MJ on the Soul Train 25th Anniversary Show

In response to a friend's question about my last post, regarding Michael Jackson's need for lots of low end extra sub-woofers while he's working, here's the actual performance. During that same show, BB King and Eric Clapton played together. BB was a friend of my Dad's, and he knew me, so I told him that I was a life-long fan of Eric Clapton, so he introduced me. Clapton says, "So BB tells me you've never had a chance to see me play." I'm paraphrasing here... I said, no, but I did drive ten hours to Austin Texas once for a show, and you canceled. He looked embarrassed and said how "sick" he was back then, and apologized. That was cool.

Anyway, here's the Michael Jackson performance on that Soul Train 25th anniversary show.

Backstage with Michael Jackson

News that Michael Jackson's death was a homicide (a deadly drug overdose administered to an addict, even if by a Doctor, is still foul play) reminded me that after his death I wanted to put a little backstage story up here about the time I worked with him.

I was working in the audio department at the Shrine Auditorium in LA for the 25th Anniversary Soul Train Awards, and Michael was one of the performers. We'd heard that he was very picky about his monitor mix--that he liked it loud, so we had a cue to roll in some extra side fill during his performance. So he shows up (late) and does his rehearsal, and he doesn't look happy, so the mixer sends me up there with my headset to relay any instructions the King of Pop might have for the monitor mix.

I walk up to him, and he looks up at me, see's the head set and says (in his high-pitch voice, almost stereotypically) "You Audio?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Jackson." They hired me for a reason: my southern-school manners.

"Michael."

"Yes, Michael, what can we do for you?"

"Make it louder."

"We've given you all the side fill we can, Michael."

"No, make the bass louder. I want to feel! it! right! here!" (hitting his chest with both hands with each "!").

"OK, Michael, I'll have him boost the bass."

"That's not going to be enough. You're going to need more sub-woofers."

"OK, but there's already two."

"More! Right! Here!" Pounding his chest again.

I went to get the last two subs in the building, cabled them up, had the monitor mixer (Kevin Wopner, maybe?) patch them in, rolled them out and stuck them next to the side fill, focusing them right at his skinny ass.

When I was ready, he does the number again, and I felt nauseous from all the bass, and I wasn't even in front of them. He's out there, center stage, with two huge sidefills and four giant subs focused right on him. It was so loud I couldn't hear the carpenters working. I could see him smiling at me.

When it was over, I walked up and asked how that was, and he spun around on one foot very dancer like, and slapped his chest again: "Perfect!"

Discount Everything

My philosophical instincts tell me to take everything I hear with a grain of salt. Everyone steps up the voltage of what they want to communicate, and if you want to get an unbiased view from what you're told, you should always run things through a step-down transformer. Of course, if you ever run across an honest person and do that, you've watered down the truth.

In terms of economics during hard times, though, discount everything is a strategy for survival. Discount as an adjective here plays into the age-old marketer's plan of enticing people into action by promising to take less money out of their pockets for something they value. I've been doing it for people who realize the return on investment they can get by hiring me to get higher search engine rankings for their websites. They've been doing it as a way to get people to see that they can save money and take that Hawaii vacation or get food delivered to their crew in Los Angeles.

We've put an ingenious twist on this idea into Volunteer on Vacation in Hawaii, by offering volunteers a 5% discount on stays at this Maui bed and breakfast, and an additional 5% donation to the organization for which you volunteer. Save money, earn money for a worthy cause, and do something ethical during your Hawaii vacation! Sweet.

How about an ethical honeymoon? While staying at the Hale Hookipa, and volunteering for one of the many organizations that need you, you could take a little time out and get married! Destination weddings have become even more popular as people cut back on the big, expensive ceremonies that were so popular during boom times. One fad I've heard is that people run off and get married, then travel to various cities visiting relatives: this lowers the carbon foot-print of the wedding by not having so many people fly in from all over, and can increase the value of wedding presents, since the people giving the presents didn't have to shell out so much to actually go to the ceremony (Maui wedding packages start at $300 with this Maui weddings planner).

Even caterers have been getting into the discount everything mindset. Our favorite Hudson Valley caterer down in Woodstock has been doing smaller and smaller gigs (weddings included) as the recession has spread like a blight across the land. Culinary Delight Catering in Los Angeles has even created a discount wedding catering package to fill the demand for a less expensive wedding reception.

Providing less for less is the driving force during a recession for any business that wants to stay in business. But how does that affect someone like me, who's job it is to get people to the top of a search for their keywords? It's not like I can just do less. It takes x amount of work to get a site to the top, and any less will get that site something less. Considering the rate at which clicks drop off for sites in the 7th position as opposed to the 1st or 2nd, that's no value for the discount.

I have to find a way to provide the same value in less time: become more productive. I've been doing this for years, and squeezing any more productivity out of what I do is damn near impossible. A lot of it is creative, especially the writing part, and you can't just shave a few minutes off that process to save a dime.

So, in effect, in order to make sure I get the jobs, I've just been bidding lower, which means I'm working for less, which means I can pay less for things, which means the people who provide those things will have to offer discounts which will provide me with less, which means I have to work more, but since I'm doing that for less, well... Vicious circle. Discount everything means less for everyone, and that sharing of less is the real legacy left behind by George W. Bush and all the idiots who voted for him.

