those guys were supposedly Saudi, who crashed these planes. But who remembers that now?

People in power have been lying about international matters, to our countrymen and their public, for a long time. The notion of public service is unidentifiable in the actions of so many of those we trust to represent us. They allow themselves to be the pampered pets of a system without integrity and tell themselves they are still fighting the good fight (and getting paid appropriately for their trouble). If you're not fighting for the truth, I've got news for you, you're not fighting the good fight.

The difference with Obama is best seen when you read his writing (he wrote a great book, The Audacity of Hope, it is a beautiful book about our country and has an amazing vision of this place that actually is hopeful.) He is a man whose entire career has been in public service; a man who has avidly studied history and past Presidents and their writings and their lives. He has also studied this country for as long as he's been alive to do it. His books are full of all kinds of observations from across life's broad spectrum. He is a thinker, and a wise man. He is not getting the support he needs from his party. People have brought guns to demonstrate at his speeches. We are in scary times. The lies are swirling even more hysterically, as people who recognize their waning influence grow furious at the loss of ass-kissing and scrambling to do their bidding. Men like this, who measure their importance by how many people will do their bidding, frighten me. That is the opposite of leadership. It is authoritarian, which was not a goal our Founders had in mind.

Obama seems to be trying to do the best he can admidst terrible criticism. The weirdness of our impossible situation seems to have made him lose a lot of joy, but I'm glad he stands up to them and tells it like it is. I hope they are doing OK. I like that family. How can you not like a family that turns the east wing of the white house into a jazz lounge? (they brought in Stevie Wonder that night, also cool) ;)

Just wind me up, I'll get started. How's December in Christianland? I liked Dallas a lot. Once I found KERA.

We just got a nice rain here and the day after rain, So Cal is breathtaking this time of year and when it rains, it's ridiculous...just gorgeous...

The Lonely Blog

2009-12-04T00:21:00.001-08:00

sitting quietly...oh so quietly...the blog may have wiggled its left ear. or did it? perhaps it was moved by a serendipitous electron or a misfiring pixel. if no one is reading it, even if it wiggled, did it really?

in a conversation, do both parties have to talk? if two people sit at a table and only one speaks...is that conversation or monologue. or if one speaks and months pass before the other replies does that change the nature of the exchange?

perhaps that's why it's called a blog because it sounds like blob, like blot...a thing that sits under the weight of its own function. to sit patiently still someone happens by and, maybe, takes a migratory interest.

tempting the tempest

2009-10-26T01:41:00.000-07:00

our miraculous cruise

a sea party passed us as we ate great patches of pastrami on a rather weathered patio. I was particularly attracted to a furtive turtle in a girdle who was introduced as a girl trapped within herself till she sold her chateau for a scarf to cover her scars. she was warmed by the arm of a skinny latin fat cat in satin moccasins who annoyed us with his sarcastic moroccan maracas.

we feasted with some Sandinistas and fell strangely ill. our repast had caught up with us. luckily the ship's mystic therapist came to our rescue skewing our screwed up tubing with harmonious hypnosis using a mist incense to cure our psychosomatic neuroses. we regressed into the matchless recesses of subtle effervescent bubbles that knocked us off our land lubber rubber deck huggers.

the next morning we were loose from our mooring. the tide had lifted our ship and slipped us from our slippery slip and we found ourselves adrift among the dipping waves. that day we had tea on the high seas which pleased us sweetly.

we never felt dead. we still don't.

Scott Peterson Didn't Kill His Wife

2009-10-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

We've got ourselves an innocent man on death row here in our beautiful, incomparable state of California.

Rights? You accused? You got no rights. Not to privacy in your own home, not to a fair trial, not to responsible journalism, not to reasonable doubt. Not to attorney-client privilege, and that's regardless of whether you've ever run afoul from the law atall. You got shit.

California Vs. Peterson---if you've been wondering where I'm at....over theyyyahhh.

Come see me, man. I need thinkers like you over there. This case truly blows my mind, because everyone really thinks he did it. But he didn't. The baby's bone growth proves it. The baby lived at LEAST six days, and that is the outer reaches of convservative in age estimation --beyond December 24, 2002, which is when Peterson's wife disappeared while he was out trying his new boat in Berkeley. Prosecution's own experts calculated the baby's age---except for the one expert whose fuzzy math magically managed to place the baby's age at 32 weeks (his age December 24th). The nifty number tweaking was beyond all the jury members except one. The one who got it--who got that Peterson didn't kill his wife, couldn't have, because after December 24th he was being tailed 24/7 by police who believed he was responsible for her disappearance---that guy got kicked off the jury. Lots of people got kicked off this jury----the whole case is a the mother of all clusterfucks. And it's a death penalty case. And it's scary.

so it's my latest obsession. Sorry for being so neglectful over here. Tell me what's goin on with you.

