It amazes me that no matter how many times this happens, these right-wing fundamentalists keep choosing to play songs by openly liberal, tree hugging, gay-loving artists at their hate-fests. Peter Paul and Mary at an anti-gay marriage rally? Really?
Props to PP&M for a very diplomatic F-U to NOM.
I have a tap water filter myself (of the PUR variety), and it tastes just as good if not better than most bottled water. The real problem with water safety (in Los Angeles, anyway) is poorly maintained plumbing in residential buildings–just for fun, try a glass of tap water in a modern office building and compare.
Brian Clark Howard: Stop Drinking Bottled Water Now! (Infographic).
I am one of many people who support the growing “Boycott BP” movement. Obviously the oil spill is a huge tragedy, but moreover, I believe the company’s response has been pathetic at best, evil at worst. Using boycotts as a form of protest is nothing new, and no one really can be sure that it will have an effect on a giant oil-sucking corporation. However, since we consumers cast a vote every time we make a purchase, it makes sense not to vote for such a company.
In response to the Boycott BP movement, however, Newsweek chided activists for punishing all the mom-and-pop gas stations who only supply the BP product but are not directly owned by BP. They reason that a boycott is not an effective way to punish BP or make any kind of statement, because it doesn’t do enough to their bottom line, and suggest bugging the politicians instead. Fine, yes, do contact your representatives as well. I’m not suggesting that government regulations are not also to blame here, because obviously that’s a big part of the problem. But I disagree with Newsweek on the issue of boycotting the end-point gas stations, and here’s why:
The whole point of free market capitalism is that consumers determine what is successful in the marketplace. Lets say Company X makes mattresses and sells to mom-and-pop mattress stores all across the country. If the mattresses are good quality, comfortable, and reasonably priced, you can bet that consumers will buy them, and both Company X and mom-and-pop will profit. However, if the mattresses are cheap quality, with springs poking your back, and are made of potentially toxic materials, consumers won’t be so eager to buy them. Duh.
So mom-and-pop now have a bunch of crappy mattresses from Company X that they can’t sell. They will stop placing orders with Company X and find a new supplier with a better product. Yes, they may lose money in the short term, but that’s capitalism. Every business gambles when they buy product to resell. In the big picture, after enough stores stop ordering from Company X, they will be forced to either a) improve their products and practices, or b) go out of business. Yes, people will lose jobs. Yes, that’s sad. But is the consumer responsible for paying the salary of everyone involved in the making of a crappy product, or on the payroll of a corrupt company simply because if they don’t buy the product, the company may go out of business?
If we boycott BP supplying gas stations, whether owned by BP or not, it will affect them. It will also affect all of the people who buy gas from them to resell, and that’s capitalism. It forces business owners to ask harder questions before getting into bed with a supplier, and that’s how the free market improves. These mom-and-pop gas stations will start buying from another company, and just have to cross their fingers that their new supplier has learned from BP’s mistakes. Feel free to tell these business owners why you won’t buy from them, but reserve your anger for BP itself.
Moreover, a boycott will continue to push people towards supporting research and development of greener fuels and technologies. Someone with capital to invest may see this anger as incentive to gamble $500 million in a new R & D project, or in a green start up. Plus, if enough dissent builds, BP backlash could persuade some of the other oil companies to examine their own practices (because lets face it, they’re all f!#@ing evil).
We in the USA are not communists, and despite a lot of hysterics on the far right, neither are we socialists. If you can’t stomach the possibility that people will lose their jobs in our free market economy, maybe you should consider relocating. Always remember that your purchases speak for you. BP brands to boycott include Castrol, Arco, Aral, am/pm, Amoco, Wild Bean Cafe and, Safeway gas.
Several area gas stations cover up “BP” on signs – News – The Times-Tribune.
Newsweek’s latest anti-boycott article which overall makes some very good points about the evils of all oil companies and the necessity for government interference. But doesn’t a public outcry against BP also speak to the government? Just wait and see how many politicians use anti-BPisms in their campaigns in November.