Calling Things What They're Not

When we moved up here near my wife's sister's and husband's restaurant near Cooperstown, we did it to be near family during these hard times of little income for me. But if you looked at me now, you'd think it was for the birds.

Because I've become a backyard bird watcher. 41 species out these glass doors on our back porch so far! I have a feeder with black oil sunflower seeds, one with suet, and another for humming birds. I never gave much of a damn about the feathered ones before, but this past winter, it became my new favorite thing.

Our favorite species we call Ziggy (as in Stardust). It's the red-bellied wood pecker, which should be called the orange Mohawk woodpecker. The hairy woodpecker is just feathered like the rest. The purple finch looks like it was dipped in Burgundy--not really purple. And so on.

Now, a lot of the bird (re)naming went on back when white men cutting out across the continent practicing biological and good-ol'-guns-n'-butter warfare. I haven't found a resource with the Native American names for these birds yet, so I call them as the early musketeers did. Like the Lincoln Sparrow: not for the President, but the first guy to shoot one. Call it red-neck bird taxonomy (of course, red-neck comes from the Battle of Blair Mountain, in which the workers were the red-necks, and the good guys, and were the only US Citizens ever bombed by the US Army, so the term "red-neck bird taxonomy" fittingly misfits).

So, when a bunch of gun-toting, evolution denying, climate change causing, pollution spewing, superstitious, KKK loving lynching parties call The President of the United States a socialist, I just look at the history of bird naming by racist white guys in this country, and I figure, well, they've probably got it wrong. Again.

Banksters Beware!

Volunteer Vacations in Hawaii: Do the Right Thing

One odd thing that I came to realize after 8 years of a fascist Junta controlling the White House was that the right's criticism of the left as ethical relativists was, like so much else from the right for a long time now, complete bullshit. The ethical relativists now defending torture, illegal spying on Americans, and other unitary executive adventures in totalitarianism have made it quite clear that on issue after issue, it is the left that stands up for some absolutist ethical or moral standard, while the right argues that it's OK, for example, to pollute and degrade the environment in some situations (when jobs might be lost, or when God said it was OK).

You're either doing the right thing or your not. Of course there are shades of gray on some issues (for all you philosophical mucker-uppers). But when it comes to things like torture, the world community long ago decided on a basis for what constitutes that definition, and even the Obama administration, much to my continued disapointment, seems to want to stretch that definition too far.

When it comes to the environment, the choices are just as stark. It's a huge, multi-faceted problem, and the best each of us can do is try to live a lifestyle that reduces our impact on the environment. Every little thing counts.

So it is in that spirit of environmental ethical absolutism that I am happy to announce today that, along with my friend Cherie Attix (owner/operator of the Hale Hookipa Inn Maui Bed and Breakfast, and author of the Maui Hawaii Blog Hookipa Aikane (home sharing friend)), all you Hawaii vacationers who would like to do a little to help the Hawaiian environment, culture, and community can now sort through our list of Hawaii organizations that have ongoing volunteer opportunities at Volunteer on Vacation in Hawaii.

Volunteering is one of the cornerstones of American culture. The recent push for more National Service, which includes many enticements for young people to volunteer (like help with money for education), led Cherie to come up with the idea of making a web site with information about volunteering in her community (Maui). Most of the vacationing volunteer opportunities are environmental in nature, like eradicating invasive plant species, planting native species, clearing trails, and cleaning beaches. As we continue to build the site, we will add other cultural and community volunteer opportunities.

Cherie is offering a 5% discount to any guests of her B&B who volunteer for one of the listed groups. She will also donate 5% to the organization for which you volunteer. Nothing like a little incentive.

The idea of voluntourism is not new to Cherie, who was recently recognized by O Magazine for her efforts to get vacationers to Maui to volunteer while they're there. Her guests have all praised the projects for which they volunteered as fun, educational, and worthwhile. After all, if you really want to get a feel for the place you're vacationing in, what better way than to lace up your boots, pull on some gloves, and get out there and make it a better place?

What do I think of that?

That being an interesting email to a friend, forwarded to me, that used the health care debate to demonstrate--surprise, surprise--that corporate America will once again get it's way, to everyone's detriment. My forwarding friend asked me what I think...

Hmmm... Well, let's see. I'm so fucking broke that I'm down to my last cherished possessions to sell to make the rent. I'm sitting here slowly panicking, with no TV, cell phones long gone, basic phone about to go, two months behind on my car, one behind on my daughter's car, in default on about 30,000 worth of credit card debt, a landlord that will kick us out in 30 days if we're late on the rent, 500 a month in food stamps that barely covers our food every month, and I've got government health care because my income is less than 12,500 per year--meaning we're officially poor.

I'd get a job, if there were any for someone who can't lift over 20 lbs. I have found some burger flipping jobs so far away that half my day working would barely cover the gas to get there.

So what do I think of some health care bullshit that would take me hours to find out if it's true, which it probably isn't because everyone's got their fucking agenda, while most of the people in this fucking country have lost their retirement, are barely getting by, and, according to the latest gun and ammo sales records, heavily armed?

What do I think?

I think whoever wrote it is onto something. But it's old news. I have two blogs you should subscribe to. I suggest you send them to your friend who wrote this.

