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I shouldn't be surprised that the Bears stink; I mean they started out as Cubs.
The only way I know there's a change of season in Los Angeles is by the change of drinks at Starbucks.
Among their many painfully annoying personality traits, the Euro-trash are pathetically sensitive.
Some people don't mind being proposed to in a cemetery
Twilight a story about blood sucking vampires is really about love. A book I never understood, I now do, blood sucking is metaphor for love: astute authorial comment from every angle.
In Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf they speak English. Don't order that grande bull shit.
If Milton Bradley still has a job than the economy has to be trending up.
The 100% Pinots from New Zealand are quite good.
In California and Massachusetts it is against the law to mount devices with a suction cup on a windshield.
If you are doing an experiment and post a personal ad on Craigslist there are only two types of people who will respond: hookers and people letting you know only hookers reply to craigslist personal ad but if you go to their sight you can meet women who aren't hookers.
Everyone looks familiar in California. Sometimes Californians look like people I once knew. From other days. Far from here. Their faces form over the faces of random people. Years ago on I met up with a bestfriend knowing our days living close by one another were coming to an end. She had just returned from Venezuela and we were celebrating her return and my finishing of my Master's comprhensive exam. At the second bar S and I visit, the waitress is someone who looks familiar, someone from my present. It’s as if we are on the Se life schedule. With my accomplice by my side, I decide to tell the waitress—as she brings my credit card and receipt—you know you look familiar. I wait for the brush off, the fake nice, the apology: sorry you don’t look familiar to me. Not so. I am familiar to her under the vomit orange lighting in the second bar we visit. The waitress sits down in the nearly empty space. Here patrons scatter when the sun goes down. There’s an effort to find out how we know each other. I ask do you live in an apartment building? Where did you go to University? She answers no, and I haven’t gone yet. She asks, did you go to high school here? I laugh, shake my head and mouth no. And then out of nowhere a twenty-something, baby faced boy comes up to me and asks: “What kind of car do you drive?” A sniper blasting away at me. This is a trigger and I recover from the confusion to find my speaker’s corner, my box, “I am a walker. I am a believer in public transportation.” I don’t end there, because I have to acknowledge compassion, mention a third world country. S wiggles her toes, and I’m waving my arms while saying, “What is it with Californians, with your coke like addiction to need this carnival of materialism?” I can no longer tell people I’m in exile. I must say displaced. In exile, you assume the customs of the natives, you become a native. S will quote at some point: “We’re all displaced.” Baby face is gone, quicker and with more mystery than when he entered. “You’re a jerk,” the waitress says as she walks away, her hair swinging. I throw out my arms, “That might very well be the case, but let’s still try and figure out how we know each other.” I turn to S and dramatize the question: “What happened here?” I tip her--to be the bigger person--and we leave. Walking down the sidewalk side by side, we notice, two places down from the bar. baby face is leaning against a window of a seafood restaurant. I stop. S stops two steps ahead of me. “Why would you possibly want to know what kind of car I drive?” I ask standing directly in front of him--mere inches away. “I’m the valet here. Some guy just gave me his keys and walked off. The restaurant is closed. I want to give him his keys so I can leave. He had two girls with him, and you look like him.” “But I only have one girl.” “I thought the other one was in the bathroom.” He assesses whereabouts and similar features, but he can’t start by saying, I’m the valet down the street did you leave your car with me. “What kind of car is it?” “It’s a BMW.” “You think I am the type of person who would drive a BMW?” Without even taking a second to think the valet says, “Yeah.” It’s time I tell him the car I drive, the cars my family always drive: American made cars, by American made people. S tugs at my elbow sensing that I’m beginning to find my speaker’s corner, my box. I do take a moment to think and then accept her advice and I say, “I hope you find him soon.” On the way to my studio, S might tell me that out here she feels ugly and overweight. I think about the beautiful people, how S destroyed one, how the waitress is beautiful, the people we pass on the boardwalk are beautiful. Later, S will ask a German if she thinks I’m cute. The girl, perhaps, will snort, and then respond as if she hasn’t ever laid eyes on my face. During the walk back from the margarita happy hour, before we stop off at the second bar, I ask S if that solider is right: is home merely a place where you get your mail? She says I don’t know, hands me a cigar from Venezuela, sold to her by a man who claimed they were rolled off the backs of Columbian whores. Can I get an STD by putting my lips on the leaves? She fists her cigar. I take a few puffs and worry this will make me throw up. I ask her if in those jungles she traversed over the summer, could someone find a cure for cynicism. Somewhere we will find swings on the beach, and we won’t put a lot of air between our feet and the ground. S has to know she’s not coming back. At my apartment building, we meet a German who snorts and rolls around on the floor like an electrocuted cockroach. In her one bedroom apartment, she pours something green and something clear into pint glasses. On the floor, S will pretend she’s lying in a bed of bread. We take two short sips, and then down our glasses to see who can finish first. The German is prompt with refills. Before the German and S get high together, she has to tell us she enjoys masturbating, and her last relationship just couldn’t go on any longer. It will be hours before S uses the bathroom. She claims she conditioned her bladder in Venezuela. I know she can’t pee if someone can hear. The fan in my bathroom is broken. Fourteen more times during the night I ask, “How do I know that waitress?” S has left. She’s never coming back. Each day I need to go on three hour walks. I walk past the valet: usually we say hello. The snorting German and I will stand next to our cars in our building’s underground parking structure, and we’ll together opt out on saying hello. I’ll get my credit card bill: the waitress didn’t add the tip. I could pretend she felt bad for calling me a jerk. I could pretend it doesn’t bother me I don’t know why she’s familiar.