Meet the Tiger Dog: Chinese owners dye pets to look like wild animals
I honestly can’t tell if they’re disturbing or adorable. Disturbingly adorable? I’d just be concerned about the type of dye they use, but if it’s vegetable base, then hey, knock yourselves out, China. If it’s the more toxic stuff, then it probably borders on (or is) animal abuse, considering how harsh that stuff is on the skin and eyes. Fun to look at though, so lets hope it’s safe!
Ah, insomnia. What a productive way to spend an early morning. Since I’m unable to sleep, I’m finally getting around to addressing the disappearance of Everything From Here To There. The site is on hiatus until Billy has time to write again. So in the meantime, I will try to post more blarticles, and I have archived all of my EFH2T posts with their corresponding posts here (which can be accessed using the handy dandy “Categories” list to your right), except for “Go with (my) flow” which I apparently forgot the first time around. So here it is:
Go with (my) flow
Many zen-minded philosophers and spiritual teachers have told us to “flow” with life, to not fight the current of life and where it brings you. I think that’s generally good advice, but it’s also turned into a justification of a lifestyle that makes me pull my hair out in frustration. There are people who, despite making commitments, setting appointments, and otherwise binding themselves to their peers, tend to be flaky. Some of these people have the same argument for their behavior:
“You just need to learn to go with the flow.”
I’ve had a few conversations with people who, like me, are inclined to be punctual and accountable when we make clear-cut arrangements, and I’ve learned a few things lately.
A lot of these “go with the flow” type people are actually exercising an inflexible control over their environment. They may seem super earthy, or they may be otherwise unstereotypical type A personalities, but what I’ve noticed is that they continually play out the same scenario: they make plans, and rather than meet on equal terms, they force the other person to wait, or to reschedule, adjust, etc. It makes me wonder, if you’re trying to “go with the flow”, why make plans at all?
I think there is a hidden message in the argument. “Go with the flow” might mean, “Go with my flow. Don’t expect me to do what you expect.”
You might think that someone who seems completely unaccountable in the name of “go with the flow” would be someone not in control of his or her environment. But isn’t steadfastly abstaining from fulfilling your own self-imposed expectations a form of rigid control?
An example: I was just in Venice performing for the Biennale art festival, and there I met a funky middle-aged Italian man who was part of the community of people around this particular gallery. He is a bit of an enigma—the type of person whether you never really know is paying attention until he makes an out of the blue insightful remark amidst a lot of non sequitur ponderings (sounds harsh, but I actually liked him quite a bit). He randomly proffered a lecture to me on how I cannot make plans in Venice, that I have to see where the city takes me—a very “go with the flow” kind of guy. However, he made plans with one of the other artists to do a photo session before her performance, for which he completely flaked. When she confronted him about it, he gave her the same sort of lecture, completely defying her to hold him accountable for his own plan.
These types of situations usually drive me nuts. However, I have discovered an interesting sense of freedom in some of these relationships lately. For the first time I think in my entire life, I have, with these people, made a conscious decision to be a bit flakier, to show up when and if I feel like it, and to feel less obligated and accountable.
While our group was out celebrating after our performance night was finished, my enigmatic Italian friend invited us all to meet at his place the next morning to exchange photos of the night. We set a specific time, 10am, because I had to catch a plane that afternoon. As I walked back to the hotel with the artist whom he flaked on earlier that evening, she said to me, “Don’t expect him to actually be there.”
I shrugged and said, “We’ll see,” and thought more about it that night as I packed my bags. I decided that the best way to approach the situation was to not put myself in a position to be unhappy—to not rely on someone who I know is unaccountable. In the morning, I had a leisurely breakfast and did not rush to check out of the hotel. I didn’t feel like it. I felt like taking my time and showing up an hour late, and if the meeting happened to work out, then great, but if not, it only left me with an hour to kill, and that was just fine.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, our enigmatic friend was nowhere to be found that morning. Not even the guests staying in his apartment had any idea where he’d got to. So instead, I had a very pleasant conversation with another artist at the gallery downstairs, and trotted off at a leisurely pace to the bus station.
