Hooray for propaganda!!

I like things that break down to an overwhelming point, i.e. nothing else matters besides "this" single issue. It makes me feel better that I don’t truly understand the depth behind the myriad other issues in this election: the economy, the war/foreign policy, health care, social security, because I can subjugate all that to the single point.

And that point is: this country needs an increasingly effective third party. We need someone to challenge the two major parties. If you have a third – and then a fourth and a fifth, etc., like other countries – then you’re really choosing YOUR candidate. You’re not choosing against – or for -- someone because of one thing you happen to believe.
You’re making informed decisions based on the majority of the issues.

Because it’s not possible that all opinions and beliefs can exist perfectly within two parties. It’s time for corporations (the debates are controlled by corporate sponsors) to open the debates and let the country hear true discourse that includes a voice of dissent. It’s time for the candidates to demand the tough questions and be concerned of how the other few candidates will respond. They will no longer be able to play to two sets of people: the minority and the majority. They can’t just talk about what they think the majority of the people want to hear because that’s how you get elected. Instead, they will begin to communicate what they truly believe and hope that’s enough. And the two parties will no longer be able to manipulate that majority/minority dynamic to their benefit. And we will be able to choose our representative that meets the majority of OUR beliefs, not a representative that is pandering to the majority.

So, as such, I’m voting for Ralph Nader. He never is afraid to call out any candidate, regardless of party affiliation. He speaks for the masses and focuses in depth on such topics – like corporate control of government and minimum wage and health care related deaths and the environment – that completely trump the lipservice these issues are paid by the current candidates.

In California, the most contentious and heavily advertised issue is Prop 8. That deals with the right for homosexuals to get married. Yep, in the good ‘ole CA, that issue has created more bumper stickers than any other issue. That would not happen with multiple candidates where the true issues would prevail. People would not just vote on a candidate’s stance on this ridiculous issue.

As far as I can tell, people don’t really vote for a candidate, but rather against a candidate. Granted, Barack is good, moreso than any candidate since I’ve been an adult. But, are people really voting FOR Barack, or against the fear of the continuation of the Bush administration?

Where is the other choice? I kinda like Barack, but he’s moved quickly back to the middle after beginning far left. McCain’s not so bad, Eh. Where is my third choice?

In my view, the only way to really validate a belief is to have chosen from many choices not just two, a 0/1, an on/off. That way, you’re more likely to choose someone who aligns with the majority of your beliefs instead of choosing the one who is against the majority of the issues that you fear, like choosing/not-choosing a liberal because of his view of Roe vs. Wade or gay marriage.

We need that third party to challenge the rote responses and lipservice. We need a third party to ask HOW someone is going to pay for that social service or economic policy. We need a third party to ask WHY they’re taking millions from Big Business and what promises they’ve made. We need someone to ask, seriously, WHAT is the plan for social security. We need someone who asks WHO these candidates are, truly. We need someone who is the underdog to the corporate candidates. Someone who is so unlikely to win, that they ask the REAL questions, like Barack before he became popular.

Ugh, being told what I want to hear is sickening, disheartening, and makes me cynical. It focuses me away from true politics and more on soundbites and consumerism. Which, perhaps, is what they want anyway.

Go third party. Let’s be like other countries and give people an actual choice based on their beliefs. Not just a choice based on “what’s worse?”!

Vote Nader. Because I know he won’t win. Because I know it doesn’t matter in our current electoral college system, at least in California. But, because I’m tired of the two choices. We need a third choice. A third party. ASAP. And I am voting FOR that belief.

Defining my belief system

I was asked by a friend of mine, who is doing some amateur research, to define my worldview. Immediately, I thought of: empathetic, kind, thoughtful, pleasant, etc. But, the more I really thought of my beliefs, I began to consider what drove those beliefs. As a result, I wrote the following. It's actually, for someone who thinksthinksthinks as much as I do, it's not an easy question.

***
I really deliberated on this, because it’s a difficult question; and, if you’re not honest, a useless question.

It seems obvious that everyone has a selfish motivation to their system of daily beliefs that drive their behavior as a whole, but also how they react in emotional situations.

Why? Because instinctually, humans are motivated by things that “feel good”, and thus are conditioned to repeat those behaviors. Think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

If someone’s belief system is based around family, it’s because family makes them feel good. If it’s gaining respect of people around them, it’s because that is a “need” and makes them feel good. If it’s a religion, it’s because religion supplants fear. If it’s philanthropy, it’s because it is rewarding to help others.

So, perhaps it’s not a “belief” system. It’s a network of motivations that drive your beliefs.

So, what is my worldview? What dominates my beliefs and guides my actions and reactions? Essentially, it’s making other people or myself comfortable/safe.

