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August 2002 Funny how we believe more in the outward image people project than in what they tell us about themselves. I often have a more positive image of people than they have of themselves. I see them as I need to see them – a positive influence in my life. Also, we are all a mixed bag. With me, a lot depends on how stressed out I am at the moment. I can give more positive energy to others when I'm more relaxed. Over the last 10 years, corporations have doled out over $1.08 billion in campaign contributions. And this down payment on preferential public policy has extended across party lines, with $636 million going to Republicans and $449 million to Democrats. Yet Al Gore, in his New York Times j'accuse, still had the gall to lay the blame for the current threat to "the future of democratic capitalism" squarely at the feet of Republicans "bankrolled by a new generation of special interests." What utter claptrap. – Arianna Huffington, Salon.com What usually happens in politics is that the main point gets obscured by a whole lot of personal static. The Good Girl – I liked all the disrespect for work. It’s hard for me to understand why anyone thinks screwing someone new is going to change their life. My experience is that nothing does. At the center of the American philosophy is the belief that we each have to justify our brief existence on earth. We will not allow ourselves to just live. The only defense is being silly. Delaying treatment is typical of the uninsured, according to the Institute of Medicine, an independent research organization. In a recent report, the institute concluded that as many as 18,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a result of not having health coverage. Many wait too long to receive treatment. – New York Times, August 11, 2002 Vermont independent Rep. Bernie Sanders says in a recent newsletter that the U.S. has lost ten percent of its manufacturing base in the last four years. Political decadence occurs when the forms that a state pretends to observe are known to be empty of all meaning. -- Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992 Sometimes the mind dies before the body. Middle and upper class people often confuse luck with merit. damn, i love being a rebellious crazy and dissident anti-authoritarian non us patriot! – Portland Indymedia Iraq, it says in the paper, will be our first “preemptive war.” I’m living in a sterile society of devil worshippers. An artist I knew 20 years ago told me as a child she would wake up, reach for her crayons and draw. I reach for my notebook. Since 1970, the population of the United States has grown by forty per cent, while the number of registered vehicles has increased by nearly a hundred per cent — in other words, cars have proliferated more than twice as fast as people have. -- John Seabrook, New Yorker, via Tom Tomorrow’s blog (weblog) Three layers of the self: 1. The conventional, artificial, linear level that society is constantly forcing on us. 2. The layer of alienation caused by the first layer. 3. Who we really are. In 1950, 44 percent of federal revenues came from individual taxpayers and 28 percent from a tax on corporate profits. In 1991, 37 percent came from individuals and only 8 percent from the corporations. The rest, of course, is borrowed. – Vidal America, the former Soviet Union and Germany “produce multiple murderers out of all proportions to their populations.” – Michael Marshall, The Straw Men Sometimes things are turning to shit and there’s nothing you can do about it, so you might as well have a drink. Working-class wisdom. Shallow, dumb, realistic. The future never arrives on time or as planned. – Mark Pesce, PC Magazine I know why smokers don’t want to quit: they will just feel worse. Neighbors are a lower form of life. They let their dogs bark. I feel better when I stick to what I can personally control. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” The gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate. Brown nodded. “I think this is it.” – Stephen King, The Gunslinger In The Gunslinger one man tracks another across a vast desert. Today I flew to southern California to visit an old friend. First time I’ve flown since 1963. There is nothing romantic about flying, they pack you in a tin can and push you through the sky at great speed. Cut and dried. Behind on sleep, burnt out on politics, tired and edgy, white clouds below like another desert. There are no stories on airplanes, like there are on the ground. I wonder why flying seems so unnatural, is it just because I’m not used to it? Or is it being up in the air? Ground transportation feels natural. Music by Paul Simon as we’re boarding the plane in Portland, “For reasons I cannot explain, a part of me wants to be in Graceland.” A part of me usually wants to be somewhere else. Flying is enormously efficient. You go up, sit there for a few hours, and you arrive. My friend waving at me from across the airport. Another reason working-class people don’t go for therapy is we don’t want people to know what we’re thinking. You wouldn’t like it. Yes, I do see the contradiction. Life is mostly about loss. The earth is constantly dissolving under our feet. Whatever happened to soapboxes? Something people used to stand on to give speeches. Before my time. Read about it. I’m a true disbeliever. Americans want to turn governance over to the experts, the “professionals.” I saw a newspaper photo recently of a professional, a high official in some corporation. He was wearing a suit, tie and handcuffs. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re crazy or I’m crazy. Retirement community on top of shopping center. All the comforts of home. – ad in Lifestyles Northwest Full Frontal – made my stomach hurt. Without [VP Dick] Cheney, America would not be planning to invade Iraq. Who else understands why the United States is starting a war without provocation for the first time in its history. – Maureen Dowd Not really. The U.S. has a long history of invading other countries just because our ruling class thought it would be in their best interests. It’s the oil, stupid. Wasn’t it Dowd who thought Bill Clinton getting blow jobs was selfish? Now that I’m older, middle age seems quaint to me, like Middle Earth. The recorded commercials on my telephone answering machine, almost daily, tell me that businesses are getting increasingly desperate to sell us things we don’t need. Good. I’ve often read that writing is a “lonely” business. That doesn’t sound quite right to me. I think it’s more like writing is a self-centered business. You have to spend a lot of time with your own thoughts. Perfect for introverts. Who don’t officially exist in this country. Along with the working class. Officially we’re all middle-class extroverts. In a movie, a dinner party of people who are involved with movies, talking about movies. A character says something like, “Why can’t we talk about something else? I mean, we’re all educated people, right?” A moment of silence, they all look at each other, then laugh. Politics is like that, only without the laughter. Sleep – how lovely that we can stay turned off for a third of our lives. Fiction – see “Sleep.” The manager of the apartment house I used to live in was a good guy, but it bothered me when he would refer to my apartment as my “unit.” Oregon still has the highest unemployment rate in the country. Our rural areas are said to be in depression. Hard choices are being forced on the state legislature due to a steep decline in tax revenue. It’s like a sickness that won’t pass. Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Men have always counted on women to be nice, to help us with the constant corrosion of living. I think most of us get a little crazy if we have to be nice all the time. On the other hand, if it comes naturally don’t change. We need you. Orange County is the area in southern California southeast of Los Angeles, a sea of housing tracts, shopping centers, freeways. I lived there for four years in the late 60s to early 70s, finished college at Cal State Fullerton. It has been over 30 years since I lived there, perhaps ten years since I last visited my friends. We go to CSF, walk around the campus, and I don’t feel anything, no nostalgia. I guess I didn’t feel much when I was a student either, a hard place to warm up to. Likewise Orange County. I think you would have to have been born there to appreciate it, to feel at home. My ex-wife said it changed a lot in the years she was growing up, the orange groves cut down, all the small cities merging into one big mess. People who live there tell you they’re from Orange County, not whatever city they live in, because the cities have lost their identities in urban sprawl. On this visit I notice the tropical trees and plants. My friend says that even though the area is dry, the soil is very fertile and her tomato plants are big and bushy in her back yard. She says a problem for agriculture is that people and plants like the same places. We stop by the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach, a yearly art show, and it seems to have lost the magic I remember. Then we go to the beach, and it hasn’t. I’m enchanted, wish I could take it home with me. The sea here seems much friendlier than the northwest ocean, Oregon’s coast. It’s a playground. |