Our Great Nation... Adventures in the News

I try not to post this frequently, but given my last blog, it seems appropriate enough. I just wanted to post a few headlines that caught my eye from the last couple weeks...


Headlines for today:
CNN.com 1, 12:26 pm: The U.S. entered a recession in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
CNN.com 2, 4:17 pm: The Dow closes down about 680 points, as manufacturing hits a 26-year low and the U.S. is declared to be in a recession.

Okay people, synchronize! I know the government until now has denied any real recession but wasn't it obvious what would happen when it happened in other countries in the last decade? Does anyone remember the Asian Financial Crisis? You know, the EXACT same thing happened but the US decided to use the EXACT same B.S. band-aid on the current crisis instead of oh I don't know, trying to REFORM the system? Maybe if we hired economists that didn't own/run huge corporations...

Other news bits that I find ironic given the above:

The New York Times: An Abundance of Food, Wasted: Each Day, America wastes enough food to fill Madison Square Garden. Okay so maybe all of our food is processed frankenfood but we don't actually eat it. We just get it because we can and toss it.

Democracy Now!: Wal-Mart Worker Crushed to Death in Early Morning Stampede of Shoppers on Black Friday I see buying cheap plastic crap manufactured by children did not fall into the recession category.

The New York Times: The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job. Uh maybe we can fix the growing unemployment rate by killing off people so we don't have to employ them? I mean why bother with quality of life or I don't know, keeping the planet around for people to live on?

Important to me personally:

The New York Times: Researchers have discovered that a compound in red wine may reverse the chromosomal aging process. So all along, I've been making myself YOUNGER by drinking wine! Wonderful!

Telegraph.co.UK: Lawyers call for international court for the environment: A former chairman of the Bar Council is calling for an international court for the environment to punish states that fail to protect wild life and prevent climate change. It's about time someone said this. I think the only successful multilateral organization that should be left (aside from the UN itself) is one that deals with the environment. I liked this one after reading our Labor Department wants to poison our workers...

The Huffington Post: Ann Coulter's Jaw Wired Shut! I wonder if she'll write a liberal book about how god showed her she was evil? I hope it stays shut for a long long time.

The Guardian.co.UK: Melissa Etheridge withholds taxes over gay marriage row. It's about time we thought of a smarter way to deal with equal rights. If the government thinks they are losing money through gay marriage, I wonder how much they'd lose if gay people just didn't pay taxes? The whole framework needs to be re-written in such a way that "marriage" is removed from legal documentation and is replaced with "civil union" or something of that nature so church and state can finally be separate. Props to Etheridge though. I hope Ellen Degeneres jumps on the wagon too...

These are, of course, just a few headlines. There are others. MANY others. Maybe even too many. I'm constantly overwhelmed by the news. From these headlines here's my take:

I hope the US is humbled in recession. I hope we can learn to be an individualist society that is still concerned with the interconnectedness of all humans and all life. I think massive poverty is one way that is going to happen and although it terrifies me and I feel bad for the suffering that will soon explode here, I am grateful that it may actually make us less robotic consumers and more human. I'm somehow happy that the US and Europe are both facing these problems because it's about time the Roman Empire remnants disappeared. I am grateful for the people that are my friends and that I am close with because most of them are progressive enough to see the changes that need to happen. I am constantly scared our voices won't be heard, but I have faith that humans can be altruistic. Yes, I think we can.

procrastination is highly underrated

There are several ways to avoid doing work that I can think of. One is to spend hours youtubing your life away. Another is to convince yourself that today is the obvious day to tackle cleaning that absurd closet you have been avoiding cleaning for 2 years. You also need to call your Grandmother, sister, 15th cousin... Maybe you should meditate for an hour or so. Now you need a nap. Maybe after you eat something (and it probably involves cheese product or tater tots in some fashion or another) you'll feel better and more focused. You should watch the rain for a few minutes, it is really soothing. Don't forget to walk the dog an extra mile. Read everything in your house except the article you need to be reading, then move on to the latest internet gossip about Lindsay Lohan's gayness which is really important when you consider the lack of long-haired lesbians being stalked by the paparazzi (sorry Portia, but since you are actually out, it's just not as amusing.) Maybe you should organize your thoughts for a bit while taking the longest bath in history. Now you need to do the dishes. A side note: if you live alone, you procrastinate more because no one reminds you that you are procrastinating and you only have your conscience to deal with. After a while, your conscience gets confused and it too begins rationalizing procrastination. Besides, isn't the voice in your head just your voice anyway? 

