Peace, Love and Erica Campbell

Jackforsenate.org dishonest video clips

2008-05-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Jack ForSenate.org - The Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer for Senate website has posted dishonest video clips of the question and answer session from the CD 8 DFL convention in Duluth.

BAE Systems investigated in Saudi arms deals

2008-05-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

The brief detention of BAE Systems chief executive Mike Turner, and employee Nigel Rudd, as their company faces renewed investigations concerning Saudi arms deals is hugely significant, and a hopeful sign.

Imagined that former CIA officer Robert Baer would have something say about this, and a google search proved my suspicions right: Robert Baer: The Saudis do not give up their secrets, Mr Blair

Disposed of two old SUN SPARCstation computers

2008-05-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

I just recycled two of my old computers... letting go of the collection of these old heavy things should be a form of progress - being less clingy and grasping of old ideas and old plans, traveling light into the NOW and future.

Also inspiring - John Perkins

2008-05-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

So we use "The Secret" and "The Success Principles" to create peace and preserve biodiversity, to change the corporations and to prevent our candidates from serving corporations because we forget to instruct them after we elect them...

Jack Canfield

2008-05-19T19:53:00.001-07:00

Made it back to Bloomington

2008-05-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Made it back to Bloomington today, which is great because then I can go to yoga tomorrow w/o a stiff back from hours of driving and after a proper shower (water was turned back on at the lake house today, but I was in a hurry to get back on the road).

I brought back my Burmese books but couldn't find the tapes, and I am still missing my passport. I also brought back the computer desk I bought at IKEA in an attempt to save my relationship w/ Christine and keep kompy (my desktop) in her Virgo-perfection apartment. That was before I got as good as I am getting at using the Law of Attraction (this link is to MySpace TV - Esther Hicks on OPRAH), and I was trying to magic my way back into another trip to Vegas w/ Page Morgan, yet I was deeply in love with and becoming very attached to Christine.

Today I was thinking about Reader's Digest while driving, and later pulled over at the Dunn Bros. in Monticello to stop for coffee, stretch and empty my bladder and there was a Reader's Digest, jammed half open into the stainless steel railing in an otherwise immaculate and overly crafty bathroom.

I listened to a Dale Carnegie audio book while driving, and started to miss the corporate life I touched and was so maladapted to in the dot-com days. I was really trying on the role of supergeek, pushing myself to master Enterprise Java in my off hours, adopting the mannerisms of stereotypical geeks and my most out of touch biology professors. If I had only had a "positive mental attitude" and some of these success manuals with me, instead of trying to be autistic Linux/Java man, I might have been comfortable with the management type gigs that people kept pushing me into, and I'd be a gazillionaire now. Next time, next time!

One of the useful principles in the Jack Canfield success manual I have been reading and carrying around was to use drive time (or TV watching time) to listen to motivational audio books. Beats hearing MPR repeat the news six times during rush hour!

MPR: Father Michael O'Connell (Basilica of St. Mary) - what's on the minds of the next generation of Catholics

2008-05-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

MPR's midmorning today hosted Father Michael O'Connell, who is leaving the Basilica of St. Mary in a discussion that included what's on the minds of the next generation of Catholics (the conservative tide, social justice/fighting poverty) and also his plans for Minneapolis' North neighborhood and his new parish at Ascension.

I'd like to hear more from the Catholic Church about how the war/occupation of Iraq hurts the poor, about how we need to redirect militaristic spending towards fighting poverty and other domestic programs. Young Evangelicals lead by Shane Claiborne are already there...

Erica Campbell, playboy model of the year 2005, appears to have retired, converted

2008-05-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

Looking at my google keyword traffic it seems that some of you are searching for confirmation of the news that busty and compassionate Playboy model of the year (2005) Erica Campbell has retired from nude modeling to serve Christ. I will try to get confirmation of this and I am totally willing to help Erica tell her story whatever it is.

The original site that made her famous, which I was an affiliate of back in 1999/2000, "BustyAmateurs.com" closed down to the conversion of its owner many years ago.

Update: There an interesting post and comments on Fleshbot.

Sunday in Bemidji

2008-05-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

Since we didn't have any food at the house we headed into town to eat breakfast and buy groceries for the next 48 hours and all of my favorite restaraunts downtown are closed and both Perkins and Country Kitchen seemed overwhelmed with the post-church crowd.