How can we cope with goodbyes clouded by uncertainty? When I finally made good friends, I never thought they would chart paths to all corners of the world. So now they have become those who I see when I see. I now have to adjust to having best friends who I see then say goodbye, not knowing if the next time I see them will be six months, a year, five years from now or never again. How do we persuade ourselves we're ok with it all? Now I deal with distance and speed, the impossibility to de-privileging time, and a future that isn't infinitely inviting.
I have to frame my relationships by believing in chance and coincidence, and then cling to a visit of one week or two or even an afternoon or dinner. You can't grow with those people anymore. They simply become vacation destinations. And there, you aren't in a limbo land, you aren't occupying that space so towards the end of the week you try to achieve stillness. But they leave and the unreasonable behavior begins--all these strangers that presently surround you look so familiar.
I say goodbye and they go back to a home so many miles away. The older you get the longer the time is between meet ups, and then it becomes harder to fall back into step. You have been creating a life without them but a life that should have them as an integral part. These goodbye friendships offer no architecture of reassurance, but rather a concrete social geography that forces me to navigate the social and cultural mazes of this modern experience.
The new neighbors built a fence. No one in the neighborhood has one. Everyone has open, one and a half acre lots. My parents' house was one of the first to be built twenty-six years ago. And for twenty-six years there has never been a fence. As I grew up, I watched all these homes pop up around me, even one summer I listened to high powered saws cut down the forest behind my house to put up flimsy, bland homes (being built in the city of Waukegan.) But never have I seen a fence in our subdivision: Equestrian Oaks. Here animals once galloped, trotted freely across lawns.
I didn't grow up under confinement and defined boundaries, territories, but when I moved away, life has imposed those distinct boundaries on me and they have been hard to accept. Many people off of late have said that I often impose strict boundaries. Perhaps borders have merged into my life more than I thought. Living for so long within an open space has led to my strong case of claustrophobia. I have had panic attacks in crowded spaces and small spaces or spaces without windows. It turns me into a meek monster. And now my urban environment has nothing but strict definition: painted lines for parking spots, numbered spaces in the spot, walls of your apartment, a balcony with walls, our cars in traffic, a towel on the beach, and new airplanes with fixed arm rests. Today, I don't breathe as easily, live without anxiety, and above all, I jump out of my skin by sudden loud noises or sudden movements.
So the new neighbor needed a fence. I could analyze the why: hiding his shortcomings, his mother didn't love him enough, father didn't encourage him, or he simply has a selfish need to proclaim one's property, monetary success.
A fence can be selfish.
A fence can be harmful.
Throughout my years at Chapman University I would walk by a piece of the Berlin wall that had been pilfered or acquired—depends on how one looks at the situation. Under the tranquil Orange County sun, in between the English and Film buildings, stands a confused piece of communist reminisce, repression and oppression. The wall, graffiti included, is surrounded by well kept shrubs and flowers and even a moat. The rectangle-ish piece has served as a reminder. Simply. Of history. But now. Well. It's exactly a piece of a whole. It no longer can define, prevent and physically inhibit anyone or anything. At one time this wall fostered tyranny and inhibited effective political activism (or did it do the complete opposite). Has history, time told us yet? But can't this single piece be a reminder that walls can be broken, that they need to be destroyed?
But the neighbor didn't build a wall, he built a fence. Is there much of a difference? Can a fence and a wall be synonymous? I once thought I knew the answer. I would quote Ariel Sharon: "You know who built the fence? Terror built the fence." Then I'd ask others, "As Americans how do we feel about such a statement?" While they pondered this question, I would start my lecture: "We should first address Sharon's diction. Are they building, a fence or a wall? What do we, as it is said as Americans, think of when we think of a fence? A fence: white picket fence—the American Dream. So many Americans would hear this statement and not take that harsh of a connotation. What do Berliners think of when they hear the word fence? But what reaction would you get from a Berliner if you said wall? I see a fence as personal space, something with a small swinging door and a reachable latch. And a wall I see as shutting out, a division: cement in which no swinging door allows people to go through. And then the question we should truly ask: what's its intended purpose?"
These statements were made many years ago, under a false ideal and the auspice that something Tom Sawyer painted couldn't be all bad. And now. Wall or fence. They do the same damn thing. Deter.
These oppressive barriers aren't just in Europe or the Mid-East. So many people want to build a fence on our Southern border. As clichéd as it sounds, is a large fence on our border in alliance the principles that our country was founded on, the principles that drove the creation of the Constitution? Like my family's neighbor, the fence at the Mexican border is unnecessary. The fact that cannot escape the whole is that if we forgive Mexico's debts they could have a fighting chance, provide the road to a stabilized, income driven infrastructure. There wouldn't be this mass need, mass exodus to come to the U.S. We would then not need a fence. Canada is the model. The proof. We don't need a fence to the North.
In Los Angeles, they don't even use the word fence or wall. In fact the "urban planners" simply blocked-in the poor, and characteristically violent neighborhoods. Draw a line for all the freeways of Los Angeles County. Then highlight the less desirable areas to live and you will see quite a portrait. The scary-genius is that they used something so useful that the barrier would never be destroyed.