How does that manifest itself on a day to day level? Conflict avoidance and resolution. Positive viewpoint in most instances. Strong levels of empathy. Simple life and social anxiety. Always giving people the benefit of the doubt. Strong radar for perception of fairness. Comfort – financially, intimately, employment, socially. Not a risk taker. Risk doesn’t make me feel good, so it does not influence me.

How does that manifest itself on a “worldview” basis? Strong reaction to injustices, sometimes out of proportion. Focus on social issues, moreso than the economy and international policies. Difficult to trust that which I cannot see/feel, i.e. religion.

What a difficult question. Being honest with yourself is the only way to get an answer worth reading.

Cuh-razy Brain

I want to be a philanthropist,
But I live check to check.
I want to be a confident optimist,
But if my self-esteem were the glass half-empty/half-full scenario, I'd be vapor.
I want unfettered access to success,
But I seem to have bumped my head on the ceiling of my intelligence.
I want not to be judged,
But I hate myself for judging.
I want to teem with the joy of life every day,
But I fret over my appearance and the superficials.
I want to learn, to grow, to build towards my strengths,
But I'm good at making excuses that indulge my weaknesses.
I want to die,
But there's a nagging hope that things will improve.
I want to live,
But life makes it so hard.
I want you to read this and pity me, feel for me,
But you feel like me.
So I guess I'm normal.

Opaque

You know the old adage that you get out of something what you put into it. Well, I’m not willing to put the crazy hours in to get out a sculpted physique with good health and self-esteem. But, oddly, I’m willing to spend six total hours in an UN-air-conditioned Ford Taurus to do something for $100/person I could have done at home for free…

Yes, doesn’t seem to make too much sense, does it? But, it was definitely worth it. It was opaque. No, that’s not a pointless word made hip, although it’s not bad. “Dude, that was like, totally opaque!” It’s the name of a dining experience, made famous in Europe and sprouting popularity in NY and LA.

Basically, the concept is that you dine in complete darkness, and experience a meal as a blind person would, and by limiting sight you’re enhancing taste. As the website suggests, you dine in the dark and embark on a “journey of the senses.” A pretentious slogan, as this “journey” lasted less than two hours, but again, what my fiancée and I put into it was worth it.

What did we put into it? The fourth layer of hell: Los Angeles rush hour traffic on the Friday of a three-day weekend. Maybe that’s the third layer. It was brutal. No air-conditioning in my Ford Taurus. Heat radiating off the highway concrete, moving so slowly by that individual pebbles were visible … for 50 miles. It took 45 minutes for the first 50 miles and three hours for the final 54.

It was one of those traffic jams, too, that teases you with little breaks up to 40 miles per hour and then wrenches your gut with quick halts down to stop and go. We were carsick, had to urinate and were contemplating canceling the hotel and the journey of the senses. However, the traffic was just as bad in the opposite direction. We were trapped!

Yet we trudged on and finally made it through hell and back to real life. And because we put so much into it, we got that much more out of it. We were so focused on the horrors of the stalled highway, we weren’t even really imagining what was to come. When we showered up and got into the cab, it was if a new evening had begun.

The Hyatt is in Hollywood, is where some famous Bravo shows are filmed (“Top Model” I think). It was swanky and needless to say, we didn’t belong. But that was fun, too. Haha, we can do quirky, European things that require lots of cash, too (or in my case, space on the credit card…)!

Basically, the Opaque dining experience works like this: some frazzled Euro-dude with thin-framed eyeglasses and a torso-hugging cheaply made t-shirt took our food and drink order in the lobby (with the lights on). When it was our turn, a waitstaff was paged. We had Beatrice, a normal looking white girl with fair complexion who just happened to be donning dark sunglasses and was blind. She stood there at ease until the Euro-dude introduced us.

Beatrice held out her hand and waited for me to take it in greeting. “Hi, I’m Jason!” She instructed Julie to get behind her and put her hand on the right shoulder. I was instructed to put my right hand on Julie’s shoulder. And so we were led through a door that during the workweek, appeared to lead into the Hyatt’s conference room B.

Butterflies were raging. All the forewarning in the world couldn’t quell the fear in my head that I wouldn’t be able to handle total darkness and would get claustrophobic and flip out. Or that Julie would. Or both of us together, like a cascading explosion of anxiety.

Beatrice led us in. The door closed behind me and all that was left to see was residual light from under the door. Ten feet in and around a corner, and we were utterly blind.

Quick recognitions began to bombard my consciousness: “Holy shit, I’m blind” and “If I lose Julie I’m lost” and “Where are all these voices coming from?” and “Why are we going in a circle?”