2009-09-11T04:36:00.000-07:00

I have to say Obama found his way onto my short list of moving orators wednesday night. I've been impressed with him before but when he did that posthumous Kennedy letter close, I didn't shbluther, but I did tear up.

it occurred to me the secret is his black minister chops. the black church force is strong in him and I'm a sucker when it's done sincerely.

thing is it's pretty early in his career to be able to trigger that response in me. good for him and good for us. a great orator with a great heart is rare and quite the thrill.

now we'll see if he can defeat the idiot dragons. he's got the brain...let's see if he's got the balls. thing is it usually takes a few years to reach that level of strength.

he's off to a beautiful start. go, man, go.

I mean, hey...

2009-08-31T18:10:00.001-07:00

if they werent incurious tunnel visioned oafs who have no reasonable understanding of the world they actually live in they wouldnt be saying most of the infinitely clueless bonehead slobbermouthed things they be spewing now would they???

my guess is they'd have a hard time spelling 50% of the words in that last querstion.

Anti-Reform Demonstrators Unable to Locate Iraq on Map of Middle East

2009-08-28T17:56:00.001-07:00

Many town hall protesters enjoy boasting to federal lawmakers about how knowledgeable they are about public policy. For example, at a town hall meeting with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) yesterday, an attendee stood up and declared, “I have taken the time to look at certain provisions of a bill on the Internet and I can quote…the sections and the page.” But the Omaha City Weekly went to a recent town hall hosted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and found that the health care protesters actually aren’t all that informed about public policy. They asked 40 pro-reform and 40 anti-reform attendees to locate Iraq on a map. The results:

A full 75%, 30 of 40 pro-reform attendees, could identify Iraq in its rather eye-catching, dead center position on the map. Only 52.5 %, 21 of 40 anti-reformers could do so. [...]

More telling was the startling reactions I got while conducting the test. Pro-reform people, even those geographically challenged few who laughed out loud at the futility of the task before them, portrayed a uniformly agreeable front. Most gave a knowing, touch_-like nod and smile. I received no negative comments, none at all, from that group.

The same could not be said of the other camp. Far from it.

One gentleman practically knocked the clipboard out of my hand in jabbing - angrily and correctly – at the country that (John Kerry was right) represented the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Many sneered. Most at least glowered. Four accused the test itself of being somehow biased.

One anti-reform Vietnam veteran also responded, “Why the hell should I care where Iraq is?”

story from Thinkprogress.org

2009-08-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

well, okay, back from taos. dammit....oh, it's cool. first week of class outta the way. hugely busy and rewarding year ahead. time to get busy even if I Am in dallas. at least I'm not in hoostun.

still in taos

2009-08-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've been in taos since august 3rd teaching at ft. burgwin...which I have to leave tomorrow. dammit. love the 1000 hand dance video. quite a production. quality stuff there.

my class has been a combination rock history/drum circle/facebook thing. I had 4 kids, then 1 got kicked out for drinking on campus. this is an abnormally upper class bunch o kids who think they're on vacation yet still most are respectful and take class time seriously so whatever.

the cool thing is the vibe. we dont lock our doors or our cars. the beauty and sanctity of the place creates a trusting environment that demands a kind of family respect. it's ineresting cause it's nothing like dallas where I tend to mistrust my neighbors cause you just dont know.

one other cool thing is I'm teaching in one of the archeology labs where the shelves are full of boxes of artifacts from the digs, including human skulls and bones...ooo.

I had my friend Lauren Camp up from santa fe to read her poetry while we played drums last thursday and it was so cool for both performers and audience. I really like her stuff and her voice has a lot of character.

the pictures are obvious...all the drums I brought and the town at dusk.

Dance of the Thousand Hands

2009-08-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

DANCE OF 1000 HANDS...
Read the paragraph below FIRST before you watch the video

There is an awesome dance, called the Thousand-Hand Guanyin, which is making the rounds across the net. Considering the tight coordination required, their accomplishment is nothing short of amazing, even if they were not all deaf. Yes, you read correctly. All 21 of the dancers are complete deaf-mutes. Relying only on signals from trainers at the four corners of the stage, these extraordinary dancers deliver a visual spectacle that is at once intricate and stirring.