On the way in we listened to Garrison Keillor's loveless "Lives of the Cowboys" and that caused me to think deeper and harder about what sort of life I want to start creating for myself. I have been thinking about how I might have been tricked by hormones and my own capicity for delusion - that the love I shared with Christine was stuff of a meaningful, eternal nature - and I looked hard at the growing stack of books that I want to bring back with me to Minneapolis, math books, Burmese signs of an attraction to the less changeable things. I could get into math. Also a book on how to draw pretty girls, Manga style, and an unused sketch book.

One fantasy I had of a future life was camping and hiking deep into the state forests here and collecting seeds all summer. The market is too fickle though, I barely managed to sell $750 in seeds in 2004, and only because Prairie Moon bought out what I had put on consignment with them so I could afford my plane ticket to Sumatra to do tsunami relief.

The fact is that I have to follow through on the politics/activism a bit longer - at least to the state convention. Reflecting back on yesterday's convention in Alexandria - the parts I stuck around for - it was clear that the pro-impeachment crowd had made an impact here - one visibly frustrated delegate wanted to amend the agenda to have Q & A or debate on the merits of impeachment immediately before the endorsement was to be conveyed to Rep. Colin Peterson. What is also clear is that Minneapolis impeachment/Jack supporters have not invested enough time in this district to help organize anything successful, there has not been a transfer of knowledge to newcomers or liberals as to how you organize to accomplish anything using Robert's Rules and the convention format, that delegate lists are available to any DFLer for the same price the campaigns get them, that they could organize a real challenge to Peterson or his agenda by phone in the days and weeks before the next convention.

Otherwise, the convention chairs end up marginalizing such spur of the moment challenges to their pre-arranged order of business, that they protect the incumbent despite his marginally Republican voting record from imagined threates like the NRSC "tracker" and his video camera, and other dragons. That is what's the matter with CD 7 - a bigger problem than Kansas.

In Bemidji

2008-05-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

I am in Bemidji, after dropping by the DFL's 7th Congressional District convention in Alexandria. My mom is moving back here, but I will be moving into cheap sober housing in Minneapolis' Whittier neighborhood. Because I was enroute to the house on the lake with mom and a van full of her possessions, I decided not to stay, and have her be bored and impatient waiting, I didn't stick around to make a candidate appearance because my stump speech is only a minute and thirty seconds, and I would rather be in a real debate or forum.

Franken and staff seem to prefer to avoid the question and answer format, especially questions direct from the floor, because they imagine Franken will get tripped up and will be caught on video by the NRSC "tracker" that comes to all our conventions. I have no need to wait hours to give a short, canned speech and not have the opportunity to display the full passion of my youthfulness next to these aging baby boomers.

In Alexandria, Charley Underwood encouraged me to get over Christine, as my depression and fixation is ruining an otheerwise good blog, and "life will be more interesting" when I get over her. I told him about my ongoing difficulties in identifying new goals, but that seeing "Body of War" last night at the Lagoon reminded me of the value and necessity of our pro-peace, anti-Iraq war activism. I was willing to give a lot of that up for a comfortable life with a retiring, book loving, art and theatre geek, and I am not sure I have forgiven myself for succumbing to temptation, losing the better part of a year but gaining a neighborhood and regaining my aesthetic.

The house is always a little hard for me to handle - my library and my clutter remind me of a thousand possible futures never fully explored, my collection of Burmese language materials and manuals to the flora of New Guinea and Sumatra, the ugly punk rock tattoo flashbooks that I keep throwing away because of the wasted years spent on the mother of my hateful children. Acres of programming books and aging computer hardware. Dust, especially book dust, triggers my allergies and tears eventually follow. I wander about my miniature botanical garden in the yard and old pasture, and miss the sweet innocent days after 9/11 when I returned to the forest and field, quit civilization and worked out protocols for seed collection, cleaning and germination of a hundred wild plants.

It is still too early to wade out into the cold water and cast into the reeds for largemouth bass, too easy to provoke on their spawning beds. The past and hopes for the future crush in on me and asphyxiate my mind, anxiety sucks up mental and emotional energy, and I desperately want to leap ahead into some possible future where after years among the tribes that tattoo with cobra venoms, I have come back to the West with strange new wealth, powerful animal magnetism and fame among that set that subscribes to Outside, National Geographic, Smithsonian and Hustler magazines, and she has taken me back with the express hope that I will occasionally bring home women for us to share...