Club Orlov. Note, especially, this post on American Swine from Kollapsnik.

And Global Guirillas, by John Robb, who recently testified before congress. He's a military expert who analyzes everything with a very clear POV.

I voted for Dennis Kucinich too, but we smart people don't run this country. The rich people do. Sometimes they're smart, but most of the time they're stupid greedy dumbasses with the power to make us feel a whole lot of pain. Their bad decisions have WAY more ramifications than ours ever will. Resilient communities, as Robb calls them, will be the new society: localized, sustainable, and resilient. Globalization will not stand.

And, all you philosophers out there will note that it wasn't Nostradamus who predicted this (voodoo bullshit, that). It was Karl Marx. Maybe if corporate America hadn't been getting rich demonizing him for the last, oh, few decades, we'd have learned something from him: That unregulated greed will be the death of capitalism, at least on the large scale. I'd say we're headed back to mercantilism.

There.

My First Clear Memory: He's Walking on What?

I was five years old at 19:56:15 PDT on July 20, 1969, and I remember seeing that fuzzy picture, and going out side to look at the moon (almost a half, waning, according to the moon phase calculator), and thinking OK, I'm five, I'll believe it. Rockets, spacemen, yee haw. By the time I finished first grade in 1971, I'd read every single astronomy book in the grade school library. I started going to the library in town and getting grown-up books on cosmology, planetary geology, and other fun factual stuff that has pretty much determined my philosophical mind-set to this day.

So for me, tonight, at 10:56pm EDT, it's going to be a special kind of 40 years since Apollo 11, the vast arc of a crazy life has moved me around the surface of this hemisphere with a kind of intellectual crick in my neck, always looking up. My desktop is the famous Earthrise photograph. I have a moon phase gadget on my desktop. And today I am all things lunar, having a ball looking at Apollo landing sites on Google Moon (just pull down the planet looking thing at the top of your Google Earth, and select moon).

The moon will be just a sliver tonight, and it will probably be cloudy--a kind of permanent thing this crazy summer of more global wierding--so, Google Moon will have to do. But it will be back in it's full glory soon, and I'll be out there watching it. Again.

And as far away as it seems, as cold and dusty and preserved, the chill of 40 years is somehow greater. The arc of humanity over that 40 years has shown so little of the promise of that second on that day in 1969. It's hard not to be disappointed.

Earthly Reflections on Imaginary Places

For me, it's just a silly question. Unanswerable. Why waste your time? Even people I know who take religion and heaven very seriously admit that it's a feeble attempt for puny humans to imagine the kingdom of God. Besides, as a militant agnostic (my young daughter reminded me years ago that I couldn't be an atheist because I have no faith), just trying to imagine the unimaginable gives credence to religion which has been the cause of so much of the world's problems (wars, over-population, child abuse).

My friend Thomas D., who writes the Bible Commentaries blog Satan Wrote the Bible, is more empathetic. He often tries to think like religious people, in order to better understand them, to better communicate with them... Perhaps to convince them that it is their certainty of that which one cannot be certain that causes most of the problems with religion.

In his latest post, What Is Heaven Like, Thomas D. immediately goes for the humor in the common view of heaven as full of gold and diamonds. Frankly, this ornate version of heaven is probably not as common as it might have been during the dark ages, when the Catholic Church was torturing people in the basements of their overly ornate cathedrals. Perhaps heaven back then was imagined as gold-plated as a way to shame the church over its feeble attempts at Godliness. Whatever. Thomas D. goes for the obvious for us nature jockeys.

Those who do try to describe heaven usually have a lot of gold, silver, diamonds and other jewels radiating bright light. I like to sink my god-given feet into the soil (I seldom wear shoes) so I can’t imagine a worse place than one made of hard metals with stones scattered about. Give me grass, shade trees and garden soil rich in humus. Fill the air with the scents of flowers, moldering leaves, ocean spray. Lift my spirits with chirping brooks and bird songs and, please, please let there be sex.

Reminds me of the song Heaven, by Loudon Wainwright III (So Damn Happy):

"There'll be lots of drinking in Heaven
Smoking and eating and sex
What you didn't do in this life bad for you
Will be totally cool in the next."

From what I know of biology, I think the clue worth walking away from here is "soil rich in humus." In my weird reductionist way, it seems that everything that dies eventually decomposes into the soil, which in turn supports new life (plants) that support more life (animals) that die and support the soil, in a kind of circle of circles. Even in the really long view, where stars are born and die, the matter that was us-come-soil-come-plant-come-animal-come-us-again goes on to be new rock, new soil, new mineral, new nutrient...

Perhaps it's way too humanist of me to accept an imperfect world as the best we can get, but when you put one persons unhappiness, or even despair, on the scale of a cold, indifferent universe, this existence of ours just keeps bouncing along in different forms randomly colliding and interacting forever, and that's about as heavenly as it's going to get.

The Current Best Littlest Known Secret in Hawaii

The secret is that if you really want to get a feeling for Hawaii without actually going there, you should read Cherie's Maui Hawaii blog: Hookipa Aikane (home sharing friend). Longtime Hawaii resident and Innkeeper Cherie (you can also check her out on facebook) runs the historic Hale Hookipa Inn Maui Bed and Breakfast in Makawao, Maui, Hawaii. Makawao is home to the Hawaiian Rodeo, and their Independence Day parade is the subject of Cherie's latest post. Cherie doesn't write her blog so much as talk story. I edit the blog, but the language (and photography) is all hers, and it is distinctly upcountry Maui...