Some people are particularly poor at it: they have their papers done 2 weeks ahead of schedule, they have your birthday gift for next year 4 days after your current birthday, and they most definitely get a sick sense of gratification from writing lists and crossing off accomplishments in planners. My lists are all in my head so I don't have to see the hard evidence of the tasks I am avoiding. Why are those people always commended for "productivity"? I mean, isn't it just as productive to do exactly what you feel like doing? Okay, maybe not by society's standards- you should all be producers, consumers, producers... I deserve an award for breaking the cycle boldly and without the slightest degree of guilt for letting the system down! I could compete with the best of procrastinators, putting off a particular project or item for literal months. I often wonder if I really just don't want to do it or if I just put it off because I can. That's right folks... rebelling against the organized is quite the hobby. Is procrastination a hobby? It might be, it's something I like to do to pass the time. I don't think it is laziness necessarily, it's more like inverse OCD.

Maybe all the things I am avoiding are just boring. That could be the case: why always blame the procrastinator and not blame the boring task?! Or maybe I am a masochist and I like to rush around right before something is due to complete it. I might just work better when I am under pressure, and am otherwise bored with the pace of life. When you look at it that way it makes the organized seem weak and incapable of true multitasking.

 I think I like that angle.

Fermented Fruit...

Important lessons can be learned when you aren't as coherent as you have convinced yourself you are. In fact, it might be a necessary voyage for some of us. You know, that sort of bold state of existence after that glass (gallon) of wine you managed to drink without realizing. One of two things happens: 1. You think you've just solved the existential dilemma of the year or 2. You put your foot so far in your mouth that you are certain you'll have to have it surgically removed. I try to steer clear of no. 2, but it seems I never fail to jump back on the sea saw after many close calls in the imagined surgery room.

The Fun Comes First:
There's really nothing more humorous than dancing with yourself in a mirror in an effort to mimic a conceited gay man dancing in a mirror next to you. This leads to several new dance "moves" which include blowing kisses at yourself, jumping fake rope, and maybe even pretending to break dance if you're feeling particularly energetic. This is all the more fun when you have a partner (or 2 or 3) in crime that is as unapologetically drunk and lacking in seriousness as you. A note should be taken that I only started dancing ever in the last year or so. I am not sure if I am drunk more often now or just lost any sense of inhibition or embarrassment for myself.

If you are fortunate enough to have a creepy guy near you, you get to exercise your right to say things you normally would only mumble or say in your head. Point: It is extremely rude to remove someones straw from their drink if you do not know them. Actually, it's rude if you do know them. GERMS people. Let it be known as well: if someone tries to fondle my friends, chances are I will give them an earful. In fact, if I have been drinking, I will probably make their head spin and their ears bleed with a whole array of rambling hard to follow statements. I might throw large words in there, or existential questions just to irritate, and likely confuse. No decent person would just walk up to a random person and think they have the right to just touch them. Period. Lastly, if they keep moving their chair closer even after I have said," I wouldn't waste my time if I were you", chances are I will eventually dump a drink on them.

Another really fascinating thing is the chip sandwich. I am not sure how this has happened in my life but my two best friends have these two things in common: 1. They can drink a lot of wine and 2. They eat sandwiches with chips on them. This particular sandwich was made at around 2am. It contained taziki, tomato, lettuce, mustard, and chips on pita. What makes this really interesting is the fact that it cost $3 but my friend was willing to pay $10 for the process. This particular sandwich also became communal and largely ended up all over the table.