I tightened my grip on Julie’s shoulder and we finally made it to our table. Beatrice took my hand off Julie’s shoulder and placed it forcefully on the back of my seat. She then took Julie away and a moment later Julie was like, “Jay? Are you there?”

Julie is convinced that she’d make a wonderful blind person. She immediately found her napkin (funny that it was still folded like a seashell, as if we could see it, or at least when we felt it, visualize what it looked like) and placed it into her lap. Fork on left, knife on the right.

Me, I was lost. I almost knocked my water over every time. The bread was easy to find but hard to butter. It took my knife AND my thumb and I don’t care that I admitted it!

The jitters wore off quickly and we quickly settled in to one of the most relaxing and satisfying dinner experiences in a long time. The food was wonderful, but it would have been so even if we could have seen what we were eating. Food may not magically taste better when you’re blind, but you definitely pay attention to the flavors more without visual distractions, which probably means the same thing.

It was fun to try and eat. You know how the Simpsons eat? Just shoveling food into their mouths as quickly as possible? I tried that. Except I missed half the time. Scoop, “doh”! Scoop, “doh”! Scoop, “Yeah, green been!” Scoop, “doh”! And so on. I gave up and found food with my fingers and stabbed it with my fork. Even if it was the whole slab of chicken, I picked it up and took bites off the end.

We played a game where we sat back in our chairs and just listened. We were surrounded by tables on all sides, some closer and some further, but all conversations within earshot. A couple to my right, Julie’s left, were literally on a blind date. She showed up after he did and left before he did. Another table near them heard about this game, and after she had left, one gentleman joked, “Dude, she’s totally fat. Did you see what she was wearing?” Two or three other tables eavesdropping like us laughed out loud.

Tables were interacting wherever possible, sharing a similar experience and similar lack of inhibitions based on the usual, appearance and shyness. The table next to us already onto desert advised us to just give up the fork and use our hands! Or that the asparagus was really tasty … if you can find it! That same lack of inhibition played in our enjoyment of our own company, too. I never had to worry about something in my teeth or a weird expression or being distracted by any passerby.

It was a very pleasurable evening, but not because of the taste of the food. It was instead for a highly unexpected reason. The visual world has embedded within it ALL the prejudices, ALL the fears of judgment, and ALL the self-esteem. Removed from that world, neighbors were friendly and open and sharing. Removed from that world, Julie and I had even more wonderful conversations, made attending a meal even more of an experience that it usually is.

If the prohibitive cost didn’t make frequent visits so impractical, I would love to experience many meals away from the visual world.

Even if I was almost blinded by the light when I left Hyatt Conference Room B. And even when it took 3 hours to get home because of re-entry into the third level of Hell. And we could have done it at home for free. It was worth it. We got out of it what we put into it.

Indigo Girls Suck

I used to love these ladies. Their endless and easy harmony. Their powerful and passionate delivery. I've even seen them in concert. And I went with three other guys: Rich "Miss'n" Sisson, Joey "The nose" Librera and Jeff "This Guy" Guimond. Real names not altered to not protect identity. I only really liked one of those guys. But I really loved the band.

Their self-titled album was brilliant front-to-back. My buddy and I in college used to sing "Kid Fears" at the top of our lungs, futile as it obviously was to match their voices. That's why we always maxed out the volume -- it's always much more satisfying to sing when you can't hear yourself sing.

I even got into an online back-and-forth about the brilliant rendition of "Romeo and Juliet". This Dire Straits tune, covered by Indigo Girls on "Rites of Passage", inspired my friend Dan to write that he thought the Dire Straits version was better. I wrote back and pimped the Indigo Girls version. Yes, the Indigo Girls were unapologetically one of my all-time favorites.

"Were". Past tense. No more "are", other then they "are" bad. And it's all because they are lesbians.

Just kidding. I am definitely pro choice repurposed for sexual preference not for abortion, or PCRFSPNFA. And because I am a card-carrying member of PCRFSPNFA, the fact that I think the Indigo Girls suck has nothing to do with their sexual preference. It's because I have a penchant for spouting an idea right before a famous person says it.

Let me explain: I wrote this article about the state of the casual American in the midst of severe global happenings. A few days later, Michael Stipe went onto Bill Maher's show on HBO and said that young people do not get involved because of cable television and the distractions available, exactly what I had written about just days earlier!

Immediately the light bulb went off and I googled Michael Stipe to find his contact information so that I could excitedly let him know I was young and shared the same opinions. rem.com, rem.org, rem.edu, rem.xxx, whatever. Couldn't find it. Then I became desperate and remembered that he sang wonderfully with the girls on "Kid Fears". In my mind, I thought the Indigo Girls could get me in touch with Michael Stipe to share my smart political thoughts with him.