People could argue, of course, that this is a digression from the situation on Dan Patch in the subdivision of Equestrian Oaks, because this fence has nothing to do with debts or terrorism. So perhaps this is unfortunately a simple case of someone stomping their foot and blurting out: "I want a defined space. I need to show and tell what is exactly mine." With the advent of the electric, invisible fence there is absolutely no need for a fence in an open space, in a landscape filled with homes that have all left the land undefined.
Green Oaks, as I wrote in an earlier blog, is very environmentally conscious, especially with their forceful blocking of mass development. This unnecessary fence is needed when you live within a mass development project. G.O. has been a little green utopia amid urban sprawl that was created all around the town. Now. With this fence. There is rural re-organization. G.O. has never been, to me, part of that cultural pattern, with rapidly transmuting rules and ubiquitous boundaries.
In G.O. the created and reaffirmed aesthetic over time is the only boundary for the town. So I am left with bitterness and anger, and not just for the neighbor but for my elected official as well. Shame on you Mayor Wysocki for not stopping this. The city of broad shoulders has always loomed large over our tiny town, and the Daleys should have served as a model for you. Mayor Wysocki have you learned nothing from Richard M. Daley's three decades and counting as mayor of Chicago? Political muscle—that is what I grew up with, grew up under. You should have enacted an ordinance stating that properties in Equestrian Oaks cannot put up a fence because it is harmful to wildlife. Done.
It is high time we all practice creative voodoo logic.
I started my—Adam Corrola-like--rant over San Francisco one Saturday afternoon at the faux-playground, the haven for people watching in Orange County with Tricky Gina…
Yes I could start with the easy topics.
How annoying it is to pick up a rental car at the airport
How the BART is poorly designed but everybody brags about it as if it is the world's foremost public transit system
How too many people hold hands
How much fun it is for them to take on topics like outlawing bottled water and legalizing prostitution.
But these are periphery issues to why I start a conversation, "The problem with San Francisco is…"
Some argue that the dot.com boom ruined the city. When the dot.com burst, why then didn't the city go back to the supposed Utopia people claim it to be? Or for those who thought the dot.com had no effect and the city is as great as ever--I'll still say: "The problem with San Francisco is…"
There is a superficial, easy to categorize fight against homelessness in SF. Unfortunately they don't tackle the needed fight against poverty. How can you give basically carte blanche to developers, to provide so called urban renewal? It is simple to say: "End homelessness." Do nothing against panhandling, believe that by mere definition a home makes someone no longer homeless, or feeling intellectual because you admit and understand that the root problem is often a need to give proper treatment, to recognize that many homeless are mentally ill. Ah but that doesn't require complexities. What about those who are barely making it, squatters, those living way below the poverty line? What do you do about them? Where are the people on the corner with laminated name tags helping them out? The ones who have nuanced problems. See poverty takes a whole city and well for SFers that's too much.
There are way too many yuppies and too many trust-fund hipsters (well I guess when you say hipster it is synonmous with trust-fund.)
Moving on...
Having the Red A—for Academy of the Art--on buildings all over downtown--doesn't make your city an art mecca. I mean come on --an open door policy. Didn't that lead to reality stars from the hills attending the school? Again moving on.
There is a culture of architecture--I will admit-- but if you live in San Francisco and call yourself cultured you might as well were a t-shirt that says, "I generally kid myself."
The fact that this so-called evolved "city" had to have a political group called "gay shame" which was a reaction to the corporate dominance of so-called "gay-pride." The creator Matt Bernstein Sycamore brought it to San Francisco because he saw a need to "create a space where people can celebrate their differences rather than rallying around the Pride for assimilation."
Oh. And your healthcare tax in restaurants. Misguided. Misappropriated. Don't get me wrong I believe in universal healthcare, I would like to see a Canadian and British system here in the states. (side note: How ridiculous is the argument do you want the same people who control and set up the DMV also setting up and controlling health care? But I digress…) But San Fran, if you are going to make restaurants do this it should fall to the owners to foot the bill. I know you've made the ma and pop argument but there are ways around this—and your councilmen knew this but who gave them the donation? Where's your pristine ideology now?
There are too many UC Santa Barbara alumni who, after graduation, move to the city and act as if it is the island of Manhattan West—apparently they didn't learn in school that it's a bloody peninsula. This overwhelming exodus from SB to SF is like the overwhelming college student's study abroad exodus to FLORENCE. The ubiquitous presence of UCSBers is one reason why SF will always be virtual urbanism, a tourist site with set pieces.
Above all, San Francisco makes me hate calling myself a socialist or a liberal for that matter. Let's be honest, the houses on the hill, the "lofts," the dot.com boom and even with the eventual bust it is a city of nothing but Elitist liberalism, the cool to be liberal, the liberal of convenience. Your answer to Utopia governing is Willie Brown and Newsom? Are you kidding me? You are as hypocritical as Laurie David --who has more than one house and flies private jets. Although I have to give her credit she did verbally bitch slap Karl Rove. Neverthless. Again, the word hypocrisy always comes to mind when I have to witness your nose up in the air attitude and we are better than everyone else because we are so high minded and 'utopiac' thinking…
A bomb ripped through the Spanish resort island Mallorca during the first week of August (2009): ETA, the Basque separatist group claimed responsibility. Since 1968 the ETA has killed 825 people.
Before 9-11 it was all about the three letter groups. But the three letter groups were national and not global and the US had no three letter group terrorizing within its borders. There have been other incidents, I'm sure. But the motive and predetermined location of the ETA brought me back to the spring of 2001.