I would never in a million years let myself behave like this with someone I know is going to fulfill their commitments, but under different circumstances, I might have been angry and disappointed because I showed up on time, and where the !@#$ was he? I might have even shown up on time expecting him to disappoint me, which now seems a bit masochistic.
I do think it’s a shame we didn’t get together that morning, but I’m glad that I got to exercise this outlook. I think if we want to avoid making ourselves crazy, it doesn’t hurt to adjust—or let flow—our expectations. To be fair, I do wish that the people on the other side of the river would flow a bit more in my direction as well.
I guess the real question is… How do we all go with the same flow?
My latest post on EFH2T, about how we can sometimes turn into angry d-bags when we know we’ve done something wrong:
Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » The Defensive Finger.
The Defensive Finger
Ah, Los Angeles. I was driving through the residential area of West Hollywood one recent sunny day when to my dismay, a man in a blue car ran his stop sign and drove into the intersection ahead of me. Given that he had a two-way stop sign and I had right of way, I felt fairly justified in giving him a “Hey, are you crazy?!” honk of my horn. Without any hesitation, his arm sprang up and displayed his middle finger, a shining beacon of “go f!#% yourself”.
I’m so happy to be driving a car again that I can’t be bothered to get upset by the millions of people who are like this in LA (besides, the worst driver here is about average in Europe). However, this man’s instantaneous reaction to my calling out his mistake made me think about how common it is for an offender to turn into an accuser, and how we sometimes get angry in response to someone else being upset with us, even—and especially—when we know they are right.
My top two examples of this Defensive Finger behavior are, ironically, in some of the highest and lowest tiers of global society: politics, and trashy talk shows. The only real difference between the way politicians behave during debates and the way seedy dramas unfold on daytime TV is the amount of physical bitchslapping involved. But if you break down the pattern of communication, they are about equal: one side accuses the other of some wrongdoing, and in response, the accused rarely addresses the accusation, but rather immediately returns with an even more impassioned accusation towards the accuser. And always while each accusation is being made, the other party is talking with his or her body: scoffing, smiling sarcastically, shaking the head, and making hand gestures that either literally or subtly add up to “go f!#% yourself”.
On a more local level, maybe you’ve had an experience where a friend has let you down in a big way, and instead of apologizing and admitting that they hurt you, they become distant or even turn the situation around on you to make you seem like the bad guy. Maybe you have been the bad guy yourself—I know I have, and that’s kind of the sad thing about this defensive behavior. Sometimes we hurt people, behave recklessly, break promises…. That is a simple fact of life, and something we all have in common. So why, then, do we have such a hard time admitting it?
I think the times when I’ve been like this have been over mistakes that I knew could have been easily prevented, and I guess that my anger over those mistakes came from my greater perfectionist complex and this feeling of “you’re not perfect, so how dare you”. Perhaps some other reasons people give the Defensive Finger are feelings of helplessness or entitlement from being hurt or disappointed in the past, and maybe sometimes people really don’t understand or even care about the effect they have on others. I’d like to think that isn’t the case most of the time, but I wonder if I had crashed into the man who ran the stop sign, would he have apologized or started shouting at me and thrown a tantrum?
It’s hard to believe that people will respect us, let alone love us, once they know how flawed we are, but I’ve really come to admire people who can own their mistakes. It takes a lot of self-confidence to admit to each other that not only are we flawed, but we can, and do hurt people sometimes. What’s funny is that owning the mistakes we make actually empowers us in the eyes of our accusers, whereas being angry and defensive when we are most definitely in the wrong just makes us look like crazy fools, and does not save any face for our sad little egos. Worst of all, we know when we’re wrong, and we will keep knowing even if we deny it. And at the end of the day, we’re the ones who have to live with ourselves. Our flawed, stop sign running selves.
