The problem was how to celebrate New Years Eve respectfully with all of the recent violence, turmoil, and humanitarian crises happening around the world, especially the brutal battle going on in Gaza and Palestine. To do the usual party to party scene all night just didn't seem appropriate at the time... considering... the idea just grew from there... from that original thought... Then it just came down to if we had the energy and the commitment to really do something. That's what it always comes down to isn't it? The idea was how much can we do if we focus 110% on peace in the world for four solid days and nights? That was the question.
Luckily I was with someone who, though she thought I was slightly mad, was willing to go along for the ride. That night of the day when we first talked about it I didn't sleep a wink. I tossed and turned all night long. I kept getting up and leaning over onto this night table and scribbling notes onto scraps of paper all night because I was dreaming of this thing the whole time I was lying there trying to sleep, sort of half awake half asleep. It was rolling through my mind like a movie. All I could think about was ‘what if we do nothing? I mean, what if we just sit here and talk and do nothing and all these people are getting killed every minute of every hour?’
The next morning I was exhausted from not sleeping but also energized. Princess Little Tree made a comment over coffee “Boy when you do stuff you really do stuff, huh?”
“Well, uh, yeah, I mean, that's how stuff gets done.”
“But this was just an idea you had and now it’s turned into this giant thing... and you're really going to go for it?”
“Yeah I know. Sorry about that. But look, it’s either this, or we’re jumping on a plane and heading to Israel today to see what we can do. Cause I don't think we can just sit here. I think I'll go freaking mad if we do.”
Miraculously she agreed. She was actually the one who had made the comment “I just don't think it’s appropriate to go to parties and celebrate on a night just because that's what we’re supposed to do and try to pretend that this isn't happening in Gaza. It feels wrong.” That comment shook me to my core. It was like someone was calling me to walk my talk.
Next thing we’re guzzling coffee and heading out into the city to go shopping and I'm carrying this giant shopping list I made that night in my sleep of all these things we would need. Posters, markers, balloons, flowers, candles, pajamas, flags of all the countries where there was conflict, food to keep us alive for four days... wine, tea, chocolate, extra batteries, film, it went on forever.
As with all things that seem providential or fated, it is hard to even remember the original impetus for the project, that singular moment of discovery... Looking at it now, seeing the footage, and remembering that we spent four solid days and nights doing nothing but working on this project to create peace in the world in whatever little way we could, that seems like an odd thing to say. But it’s true. It was certainly not planned.
There was the moment when we both had this realization that a night spent party hopping just didn't seem right. And then another moment when we both discovered that recently we had seen something about the 40th anniversary of John and Yoko’s infamous first Bed-In for Peace. We were in a car or something. “WE could do a Bed-In you know,” I casually mumbled without looking over. Just staring straight ahead watching the hills and giant fir trees pass us by. “I mean, not invite the press or anything, it’s your home and all, but just make a shit load of calls, voice our concern, film it, learn as much as we can, share it with the world...” My mind began ticking from there... “We could pray a lot. We could meditate on peace a lot. We could take every action that we take for peace for a few days. Even celebrate peace... It’s better than not doing anything...”
What we did know was that the world was already starting to go a bit mad from these sudden attacks on the people of Gaza and we could see both sides. Smack dab in the middle. Plenty of Jewish friends who lived in Israel and plenty of Muslim friends who live in what will one day be called Palestine. There was no SIDES except the human side... and there was a lot of bloodletting happening on the human side. And people were going to get pissed. That was a given.
This was going to manifest as hundreds of angry tirades on YouTube and GoogleVideo and Facebook and MySpace and the news. Angry tirades never got anyone anywhere. It usually just leads to more death and violence. As angry as I was there was going to be no angry monologue into that YouTube camera. Not this year. We needed to rise above the whole thing. Attempt to transcend it without losing sight of the fact that it was really happening. That was the key. Oftentimes when we feel helpless around something, we do nothing. That's too bad.
But the times they are ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changing.... more and more of us are doing things now. Taking action. Whatever it is. Young and old. The world has changed. People have changed. Humanity has changed. Busy or free, rich or poor, people are taking action. Barack and Michelle worked their asses off. But the people got them into the White House. I think that was a pivotal moment for much of the planet. I've got a whole roll of film I took of the freaking TV screen the night he won the election. I was in the recording studio. I didn't know what else to do but just snap pictures of the TV as if aliens had just come down to earth from Mars or something. So I just took a ton of pictures of the television. Yes. That was a moment.