Bemidji is still slow on and early weekend night, the debauchery of languid summer nights is months off, we wait on the arrival of language camp instructors, sumer stock players, bored divorcees on long road trips from Chicago. Yet there is a rumor of a new place near Walker, in an old red barn, with a central dance floor on an elevated stage...

Eckhart Tolle and Neale Donald Walsch

2008-05-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

I have spent the afternoon searching google video, etc. for Eckhart Tolle and Neale Donald Walsch materials. Soon I have to start spending afternoons packing for the move to Bemidji for the summer, the first trailer load will go up on Friday or Saturday.

A year ago I was on the road back to Las Vegas and Los Angeles after spending Cinco de Mayo and the May Day parade with the Ponkey. I am still not able ascribe any meaning that I can put behind me about that relationship, I only know that she did not have patience with the depth in which I needed to explore materials on "The Secret" before putting them into practice to fix my unbalanced life. I dropped the fantastic role I was playing when she first met me - which was pretty wild, out to conquer the blogosphere, to end the war, to promote Page Morgan - to become a very domestic, comfort-seeking guy who loved making burritos and turkey pot pies but hated making money, and was at a loss too often in social situations outside of politics, and absorbed in this Law of Attraction mysticism.

I still need to find new worthwhile goals - being in a position to help conserve biodiversity is the best goal I can find to replace the simple goal I had to pick up after the end of this political season in June. My highest goal had been to be her companion and inspire her to live bigger dreams, but my wild talk or something...

Anyway, here is a Neale Donald Walsh clip from google video:

Burma or Aceh

2008-05-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have a couple things to do before I could leave - renew a passport and get some dental work done - but I am thinking about volunteering in Burma (I have wanted to learn Burmese for years) or returning to my project in Aceh. I will follow the path of least resistance in deciding my destination. In any case I may not leave until after the State DFL convention in June and after a new passport arrives. I have misplaced my outdated passport - searching for it is taking time away from packing to move back to Bemidji for the summer.

A little sad today

2008-05-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

I am a little sad today that Christine wasn't able to see my success yesterday in a side by side short speech + Q & A session with Al Franken and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. Out on the desk next to the computer I had notes for a mailing that I wanted to put out in early January that she had commented on and promised to type up for me at work. It is one of the last artifacts from our relationship that remains, and I finally summoned up enough courage to stuff it into the duffel bag that contains all of my reminiscences about her.

A few weeks ago I was driving through Grand Rapids and I stopped to politic a bit in Brewed Awakenings. There were a couple of older guys talking about the business of writing, and I told them a bit about how I was skipping the 4th CD convention to take a writing class at The Loft. Eventually the story about how the last time I had politicked in Grand Rapids Kucinich dropped out of the race and Christine broke up with me. I said that I had done a bad job at the relationship and at the Kucinicgh thing and if I could do it over I would just choose one thing and do it well. They had some sympathy but pointed out while there were plenty of fish in the see, there is only one Kucinich.

The responses to my somewhat Kucinichy policies during the 'debate' showed me that my time was not wasted, especially in the Northwoods. While I wish we had resources back in the fall of 2007 to do phone banks, buy call lists and arrange a visit by Congressman Kucinich, people in Duluth and the Range are aware of the true history of this last year, that the impeachment effort targeting Cheney may have slowed the rush to war with Iran, etc.

So I am sad that I didn't have Christine's support in doing everything that I have done, but I am glad that I have done it, and maybe I should just be hopeful that the next Erica Campbell, Sasha Grey or Page Morgan could grok our politics and would stick around longer...

Dissolving the Pain-Body

2008-04-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Eckhart Tolle's book has a useful term, "pain-body", that I think perfectly describes the wave of emotion that creeps up on me and takes over. Today it was less successful, I was able to watch it and find it interesting, not overwhelming, when it hit grocery shopping. I often am loneliest while grocery shopping, now that I am not shopping to produce a menu for two.

I am not going to date anyone who hasn't read this book, isn't willing to read it, isn't taking yoga classes or trying to connect with their higher selves and be more peaceful. The Ponkey wanted drama, towards the end, to replace the waning, early rush of initial love and "bondy chemicals", to feed the addictive-relationship pain-body, and she complained that I would not fight her, would not call her a bitch, etc. I am pretty serious about trying to be a peaceful person.

The girl that I have seen, on and off since Ponkey threw me out after during her mom's visit, that girl and I are over - since it is very clear she is not willing to do this work and examine herself, or be patient and faithful.