There is a lot to be said for that little courtesy wave we give each other on the road.
This week’s post on Everything From Here to there talks about the different shades of dissent:
Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » The Spectrum of Dissent.
The Spectrum of Dissent
All of these posts about anger on the site lately have me thinking about the issues I care about, and what is or is not being done about them, like the ongoing struggle to legalize gay marriage. It’s something I feel very strongly about as a fundamental human rights issue, and I felt really angry when Prop 8 went down and powerless because I was living in Germany at the time. So I moved back to LA thinking I’d get all activist-y and help stir some @!#% up, freak out some squares and so on, expecting that when I started talking to people here about the issue, they would be bursting with rage. So far, they aren’t.
I had a conversation with a gay man last week about Prop 8 and the state of the rainbow these days, and his coolness towards the subject really surprised me. He basically said that he wished people would be a bit more patient and give those who are afraid of homosexuals and gay marriage more time to adjust as these “alternate lifestyles” become more and more accepted into the mainstream. He appreciated when people didn’t cram their beliefs down his throat, so he didn’t believe in doing it to someone else.
While I completely agree with the idea of patience and acceptance of others’ beliefs, part of me still wondered whether anything would change without those who stand up, flail their arms and scream at the top of their lungs. I thought about that for a while, then after reading through the good ideas in the Anger 1-5 posts, I’ve tried to form some chain of causality in my head that results in large scale social change.
If we all picked sides, then sat back and didn’t do any down-throat-cramming of our perspectives, we’d all live in a state of passive discord. At some point, someone is taken over by passion for their point of view, stands up and starts shouting, and that’s where dissent gets tricky. One person shouting equals man on a soapbox—news pundits, for example—while everyone shouting equals a riot, like the Iranian election riots. Since everything has an equal and opposite reaction, you can anticipate that the more people are shouting about something, the greater the reaction will be from the side they are shouting against.
So what if something happens that affects a lot of people very deeply, but only one man gets up and shouts about it? What if only the Iranian pundit-du-jour made a fuss over the elections, and everyone who agreed with him sat back quietly and nodded, saying, “Oh, he’s right, but we just have to be patient.” If there hadn’t been such a large public outcry, they wouldn’t have gotten the rest of the world’s attention. Regardless of the outcome of those awful and tragic riots, there are a lot more people paying attention to the issues in Iran now.
But what if people rioted in the streets every time there was a social disagreement? If we were constantly screaming at each other, throwing rocks, and burning cars over every issue without any other course of action, we’d either burn out our passion so quickly that the fight would fizzle, or we’d create such a strong opposition against us that there would be no chance of what we’re actually saying ever being heard, and we’d just be fighting for fighting’s sake—look at Israel and Palestine and how hard it has been for them to back up and just have a discussion. When discord reaches that level, the opposing sides seem to be pushing harder and harder on opposite sides of a wall, and all of their effort goes toward holding the wall in place.
Social evolution needs the entire spectrum of dissent. We need everyone, from the big screaming crowds to the more reserved supporters, to move issues along, and the reason is that we don’t all identify with the same kind of passion. Some of us are really turned off by fanaticism, but still want to express some kind of support. Some of us find anything less than full out demonstration to be an insult to The Cause, whatever it may be. Personally, I identify with the passion of individuals on the ground, and can’t stand the soapboxery of pundits and speechwriters, but some people feel better hearing about the issues they support while staying out of view.
The important thing is that we support what we believe in, however that feels right to us. We must all find where we belong on the spectrum, and not assume that dissent is one-size-fits-all.
My latest post on Billy Corgan’s blog about holistic livin’:
Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Living with Bears.
Inspired by this pamphlet sent to me by my sister, who finds completely banal things as funny as I do, god love her.
Living with Bears
My sister recently sent me a hilarious pamphlet she found in upstate New York entitled “Living with Bears”. It’s all about how to coexist with the indigenous and migrating bears that sometimes mosey into the wooded neighborhoods of New York, and why bears behave the way they do. It says things like:
“What should I do if I see a bear? Don’t panic. Bears are more likely to be afraid of you than you are of them.”