Its first major international debut was in Athens at the closing ceremonies for the 2004 Paralympics. But it had long been in the repertoire of the Chinese Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe and had traveled to more than 40 countries.

Its lead dancer is 29 year old Tai Lihua, who has a BA from the Hubei Fine Arts Institute. The video was recorded in Beijing during the Spring Festival this year.

People vs. Peterson

2009-08-12T21:32:00.001-07:00

I did not write this, but found it in the comments on the Peterson family web site.

Proof Of Insufficient Evidence To Support The Verdict

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt was needed to support the jury’s finding that the killing of Laci Peterson was a first-degree murder by Scott Peterson. Jury instructions defined the necessary murder-one elements that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt; i.e., willful (intended), premeditated and deliberated. Moreover, jury instructions also defined the necessary element for second-degree murder; i.e., malice aforethought.

In whole or in part, proof of premeditation, deliberation, intent and malice aforethought must be based on inculpatory evidence. Standing alone, corroborative evidence (consciousness of guilt, flight, dog evidence) is not sufficient to prove premeditation, deliberation, intent or malice aforethought.

An analysis of all possible sources of inculpatory evidence shows there is no inculpatory evidence the jury could have used in reaching its finding.

An eyewitness can not be a source of inculpatory evidence in this case, for no eyewitness testified at trial.

A confession can not be a source of inculpatory evidence in this case, for Scott has always maintained his innocence.

Time of death can not be a source of inculpatory evidence in this case, for there was no testimony that established either the day or the time of Laci's death or Connor's death.

Place of death can not be a source of inculpatory evidence in this case, for there was no testimony that established where they died.

Cause of death can not be a source of inculpatory evidence in this case, for the medical examiner, Dr. Brian Peterson, testified it could not be determined.

Neither a crime scene nor forensic evidence from a crime scene can be a source of inculpatory evidence in this case, for no one testified that a crime scene had been found.

Given that the above sources were void of inculpatory evidence, the only possible remaining source of inculpatory evidence would be motive.

On December 14, 2004, a juror, Greg Beratlis, took part in Larry King’s TV show on CNN. During the show, Larry King asked Greg Beratlis the following question.

”KING: And what do you think his motive was?”

”BERATLIS: You know, Larry, I think if we all knew the motive, if there was this one thing that stuck out, we'd probably have the answer to the whole thing.”

Greg Beratlis' "if/then" statement conditions deduction. Greg Beratlis, himself, is included in "We". At the very least, motive was unclear in his mind. For motive to have been used to support the jury’s first-degree murder verdict twelve jurors had to agree. Greg Beratlis proved that did not happen, which proves the jury reached its verdict absent motive.

Having eliminated motive as a possible source of inculpatory evidence, there are no other sources of inculpatory evidence that could have supplied evidence of premeditation, deliberation, intent and malice aforethought.

When all sources of inculpatory evidence cannot be the source the jury used to support its finding that premeditation and intent were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, then of logical necessity, the jury’s verdict either had to rely on impermissible speculation or had to be fallaciously derived.

Based on insufficient evidence, the verdicts should be reversed with jeopardy attached.

33 Vague Reasons to Assume the Worst of Scott Peterson

2009-08-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

I have a fascination with all things that aren't as they appear to be.
I know what it's like to be wrongly accused. I know what it's like to be punished for things you didn't do. And, especially, I know what it's like to be accused of calculation, when all you're doing is experiencing so much pain and confusion, you can barely breathe, much less defend yourself.

So this is slightly about my own ghosts.

But, now I'm curious about the Peterson case. I bought the book by Anne Bird, "33 reasons my brother Scott Peterson is Guilty" because I like crime books. I especially like books that contain personal analysis of others, because sometimes they tell you something about the person being analyzed, and sometimes they tell you more about the person doing the analyzing---in fact, it goes both ways. My conclusion was that the author has known great darkness in her life...but not from Mr. Peterson.

This is audio and it's in two parts.

I have now bought a few other books on the case, to learn more. Maybe he did it...but halfway through the book the jury wrote (12 jurors, only 7 of them wanted their names on this book..even though it takes twelve to convict); and so far all I can see is a freak show of egotistical smalltown, smallminded bungling, with giant loonies like Nancy Grace breathing stench of hysteria into every corner of the entire television-saturated circus. And you know how I feel about television.

