A Spy in the House of Mobile

It's a rainy day in Berkeley, as I set out from my garden, into the flower-laden streets of NorthB.  I have to leave the ferns and dripping beaks of the Birds of Paradise to enter the maw of the Beast.  Into his chthonic BART tunnel, through the billboarded piss-hallways, through the throngs and trophy parks and the screaming streets, into the screaming office, to sit in a row at my desk for the next nine hours.

So far, I'm passing fairly well.  Had my Giants hat already for the team outing to PacBell Park.  As part of my job requirement, I must participate in Skype chat (text only) all day.  Response times over a few minutes are called out.  Sometimes required conversations must take place in real time, talking by typing, to a group of engineers all sitting around the same table.  Everyone is typing, and suddenly, out of nowhere, everyone is cracking up, synchronized, and you have to jump on chat and catch up.  I haven't quite gotten to the point of fitting in well in chat.  I might need to post some cat videos.

I'm in the House of Mobile to learn the secrets from the inside.  To understand how marketers, and business men think.  To understand how someone can have a passion for Advertising.  To me, Advertising is the mark of the Beast, maybe even the Devil himself.  Born and raised in Berkeley, right here in NorfB.  I want to have a world where we all contribute content for free or micropayments, or *something* without ads.  Which makes me either a hypocrite or a rebel.  Pass the stogie, brother, it's been a long day.

27 June 2013
Overheard: "Well, they're a non-profit, so if they aren't in it for profit, I don't know what their motives are, so I can't trust them."

I like the 99% thing.  I want to be 99% faithful.  Hey, that's like three days a year...

Seen in downtown S.F April 1, 2013

April 1 seen in downtown S.F. : A man with his "unit" in a knitted sock dangling between his legs to the ground, in half of a cut-up suit and tie, with exactly half his body exposed (the left half) and a sign that said "Sale, half-off"; A vintage 70's mint green Country Squire station wagon... with giant ghetto wheels (rimsos) cruisin'; And at Yerba Buena, two giant roll-off dumpster containers re-purposed as art installation with built in park benches and yucca plants; And the Twelve Gallaxies guy's sign is now in Cyrillic script. Sorry I didn't bring a camera, y'all. Just another normal day in S.F.

Food Sovereignty -- what if Ask versus Make creates Trust?

I had some thoughts after reading these two posts that separately appeared on facebook:

http://www.foodrenegade.com/maine-town-declares-food-sovereignty/ 

http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking.html

Food safety might be related to trust. Do you trust your neighbor when he says his Vermont maple syrup is organic? Do you trust some mega-corporation when it says "All Natural"? Now, Vermont (my state half the year) has very strict maple syrup regulations to support the participating farmers. But the fact is, I could wander over and say "Paul, are there any chemicals you use, etc." I can't do that with a giant food corp. I must rely on government to make them compliant.

In her talk on TED, Amanda Palmer says we should Ask rather than Make. I'm relating these two posts ("Food Sovereignty" and "The Art of Asking") because Ask works over Make, when you Trust. So in Vermont, we trust because the social network is strong in Vermont. It has to be or you die of the freakin cold or the freakin floods.

So I live in Vermont when I can because I trust my neighbors. I can't trust a giant food company being regulate by a giant, distant government, because there's lots of documented problems with government not really checking for diseases at slaughterhouses, government allowing shady business practices of trans-shipping food from China through Mexico so it skirts some regulation, Government allowing genetically modified material into our food stream without warnings, courts upholding the right of mega feed/seed companies to sue farmers for "stealing" copyrighted corn polen that blew onto their farms, and on, and on, and on. In other words, no TRUST.

Maybe if we buy and GROW locally, we'll know where our goddamn food comes from and we can trust, and know, our food is safe. Now--local growers can still elect to go through any certification process (e.g. certified organic) if they feel the stamp of approval will help them with their customers. But being made to do this won't make food any safer, because the "make" implies top down control, which would be fine if "everyone" agreed with the top, e.g. functioning democracy. But when the system gets a bit big and convoluted, maybe smaller, more local, more known, can be more trusted.

[Getting ready for french toast at our Bed-and-Breakfast in Berkeley.  Challah bread: Cheeseboard Collective, Berkeley, California.  Maple-syrup: from our neighbors in Brownsville, Vermont]

A Week In L.A.