“Never approach, surround, or attempt to touch a bear. Always leave a clear escape route for the bear.”
“How to prevent bear problems: Proper storage of garbage and removal of bird feeders are the two most important steps you can take to drastically reduce nuisance bear problems in your area.”
And so forth.
Once I got over how funny it was, I started thinking about how much easier life would be if we gave ourselves permission to objectify the differences between each culture, gender, and lifestyle in this same manner, distilling it all into a three-fold pamphlet that we could each hand out.
I guess the first thing people are afraid of is that by objectifying the differences between people, they would be accused of being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. As a comedian, I have a bit of license to go at these topics with greater abandon, however as a person, and a white American one, I have felt the cultural conditioning that is “treat everyone exactly the same”. While I agree with that idea from a human rights perspective, from a cultural perspective, it’s actually a bit insensitive when you look more closely at what it means. The truth is that culture shock can be extremely upsetting. We’re so concerned with not offending different cultures that we don’t know how to react when the differences bother us, i.e. pretending to be indifferent and behaving passive aggressively while the indexical shock grates on our nerves, when we could just point these differences out in objective terms and address them head on.
I wrote a bit about cultural indexicality before, and how certain types of behavior mean different things in different cultures, for example, how some Russian women I used to work with found whistling indoors to be extremely offensive. What if, on the first day I met them, they handed me the pamphlet “Living with Russians”, which explained the many superstitions they have involving whistling? Conversely, I could have handed them my “Living with Americans” pamphlet, which would explain that we generally like to do whatever we please when it comes to our personal space, and we may seem insensitive to a culture that has a lot of customs or superstitions, however we are not fond of people we don’t know well making extremely personal remarks about our looks or body (they all felt the need to point out every time I gained or lost a pound, and it drove me nuts).
However, this raises another problem: after the pamphlets are distributed, we’d have to figure out who is “right”, and who should concede to alter their behavior. In the case of the whistling incident, should I be sensitive to the Russians’ superstition, or should they be more willing to conform to the local culture?
That, of course, is trickier. But if we were allowed to objectify these differences, instead of being aware of them but forced to pretend as if we aren’t, I think we’d be more content to make choices based on these objective, impersonal pieces of information than we are with all of the unspoken differences we deal with now. A lot of the cultural and interpersonal ego battles that prevent us from getting along stem from a deep desire to be understood for the simplest things without having to go out of our way to call attention to them.
I’d personally love to hand out a “Living with Ve” pamphlet to everyone I meet. It would say things like, “Ve is prone to extreme moodiness and lack of focus before noon.” and “Store sugary food in tight containers and keep them in a secure place out of Ve’s field of vision lest she will, due to an overactive enthusiasm for candy, be forced to devour your sweets as soon as you turn around.” (Somehow I think the above two statements may be connected, but I digress.)
Think of how easy social life would be if we were allowed to make these pieces of information so objective and distant from our egos! What would your “Living with…” pamphlet say?
Since there’s currently no government subsidy for such pamphlets, maybe for now we can just try to see the differences between us, our lifestyles and our cultures as objective things, and not let them rule our relationships, or get under our skin. As with bears, acknowledgment and acceptance of our differences is the key to Living with Humans.
‘Whites only’ basketball league announced | ajc.com.
“only players that are natural-born United State citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.”
” According to the Chronicle, Lewis said he wants to emphasize “fundamental basketball” instead of ‘street ball’ played by ‘people of color.’
‘There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,’ Lewis told the paper. ‘I don’t hate anyone of color.’ “
Umm… Are you out of your f!@*&ing mind? Like… Wow… Really? Really? I know maybe it doesn’t seem fair to you white dudes that you’re not the richest, most powerful people in the world and the best at sports, but seriously?
20 bucks says they get Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh to do (non)color commentary.
|