So for now, in case you're curious, here are Ms. Bird's 33 reasons, with some commentary.

PETERSON WAS FRAMED. JUSTICE FOR LACI

2009-08-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

I just finished "Presumed Guilty" by Matt Dalton. This is the biggest unreported
story of a railroaded jury that I have ever heard.

I'm not going to write about it right now, but I will put up some audio files. Download the windows media player and you should be able to listen. It's free.

2009-07-31T04:43:00.000-07:00

these assholes can't get away with the 911 holocaust. they just can't!

come on all you guys who know something and all you leaders who want to clean that slate...let's roll!

American war criminals are not allowed any slack for whatever the hell they thought they were doing on that fateful day.

I Know you guys were puppets of a bigger machine and I'm absolutely sure They will give you guys up to save Their asses. Maybe someday we'll get them too but...FOR NOW...I'll personally settle with your beastly sins being cleansed in sweet retribution.

dammit if America is going to stand up again it has to shine Miss Liberty's light on this very dark place in its own history. turn the villains out in the square and let the stoning begin. bring out the horses and tie their arms and legs...draw and quarter each in turn...let their blood spray the population so we will never forget their cold-hearted crimes against their own. in the end hang each of their cursed heads from the Washington bridge and let them swing and rot till they crumble into the Hudson. let their stench remind us of the stench they left behind on America.

in the name of the needless deaths of the 3000 here and hundreds of thousands overseas including 5000 young Americans whose lives were taken away from them at the point of a pen, the world must see, we must reveal the horror. if we do not the many will continue to clinch their guts in shame for the shameless meaningless acts of a few.

Some Morning Conversation For U

2009-07-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

The Life of a Hollywood Director (so glamorous)

(or: The Mother of All Excuses?)

conversations with Tim

World Trade Center 7 - The Smoking Gun of 9/11

2009-07-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

40 U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism agents challenge official account of 9/11

Examples:

William Christison, a 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis describes the 9/11 Commission Report as a “joke” and offers even more outspoken criticism. In a 2006 podcast interview by George Kenney of Electric Politics, Christison said, “We very seriously need an entirely new very high level and truly independent investigation of the events of 9/11. I think you almost have to look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a joke and not a serious piece of analysis at all.”

Terrell E. Arnold, MA – Former Deputy Director of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning, U.S. State Department. Mr. Arnold is a leading expert on terrorism and counter-terrorism and the author of several books on the subjects. In an extensive article in July 2007, Mr. Arnold wrote, “Washington leadership keeps the American people fixated on the events of 9/11. They have brought us no closer than we were on September 12, 2001, to resolving how it was executed and by what enemy. They tell us repeatedly that it was the work of al Qaida, but they have yet to show us the proofs. They told us the official version of what happened that day, but their story is laced with contradictions, and the facts visible on the ground at the time belie much of the official account. ... As an alleged post 9/11 defense, the War on Terrorism is a gigantic fraud."

I mean-WoW.

What more does it take for some of this stuff to make it to Television?

You watch TV--have you ever seen programs on this stuff?

Have you ever looked around the web at the 9/11 stuff? Youtube it...it's fucking scary.

And what's most scary is that our omnipresent Orwellian Propoganda Device, multiple devices found in each and every American home, the TV set, does not carry programming on this.

I am thinking about starting an Anti-TV website.

I remember Steve running around the halls of CBS News saying TV was a shit machine. No wonder he didn't last there.

"Grasshole"

2009-07-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

That's Bob Cesca's headline for this one. Cesca is goddamn awesome, I don't know what I'd do without his blog.

Anyway, he writes:

The Senate Republican with the most influence over the future of healthcare in America wrote this on his Twitter today:

PTL BluDogs Keep barkin Pelosie bill is Govt takeovr of healthCare Breaks Obama promise"keep what u hv" Puts Wash Burocrats in chrg MUSTSTOP.

Pelosie?

*banging head on desk*

Jesus H. Motherhumping Chuck Grassley.

On top of being completely incoherent and not unlike the scribblings of a 12-year-old girl in the margins of her math notebook, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee wrote PELOSIE?????!!!! He misspelled the last name of the Speaker of the House????!!!!!

listening to O

2009-07-22T17:30:00.001-07:00

I'm struck as I always am at how thoughtful, measured, plain-spoken and focused this guy is. And I'm again amazed at the fact that I *admire* a President.

