2003-10-02|8:53 p.m.
I had the most surreal and wonderful set of days this past weekend.
On Saturday morning, A, AN, and I all went to a small breakfast place called �Big Kitchen.� It�s owned and run by a lady called Judy (�the beauty on duty�) who, though has smoked her voice into a harsh Tom Waits gruff, is a pretty awesome older lady. The place has a feel of a shop on Haight St. The walls are covered (and then covered some more) in pictures of people that have come and gone. Some are famous. AN told me that Whoopie Goldberg once worked there and is good pals with Judy. At the end of our meal, A went to pay with his debit card, but Judy wouldn�t have it. She said she�d like to be the last place on earth to take plastic and that A could simply pay for the meal the next time we were in. I thought that was pretty amazing. Of course, A didn�t feel right doing that so he went across the street to the ATM and got out some cash to pay for breakfast.
After the nice breakfast, A and I drove up to LA where we picked up MM. We took MM to pick up a few slices of pizza and then we grabbed some delicious string green bean and orange tofu dishes at a tasty Chinese food place near MM�s apartment.
After dinner we went to see Aesop Rock with El-P at the Troubadour. That was awesome to say the very least. They were also accompanied by some pretty talented local openers. I danced and sang and had a really awesome time.
Oh, and El-P said that they�d never come back to CA if we elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. I am sorry to find in the recent polls that if El-P made a credible threat, we may never see him live again. It�s only a fraction of the reason I am so angry about this whole stupid recall.
Then A drove us home super early in the morning and I crashed at his place as he hurried to work. I left his place and caught up with AN and went to a local street fair with booths of crap to buy, live music on every corner, dogs and their owners, and kids eating until they puked. It was as a street fair should be. And it was nice to hang out with AN.
After the fair A, the sleepless and jerky/cranky boy, and I got pizza. From there I drove home and showered and got ready for K to pick me up.
K picked me up with his friends and then we drove to see Radiohead here in SD. Again, the concert was breathtakingly wonderful and I sang (not too annoyingly, I promise) and danced and had a great time. Thom Yorke was silly and generous with both old and new songs and the band itself showered the audience with talent and love.
I did all the matching for the mix music trading. If you still want to do it, I think we�ll do it another time again and you can join in then.
Classes are amazing. I am so glad K helped me to change my political science focus on something more suited to myself. I am happy studying theory. My brain works better wrapped around Confucius, Lenin, and Thucydides than it ever did in number crunching political science. Without being too boring, I want to talk more specifically about the amazing things I am learning.
I sang karaoke the other weekend with A. And amazingly, I was completely sober. We sang �Video Killed the Radio Star.� I sang the chorus and tried to do so in the cutesiest voice I could produce.
I am honestly really depressed about the whole recall thing. I went from a nice weekend to this. In emergency of things, I am voting for Bustamante. And of course I am voting no on both of the propositions and on the recall. If I could vote no on ever having something this stupid happen again, I would with an emphatic NO!
�Yay� to the minority (could be as low as 20%) that will place a stupid-idiot Republican know-nothing in the gubernatory office.
It reminds me of the time that I wrote about principal-agent relationships. We, as voters, are the principal that employ a politician as our representative agent. I compared that to the principal-agent relationship of a guy with a broken car and a mechanic. The guy with the car has all kinds of mechanics to pick from. But oftentimes he doesn�t trust mechanics to do what he wants for the right amount of money. And like the recall election, sometimes the man wants to pick a guy he knows to fix the car. Maybe even someone who doesn�t know how to fix a car that well.
That becomes a new trend in people running for office. The anti-politician. Schwarzenegger is selling himself like that. He�s not a politician and therefore incorruptible by the system. Forget that your everyday man isn�t a multimillionaire businessman who acts in movies. Bush does this game too. Bush is the everyday beer drinking good ol� boy who likes to live on a ranch and go to church. Forget that your everyday man isn�t multimillionaire with a thousand ties to the oil of a country he just had conquered with American tax payer dollars. And even Clinton did it; although, in a lot of ways he was in fact pretty ordinary as he grew up poor to a single mother in the South. His only exception was being a brilliant scholar.
There are major problems with employing someone simply based on the idea that you can trust them more. The first reason is that they might not have the experience to do a satisfactory job. The second reason is that they might not in fact be trustable.
And I don�t blame the average American for being jaded about politics, I suppose. It�s tiresome, time-consuming, and slow to bear good things for the average person. We often feel voiceless among the powerful and wealthy lobby groups like the US Chamber of Commerce who �[fight] for the interests of business and free enterprise before governments around the world.� Heck, Bush is actively not listening to protestors at all. Or to emails for that matter. It�s outrageous! How do you remain hopeful about politics when your mechanic decides to do whatever he wants to you car (like war with a country) because he lies to you about what it needs (WMD?) and charges you an exorbitant amount (an average of 1 billion a week) for it?
I will be frustrated with my fellow Americans for choosing politicians like Schwarzenegger and Bush (strangely both have family ties to the Nazis). But I will never blame them for being angry or jaded about politics. And I even sympathize with the fact that they react on false information. It�s hard to make out what are lies and what are not.
Recently, I read that the freedom of our press ranks 17th in the world. That�s not exactly high marks for a country that considers itself a bastion of democracy who frees the peoples of oppressed nations.
I believe it�s our job to pass on the information. Groups like True Majority and Move-On are grassroots and pride themselves on their work to pass on important information about the politics that govern our lives and others. If you�re an American, you should, for informational purposes sign up to these sites. Plus, sites like Democracy Net are just helpful guides to have on your favorites list. Pass on the info!
Like this is important to know:
Bush has gathered a bunch of old cronies in a firm to choose who will rebuild Iraq. No groups or organizations inside the country are invited to the party. No, because this firm knows what�s best for them. Or, rather, they know what�s best for making money for the companies now coming to cash in on the support they�ve given the Bush family (yay! soft money). The company is called New Bridge Strategies and the troll protecting the bridge is Bush. Just look at the bios on that site.
I like what Paul Krugman, (and love Krugman in general--- infact if he wants me to have a million of his babies, I�m game) a columnist from the NY Times, had to say about it:
�Cronyism is an important factor in our Iraqi debacle. It's not just that reconstruction is much more expensive than it should be. The really important thing is that cronyism is warping policy: by treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
It's rarely mentioned nowadays, but at the time of the Marshall Plan, Americans were very concerned about profiteering in the name of patriotism. To get Congressional approval, Truman had to provide assurances that the plan would not become a boondoggle. Funds were administered by an agency independent of the White House, and Marshall promised that priorities would be determined by Europeans, not Americans.
Fortunately, Truman's assurances were credible. Although he is now honored for his postwar leadership, Truman initially rose to prominence as a fierce crusader against war profiteering, which he considered treason.�
Does this then make Bush a traitor?
Laura-Jane is about the loveliest, smartest, most talented diarylander I know. She sends postcards and lovely packages to total strangers.
I was thinking that beyond music mix trading, if you want, you should email or send a note to get her mailing address so that you can send her a small home-made gift or card (or even music mix). She always sends charming things to people (including to me) and I know that she loves to receive packages as well; so, you should send one to her. Because not only is it nice to make someone happy, (I�m not guaranteeing this) but also she�ll probably shock you with a kind reciprocation.
It�s something that makes me happy and I think it might make you happy too.