The one and only sleeper train car I have been in held three bunks on each side and the beds were so close together I couldn't sit up. After too many hours of being confined to a coffin-like space, I was excited to depart the night train at a station near the France-Spain border. The station was too old and neglected to have a platform, so I sat down on a bench between tracks and placed my bag--larger than a bag a backpacker would use, smaller than the European carry all--on the gravel. It was colder than I expected and as usual my clothes didn't keep me warm in Europe. I was intimidated by the surrounding mountains, which subsequently gave me tunnel vision preventing me from seeing all the other people scattered about the open station.
The train for Barcelona slowly moved into the station, and I was actually concerned if the tracks would be able to handle the weight of the cars. When I got on the train, I had to take my right hand and place it underneath the bag so I could lift it up onto the shelf above my seat in the second to the last row. After ten minutes, already feeling too confined, I began to wonder how long the train would wait at the station. I opened up my book but quickly snapped it shut. I needed to stay awake so I stared off into the empty car. Five minutes passed, and at the front entrance of the car, the first passenger entered the train. The man took his bag, which was smaller than a bag a backpacker would use, and easily put it on the above shelf. The man's face was hiding behind his dark shaggy hair. The man looked down the car, without making eye contact with me, and sat two rows ahead of his bag. On the continent, I was nervous to even have his bag above him. As I tried to decipher why this native was letting his guard down, the shaggy haired man got up and walked through the exit and into the next car without turning around. The only thing I could look at was his dark jacket that came down below the back pocket of his slate trousers. The man occupied the first row window seat. I looked back at the bag. I had read in the Independent two days before I left for the Continent from England that the Basque Separatist movement had been increasingly more vocal with threats and more violent with each attack: "ETA has conducted a campaign of violence." It had been five months since the ETA stopped upholding their end of the cease fire. When the shaggy haired man walked away from his bag, my nerves were tortured. Nobody else was around to be a witness, and I realized the safety of others befell on my shoulders. I leaned back in my chair and reasoned that if the man planned to cause harm he would've dropped off the bag and got off the train; yet, there was the term suicide bomber. There was sweat under my legs and lower back. If it was a suicide bomber, I considered, the man would've kept the bag on him to make sure everything went accordingly. But then I thought maybe the man was planning on getting off the train and was being patient to avoid drawing attention. I got up and put his hand on his own bag and looked at the exit. The stairs were blocked by an elderly couple struggling to get on the train. I took my hand off the bag, and wondered, perhaps, was the man performing a natural thing, a culture thing? I was petrified of overreacting. I didn't want to get off the train and try to figure out in a foreign language how to re-route my travel plans: what if that was the only train that day? I sat back down, but kept my eyes on the front row of the next car. The elderly couple sat down two rows ahead of me, and within seconds the train moved away as slowly as it arrived.
At the next station the cavalry had arrived, and I sat up in his seat. Two detectives in plain clothes, with a badge and a holstered gun on their belt, entered through the back entrance of my car. They were like casual businessmen as they each put an elbow on top of a seat and leaned. The detectives were too calm for my standards. It was as if they were there for no other purpose than to use the train for transportation. I flicked his head and shot with his eyes: there he is go get him. One of the officers was standing over me, and I wanted to tug at his jacket like a one year old and plead distress by grunting out Morse code. But I was mute. It was as if moments before the officers stepped onto the train a little man had cut out my tongue with a plastic knife. The officers jostled with the movement of the train as they walked into the next car.
"Bulls-eye," I muttered.
The two officers stopped in the middle of the car and questioned two men sitting together. Each officer grabbed a passport, scanned it, and then tag teamed a round of questions. I practically fell into the aisle trying to watch. I got out of my seat then quickly grabbed a part of the metal shelf. As I went to make his first step to the other car, I couldn't move as my mind rattled off a litany of possibilities: I could shove the bag out of the window, but someone else could still stumble upon the bag, it would still be dangerous, it could burst on impact, and the blow could still harm the train, consequently, I realized that tossing something out in the middle of nowhere didn't stop danger, what if I got accused of owning the bag, I shouldn't attract attention, people were always saying to me, keep a low profile, don't attract attention, what if it wasn't a bomb, what if it was a hand off, and the bag was filled with drugs, I was well aware American Embassies didn't help people arrested and accused of drug possession, and above all drug trafficking, I didn't do drugs so those warnings never worried me, I tried pot once, but I didn't like it all that much, either way this wasn't my business, this wasn't my country.
I wanted someone else to have noticed, wanted someone else to help the officers. As a matter of fact, I thought it would be easier if someone else spoke up, because everyone knew I was linguistically ignorant in Spain. No, I told myself, none of it mattered: the bag was merely cultural. I knew Americans overreacted in regards to petty theft on the Continent: "ETA has conducted a campaign of violence." The train pulled away from the next station, and standing on the platform were the two detectives.
As I wondered how many more stops I would have to endure my mind wandered: It was thirty-two years of armed struggle which got very little press in the United States; why then did he have to be a part of something that erupted before he was born? If the majority of Spaniards, including the majority of Spain's Basque populace, had no tolerance for continued ETA violence, then as a human I should have no tolerance. I told myself that I didn't know who the harasser was anymore. But that was one of those lies, one of those blurbs I could tell myself before I went to bed at night.