The pain I felt a year ago vs. the pain I know today

2008-04-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

A year ago, driving around Nevada, I felt a different sort of pain than I feel now. I felt separated from my fellow humans, definitely separate from any kind of creator or higher power, enthralled at times with my ego and cleverness at the politics I was engaged in, wrapped up in high expectations, somewhat suicidal in my willingness to abstain from the economic activity that I saw as sustaining the war machine. Only an obligation to meet the trust my mom had put in me in lending me the minivan for my trip to do politicking in the early state kept me from sliding into some self destructive trap or starving myself on purpose in the desert.

I totally had no connection to the radical spiritual ideas of Dennis Kucinich, the "we are all one" vision, but his votes on war and peace issues made him the one candidate deserving my early enthusiasm.

I had a crazy courage, imagining that my life was already somehow forfeit, that the election was an existential crisis, that this was the last shot for defending freedom in any acceptable future. Evil was real, and good people were trying hard, lighting candles in the darkness, and I was teaching a few people about candles in the form of homemade political lit pieces, blogs, mass emailing. I was tired, and exhausting myself. I was usually poor, spending $4-5 a day, living on green tea, graham crackers and power bars, gas tank usually running on empty. During the period I was operating completely out of the van, parked in casino ramps for the shade, I had no way to print handbills but made crazy pro-impeachment signs with large tag board, and explored promoting strip clubs as a way to make a little money to eventually dig into Las Vegas, or afford to get out. I washed in casino restrooms, or drove out to a truckstop with a shower north of town. I loved the crowds. I was actually happy most of the time. I felt pain about the impact of my activism, but I figured that while I was there we really clued in at least 10,000 people, that articles of impeachment had been filed against Dick Cheney. The liberation of human potential was something that could be accomplished politically, that there was a political way to end the war in Iraq and regain face for America.

Today I have a sense that there is something to the "we are all one" idea. I think that idea is best expressed in the writings of Neale Donald Walsh's "Conversations with God" series. I am just starting Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now". I am most often hurt by self criticism - that I was wrong about Kucinich, or The Ponkey - and by an awareness of the lack of a good opportunity to beam love at some deserving fellow human as she scrambles around getting ready for work in the morning.

Had I known that The Ponkey was about to leave me, I would have gone back to Nevada for the January 19th primary, and maybe Kucinich would have done better. Instead I figured my love for her was a more permanent thing than political opportunity, and we were headed to Dubuque to stay in a bed and breakfast and to attend a family wedding. That caused conflicts for The Ponkey that I am not privy to and cannot fairly relate. We didn't go. Kucinich didn't fair well.

Lost opportunity. Lost love. An absence of any plan or motivation to move forward. I have to hope that there is something to just being. I was good at just being, just being in touch with my dreams and some of this material this fall and winter, taking afternoon naps before planning political outings or cooking dinner.

Having a real tough time

2008-04-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

I am having a really tough time, despite a few breakthroughs regarding communicating my experience in Aceh, or starting to effect U.S. policy towards Indonesia. Inability to do anything for Aceh and the failure of the U.S. peace movement to realize any success vis a vis Iraq after the supposedly successful 2006 democratic gains in Congress were the big causes of the depression and malaise I suffered from when I lived with The Ponkey. I still did everything I could, attended every DFL function, ever event on the peace calendar, tried to build support for Kucinich with striking AFSCME workers. I did too much, spent too much for my meager resources to allow comfortable living or to have any pocket change left for the last weeks of the month. I brought The Ponkey to many of these events, showed her the whole state, yet her harshest criticism of me and the time we spent together was, "what the fuck did you do while I was at work?". My DailyKos posts, recs and uprated comments did not make her more secure about meeting future mortgage payments or taking a Roman holiday.

I wonder if they did any good at all.

Anyway, the depression I am suffering now is a hundred times worse than what I normally suffer, I cry almost every day. I do want to die, I am tired of life, and I cannot find worthwhile goals unless I am convinced there is a path back into the sweetness I shared in caring for The Ponkey, the breakfast and driving her to work, the gChats, spending time together on the couch as much as the hot Seksi-on-Ponkey action.

At the same time I am glad for the break up, as I have been more effective at the DFL activities I have undertaken, been able to manage my paperwork and file taxes, to spend time with my desktop computer, all things that were impossible in that beautiful museum she made for herself out of her condo, in typical Virgo neat-freakishness.