If you like to keep up with all things Hawaiian, and especially Maui, no matter where you are, Cherie's blog is definitely worth subscribing to.

Infinite Test

I read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest from March to June this year. I intentionally read it very slowly, trying to savor what is a very thick, and even more dense book. If you tried to read it too quickly, your head would likely start to wobble in a distinctly oval path.

So it is with a profound sense of now-you-tell-me that I discovered, through a post at Matt Yglesias's Blog that he and a group of friends are reading IJ this summer, and blogging about it at A Supposedly Fun Blog. It's a real joy to hear opinions from people as they plow their way through the best book I ever read.

Honestly. Set aside a few months. Read slowly, only a few hours a day, preferably morning so you can mull over what you just injested, and enjoy the high, so to speak. It's addictive, and if you take it in small doses over a long time, it won't kill you to finish it (Mithridates, he died old), and the withdrawals when you're done won't be quite as bad as if you'd filled up your day with it every day. But and so.

Oh, and you might want to brush up on your Hamlet first...

Gourmet Grass Fed Beef Jerky on Sale!

Well, we've finally managed to get our long-dreamed-of gourmet grass-fed beef jerky business off to a very small start... We're bartering with our friends at Nectar Hills Farm for the beef. We're cutting back on everything else in order to at least attempt to sell Robin's delicious jerky--especially the new jalapeño and Ommegang Hennepin Ale spicy beef jerky, which sold out at last week's Cooperstown Farmer's Market!

Civil Disobedience by the Manichaen Paranoiacs?

Ethical arguments are always moved along by action, often violent. In a comment to a Whiskey Fire post on the Tiller murder, I wondered about the one thing that's always bothered me about these terrorists... Why do the run? Why, if they believe the law is wrong, and that they are committing not just murder but an act of civil disobedience, do they run and try to hide?

If their cause is so righteous, why not just shoot, and then sit down and wait for the cops, while you explain to everyone around you, as your victim lies there bleeding to death, how righteous you are?

This is an extension of the Manichean Paranoia exhibited, nay apotheosized, by the Bushies, that says, essentially, I am good and therefore I can do bad without being bad. Seeing the world in black and white leads to some stark conclusions and, in some cases, extreme actions. But if you believe you are good, that you just have to do bad to protect that which is good, then why run?

A Backstage Story of Downstage Proportions

It's been a while since I told a backstage story, so how about the time, maybe 10 years ago, working a show at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles called Tongue of a Bird. With Cherry Jones, Sharon Lawrence, Diane Venora, and my friend Marian Seldes. Fun show with Sharon flying around all over the place, falling out of the grid, and a set with lots of sliding doors. Great fun back stage with a small rail to operate the doors, prop guys doubling on the rail, barely enough time to make your next cue...

One of my cues was going out on stage for a scene change in low light. Cherry Jones rolled a big heavy iron frame bed toward me, and I put it up stage through a door, which then closed, with me and the bed in there. One night, Cherry makes a bad roll with the bed, which heads off stage left, which, in the horseshoe-shaped house of the Taper, means it's heading right for an old ladie's lap in the front row. I jump down stage, stop the bed, spin it around, throw it in the upstage hole, the door closes, the lights come up, and I'm standing there on stage with Cherry Jones who looks at me like, "What are you doing here?"

So, I jump off stage, over a row of foot lights, and as I'm running up the aisle to the vom, I hear a round of applause! For me!

Well, the stage manager who shut that door and left me out there in the light (my Dad always said the only time anyone ever notices a stage hand is when you fuck up) became a good friend over the years. We did many shows together after that, and she never left me out in the light again. But we sure like to laugh about that story, still. Now she writes a blog, There I Am. Exactly how I felt that night, standing there in front of 750 people... There I was!

If you're interested in theater at all, you should follow her blog. It's a great insider's take on the theater world from an old hippie who has, quite literally, seen it all (I almost wrote scene it all)...

Busy Spring Gardening and Making Friends

Well, as you can tell I haven't been posting to this blog. That's because when I'm not working creating new web sites, or working on other people's sites getting them higher search engine ranks, I'm in the organic garden which I had to build, since this is our first year up here near Cooperstown NY.

I just finished making a site for our new friends who raise grass-fed beef and meats at Nectar Hills Farm. I've also been putting in a smaller garden for the Rose and Kettle Restaurant in Cherry Valley. Plus, Robin has been making grass-fed beef jerky from the Nectar Hills Farm highland cattle, both of which are delicious. We're selling the grass-fed beef jerky at the Nectar Hills Farm store in Cherry Valley, and at the Cooperstown Farmer's Market. We're hoping it will be available in a few other places soon!

Those of you subscribed to this blog's feed know that I often post things to that feed through delicious. I'm not sure how to make them appear here (which is odd, because I should be able to figure that out), but if you subscribe you'll be treated to all kinds of fun posts in your reader.

High-quality digital movies at affordable prices

This camera took this video. Seriously. Follow the links. The price of high-quality cameras is falling so fast... Low-budget movies don't have to look like crap anymore. And think of what this will do for nature photography.