A Week in L.A.  (c) 2013 Laramie Crocker 

Sunset on Berkeley

A Week in this town

is better than sayin 

I'm leaving in May

I'd stayed a year

and another year

I left my other girl

when my brother left his

and her sister said

as she stood in our kitchen

does this idiocy run in the family

in pairs

or is it contagion?

and I took a two-week vacation

once

a week on a cruise to paradise

and back

and a week in LA

a week in LA

that's what was left

seemed better than sayin

I'm stayin til May

and I'm calm under fire

capable of murder

I've taken my own life

but still, here I am

but still, here I am

and I've sold chocolate bars

delivered papers

I've been a carpenter

and I've been a trainer

and now I'm a singer

and I wanna live

and sing every day 

and live my whole life

like a week in LA

Sir Mick explains all to Oprah

Oprah: So tell me, Sir Mick, are you willing to be totally honest on my show.
Sir Mick: Sure, luv.

O: So did you do it?
SM: Yes, I did.

O: And did your "team" also go along.
SM: Sure, we all did.  I mean, it was the only thing keeping Keith alive.

O: He's alive?
SM: In a way.

O: And how did you avoid the testing?
SM: Well we didn't very well avoid it in Alabama, did we?  I mean, it was part of our image.  People expected it.

O: And did you make your team do it?
SM: Well, I felt just as I told them we should tune up, and practice, aye, that it was my duty to share what I could score with the team.

O: And what about the other bands?
SM: Look, luv, it was Rock'n'Roll.  EVERYONE doped.  I'm not gonna name names, but Floyd, The Doors, The Who, the Grateful Dead, The Mouseketeers, EVERYONE.  Well, not the Monkeys...

O: Not Jerry Garcia--no way!
SM: 'e was a bleeding smokestack on stage.  I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.  I mean, we coulda not doped, but then we'd still be wankers, and the Beatles would still be choir boys, wouldn't they.

O: So there we have the whole truth.  Sir Mick, admitting that the Rolling Stones doped, the Who doped, and most shockingly, and perhaps part of a continuing pattern of coercion, Sir Mick outs the leader of the "Hardest Working Band" as doping as well.  A whole industry, riddled with doping, perhaps even unable to function without it.

Django Unchained

Hideous Fun. Blaxploitation never felt this good.
Django Unchained is Blaxploitation for good, instead of evil, and it allows the director, Quentin Tarantino, to get away with showing
attrocities on screen that even Roots could not muster.  This movie is serious in the same way that James Clavell writes, in Shogun, that the feudal Japanese attendees laughed after witnessing sepuku, laughing to relieve the social and emotional strain and acknowlege the horror, in a socially acceptable way.  The film is brilliant, funny, outrageous, over the top, post-modern, a blaxploitation spaghetti western complete with soundtrack, an excoriating expose of slavery in this country,  a deep philosophical dive into feeling and living in those awful moments, and an unbelievable riot of a pulp movie.  Tarantino has perfected his game.

--Laramie Crocker
  showdate: 2013-01-14,
  Westwood Village Theater, L.A.

Reflections on Violence

I've lost a small child.  So I know that if you are experiencing loss now, nothing anyone tries to say to you will make any sense.  I know that compassion and love reached me in the depth of my loss.  So if you are in pain, please accept my love and compassion.

The rest of this post is analysis, so please read on only if you are in a state to receive these thoughts.

Since 2004, I've subscribed to a feed of every syndicated editorial cartoon in the national papers (http://gocomics.com).  This feed gives me a finger on the pulse of the major media that is more incisive than the print stories.  This is the first time since I started subscribing in 2004 that I read the list when every single cartoonist agreed on one thing, and had the same take.  They all editorialized gun control as the solution, or lack of gun control as the problem.  I get cartoonists from left, right, center, and independent.  They have never agreed on anything before.  So clearly, this latest shooting brings out similar thoughts and feelings.