Anyway, I cry a lot now. I read books that are supposed to help and I struggle to reconcile the calming "just be" message of the Neale Donald Walsch books I have picked up and the aggressive, goal setting spiritual materialism of The Secret and Jack Canfield's "the Success Principles".

The only reason I can come up with to be a conventional, well-dressed success is to have a shot at winning The Ponkey back. Apart from advocating for peace and traveling, I am having trouble envisioning my right-livelihood. I wish she could have seen that and appreciated it, and not measured me against her father or whatever. At least not without more discussion between the two of us, I am sure now that we could create shared goals, or take baby steps towards my employment as a Target-tron IT engineer (or maybe some sort of medical technician) if that is what she needed for financial stability while she took her time to grieve her losses and mistakes in life, too.

The girl that I have been seeing since the night I got tossed out after meeting The Ponkey's mom, that girl is confusing - screwing around a little on me (I have been absent/distant/busy) but also now wearing a 'wish bracelet' that is supposed to make me fall in love with her.

I just wish I could find someone who could love me back, and someone who could afford to help me follow through on what I started in Aceh.

MPR's 'In the Loop' Story Slam

2008-04-24T14:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote and read a short story about my experience in Aceh for MPR's 'In the Loop' Story Slam.

Here is how it begins, as I rewrite it without the 4 minute time constraint:

Panga was half nightmare and half paradise. A few tall coconut palms and two ancient mango trees provided a little shade, a relief from the parching heat of the sun. Around their trunks were a cluster of tents, a bunker fashioned from coconut palm logs, small buildings being built from scavenged sheets of corrugated tin and thin planks were beginning to take shape. The bunker was manned by a group of young Indonesian marines, or "Marinirs". A long green canvas tent, with crisp yellow letters that said "Departmen Sosial" was the largest of these structures that now stood over the ruins of the town, where 100% of the buildings had been shorn off of their foundations. The walls had smashed into millions of pieces of concrete that on average could be palmed in one hand. In between the concrete pads, tiled bathroom floors, and deep holes held open in the earth by conrete well rings several feet in diameter, there were tangled piles of clothing and hairbruhes, children's toys and flip-flop sandals, colorful plastic furnishings that typified the average Indonesian householder's sense of style and simple pride.

A small crowd formed daily to watch and wait for the arrival and departures of helicopters...

It is possible that my story will be picked to be broadcast on an upcoming "In the Loop". I'll link to it if it ends up on the web!

The theme was Achilles Heel, and it was hard to work that in in just 4 minutes, and I didn't get to tell the whole story about the Red Cross fiasco, or anything at all about the Samaritan's Purse mindfucks and dangerous lies of the housing program manager, who I was going to call "Jethro" in the story.

One year ago today: articles of impeachment vs. Cheney

2008-04-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

One year ago today Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment vs. Vice President Richard Cheney. I helped to hand out thousands of handbills announcing this move to tourists and others on the Las Vegas strip.

Hillary beats Barack in PA, yoga class, spiritual materialism

2008-04-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

While the official Pennsylvania election returns website is currently overwhelmed/unavailable, the Pittsburgh Channel posts that Hillary has beaten Barack 54% to 46% with 6657 out of 9268 Precincts Reporting.

I don't care so much. I spent much of the afternoon basking in the sun out in front of the Spyhouse reading Jack Canfield's 'The Success Principles', visualizing a world with a little more love and debating how much spiritual materialism I should engage in in any attempt to draw my Ponkey back to me. I checked out the house we had looked at together and noticed the Sotheby's sign had been removed. It was an obvious easy goal to buy that to impress her, once my book of short stories gets made into a smash hit movie. I put those silly fantasies away for Hatha Yoga class and meditation this evening, and asked some tough questions about spiritual materialism, initiation, the goal of true meditation.

Robert Young Pelton had this to say on his ComeBackAlive.com forum about my review of Morgan Spurlock's "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?"

sadly you are talking about a constructed reality aka "high concept"

Obviously he had no intention of finding or dealing with Bin Laden so he turned into a lame spoof of the U.S.s failed efforts to find bin laden. Thus you have to camp it up as much as possible and find a media friendly reason to fail instead of confirming the difficulty in finding OBL. So he uses cowardice which is why the movie falls flat.

The other example of this would he hey" What if Osama tries to find George Bush"? its an idea that pitches well but executes poorly. And we all have Michael Moore to thank for the high concept doco.