The Barcelona stop was underground. By the time the train arrived at its destination all the seats in the car were occupied. I got up before the train came to a complete stop and scanned all the faces. After I got off the train, I stood on the platform searching for the dark shaggy haired man's stop but there were just too many faces. I let my bag fall to the ground and sat on it: "ETA has conducted a campaign of violence."
For a couple days in Barcelona, I desired to be aware of any news that might remotely deal with either bags or trains: there were only articles on O.P.E.C., the soon to be E.U., flyovers, and editorials on football matches. Before I moved on to my next destination, I booked tickets for air flights and ignored my train reservations and my Eu-rail pass. Days later I stood, half-drunk on chilled Bordeaux, a southern French sunset behind me, in front of the television in my hotel room watching the BBC report that a bomb blew up a Royal Mail Carrier truck near Paddington Tube station: IRA dissidents claimed responsibility.
It is time for another lambast at shady business practices. Like many before, Enterprise Rent-A-Car has now been added to my list. In this economic downturn people keep saying that it is a buyer's time (albeit few buyers.) However, let there be no mistake "buyer's market" is a red-herring under the guise of corporatocracy. The trickery is about making the buyers believe they have power, like any other time, we are simply there to meet a monetary objective. Let us not forget the majority of large corporations are still crossing the line of morality. Today the wooing is about giving you the bare-minimum and affordability. But we can say no to both.
(I understand that by putting Enterprise Rent-A-Car in my blog that the adsense program will probably link my diction with E-R-A-C advertisements for viewing on my page.)
I lived in the Oakwood Apartments, here in Marina del Rey, when I first moved back to California in January of 2008. This national chain provided an easy transition with furnished short term apartments. While staying there I learned that E-R-A-C had an office in the lobby and in the parking garage there were cars, with the asinine license frame my other car is a blah blah blah, parked in spots with signs labeled reserved for E-R-A-C. When the time came a year and a half later and I needed to rent a car within walking distance I decided to use E-R-A-C. I called ahead to the direct office on Via Marina and was told that I could pick up and drop off at the Oakwood. I booked my reservation on-line through E-R-A-C's website for 9AM Monday morning, and even on my confirmation the reservation location stated the Via Marina address in Marina del Rey with office hours between 9AM-6PM Monday through Friday.
Appropriately my father and I arrived at the Oakwood lobby at 9AM. No one had arrived at the office yet and we see a sign that says the office doesn't open until 9:30AM. At five minutes after the half-hour we decide to use the courtesy phone to call another E-R-A-C location to let them know that no one was at this office yet. The phone didn't work, but one of the nice staff members at the Oakwood called for us. We were told someone was coming from the location on Lincoln Blvd. and would be at the Oakwood in about five minutes. At 9:50AM when no one arrived she called again for us and they told her someone had already left, but at 10:10AM, I decided to call from my phone where I ripped into the guy on the other line. He informed me that someone was on the way, even though we learned later no one was on the way, and that they simply pick people up at that location, a courtesy to Oakwood residents.
What? If E-R-A-C picks you up anywhere, why would they need an office and you can reserve online a car at a location? This would mean that ostensibly we reserve at our home address where we get picked up. Why all the charades to show there is an office there if it is just a pick up location. It all sounds so ridiculous, bizarre—stupid.
My father and I drove to the sister location, five minutes away--maybe less (One block north on Lincoln after the Washington/Lincoln intersection.) At this point it was close to 10:20AM. For those keeping track at home, 80 minutes past our reservation time—still no one had been sent yet to the Oakwood (plenty of people were "working," chatting, and drinking coffee.) I go straight for the guy I spoke with over the phone, the one who actually told me when I told him I didn't appreciate him trying to hang up on me responded by saying, "Well, I mean, I need at least 30 seconds before I can give you my undivided attention.)
I ranted and ranted about all the "Why do you, why didn't you." I even pulled out quotes from "Seinfeld" over their inability to honor, hold a reservation. I went into letting them all know about their bad business practices. At one point I told the smug gentlemen behind the counter that "I don't care if you are sorry. Sorry isn't going to cut it here."
I of course got to my bottom line of not leaving the lot without an upgrade—at the very least for wasting my time and inconveniencing me.
He took us outside and presented us with a min-van. Our intended vehicle is a mid-size SUV.
"How is this an upgrade?"
"Well it costs a little more and you can fit seven people."
"Does it look like I want to fit seven people in anything let alone that thing? Do you think we want to drive around in that? Your upgrade is annoying. We want that Durango. Now that's an upgrade."
"You would have to spend a little more for that."
"Well can you at least get us satellite radio?"
"Well in the mini-van it isn't activated."
"We don't want the mini-van. Do you not see this is going from bad to worse?"
Silence. Silence. He looks around. "Ok you can have the Durango with the satellite radio."
It took more than North Shore attitude to get an upgrade for constantly being lied to over and over again for an hour and a half. We are not talking about loose facts but actual flat out lies. How can this be acceptable?
Did E-R-A-C simply decide to close the Oakwood location but still use it as a façade to lure people into getting a rental car? Did this local E-R-A-C decide to meet its numbers/budget to close the location without telling the corporate office? I was told by the gentleman that they couldn't put up a sign at the office in the Oakwood stating that we only pick you up and take you to the Lincoln Blvd location. Although they had a sign stating days and times of when the office is open and closed--although different from the website--and signs stating different car rental specials. Then I tell him they may want to change the website so there wasn't an option to rent at that location. He told me they couldn't change the website. But if you don't offer rentals at the location how can you have a website page allowing people to make rentals. If you have a known reservation at the location why isn't the patron notified? Why isn't someone at the location to pick people up during a known reservation time if it simply going to be a pick up location?