I liked Clinton in some ways; and in some ways he blew my mind because of all the terrible concentration of wealth/power that happened during his tenure. I couldn't believe that such a seemingly well-meaning President would let such things happen without a peep, or that he wouldn't say "This is Bullshit" in response to the Monica shit.

apartment life

2009-07-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

I'm Loving living in these apartments. respect for borders has a lot to do with it. I used to feel antisocial cause I didnt interact with my neighbors in my old neighborhood. there was pressure to interact. not here, man. and the place is so well made it's as quiet or as social as opening the patio door.

there was this guy downstairs with huge dogs that should Never have been here. he kept them on the patio and they barked at worms and leaves. not cool. the good news is his girlfriend kicked him out and the dogs are gone and now it's back to being as peaceful as I want it to be.

my girlfriend bought a house and I may move in in a few years. but for now...this is Great. it aint LA but it's just what I need. mostly I love being anonymous and if I go outta town for a week or a month (which I'm about to do) I lock up and go...no lawn, no car, no mail or papers, no worries of any sort...nobody knows if I'm there or not. beautiful.

what the Eff am i talking about at this godforsaken hour?

2009-07-20T23:19:00.001-07:00

Every night here in Hollywood has a soundtrack and it varies from night to night, with layers of white sound from the whooshing streets and car alarms, to wafts of booming bass from any of the many automobiles crawling at any given time down side streets; the perfunctory comings and goings of neighbors, music blasting from a nearby apartment; and voices, punctuating the night in symphonies of mood, and nights like this, this is what I love best about living here: that the soundtrack is laughter and silliness and music. There are some new neighbors who moved in across the way, and they hit it off with the girls already there, and now they're having parties all the time. People hanging around outside, smoking, talking, just enjoying the night. Not sounding strained or unfun at all, ripples of laughter and shouts and teasing.....

I like living here, not because of anything but the people. Living in this exact spot feels way different than living in any of my other neighborhoods: Silverlake, Malibu, Venice, Santa Monica--I tried 'em all, but Hollywood has grabbed me in some way. The Hollywood flats, as a matter of fact---what I once thought of as urban wasteland, too rough-and-tumble to make a good place to live---has turned out to be the most vibrant and laid-back, interesting place. Now the voices are laughing, woman's voices, one of them hysterically telling a bizarre story about something that happened and the others howling with glee---that's the sound of a good neighborhood. Which this is. It is a noisy neighborhood, if things like this bother you. I always thought it would---but it doesn't. I feel safely private, people respect boundaries; but surrounded by life and sound and whatever that thing is that becomes the rhythm of a place.

whaaaaa?!?!

2009-07-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

charlie rose is talking with ambassador hill (our man in iraq) who's saying the problem with the middle east is the countries think they can control their neighbors...that the different sects dont understand they have to keep their fingers out of other sovereign nations.

fucking jesus, jack! how dare any american dignitary talk about keeping fingers out of their neighbor's pie. who freakin creAted the map of the middle east??? and not that long ago.

the west carved up persia and arabia and changed the borders based on mostly British and French influences. now we've gone in in our goddish way and anyone who thinks we're going to abandon our bases in the burbs anytime soon is living in a universe we havent seen lately.

check out the map above. A. Persia doesnt exist any more and B. that Red Zone (remind anyone of our Green 'Zone'?) was deClared under the diRect conTrol of the British. how fucking arrogant is THat?

that whole colonial thing was such outlaw scumbag scam! and WE still do it. that's as BUTTIFUL as it gets, doris. Sykes-Picot Agreement...which one of those guys was Arab?

answer: none of the above.

they got the wrong guy!!!

2009-07-08T04:37:00.000-07:00

I was looking up michael jackson images to accompany a note about how weird America is with its celebrity orgasms and this came up. it's labeled 'Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder at the Grammys.

really. I guess celebrities are interchangeable. does it matter anyway? some famous entertainer dies and we go down on our knees in a way we never would have in real life...yet we do it too much already.