I am learning how to be my own witness in life, not being so attached and dependent on the idea that some girl out there, preferably a famous playboy model or hot celebrity has to accompany me on trips into the last remaining wild lands. I would still like to make a documentary about Aceh, rubber and forestry, the conflict and the tsunami, and if anyone is qualified to do that it is me, with two years of TV production classes and paid experience in my high school career, and my ten year fascination with the island of Sumatra, 'the land beneath the winds'.

Loft class was great

2008-04-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

I skipped the 4th Congressional Distict DFL convention today to take a class at the Loft Literary Center, "Making Good Writing Great" taught by John Lehman. My writing, and my desire to write about my life is keeping me alive, while my frustration with and involvement politics, on the other hand, is killing me and helped destroy the sweetest relationship I have ever had in my adult life. I am not quitting the senate race, but I took a time out to try to develop my writing skills and maybe eventually this blog will be a little more compelling.

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

2008-04-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

I saw the first showing today of Morgan Spurlock's "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?" at the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. The film makes good use of video game style avatars of Osama dancing and battling an avatar of the documentarian in the intro - Osama bin Laden has become a pop culture icon in the Western and Islamic worlds alike. The question of 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?' is a troubling one that all of the resources of the U.S. military and Western intelligence agencies have been unable or unwilling to answer for more than a decade.

Spurlock's film is not a serious attempt to uncover the location of bin Laden. He turns back, at the end, from the crossing into the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, as he is an expectant father and he says the risk is not worth it. Nevertheless, the journey is worthwhile if you need a reminder of the common humanity of Arabs and Americans, and a reminder that Afghanistan, despite the well publicized pledges of foreign aid, is desperately poor, an environmentally degraded landscape with little water.

Morgan Spurlock travels with good preparation, yet great trepidation, to Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and starts up a thousand silly conversations, as well as a few substantive ones, with Arabs, Israelis and the Pashtu tribesmen of Afghanistan/Pakistan.

There is no questioning whatsoever from Spurlock of the frame of the Neocon engineers of the Global War on Terror that al-Qaida cells exist in the vast majority of countries worldwide.

The film ends with the water-birth of a child that Spurlock had neglected in utero while he traipsed across foreign desert in his sometimes self-glorifying, somewhat self-deprecating film. The film was a great way to kill some time, but I would steer seekers of a real solution to the East vs. West conflict to other materials, like Omar Nasiri's book 'Inside the Jihad' or John Perkins' book 'The Secret History of American Empire'.

Returned earrings

2008-04-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

I returned two pair of earrings I bought her and hoped to give her last time I was here in Bemidji. Now there are no artifacts of my sentiments. There are only addresses I have to avoid. As/if/when I come to the end of my grief, it will be as if she never existed...

On the way up I found a strange and good audio book, Shamanic Navigation by John Perkins, who also wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman and what I was listening last time I came up this way, The Secret History of American Empire, which I did give to her, with $50 cash, the night before she had me arrested. The point of that gift was to explain what happened in Aceh, and to show thee were some good Catholics working in Indonesia on social justice issues, and that our job, if we want to save the world, is to change our dream in the Western, modern world.

I will eventually forget The Ponkey and the last overly cautious year because at some point I will be busy again, have to learn a new language and travel, and she really wasn't up to that sort of challenge. Hopefully I will meet someone who is, but still embodies that kind of sweetness, love and interlocking of souls/intellects that I think I had with her.

filed my taxes

2008-04-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

I filed taxes today, handing off my envelope to a US Postal Service employee from my car window after making it through a long line to the downtown post office next to the river. There was some Ron Paul supporter passing out leaflets - I didn't take one from him but I heard his spiel about the Federal Reserve and tuned out. That's not my kind of tax protest.

My kind of tax protest is rejecting the whole of the war economy - at least to the extent that is possible - reducing my obligation to pay taxes by reducing my income and devoting myself fully to action and words that might end the war. Doing more with less - a radical ephemeralization.

The total amount of income I earned last year was $1115.55, plus $8000 or so unearned from Social Security Disability. I was too busy and frantic this last year to keep good receipts so my business income did not zero out and I owe $150 or so in self employment taxes. By eschewing too many meals out, not buying new clothes and general being frugal, I managed to do a lot more this last year on a lot less money than I was used to in the good old pre-war days, when flipping bits and pushing packets allowed me to live in San Francisco and to buy too many books.