At this point I am not sure how far I want to make my boycott against Enterprise Rent-A-Car for improper and immoral business practices. Is it simply the local branch cutting corners or does the corporate office know and approve such tactics? I will contact corporate and make a determination after I receive more information. Although my local and specific boycotts have been a success, like in the case of a now defunct Jamba Juice, I don't have allusions of bringing down such a corporate nightmare--but I'd be happy to be a very pointy thorn.
I am a chronic snooper. Yes. One excuse. I am a writer. Yes a writer. Everything is field research. Off of late, however, I think I might've been doing it--I am doing it--because I have convinced myself in the certainty that there has to be something more. I snoop because I am desperate for people to have secrets, be someone other than their dull lives. This life they live, this can't be real, they can't be real. I am not simply talking about somebody I've dated, but friends, siblings, parents, relatives, random people's homes and apartments. I snoop them all.
When given the chance to snoop how far do I go? What do I need to look for, find to convince me? What does it mean that with certain people I've snooped on more than others? There is no rhyme or reason to the why or when. Or at least I thought there wasn't, but more specifically, while I am in the middle of the act there isn't a pre-meditated rhyme or reason. But I am scared by the fact that a lot times before, during, and after I feel as if I have the right to snoop.
So where, what do I need to snoop. There's the obvious medicine cabinet. But I prefer searching underneath the bed, and if there's a vertical row of drawers underneath the bathroom sink I like to open the middle two drawers. What have I found? Nothing. And I have learned nothing. You could just ask, but can you? You could continue saying to yourself don't tell me, I don't want to know. That never lasts, never works.
But I can't stop. Even when I am not being a writer, I am fixated on a belief that the person has another life and I think about what Steve Martin wrote in Shopgirl, "I can hurt now, or I can hurt later." Yes. Prudence could ask, what do I do with the knowledge I gain? How well are my interpretation skills? How am I to trust that assessment? What is the risk? What is the reward? Is there a percentage that could stop me? How many times do I need to find nothing for me to stop?
Can I be criticized, condemned, chastised, yelled at, or even called, gasp, immature? Let's talk about our federal government. No longer I. No longer you. But OUR. The NSA and god knows who else is still eavesdropping, reading, snooping on the very essence of our communication: emails and phone calls. This has been happening into the month of June. Even our President, our Hope, has been ineffective in stopping the wicked terror and safety web that has cast over every pore of our society.
On June 16th, the New York Times reported that, "Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. […Critics have] disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the over collection was inadvertent. [They say] 'Some actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental.' Some lawmakers are asking what the tolerable limits are for such incidental collection and whether the privacy of Americans is being adequately protected." If my government can do this why can't I? There aren't just governmental rights and then the rights of citizen. There are the rights of the American people. So. Of course. If there is a grey area I want to be in it. Like while I am snooping, I feel scared for thinking this way, making a mandate in and of my life. I watch as my President hasn't done a damn thing in regards to not only stopping these acts, but hasn't at the very least made sweeping condemnations. As New York Times Opinions Editor Bob Herbert wrote in his column, "Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Mr. Obama had promised to bring both transparency and accountability to matters of national security. It's the only way to get our moral compass back." And there it is: Moral Compass. Somehow my compass has taken me to kneeling on dirty floors to look under dusty beds, and opening empty drawers or drawers filled with too much unnecessary crap. Obama needs to take a tougher stance and so do I. (And also we as a society need to stop over using or misusing the word transparency.) And I have in a way used the terror argument to justify my snooping.
So today I will try and not say but believe that I will wait to get hurt rather try to stop it before it happens.
Beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, I think about the role of government eavesdropping and how I haven't found any secrets when I have snooped.
There are more medians for us to be searched, and more medians for us to open up within. And the more we open up through technological medians the more we close off in reality and it's easy to have a push-pull. Yes we can open up in technology because it provides a distance, but technology also allows for others to really be very intrusive in the lives of others. And in a twist of events this has turned us all into being plain and conventional--in our own ways, within our own communities. But can we blame ourselves for repressing who are? Secrets aren't being hidden because we have even repressed secrets. Things are way beyond us now. Of course we are being protected by our government, but it ends up that our government destroys who we are, who we can be. We're all scared and half the time we aren't sure why or what we are scared. We have all become one, no matter how different we have become, we are being caged and psychologically kept within a framework.
In a refurbished downtown space with a small theatre and plenty of steep rows, Emily Wells did a little jump and kick as she made her entrance on to the stage. Her action seemed unplanned and inspired by nerves. I wasn't too optimistic. As she took center stage, behind her was a drummer and a bassist. She claimed she had sound problems, but everything seemed to be fine, but we sat in the uncomfortable seats as adjustments were made. When everything was ready to go she looked over the plethora of children noise maker toys, picked up her violin and played her first song "Symphony #1, In the barrel of the gun." At first, the music mirrored Andrew Bird but with more intensity and chased by notes of hip-hop rather than folk. But during her second song "Passenger," Wells was creating something wholly hers with quick precision between a ukulele, an instrument that made echoes and a small keyboard played that had plastic tube connected to the board that she blew into. Small tattoos showed around her white t-shirt, Emily wore her maroon, slim fit jeans loosely while clad in All-Star sneakers. She could be classified as a hipster, but she took us way beyond Los Angeles's urban landscape of consumer desire.