But I can't help but wonder if there isn't an agenda to make us give up our constitutional right to defend ourselves against a government gone security-state.  The NRA exists because many Americans feel passionately about their constitutional right to bear arms, and the right to bear arms that a militia would use.  My mother believed in non-violence.  I have always dismissed the argument that if you were willing to take up arms when the Commies come marching up your own street, you couldn't be a conscientious objector.  I object on conscience to all foreign military adventures because they make us the invaders.  I've defended myself, and I think, despite my non-violent upbringing and my Buddhish nature, that I would take up arms against a corrupt U.S. regime if the Code Red Coup were to happen here.  ( http://ProvisionalAuthority.us )  It's my constitutional right.   I would join with my neighbors, friends, and countrymen, and I would hope that we'd have sufficient weapons to prevail.  No, I don't have a tank, but assault rifles in the hands of Iraqis have sure kept the "Most Powerful Army On Earth" from being victorious in Iraq.  I say this not to piss off American soldiers and their families, but to imagine, for a moment, what it might be like to be Iraqi, stuck between a U.S. supported dictator and the U.S. Army.

On the other hand, I'm not hearing a lot about the causes of our current situation.  I would like to hear more about how we don't offer national healthcare in this country, when all other industrialized nations do.  I would like to hear more about how we don't provide mental health care.  How we don't educate our citizens in Non-Violent Communication (NVC).  NVC was promoted by Ghandi, and the work is carried on today in the most hostile of regions with some success.  I studied with Dr. Marshal Rosenberg ( http://www.cnvc.org/ ), who teaches this method, and he and his co-workers bravely tread into Israel, and Sri Lanka.  But how many school children or adults could tell you what NVC is?  I'd like to hear about how we tolerate violent TV shows, Web ads, Movies.  Have you seen Spiderman?  It's a children's movie.  Up until I realized how dire Romney would be, I was going to abstain from re-electing Obama because of his little robot-speech about how he hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden.  Without a trial.   This country has been on a path for a long time that pointed to the morals of the law of the Wild Wild West.  Every president has sought blood rather than compassion.  So many TV shows make crime sexy, and glorify the masters and minions of the security state.

Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of my state (California), opened the mental wards and just let everyone out, claiming that the state and the people shouldn't have to pay.  Then he rode into washington as an un-apologetic Wild West cowboy, and joked about nuking the Russians out of existence.   ("My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today, that I have signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forerver.  We begin bombing in five minutes." --Ronald Reagan.  On microphone, at a Whitehouse press conference.) Even Hilter was unable to wipe out the Russians, so Reagan was talking about some major kick-ass.  I believe the word is genocide.  Reagan is now revered as a statesman.

I am limping these days.  I broke my toe kicking a BMW who cut me off in a cross walk.  That's how close he was.  I'm Buddhish (means I think Buddhism makes sense, but I can't claim any single belief system) so I consider my broken toe to be a Hard-Zen lesson.  My anger did nothing to this man and his car, but it hurt me.  I live in Berkeley.  I used to carry quarters in my pocket to fling at all the cars that cut me off.   I went through about $1.50 a week.  But, thinking of the damage I've done to my toe, I've sworn off attacking those who trespass against me, as a small step towards non-violence.   For ultimately, our violence comes back to get us.

My mother was manic-depressive.  She found yoga, meditation, music, and a loving church community to be helpful.  My mother worked on psychiatric wards. We performed music in chronic wards.  My friend John was schizophrenic.  He was never violent, except to himself.  His sister made a documentary that included him because he slipped back and forth between lucid cogency, and hearing aliens speaking in his head warning him that the government was controlling him through the TV.  (Well, I believe that the government and the market are controlling us through TV, but that's different.)  He meant literally warping his mind through special rays.  His sister said every time she screened the film, folks would come up and say they had someone in their family who had a grave mental illness.  Every family has some contact with mental illness.  Yet John could not get care for more than 30 days at a time before he was out on the street.  And he had healthcare and his family had some money.  The system simply does not deal with long-term illness.  Without being committed, you simply cannot get long-term coping care.  And committment is roughly equivalent to imprisonment.

I feel for everyone who is outraged and incensed.  I'm only asking that we take this time, those of us who can, to reflect on our whole society, and our laws, our warrior-class aproach to the world, our consumerism and materialism, our fear- and security-based society and media, our social network, our industrialized school systems, our "gilded-age" health care system, and our lack of mental health care.

Laramie Crocker
21 December 2012
Berkeley, CA