Whiskey Fire In Binghamton

I've been reading the Whiskey Fire blog for quite a while now. Great snark. Plenty of insight. Always good wing-nut fun making. When a shooter killed 14 people in Binghamton last week, I was surprised to hear that this fun little blog I'd been reading is being written by folks just down the road from me. I felt a little tinge of memory from past tragedies that make us all feel closer together. In this case, we were pretty close already.

I was anxious this morning to see what they had to say about the tragedy, now that it's had some time to really sink in. The post is from Jake T. Snake: Why is the mine still open when the canaries keep expiring? It's a powerful post, and I recommend reading the whole thing, now, because I'm going to quote the end, which is where Robin and I wound up when we talked about this yesterday. Why, if this guy was pissed at people who fired him, or the rednecks (Binghamton is a city of 43,000, of which 80% are white) who made fun of his bad English, did he go shoot other immigrants like himself?

Finally, I think it is instructive that the shooter picked as his victims, not someone powerful like the people who had laid him off, but a group of the powerless like himself. This is the other dynamic that repeats itself over and over, don't attack those in power that are the root of the problem, but rather find someone weaker to victimize and perpetuate the cycle. This also explains the disdain people have for social workers. We help the weak and disenfranchised and in the united states that is a sign of weakness the unforgivable sin.

All the pitchforks and torches talk is a bunch of hot air fueled by psuedo-populists who will pat the back of the next CEO to donate to their election campaign. When the really angry people lash out with their firearms and satchels of ammo hanging around their necks, they don't go after the powerful. They go after the weak, the easy targets, those least able to protect themselves or fight back. Their self-loathing is exposed through their choice of targets.

Take the case of the Pittsburgh cop killer who was so certain that we were going to take his guns that he, whipped into a frenzy by the riot inciters in the GOP and Fox news, decided to take it out on some middle class, under paid cops who were just doing their job trying to keep their community safe from the likes of Wing Nuts like him. Maybe those cops were conservative 2nd amendment types too. He didn't know. He just started shooting at the first easy target to walk up to his house. He used an assault rifle. The cops were sitting ducks. Easy targets.

We're going to see a lot more of this. As Bushvilles sprout up all over the country, as the welfare roles and the unemployment lines get longer, as wages continue to fall, real income collapses, health care is lost, mental illness goes undiagnosed, we're going to see some very angry, heavily armed people lose it. And they won't lash out at Phil Gramm, George Bush, or Dick Cheney. In one of the final, ironic twists of the Bush era, they will take it out on the people who least deserve it.

UPDATED: Safe Havens in End-of-Your-Rope-istan

Expect to see a lot more of this (well armed people attacking and killing groups of people, like in Binghamton, NY yesterday). While we're trying to stop a safe haven for terrorists in AfPak, we're letting them re-develop in militia-stan, crazy-stan, and at-the-end-of-your-rope-istan (think Michigan).

We have increasing numbers of frustrated people. These are especially frustrating times. We have easy access to guns and ammo, rampant undiagnosed mental health problems, loss of access to health care and medication, rising unemployment, homelessness and Bushvilles, higher rates of poverty, violent gangs, mafias, narco-terrorists, layoffs of cops and public safety officials, rapidly declining tax revenues at the state and local level. Add desperation to the mix, and people will react in very angry and violent ways.

Odd that John Robb of Global Guerrillas gave testimony to the House Armed Services Committee (pdf) Thursday in which he said:

"With the failure or weakening of nation-states across the board and the lack of ideological alternatives, people will shift their primary loyalties to any group that can provide them security and the basics of survival. These groups will span the gamut of gangs, tribes, criminal syndicates, militias, religious sects, etc. Many, if not most of these groups, will maintain and expand the interests both vigorously and violently. The worst version of this trend line would be the expansion of the criminal insurgency in Mexico into the US (through expansion of the criminal ecosystem more than anything due to ethnic identity)."

While not exactly on point, the example in your backyard is more proof of societal collapse, and is to be expected in the pressure cooker of 21st century America: armed and more dangerous than ever.

UPDATE: Three police officers dead in Pittsburg, shooter feared Obama Gun ban.

Poetry After Years of None

Thousands of Tiny Taps Almost at Once

Almost frozen rain drops bounce
off slanted glass: molten BBs
the second impact of which
humans can barely detect.

The defroster-warmed windshield
lubricates the basal slide,
a glacial race across car parts
toward salted road like wrist blood

down fingers. Red and blue sirens
intermittently flash blinding,
weary authority from cops, ambulances,
and plow apparatus-strapped pickups.

The shorting-neon bar-sign effect prisms
through each half-flattened drop in the mire--
Tetris-piled-ice sky-scrapers, an opaque
cityscape on a bedrock of wiper blades.

Flip the switch! See a civilization
destroyed! The rubber barbarian
horde squeegees the watery wen
into compressed detritus, then resets.

Oil-fueled blades slice ice aside
into dross monoliths, offal sacrifices
destined to feed roadside sluices.
Obliviously eager new sleet

floods the excavated tabula rasa--
the abhorred-vacuum, now a province
filled by termites, protected witnesses,
contraceptive sponges, and colonists.