Then...
You somehow manage to find yourself gracefully moving on to the next phase, the existential state of 'definitely intoxicated.' This is where the conversation goes on in spite of itself. You get to ask questions like: Why are we here? What if everything is constructed and we aren't really here but not here? What if the Earth is meant to be destroyed by global warming? Don't you think it's funny we think we have any idea about the Universe? What is the Universe anyway? Did I turn off the coffee maker? Did we really do that? Now if you're as lucky as I am, you've found a worthy conversationalist and are buckled into the verbal Magic School Bus. You might make a lot of U-turns, but a lot of ground is covered and eventually you exhaust yourselves and fall asleep. The point isn't the sleep though, it is the adventure. Even if you haven't answered any of these questions, more than likely you have at least convinced yourself of the answer and with any luck written it down (for later humor if nothing else.)

I have this theory that extremely intelligent people usually have a love for the drinks and/or any other mind altering substance(s). Maybe this is my way of trying to get out of giving up my love for fermented grapes. The idea though, is that you get to leave the day where you are constantly-maybe-too-coherently worried about whatever you can possibly sum up to worry about (usual things: bills, love/family, deadlines, life decisions/not so usual things: weird toe, penguins, that crooked picture on the wall) and enter into this parallel universe of thinking freely about them instead of rationally. Yes, escaping rationality. I think you have to do it or else that scribble called our brains would turn into all scribbles, just a big blackhole, and we wouldn't have any room to move.

And no, I haven't had anything to drink today.

Economic Meltdown (?), the Election, and all those other "things" on our minds lately

I have to admit, I've been extremely distracted by all of the events going on in the US right now. The largest 2 (most obvious, I should say), being the election and the crumbling of our Casino Street ecomony. What concerns me right now is how little these things actually intersect, or at least, how little it seems either of our presidential candidates seem to understand that they actually do.

During the second Presidential debate neither candidate was willing to actually point out to Americans that the economy will get worse before it gets better. This is contrary to statements released by Paulson (Treasury), Roubini (academic), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and I should mention that the debt ticker in NY is no longer long enough to show our actual debt (the new one will go up next year, probably to calm panic when people see it daily.) This includes the crumbling of other global economic systems (see the disasters in the European and the Asian markets for details) which- whether or not we'd like to admit it, are highly related to the function and stabilization of our own economy. Both candidates also seemed to endorse the bail-out plan, while neither candidate seemed to be able to state exactly what that bail-out did/will do to alleviate the rippling effects of Casino Street's now 6th straight day of loss on the average American. A point of clarification: by average I mean lower middle class and poor and in the last decades we can also add: complete poverty level Americans. The wealthy- corporate elite and government employees- are not considered "average Americans" to me, and how anyone could consider them as such is far beyond my comprehension. What this bail-out has essentially done is add a taxpayer financed patch to a corrupt system without any true restructuring to prevent this from happening again in 2 weeks, one month, 6 months, etc... I should be clear now in saying that it is not the bail-out specifically I oppose but rather, the entire de-regulated, neoliberal economic policies of the US that have gotten us (and most of the world) into this mess. The bail-out fails to address that. The presidential candidates also fail to address this. In fact, I am almost certain that Washington is part of the reason that 'neoliberal' isn't even listed as a true word in American dictionaries because to them we are just a "capitalist democracy" legitimized by tagging democracy to every possible word we can. News to Washington: we are capitalist, yes. A democracy? Not by a long shot. Americans should be calling our govenrment out on this abuse of the word.