Here's the email I sent the Indigo Girls:

"I'm a huge fan. I love the self-titled and Rites of
passage from my high school days. Kid Fears is one of
my favorite songs of all time. My buddy and I in
college used to harmonize. I would play Amy's part,
Chris would play Emily's.

Michael Stipe was on Bill Maher tonight. He made very
similar comments that I wrote on my website a few
weeks ago.

I know this is cheesy, totally hopeless attempt, but
can you send this article to Michael Stipe? I want him
to know where younger people stand on these issues,
through my satire. As I struggle with recognition and
appreciate emotion through words (whether music or on
the page, or both), I am trying to find Michael and
his passion through MY words...

Thanks, here's the article:

http://strongbrain.org/sb/article.jsp?aid=2&article=58

Thanks ladies. You are on my ipod and I just listed to
"Airplane" off Rites of passage...

Thanks for your voices, your harmony, but most of all
your passion,

me"

Anyway, neither the Indigo Girls, nor Michael Stipe, have ever emailed me a response. And that is why I think they suck.

Gas prices Schmas prices

I was upset when George Bush recently mentioned how he was going to lower gas prices. He said that he'd investigate price gouging, halt the refilling of the petroleum reserve for a bit to ease prices, and expand the tax breaks for the purchase of hybrids.

What we have here is a failure to communicate the paradox he's creating. Bush illuminates the benefits of "alternative" energy sources (By the way, stop calling this energy "alternative". Give it an adjective more easily taken seriously. No one pays attention to the alternate in Olympic swimming. Green energy is not the alternative to fossil fuel. It should be "replacement" or "future" or "preferential" energy.)

Bush needs to realize that the only way to change the behavior of fuel consumption from oil to "preferential" is to allow gas prices to rise. Rise and rise high. Europeans have long spent close to $5 per gallon for gasoline and 40% of their automobiles are diesel. He must know that as long as fuel prices are manageable for the majority of Americans, all his rhetoric regarding clean fuel will go unheralded. Sure, there have been more advancements in hybrid and hydrogen cars, but the development of technology is slow.


Wanna know why? Because of the following formula: high gas prices = demand for "alternative" fuel. Demand for "alternative" fuel = much quicker developments of technology and lowered prices for that technology. Little does Bush or any other policy-maker realize that the only way to save this environment is to ruin their own, personal employment. They must lose their jobs at the whim of frustrated, broke Americans in order for behavior to really change.

That's why we are so short-sighted. It will soon be less expensive to purchase a decent hybrid than an SUV. But it's the gas prices that will drive the middle class and wealthy from the gas-guzzlers to the prospect of fuel-efficient automobiles. So, let them rise. We'll suffer in the short term ... slightly. But perhaps we'll save our planet from extinction and be able to survive in over the long term. Priorities must change. Finally, we have the technology to do it. Now we need buy-in and there's only one way to get it:

Let gas prices rise!

Suspension of Disbelief

A film fan is a study in apologise. What the hell does that mean? It means I'm tired of my girlfriend pointing out the minutiae of a film's detail to be lacking verisimilitude. She's smart so she asks very pointed questions like, "Where the hell did Aragorn get that flaming torch? There just happened to be one there? C'mon!" And I have to answer quickly yet determinedly, "He's a Ranger. He probably just found one on the ground and then lit it in the cave. Totally reasonable."

The thing is, her questions are valid. But I either hadn't considered the continuity issue or hadn't considered it to be a problem. I have a high tolerance to disbelief, meaning that when I'm in the throes of a film's transport from reality, I don't recognize the fact that because River is a seer, she probably should have seen Wash get a huge pole violently driven through his midsection (In "Serenity").

Suspension of disbelief is a necessity in all films, especially action/adventures -- as opposed to romances --- when so much of the storyline otherwise spent on character development is trumped by explosions, sweat and faces contorted in anger. In these cases, the fan must understand that things happen behind the scenes, motivations for behaviors are hidden. They, of course, must be small leaps of faith, which I can make, my girlfriend cannot.

And she voices her concerns. And I exasperatedly and ineptly answer with, "BECAUSE!", more upset that I know she's corrrect than anything else. Every time I now watch Serenity, I question like three different things I had previously suspended, a subconscious treat which I usually savor. Perhaps I'll get back to that oblivious state someday, but until then I'm going to stop suggesting my favorite films for us to watch, in fear that my apologise will not suffice to convince her that Anakin turned to the Dark Side so quickly because of all the hidden angst he held back from us but we're to assume he carried and buried.

Serves me right for only enjoying the company of intelligence. Love you baby!