Gravity hauls the slush across
the transparent Diolkos, unaware
of its shivering nakedness, bare
liquid held together by sheer

temperature like exposed, decrepit
houses in leafless woods,
revealed only in winter,
about to be obliterated.

Scott Supak
February, 2009

Lauging off the Weed Questions

The following is a comment I left on John Cole's post today about weed:

First of all, there is no reliable evidence showing that marijuana is as bad as tobacco or alcohol in terms of health costs. In fact, it's way down on the list of drugs that do harm in those terms.

But there is one angle where legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, would make a big difference: the drug war now raging on our border with Mexico. As the administration has been saying for the last week, the US's appetite for these drugs (a large chunk of which is Mexican weed) is fueling the war (as are our guns).

Before Sarah Palin changed the Alaska law, a citizen there was allowed to grow as much weed as they wanted as long as it never left the property on which it was grown. This kind of decriminalization would increase domestic production of pot, and decrease the demand for the weed coming in from Mexican narco gangs.

So, the dismissive way which Obama laughed off the question was, indeed, a big missed chance for him to say something substantive about the good things that could happen if we would refocus our resources on things that actually cause more harm, like alcohol, tobacco, meth, and blow.

Plus, decriminalization would mean less people in prison for pot. The fact that we jail people for possessing even small amounts of weed is astounding to me. These are non-violent people enjoying a substance which has been proven to be less detrimental to the public health than tobacco or alcohol, and yet we put people in prison for it. I have severe arthritis and live in a state where I can't even legally use it for pain, even if my Doctor thinks it would be better than the pharmaceuticals that have severely screwed me up in the past.

This is a serious subject, and deserves to be treated that way. Laughing it off just shows me that our president is capable of ignoring important issues because he thinks the people who ask the questions are stoners.

Foul Weather Gear

I landed a new internet marketing client who sells sailing gear. Specifically, foul weather gear for sailors. He also sells some sailing accessories, like hats, sunglasses, and hand-held GPS units, that aren't specific to foul weather, per se. So, when I started researching keywords to use to drive more traffic to his site, I kept coming back to outdoor gear.

Today, I get word that they don't want to associate themselves with the term "outdoor gear" as it is so general that they're afraid the sailors who come to their site will think it's just regular old outdoor gear, and not the specifically for sailors kind. I can see where they're coming from. Makes my job much harder. But, hey, that's what I get paid for. I'll be talking more about this specificity problem at my internet marketing blog.

I just wanted to post a notice here for all those Wall Street types who are about to find themselves with a lot of extra time.

Go sailing. Please. Take that nice sailboat that you paid for out of your taxpayer funded bonuses, and sail away. Sail to the Bahamas. If there's a storm in your way, strap on some professional sailing foul weather gear, the kind used by actual competitive off-shore and ocean racing sailors, and sail right through it. If you're prepared, you can sail right through the worst weather. Salt water won't eat away at your shoes if you get the right sea boots. Your hands won't get cold if you use the right sailing gloves. You will be protected by the clothing made especially for sailors.

Some of you might want to sail to the Cayman Islands. Don't be afraid to take the Mrs., or maybe your mistress, as you can get women's foul weather gear too! Maybe get a little condo--something more than the little PO Box you had to get out of paying taxes in the US, taxes that pay for things like the Iraq war, Halliburton shock-showers, and your hero President GW Bush's pension. In fact, I hear the sailing is good year around down there, so buy a bunch of great sailing gear and sail away to your John Galt paradise where all you productive people can live happily away from all us socialist scum up here in the US, who will have to wade through the muck, without decent muck boots, that you have left us with.

Cheer up! Your warm salopettes and fleece lined hats will keep you cozy and warm no matter how much spray is hitting you, or how much guilt you feel. Feel a little cold around your neck? No, that's not the breath of federal regulators coming to put you in prison for fraud. It's just the cold sea air... put on a neck gaiter and you'll be all snug and warm as you tack off toward warmer waters in more deregulated lands.

Please understand that this is just snark. I understand that many people like to sail, and by no means are all of them fraudulent wall street crooks or Bush voting John Galt types. Plenty of Democrats (I'm looking at you Teddy) love to sail. In fact, a recent nominee for President was photographed in a wet suit while windsurfing. I'm just suggesting that you sailing people take a look at my new client's site and see if you need anything that's for sale there. My research suggests that they have some of the best prices on this gear, so consider it a money saving tip.

But for those of you who have been stealing billions of dollars from the treasure, our pensions and 401ks, in the form of Bush tax cuts, or Bush no-bid contracts, or deregulation of financial instruments you used to get rich while you looted the companies that were paying you so well... Well, for you jerks, I do hope you keep sailing into the sunset, toward a low-tax Randian paradise of deregulation and no minimum wage for your "help." I just want to make sure you're wearing the proper gear for your trek into your conservative utopia. Wouldn't want you to catch cold.

Scott Murphy for Congress from NY-20

Conservative Catharsis: Blame Deregulation and Privatization

[Cross posted everywhere it makes sense.]

George W Bush broke the world. It was pretty fucked up to begin with, after years of laissez-faire economics practiced by all American presidents since FDR, but much more so since Reagan. The conservative philosophy was corrupted by deregulators who's belief in the free market completely left out the fact that most people are greedy bastards who will steal everything that's not tied down.