I might feel differently if we actually cared about what they did. if we actually gave half a shit about their art and magic of their craft. if we as a culture truly cared about what art does to and for us. that is, if we revered the power of art and entertainment in our lives on a daily basis and were in awe of that mystical exchange to the point of wanting to understand it, wanting the essence of that exchange to mean something beyond the superficial way we download and debate who's cool and what IT is.

if we understood a bit of that we might truly understand the significance of it when a major conduit of what that is goes away. that would mean a whole lot more than, " we miss you, michael. we know you're looking down at us from the golden spires of heaven above. we'll see you there...someday (final sob deleted)."

there's no looking behind the story. 2 headlines: Beloved MJ Dies or Troubled Icon Passed Caring. that's it. oh, and Look at all the Freakin Fans. that's as much as we get. endless retrospectives on his heyday and how cool the moon walk is. there's no scratching the surface. they barely pawed the lid in the same place over and over.

whatever. do whatever you guys wanna do. it's none of my business.

but hey, mr. celebrity uploader...mistaking dylan for mj? whoa.

I guess we all look the same after a few years in the grave.

digging in

2009-07-08T04:05:00.001-07:00

the best palin joke I heard was Conan, "President Obama is in Russia cause he knew from there he'd be able to see Sarah Palin cleaning out her desk."

the story was of immediate yet short lived interest to me. I can't imagine her being much of a threat to Obama unless he royally screws something up. in fact, I dont consider her much of a threat period.

America hates losers, especially big time election losers, and she's got all the loser cred you can get these days. I felt sorry for her when McCain tapped her back in the summer. it was obvious she was in over her head.

some day, after we make our way through all the skin color minorities, we might actually get down to accepting White Trash Americans. somewhere toward the end of the century. then maybe someone like Sarah will have more of a shot.

it does seem somewhat odd that the 'Love it or Leave it' culture was backing someone who indeed Had pretty much left it. you can't get much further away from the heartland of America.

oh, and of course you know I think Cheney's wrong about pretty much everything. all those guys who came up through Reagan and Bush, many starting back as far as Nixon, clearly have poison in their pens and turtle wax for brains. it's good they're out there for the rest of us to see.

I just wish we could get them on the gallows before they get too far back in them hills.

Almost Feel Bad For Palin ....well, sorta.

2009-07-08T02:35:00.000-07:00

"If Dumbfvckistan is getting ready to secede, she may go down as their George Washington, the Hockey Mother of the Country."

Someone wrote that in the comments. I love the comments. Frickn comments crack me up.....and what also cracks me up is the idea of all these people sitting all over the world staring into screens with their eyes, and with their minds, into some shared inner space that the internets are carving out year by year.

I just love it too much.

A day with the Fids

2009-07-07T22:32:00.001-07:00

fluffy kids is what we bird people call them.
someone told me "you're one of those weird bird people."
i wanted to go, "you're one of those weird Obama haters."
i didn't, though.

Why Cheney is Wrong about Torture

2009-07-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

well, I mean, there are a whole bunch of reasons. but this one is pretty good.

A Memo To the President by William S. Lind

Try to imagine untangling these....and guess where it is

2009-07-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

give up?
India.

where we call to get technical help!!!!!!

dumb ad

2009-07-06T07:56:00.001-07:00

I just heard a stupid radio ad. it went something like...

Small business is the life blood of America, a vital part of our new economy, far more important than those stodgy giant corporations who don't understand the value of innovation and a fresh approach. If you're a young company hoping to take America in a new direction call IBM today or visit us a IBM.com. we'll help get you started.

I'm not sure if that's more ironic or moronic.

daddy dearest

2009-07-05T23:09:00.000-07:00

after all the reports and interviews, why is old man jackson not under arrest for child abuse? when you get multiple accounts of "he beat us everyday" and you see the screwed up kids who came out of that environment why oh why is he not brought up on charges and sent up the river where our fine fellows in the big house can give him a proper reaming so he can die screaming as he righteously deserves?

we Have halls of justice in this country. they're called cell block C and D.

escapism

2009-07-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

we talk about this in class every semester. people escape for a reason. we all do it, everyone all over the planet does it. some people cook, some people garden, some people smoke dope, everyone does Something.

adolescents have plenty of reasons to escape. adults have theirs. this is an escape. this blog, this internet, this computer. entertainment in general. why should drugs be off the list? it's an ingestible release like ice cream and aspirin.

the war on drugs is as stupid and asinine pursuit as any the world has ever seen. I would much rather see government declare war on pop up ads and billboards and telemarketers and price gouging. get between us and the People who are trying to exploit us, not between us and the escapes we choose.

BLOGGER CREEPING ME OUT!

2009-07-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

OK, so I just posted that item which refers to drug abuse, and after I hit "publish" a big yellow ad came up onto the blogger page advertising treatment for drug abuse!