My total contribution to the DFL party and parallel organizations in 2007 exceeded $800 and I still managed to buy groceries and contribute a little money to the household when I was with The Ponkey, spend two months campaigning in Nevada and California, and I was treated a little by friends to a few nights couch tripping in a marquee suite at the MGM. I also slept in my van for a week lobbying on behal;f of a Dept of Peace in Washington , D.C.

If everyone who was against the war would consume less, share more and reduce their participation/earned income and thus their tax contribution to the war economy things would change a lot faster. At least consider the General Strike for Peace/Iraq Moratorium!

The Century of the Self

2008-04-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

Links to the Century of the Self. Google video/FreeDocumentaries.org were too slow, so I am downloading the whole thing and might write a review.

Seth Godin writes about marketers' (and lobbyists') responsibility:

Marketing works.

Advertising and promotion and lobbying cost money. And organizations pay for it because, by and large, it works. Not all the time, and rarely as big as people hope, but sure, you can influence the public by spending money.

Which leads to the key question: are you responsible for what you market?

Some people will tell you that the market decides. They’ll remind you that most consumers are adults, spending their own resources and doing it freely. That people have a right to buy what they want, even if what they want isn’t good for them (right now, or in the long run). That’s what living in a free country is all about, apparently. Buy what you want.

But wait.

I thought we agreed that marketing works.

If marketing works, it means that free choice isn’t quite so free. It means that marketers get to influence and amplify desires. The number of SUVs sold in the United States is a bazillion times bigger than it was in 1962. Is that because people suddenly want them, or is it because car marketers built them and marketed them?

Cigarette consumption is way down. Is that because people suddenly don’t want them any more, or is it because advertising opportunities are limited?

Others will tell you that if it’s legal, it’s fair game. If it’s legal for Edelman to post a blog called Working Families for Wal-Mart (when it’s really working Edelman employees for Wal-Mart), then they have every right to do so. In fact, they have an obligation to their shareholders to do so. Or so they say.

I believe that every criminal, no matter how heinous the crime, deserves an attorney. I don't believe that every product and every organization and every politician deserves world-class marketing or PR.

A neighbor was complaining that the baseball field in my town needs upkeep, and wonders why we don’t go ahead and take $100,000 from Pepsi for sponsorship of the field and a long-term contract to put vending machines on site. It doesn’t matter to him that obesity and heart disease are the number one preventable cause of death. He says that it’s a personal choice, and if we can get the money, we should. [Read More at Seth Godin's blog]

21 - Visions of Las Vegas

2008-04-07T17:57:00.000-07:00

I just returned from seeing "21" a second time at the Southdale AMC theater. The movie is based on the book, "Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions", by Ben Mizrich, which I haven't read.

I really enjoy the montage sequences of Las Vegas, which was home to me for two months early last year, and there is a scene that I can tell was probably shot while I was there (from the Prince symbol on the side of the Rio).

I don't gamble. I do know the extent to which the application of mathematics to winning games of chance has contributed to further development of math - as does everyone who has taken a college-level math class. I was never good at math - because I lacked discipline and encouragement in it after my father died - and also because I could do too much of it my head and sometimes was at a loss for how to show the work in the right format. I developed the same math phobia nearly everyone else has.

My father good at math and bad at spelling. I became freakishly good with words and spelling and grammar precisely because my father had so much trouble with it that he called out for spelling help while working on his psychological evaluations so often and me and my sister would race through the 'Misspeller's dictionery' or other dictionaries to help him out. I won a fifth grade spelling bee with the word "PSYCHOLOGIST" and "RHUBARB" some of the other finalists complained without any satisfaction. Unlike the students in the film I am better with languages and logic than numbers.

One of the odd student jobs I had was working with digital video, and I am familiar with some of the digital video protocols and applications in used and development for loss prevention in Vegas and other places, though I worked on it for microscopy, and was stymied on using it on the adult internet, unnecessarily, by the Acacia/DMT patent enforcement scare.

One odd thing I caught in the second viewing was the placement of a couple SEIU logos on an extra in the Chinese New Year sequence. Other than that, it was a good way to blot out my consciousness for a couple hours after an emotionally stressful day. Counter to real world statistics, the smart kid wins in the end.

While I don't know anything about card games, if I could put together a cohesive team of bloggers, web designers, videographers and adult talent, I could bring them to a party in Vegas better than "21"...