Things had been bubbling up for years from the underground. Activism had become hip again. Volunteering had become cool. Giving had become cool. It’s funny. This was the nature of a blog post I had written back in 2002. In fact it was the very first blog post I ever wrote here. It was about precisely that. http://www.tuneinturnonhelpout.org/about-us/
The theme of it, the reason I wrote it in the first place, was to say that we must find a way to make giving and volunteering and activism cool and to make people in the public eye feel foolish or ashamed if they didn't partake. It isn't enough just to live here anymore. We need to attempt at least to make it hip to do good things and to encourage -- especially people of note and celebrity -- everyone to do it. Regardless of what they have going on in their personal lives. I was tired of people coming on TV pitching their newest product. The magazines and tabloids all about what so and so was wearing to some gala or event. For what?
Well I obviously wasn't the only one. Bono turned pitching products into an actual way of giving back with his RED campaign. One elegant bastard with that move. Bill Gates tells the story of witnessing Bono receive this epiphany over ten too many pints in a bar one night. And he then turns around and donates 20 billion dollars to various charities with his Gates Foundation. A few years later, in fact quite recently, Warren Buffet promised the Gates Foundation an additional thirty billion dollars of his own personal stock pile. Being rich and successful is no longer enough. In fact its downright dishonorable if practiced solely for fame and fortune. Giving has now become the in thing. The impetus for that original blog post back in early 2002 was my reading about Ted Turner giving away ONE BILLION dollars to the UN for humanitarian aid. One billion dollars. That seemed like a lot back then. Ted is a crazy old coot. But he's a good hearted one. That was seven years ago. I'm still blogging in the same place. Same URL. And Ted Turner has now given away literally billions more dollars to charitable causes.
And yes things have changed. Immensely. As I was about to close, for whatever reason, the Bush-Cheney administration came to mind. “So where exactly do these buggers come into the picture if things have changed so much?” was the thought. I mean they don't exactly fit with the picture we’re talking about do they? They seem almost shadows of an old world that most hope to forget about for a long, long time. But it reminded me of this theory that floats around in consciousness... it is something about the need for the opposite extreme to play itself out before we can boomerang back to a more balanced enlightened middle. Sort of that old adage “You’ve got to make a slight mess if you're really going to clean things up.” This is just about the only thought that kept me sane the last eight years.
The idea that there were still a few people who actually needed to see some people really foul things up before they got on the bandwagon and we set about to really making the world a better place. So that takes care of that. It can’t get much worse than it is now. They certainly did their job. We’re left with one foul mess. But we have hope. Real hope. And we have a world, however tattered and torn and frayed and battered, that for once appears to be ready to unite to create real positive change for everyone from every nation. BED PEACE 2008 was nothing in a larger scope. We know that. But it was an action. Perhaps at this point that is all we can ask of ourselves... just to do something.... anything. Little by little we’ll get there.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The God Delusion Illusion
IN the last few years there has been a small uproar in the religious and scientific communities, and the suburbs, throughout America over the publication of many books about whether or not a “God” exists. It is a very old, though newly dusted off and refreshed for the modern masses version 2.0 argument brought about by books such as “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and “The Language of God” by Francis S. Collins. Consider these the umpteenth remakes of old Hollywood Classic arguments. Some of these authors attempt to disprove the existence of a God. And some of them try to prove it. Neither successfully.
I find the whole trend as fascinating as I do annoying. I can’t get my head around why anyone in their right mind would dedicate the necessary time required to read a few hundred pages written by a man they don't know about why he doesn’t believe in “the God concept.” If a girl down the block wrote a book about why she doesn’t believe in big foot, would we care? We have been talking and writing about why we do or don't believe in the God concept for thousands of years. We have also invented thousands of names for this God, whether real or imagined. And through the millennia we have invented hundreds of religions and religious and ceremonial practices around these various Gods. None of which have ever helped us in our pursuit to prove or disprove these Gods’ existence.
We can no more debate with any degree of success the existence or non-existence of a “God” than we can the equally evasive concepts of “the ego” or “the id” or “the sub-conscious” or “the afterlife” or “the soul.” They are all intriguing concepts but neither provable nor disprovable. Ideas such as reincarnation, human beings having “souls,” astral projection, near death experiences, a spirit world, the list goes on and on. The minds of human beings are filled with ideas and concepts that remain no more than that: ideas. Ideas are not necessarily bad things. But they certainly are not real except in the fact that we may or may not be able to one day measure their existence with brain scans or more advanced technology. Even when we are able to prove the existence of ideas themselves, which we inevitably will at some point in the future, that does not imply that we will be able to do much more with them other than to know that so and so has one. It certainly will not mean that we or he or she will be able to prove their idea has any merit or truth to it.
It always annoys me a tad when someone tells me that they are feeling a little unbalanced and are thinking that they “might need to get their chakras aligned.” A good friend told me a few months ago that a psychic told her that if she worked really hard and mediated everyday she could have her “fifth chakra” balanced and empowered within five years. I was aghast. She made the comment so casually, with such certainty and conviction, as if chakras were as well-researched and proven a commodity as bread or milk or cheese.