Is that kinda like Webmail where if you type tampon in your message, you'll get an ad for tampons? Or insurance and you get ads for insurance out the waz all down the side of the page?

*sigh*

The Establishment...The Man

2009-07-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

I liked this..

"root causes are largely overlooked by adults. While adults will discuss the particulars (the effects), most ignore the underlying reasons which cause them. In other words, adults over 30 tend to forget about cause and effect. For example, few seem curious why kids use drugs... only their drug use is lambasted. Shouldn't the causes be attacked instead? The number one reason people use alcohol and drugs is to escape society's bizarre realities. Upsetting the natural order causes psychological damage and in the long run perilous to the species. It's not the role of government to administer private lives or habits. Pretence and hypocrisy, not its victims, should be dealt with.

By the time they're eighteen youngsters know the causes for most things even if they don’t know all the particulars an elder might. The reason most older people only concern themselves with the effects, and not the causes, is because they don't care about the big picture anymore. For example, while attention is often paid to the activities of congress, its corrupt nature is often overlooked or shelved. As long as societies are administered by elders these root problems will continue to be shelved... an ideal environment for the American establishment. Shelve it, ignore it, move on. The belief that any system which holds things together is better left undisturbed, regardless its judicial qualities, is wholly un-American. America, after all, was born of idealism."

more here

2009-07-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

I love this quote from the LA Times' obit for MJ.

"Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary, Ind. His mother, Katherine, would say that there was something special about the fifth of her nine children. "I don't believe in reincarnation," she said, "but you know how babies move uncoordinated? He never moved that way. When he danced, it was like he was an older person."

The story about the mouse also really moved me. That he had a mouse he used to feed when he was really little, this house mouse, after everyone went to bed, he would crawl under the table in the kitchen and bring crackers and stuff and feed the mouse. He tamed it and wrote the song "Ben" about it. He said the mouse was a friend he could tell things to, that no one else wanted to or cared to hear.. You know he had a viciously abusive father, Joe, who beat them all and so terrified him, Michael, that he would throw up in terror when his father was looking for him.

Joe killed the mouse on purpose and it devastated him.

I'm trying to think of something more horrible, and coming up empty. No wonder the poor kid was so fucked up. Someone else was saying that after MJ died, his father was holding court outside the Encino house and smiling like a maniac. This was a guest on KABC who said this, a woman named "Crystal Ball" who said she grew up playing with the Jackson kids: she said Joe Jackson "never" smiled and that she couldn't get over how much he was smiling after MJ died. You could hear the anger in her voice.

Now as for the kids. It seems pretty clear he was a molester. There's no reason to be sleeping in bed with kids when you're a grown man. Not if they're not your own, man. It's just a thing. That's just a line you don't cross. But besides that, he really did do inappropriate sexual things. And parents didn't care, they brought their kids, got paid off or whatever, everyone was cool with it----Not, I'm sure. Someone's going to write a book about it. Just wait.

Having been in a family with a molester at its head, not my own family but one by marriage, I can tell anyone that molesters are not evil people; they are sick. What's evil is standing by and letting it happen. What's evil is anyone who doesn't stand up and confront shit that's wrong. And it's wrong. It causes so much unhappiness and fucked up emotional static that my own life still reels from the repercussions that affected everyone in the family. I'm blessed and lucky I didn't have that lot in life, but this person's crap did get passed down to me in a big way. Abuse takes different forms. And what almost always happens, if it's not stopped, is that everyone suffers.

And life's too short and too beautiful to suffer, you know? There's enough to suffer without having someone put their shit in a big wagon and hitch it to your ass to haul. And make you feel guilty if you don't want to haul it.

I know I'm talking in circles. What moves me is that this particular victim was a great entertainer. I dug that all night long last weekend, people driving through Hollywood honked all night outside my windows and blasted MJ music and honked and honked til the wee hours. I love living around that kind of respect for performance and entertainment.

The other stuff is tragic. It's tragic because it's kept such a secret and as such is not dealt with and healed properly.

Secrets kill.

That guy could have had a longer life. If ever someone's face showed that he couldn't carry the load of psychic pain alone, that would be MJ's face. He should have had treatment. Maybe his story will open up a dialogue about child abuse, who knows. Because God knows it's far more common than anyone ever thought. It's freaking everywhere. And it's not the end of the world. Things can change. But first someone's got to pay attention to them.