Wells began as a nervous amateur with a large crowd, but when she finished her third song she was as an artist with a defined aesthetic. (At the age of 28 is quite remarkable.) Her music reminded us that we could get swept up in a whirlwind of intellectual, social, and sexual activity.
When Wells announced that for her last song she was going to do a Notorious B.I.G. cover, I cursed my pathetic idolization and for the drool that had amassed all over myself just after a few minutes of music. How was this tiny, white girl with a violin and a ukulele and her very hipster back up musicians going to pull this off? I already prepared my statements for afterwards--ready to use language--like collapsed, faded away, decomposed, arrogant, and ultimately, say just because you can doesn't mean you should—the defining principle of the power of unreasonable people. And then out of her aesthetic came one of the freshest covers I've ever heard in my life: full of discipline, depth, and the measured reasoning of social justice, out of a song that Biggy wrote to show how low he'd been and how far he had made it. Although from Wells' brief bio on her web page, it didn't seem as if she was once part of the oppressed and forgotten urban poor. But she was covering, not pretending to have created. Wells was simply exploring a new contour within the current reality. She simply was picking a weapon, sharpening the tool (the way she knew how), and fighting against the stubborn persistence of wrong ideas. Beyond trying to string clever words together, being an American Idol, she put energy into music without conforming to a market research driven artistic form and way beyond the offices of Hollywood that loomed over the downtown theatre.
The documentary The Cove opened this summer to critical acclaim, both at film festivals and from the cinematic cannon of critics. Filmmakers and a select group of activists with specialized skills went on a clandestine mission, at the risk of their own lives, to film and provide audio of the Taijii fisherman capturing and subsequently slaughtering dolphins. From September to March Japanese fisherman gather in boats and form a blockade in the ocean, place a metal pipe in the water, bang on it and thus using the sensitive sonar and hearing of the dolphins against them. As they try to swim away from the noise they swim right into the fisherman's traps. The best specimens are sold to private industries for aquariums and swim with dolphin programs. The rest are moved to the nearby cove to be secretly slaughtered by the tens of thousands. The dolphins are chopped up and its flesh is sold secretly with other fish meat across Japan. Dolphin meat is not some sort of delicacy. As food the dolphin is deadly, as it contains a large amount of mercury. When environmental groups offered to pay the fishermen the same exact amount they made from the dolphins to stop the men of Taijii declined the offer. It is said that the Japanese government believes that Dolphins are eating too many of the fish that they need for sale and consumption, they worry that soon there will be no fish left. So the future of the dolphin is either imprisonment or death. Now the people involved in the film went to great lengths to provide the coverage in the documentary so I am disinclined to provide much more information other than some of the most startling things that filmgoers witness is the quick change of the water from blue to red in a matter of minutes, and the speared dolphins flail about as blood spurts out of the punctures.
(Before I go on my rant. Let me stop for a moment. It's no secret that I love going to aquariums. I have put a stay at this point on scheduling any excursions to said places. At this point in my life I have never gone to a swim with the dolphins resort or event. I do not plan to. It is no secret that I am not a vegan. But now I only eat fish on the environmentally safe catch and eat list. As far as cows are concerned I eat my fair share. I have tried to decrease the amount I eat now, however I do not plan to stop anytime soon. Cows are raised and bred for consumption. Eating cow meat does not cause death or serious illness. Yes the environmental impact of cows is not acceptable, but like I said I have decreased my intake. Now I roll on…)
How do we sit through The Cove and then walk away with the knowledge we have gained, what do we do with it. I was going to talk about the balance of guilt and activism. But I can't stop thinking about how we don't possess those human conditions. Samuel Beckett argues that there are only two human conditions: impotence and ignorance. His argument is extremely valid. Ninety percent of us embody at least one of those conditions on a daily basis, if not both. With such a high percentage how can I argue about complete opposite conditions: guilt and activism. It is quite obvious why the percentage of the first two conditions is higher than the latter two conditions. I find myself often moving into the guilt condition but rarely towards activism.
For awhile I blanketed my views on issues with liberalism, guided by a deep-rooted hatred of the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress. These days I find myself in an ambiguous middle ground where the possibilities are boundless. Lately there have been only two positions I have taken one in which I have moved to the center and have a balanced view, the other is a belief in anarchy. When things are too inter-connected, beyond our control, only anarchy will save us. There must be destruction and then participation in the time-honored tradition of building up from the rubble.
I'm not going to be subtle about my metaphor. (Let's face it a subtle metaphor, a disguised metaphor simply feeds the pretentious circles that pat each other on the back with the "we are so smart, we figured out the secret puzzle metaphor." The establishment tells us that if we simply state the metaphor we are telling the reader they are stupid because we are being both implicit and explicit. Dear read I don't think you're stupid and that's why I say let's stuff the cleverness, guiding the reader, feeding an ego to make him or her feel important when they get it on his or her own. I mean really who has the time? Who has the time?) The Cove is a metaphor for how we deal with both peripheral and the greater issues facing humans today.
(I need to make another side note: With all this recollection of Woodstock and by default the '60s these once vocal activists and protestors have since taken their love of hippie and became yuppie and have now become ruppies (retired urban people) without really ever being active again. Could this cause wake them up and get them protesting again? Probably not. I'm sure all of the one hour specials and retrospectives and Ang Lee's movie will simply be a way for many to relish the past from a safe and manageable distance. But maybe I am misguided. Most of the protesters of the Iraq War were those accused of trying to re-live the past. And the twenty-somethings of this decade were too busy with the myriad of things not afforded to twenty-somethings in the '60s.)