Now this upper class of well-to-do Reaganites, many of them in the Democratic party, have drained the wealth of this country into their walled communities and private security forces, while they whine about their portfolios being worthless. What did they think when they were doing everything Phil Graham suggested? Did they think we could just trust the robber baron class not to be robber barons?

The profit motive works just fine in a regulated market, where everyone has their cards above the table, and we all play by the same rules, which we can all understand. Old timey conservatives were for stringent regulations, especially capital requirements on banks and the like. To be a fiscal conservative meant, literally, to not take crazy risks. A little risk for a decent return, but nothing crazy.

Well, you guys had your chance and you blew it. But what's funny about it is that Karl Marx basically predicted it. It's not hedge fund science, you know. If you have a bunch of money in one place, and you loosen the rules that protect it, someone will steal it. Human nature--GREED--is not good in a market because the greedy will take down the rest of us in that inter-dependent system.

So, now we're going to try something else. It's kind of like what FDR tried, at least in the sense of the largess, the investment in infrastructure and people, and the like. But it's also like FDR in the sense that he realized that everyone deserves some basic floor to stand on: a starting place so that we are all, indeed, created equal when we become a member of The Class of US Taxpayers. Now some of us might get more out of that system than we paid in, but the ones at the top will still get something out of it. They'll have clean dishes to eat cooked food on in restaurants. They'll have firemen and cops and teachers and those people will have the basic dignity of health coverage, affordable housing and utilities, and the like. If the private enterprise system refuses to charge enough for the products and services so that those people can be paid enough to buy their own coverage, then it is we the people, the government, who must force them to, through taxation.

And if you don't believe that, then your option is to have a whole class of people who are broke, unhealthy, and damn angry about it. In this country, those people vote for someone who will make the playing field fair again. In the current view of the dominant conservative voices, those people can just crawl off and die somewhere. Or wind up in prison where we subsidize their everything.

There will be people at the top who pay for it. That is populism. That is the price you pay for living in a country where we pay people who stock shelves at Wal Mart so little that they qualify for government subsidized health care. I'm sure most free market conservatives would prefer to have Wal Mart take care of their employees. But then how could they be the low price leader?

It's still a free country, and there's going to be a free market for practically anything (including things that are illegal). There will be a free market for health care and those of you who can afford it are more than welcome to sink your dollars into a system that profits from your sickness on one end (the HMOs) and profits from your minimal care on the other (the insurance companies who don't want to pay, they just want to collect). I ask you, which force will drive doctor salaries lower? A government that tries to enforce fairness, no matter how cumbersome a bureaucracy that develops in order to implement that fairness (and, again, medicare does it with amazingly low administrative costs compared to private companies), or a private insurance company that is trying desperately to keep outlays down because raising premiums is just making them lose customers?

I'm all for personal responsibility. I grow a lot of my own food. I own my own small business and work for a lot less than minimum wage. I would require more stringent food requirements on Food Stamp recipients, like me, to eat healthy foods and support local, small, and organic farmers. But when it comes to something as complex as health care, I just don't trust the greedy bastards to run it anywhere but into the ground.

I lived in LA for 20 years. I remember the Enron fiasco during the electricity crisis. We had been sold a bill of goods about privatizing and deregulating the electricity markets that turned out to be worse than a load of horse shit (which is at least good fertilizer). It is a perfect example of how unfettered markets only serve as suet to a bunch of hungry birds like Ken Lay who fly away with the whole chunk if they can.

At that point, I started looking into co-ops, public ownership of utilities, community supported agriculture, and credit unions. I like employee owned companies and try to support them when I can. Guess what all those examples are? Communist! They take the assets, the factories, the power lines, the loan portfolios, and they collectively own them among all the members. Where I live now, we have an electric co-op (a remnant of FDR's Rural Electrification Association). It's great. All the people who get the cheap power own the assets of the power company collectively. There is no profit, but the guys who cut the tree branches out of the way get paid well, get health insurance and other benefits. So does the nice lady who answers the phone. Because we, the owners, have decided that's a good thing to do. There's no profit for any corporation, but there is enough to make sure everyone gets paid what they're worth. If those employees had a government health plan they could choose, and pay for with a tax on their paychecks, then as a co-owner of the co-op, I would be more than happy to give them a raise with the money the co-op saved by not having to pay for their health care.

I'm pretty sure GM would like that too.

Why should health care be any different than the co-op itself? Why can we not use the medicare paycheck tax to pay into a fund that is then used to pay our dues for a medical co-op that fairly and equitably distributes care on a triage basis, and puts a premium on prevention, even to the point of rewarding people who do the right thing for their health (thereby being less of a burden to the rest of the co-op)?

Now a lot of people will say it's a red commie flag there, but if you really think about it, and look back over American history at the collective good that has developed as a ethic in this country, it's conservative. It says YOU have a stake, YOU have a responsibility, and if you do well, you will be rewarded. The fact that we are all owners makes it the ownership society for real. And the fact that it is controlled by a bureaucracy that is built to make it as fair as possible takes it out of the realm of Stalin or other totalitarian philosophies, and puts it squarely in the hands of voters who get tho choose the head of the federal government every four years.