Now, I still stand strong on my vote against McCain. Not because I believe that he and Obama are drastically different candidates. They are I suspect, largely different humans with largely different ideologies. However, I doubt either of them will be able to accomplish much on this 'compromise with the already in place system' tickets they both fall on. At the end of the day, I can barely tell the difference between the democrans and republicrats with their US Empire/imperialist policies of the last half century. I have to admit too that any elected president after George Bush will face a tremendous workload, and will need to possess a keen ability to rationalize which issues need to be tackled first. I hope what they include as a prime focus is the welfare of the people of this nation without whom they would fail to have any legitimacy. What I hope they are able to see is that globalization has not worked and local economy needs to be focused on to ensure a stabilized nation at all, let alone a powerful one. Face it: we cannot help our own with all of our jobs overseas, massive wars being fought and funded by external sources, with no access to healthcare for MOST Americans, with post-dated policies and officials enforcing them, with our civil liberties and rights slipping through the cracks unknowingly. America is in a tragic state of potential disrepair.

As a suggestion, I urge everyone to start living more conservative lifestyles. This government injection into Casino Street will cause inflation. Money is going to be sparse. If the government does buy banks to free loan availability be wary that these loans are now a speculative measure to pay off the debt used to boost Casino Street. This is a circular loop of self-defeat. I urge everyone to contact their local, state, and federal representatives to push forward a global, multilateral solution to this problem. Not a US-led solution. A democratically created and approved global solution. I urge US citizens to support global systems such as the United Nations, by telling your representatives they are wrong to bypass the UN in making decisions such as military interventions. In essence I urge US citizens to step down from our role of "global leader" to a role as "global citizen". It is imperative to the success of humanity on more levels than just economics.

Some tips for Sarah Palin

Dear Sarah Palin,

Congratulations on your vice presidential nomination, I really don't know how you did it. No, really, I have no idea. 

A few pointers:

1. Global warming actually does exist. I understand it is difficult for a woman of your caliber to make time to understand geology, physics, and ecology, but you should maybe try catching up on science before it catches up to your Grandchildren and they are fighting to survive.

2. Pipelines will not help America. Well, yes they will. For about 50 years. Wow, what a sound investment! Maybe you can go back in time and ask God while he's making the Universe if he could just ban global warming.

3. I hate to break it to you, but you won't get the votes of the women that supported Clinton. There's a large difference between you and Clinton: she knows how the government works and I have a sneaking suspicion, even knows what the Vice President does without being briefed. 

4. I am embarrassed for women and men every where, including in the US, that you are a now well-known political figure. I am thankful that you exist as an important example as to why education is important for everyone.

5. Iraq is not a playground for small town gossip. It is a real place, with real people some of whom are from the country of which you live in. War in Iraq is a violation of human rights. Oh and Iraq and the pursuit of other nations' resources are not "God's Will." Shame on you.

7. I don't think you have enough time to study to debate Joe Biden... You know, foreign policy, it's sort of a big deal. Oh and renewable energy. Oh and equal rights for all humans. Oh and our floundering economy. Oh and our dying soldiers and the dying civilians in our hands over seas. Oh and education beyond 1820. 

8. Banning books is absurd. The media loves to call Democrats Fascists but I think now we see where the real dictators are. So let me get this straight, you're anti-education?

9. Religion has no place in our Government. No religion is representative of all US citizens and should not be treated as though there is one that is. By all means, practice any religion you'd like... just keep it out of the government of which citizens pay for.

 10. Thank you for enforcing my decision vote against your party for yet another election, and for reminding me why I continue to do so.

Yours Truly,

Megan

Bottled Water

Isn't water just an amazing thing? We all need it to survive yet it has become this massive part of consumer culture and isn't really seen as a necessity, at least not to Americans.

It used to be, pre-privatization of every single resource on Earth ("they" haven't gotten to air yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some day you pay tax on breathing), water was a given. You couldn't really deny people access to water. There was of course no guarantee that the water you were consuming would be clean, but then, there was a lot less fuss over waterborne diseases too. Anyway, the government didn't have the ability to charge people for water per se, and you certainly didn't buy bottle water, except maybe as a luxury. With the combination of health crazes which dictate varying amounts of water we should each consume every day (I've heard anywhere from 4-12 glasses) and the need for increased showering/bathing via social standards of bodily cleanliness, the increasing awareness of chemicals in our water supplies, the increasing awareness of sewage and other polluted water sources, we're all buying bottled water. Or paying city taxes to have water transported to us. Or building our wells on private property to ensure we have running water which comes with a unique set of government mandated standards (we certainly don't want to use lead pipes, right?)