Well hasn't this become a tangent, a partially misguided digression? Where am I going? Ah yes. So the movie directs you to the take part or take action website where you are given five or so things in to do to take your part and stop the insanity.
The options of what to do are write a letter, sign the petition, donate money, become aware and inform others. How can I be an activist with those options? The killings begin in September. Today is September 1st.
Write a letter. Come on. There has to be something better than a letter. When has a letter affected change? Remember the hoax when we were in grade school by some white trash couple in Florida who pretended to be a terminally ill child and asked you to send a letter so they could go down in the Guinness book of world records as being sent the most letters in a single time period. OK I am getting off track again. So can I be considered an activist, can I be affecting change by doing what that website tells me. Well I bought a t-shirt with proceeds that go to the cause, I signed the e-petition: the letter that is going to President Obama, Vice President Biden and the U.S. Ambassador to Japan (his name doesn't really matter). As far as alerting people I can do that, and I can post very easily a link on the side of my blog. But if Beckett is right what does it matter who I tell? Am I venturing on/into Nihlism? Oh new question, is Nihlism dangerous?
So I gave anarchy as an option.
No other options gave a democratic option. They didn't talk about using the vote, rocking the vote. It's not realistic to use your vote. One issue cannot be the only thing a candidate should worry about, and one issue shouldn't be the only reason we vote for the candidate.
At any rate, there aren't going to be large protests clogging the streets of New York and D.C. And there probably shouldn't be because metaphors never resonate, make a good video or sound clip.
But the ability of those in positions to end this seems laughably easy compared to other problems, atrocities facing the world. So why does it continue? Is it apathy? Is it a strong inter-connected relationship between governments and private industry? Or does it simply not matter because it isn't at the top of the list, because there is only so much time?
The Cove. Running time: 92 minutes. Rated: PG-13, for Disturbing Content
So a few months back I took a poll regarding what we've named our GPS machine: Linda, Beverly, Shaniqwa, Christine, and Daniel—too name a few. All of us have a relationship with this thing, whether it is an open relationship or a committed, exclusive relationship. The relationship exists.
I realized I have placed way too much trust in mine, Dive (The joining of Diane and the short Di and Vivian and the short Vi—thus Dive was born.) And each time she takes me the longer way, the way with most traffic, the way that is a straight shot through the ghetto, the 110 freeway when there is an SC football game, takes me on the 10 freeway when the Lakers have a home playoff game—I keep coming back to her for guidance, support, company on a long drive or stuck in traffic. Why have we begun to place so much trust in something we hardly know? I know it sounds dramatic but we put our trust in its hands? What has led us to this point?
When I first came out to California I would purposely get lost because that was the best way for me to know, be familiar with the area. And although there were times a ten minute car ride turned into a forty-five minute drive, pretty soon I was confident to go anywhere, I knew all different street combinations like I knew Tommy Boy movie lines. I even had a two hundred page spiraled map-book of Orange and San Diego counties--slid underneath my back bench seat--which generally I only looked at before and after, rarely during a drive. But this allowed me to chart, be an explorer. I enjoyed the adventures of not really knowing where I was going. Granted gas prices were different and I was a college-thinker--meaning I had all the time in the world. But alas. I prided myself on the shortcuts and new routes I could take. Thanks to those lazy, misguided days I can now make great time going to places, I rarely get lost and know that very soon when the city isn't running in the red they will erect a statue in my honor at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica for my splendid mapping of the city
When I went back home to Illinois and borrowed my father's GPS to take me around the loop it didn't know what the hell it was doing, worst of all it had direction ADHD--couldn't stick with one way, kept babbling out new ways. After the first circle I went in, I decided to forgo the "Garmin" and drive on instinct. I got to my destination quite easily. My affair was short lived and as soon as I got back to Los Angeles, I had Dive within my grasp, pressing her buttons as if nothing had happened. Days later as she was slow to grab a satellite signal or didn't have the eatery I was happening upon that night, I started to sense a distance between us. Was it because I left her in LA when I went to spend a spring week in the city of Chicago? Or maybe she was sensing I was starting to contemplate my life guided by machine, my all too intense personification. Or the real thought that GPS led to eight years of George Bush. We aren't doing our own mapping, we are told of our map, provided a map. We are told by a machine and we are ok with that because it is so easy, we are too busy to be bothered to map.
Beyond politics, beyond the man and machine, there is something between Dive and myself and I can't figure out what it is. I am enamored with the fact that she can direct me to see any of my friends, no matter where I am at, with the simple push of a button. She could put me in the direction of Seattle or D.C. and I can know exactly when I will arrive. She never asks questions of me, and simply molds with my changes in direction. And she will be mute for me. There are times I say to her why can't I put real people, humans on mute. I think of different relationships of mine when I was really judgmental and I held things people said either in confidence or randomly against them. Now I wish I could put people on mute until I got to that place with them when it didn't really matter what they said: I was still going to be their friend or their boyfriend. With the GPS everything is timed by miles and it doesn't come too fast, doesn't jump ahead. I like the vice-versa relationship and the equality of the relationship, the GPS needs me to go somewhere and I need it to take me to that somewhere.
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