I worked my ass off for big entertainment companies for 20 years. They made plenty of money off my labor: more than I did, in fact. And when that work caused the degenerative disease I have in my big load bearing joints, those company's insurance companies denied that they had caused it, and tossed me out like any old broken cog. In your world, it's toughsky shitsky for Scotty because they have to profit. In my world, the money I put into the co-op would come back to me from the co-op when I needed it. Some guy who profited more from my work might have to pay a little more tax now to fund it, but I'll never get back all the profit I helped him make. That's fine. But when he tries to say he has no responsibility for my care, now that I'm broken down and can't do the physical labor that I spent 20 years turning into a career, I say he's full of it.

But when he says, well, I don't really want to pay into a system where a bunch of jet-setting insurance company executives and HMO executives milk every last dime out of everything in order to feed their Myopic vision of next quarter's stock price, then he has a point. I don't want him to pay them either. I want him to pay my doctor, with as little administrative or other overhead as possible. In fact, less overhead means more for my doctor.

So that's my long and winding explanation of why I want medical care to be non-profit and universal. And I'd like to thank the Ron Paul Republican who's been rattling a few cages around here for setting me off on what was a comment, but turned into a diary. So much for banging out a quick answer and getting back to work!

And thanks to Hunter today for firing up my populist, anti-Randian roots. Sometimes I forget why I hang out here, and then Hunter posts something that makes me feel like writing again.

Health Care's the Cure that Ails Us

I'm a big fan of the Freakonomics blog. They recently announced the winner of their new 6 word slogan for the US contest. The winner was: Consumption's the Cure that Ails Us.

Today, I learned from two of my stagehand buddies that health care is the cure that's going to break the back of the unions. One of those buddies you probably heard of. He's the stagehand who "surfed" the collapsing scaffolding at the Academy Awards a few years ago, breaking his back in the process. He was a rigger, made good money, and is now disabled, but he stays in touch with old friends from backstage. Here's what he told me:

[...] health care has a annual low limit....weekly, a person has to make $830/week to qualify for health insurance....[a friend] worked for Port Charles props nighttime turnaround...averaged 40 hour weeks. in 2000, she made $600/week for a 40 hr week. with the raises per year to now.....nighttime turnaround at GH probably makes over $700/week...not enough to make health insurance.....there are many uninsured members in the 2 and 3 groups [this union has 5 senority "groups"].

Health care is killing unions. Every inch of negotiating room is eaten alive by the health insurance monster. My other friend from the IATSE sent me a story from today's LA Times, Conflict erupts inside theatrical stage employees union:

Leaders of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, whose members include 35,000 who work behind the scenes on film and television sets, are facing a high level of dissent from the rank and file over a contract that includes modest pay increases but also deep cuts in the union's coveted health and pension benefits.

There's more than one way to battle the health care monster. Cutting coverage for those covered is one way. Another is to put heafty qualifications on qualifying, like requiring substantial over time hours or even a second call (daily hire job) on your days off. Here we have yet another American Union, the battlers for the 40 hour week, and worker protection, essentially bowing to corporate demands that workers only deserve health care and pensions if they work more than 40 hours per week. From the LA Times again:

Under the proposed three-year contract, members would be required to work 400 hours every six months, up from the current 300 hours, to keep their benefits.

That's the movie locals requirement, and at least it's less than 40 hours per week average. My old local, 33, is in even worse shape, and has been forced to institute coverage that only covers those who make the most money. Younger members, who often work in lower paying television jobs, don't even make enough to qualify when they work full time.

Eugene Debs would be appalled.

Unions are going to be forced to cut back on pensions, 401ks, increased hourly wages, and better working conditions (meal penalties, continuous tour, golden time, etc) in order to feed the health care monster, and the Wall Street Monster that Ate the Pensions. These Unions (not all IATSE) already hamper themselves by sending stagehands in $200 suits in to negotiate with lawyers in $5000 suites. Now they have the other arm tied behind their back with capitalist, robber baron, Republican tactics to drain power away from what they see as communist union thugs robbing them of their next BMW.

As much as I hate to say it, I don't see any light on the cyc, so to speak. Things are going to get much worse, and who knows if we'll ever recover. And now our new progressive government is going to tinker around the edges while the solution, single payer universal non-profit health care, stands screaming from the sidelines, while we all talk about Rush Fucking Limbaugh.

The only slight glow coming from the dimmer racks on this one is that, in the kollapsnik world, guys with calluses and working knowledge of mechanical systems will be the new kings, wearing $200 overalls.

3/3

My Dad, Frank Supak, died nine years ago today. I'll be listening to Miles, Kinda Blue, here in a little while, while I drink a beer. I'm just sorry I can only afford the cheap regional lager, and not an Anchor Steam. And I prefer Bushmills to single malt Scotch. But I'll be listening to his Miles CD, on his speakers, at his volume (not too loud). Maybe I'll listen to Holtz, The Planets. Maybe some Brubeck, live at Oberlin (a CD the significance of which he couldn't stress enough). I know I'll listen to Art Pepper, because I listen to him a lot.

But I don't think of Dad that often anymore. He was the contradiction: a Republican union member (IATSE), so, by dying 9 years ago, he saved us both a lot of grief. He had a very good life, if too short (he was 62). He was the sound man at the Hollywood Bowl for 20 years, and he enjoyed every second of performance pay.

But any time I feel sad, I remember that he liked to say that things only seemed one in a million because we don't live a billion years.