In countries like South Africa, water has been an increasing issue. Poor communities unable to afford to have water transported to their homes, have called on rights established by their government to allow them at least an amount of water necessary for survival. Thus far, and this may have changed in recent times, they have been unsuccessful in actually securing the rights their constitution supposedly offers them. In China, estimates of drying up and polluted water sources (rivers) are ever increasingly an issue particularly considering a growing population and of course, a growing manufacturing sector. In the US there have been plenty of issues in terms of irrigation flowing to the South West. There have been a number of concerns about the man made water channels carrying water for agricultural practices throughout the nation, the impact of this on the environment and the availability or amount of water able to be allocated to regions that are seeing increased population and urbanization. But I am getting away with myself...

My concern is with bottled water. In the US, we buy bottled water for around $2 a pint. yes folks, we buy water. In a recyclable but damaging plastic bottle. Then we toss it and get a new one. In more recent times there have been moves to nalgene (although after the toxic plastic issues, probably much less so), or sigg bottles to stop purchasing plastic bottles, these are refillable. They assume you have a source of water that you can fill your bottle with. It's much easier here in the states, you can usually use the water from your faucet, or a public drinking fountain. Yet people still buy bottled water because it is convenient: what if you forget your sigg bottle? I'd be interested to see if more bottled water or soda is purchased annual for on the spot consumption. I can some what understand soda, it's not exactly something you can get at home. There is also a larger and growing selection of bottled waters, some from the US, others from around the world (France, Fiji, etc...) Why exactly are we importing water from other countries? On a bottle of Fiji water, one of it's selling points is "one of the last clean water supplies on Earth... bottled at the source." Bottled at the source? Are there 100,000 Fijians out there holding bottles in some aquifer for $1 a day?Speaking  of aquifers, there are several that I know of in the Americas. One is in Cortland, NY another on the boarder region of Argentina, Brazil, Uraguay, and Paraguay which spans a space larger than Texas and California combined (you may know this region as a recent target of the US for "terrorist" activity- coincidence?)

The sad part about water is that it is a commodity and not consider a necessity anymore. This happened during the rapid privatization of former government subsidized resources between the 1970s and now. Oh capitalism, you marvelous creature you. Other reasons this period of history has effected water as a highly contested resource include pollution, industrialization, urbanization, technological advances in farming techniques... the list goes on. Yet we fail to be all that angry about it. After all, most of us take water for granted in the US. We don't have to fight to have a faucet in most of the nation (although there are increasing areas where water has become an extreme issue due to the housing market downflux, natural disaster areas, etc...) We don't fight for it, and we are willing to pay to have it immediately available for our consumption even if we don't need it that availably. This is a whole different issue, perhaps another blog, consumer culture. Distribution of resources globally is sadly lopsided to the point where only what are considered "environmental extremists" and human rights activists in the US seem concerned about water and many others aren't aware of any issue with water at all. I would guess many of the "developing" nations around the world don't see this the same way, many of whom have been fighting for the right to have water since well before I was even born. 

I don't have a solution to this... the best one I can think of is to always use your sigg or nalgene bottle and refill it, not from another bottle of water but from a faucet. Bottled water, like plastic bags, is a menace. No government should allow any corporation to sell people water for basic needs. It should be available for our necessities. Why not tax people with pools?! Isn't that an extreme abuse of what is left of the world's natural resources?! Why not ban public fountains?! I have many answers to these questions, but again, no solutions. I challenge you to this however: try going 24 hours without the use of water at all and let me know what you noticed. I am certain you would reconsider that bottle of Poland Spring the next time you are at your local convenience store.