Of course there are also vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and angels too. Brilliant ideas. Interesting ideas. But hard to prove or disprove. So most simply don't go there. Though some do. Vampires have been all the rage for hundreds of years. And angels for thousands of years. Though no one has yet to capture one with their cell phone and post it to YouTube. That will certainly be the day for us all. Talk about “millions of views.” Think of the instant celebrity for that lucky bastard.
The idea of a Loch Ness Monster captivated my attention for at least a day or two when I was a youngster, but I certainly wouldn’t read a book by someone now trying to prove or disprove the existence of a Loch Ness Monster. Now if someone manages to yank one up out of the deep one day, I'll be the first to forward that news link to friends and family the world over, but until that fateful day, I just have no interest in listening to someone pontificate about it.
By the end of my sophomore year in college as a budding young philosophy major I resolutely decided I was done being a philosopher. Or better put, I would be a philosopher for life, but I was done majoring in the art of debating the improvable. Much to my professors’ disappointment. They thought I would make a fine philosopher. But I switched majors to World Literature which I felt offered me a little more in the “real” department ironically enough. In those first two years we were introduced to many fine concepts. “Freewill versus determinism, the understanding of fallacies, the proper use of a killer syllogism. It was valuable learning. But I still did not think the study of things improvable was a worthy pursuit for a life well lived. At least not my own.
One of the assignments I remember that really nailed the coffin shut for me was when we were studying the philosophical dilemma of trying to prove whether or not WE existed or not. This is in academic circles a very real and seriously taken philosophical dilemma and one that hundreds of thousands of books and papers have been written about; both trying to prove and disprove the theory. Descartes attempted to prove this ancient dilemma by proclaiming “Cogito, ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I am.” One of the most famous philosophical utterances of all time. And one that many a man has used to prove to himself that he does indeed exist. (Which is of course inherently a joke in and of itself. If you are trying to prove anything to yourself, chances are YOU probably fucking exist. So leave it alone already.)
If I had stayed a philosophy major I would have proven my own existence to my professor by simply walking up to him and slapping him in the face a few times and asking him in the process if I existed or not. We can safely assume that eventually he would have had to give in, proclaim my existence to get me to stop slapping him, and given me an A in the process.
When people ask me, both religious and non-religious alike, how I can feel this way and still claim to be “spiritual,” have faith in a God, and regularly practice a religious faith tradition – currently a Christian-Buddhist fusion – I respond by saying “How can you practice being an honest, moral, good decent person without knowing or being able to prove with certainty that it’s necessary to be this way? You ARE an honest, decent, good, moral person aren't you?” Many attempt to live this way. One would wish that more did... But still, many do, and for what reasons specifically other than that it simply feels like the right thing to do? What more can they say? We have no proof that there is any real need to be honest or moral or kind or decent or ethical. Nor can anyone for that matter give a real proof regarding why they might be spiritual, religious, or attempt in their daily lives to connect with a higher power in the universe.
Of course I also tell them that I love, cherish, and have a very close and special connection and relationship with a God. Or at least I BELIEVE I do. And therefore I believe in the “God concept.” But that connection and the inherent belief in it that follows is very hard to even fully fathom, let alone put into words. And it is certainly not something I can prove to anyone other than to relay certain stories or anecdotes from throughout my life that have seemed to be slightly peculiar or coincidental, serendipitous, transcendent, synchronistic, providential or Divine in some way.
One day a few years ago a pastor that I admire and look up to very much commented that “One does not find God. God finds us.” He asked us to stop and think of the ramifications of this idea in our own lives for a moment. Besides the fact that I nearly idolize this man, for his insight, his brilliant mind, his passion for the Divine in all things, his tender open heart, and his example as a human being, I still found his statement and question very apropos to my own personal experience of “God finding me.” It was, in essence, exactly what happened to me. Something I have already spoken about in the past. It wasn't that I was not seeking, it was just rather unexpected and sublimely more impactful and transcendent an experience than I expected it to be when “God found me.” Something I will never forget. And quite probably something that will keep me a believer in the God concept for the rest of my life. And also keep me attempting to connect more deeply with He/She/It as much as I can as well.
When friends in my business ask me how I can possibly believe in a God – for there is no more secular nor liberal place in the world today than in the arts and entertainment business – I always respond that I completely understand and relate to the atheist and agnostic identity. I wore it for years. I dig it. It’s a very cool, practical, logical, and intelligent place to live. But for better or worse it is not a luxury I am able to afford now. God simply wouldn’t allow it. He found me alright. Yanked me up by my hair and dragged my ass into being “a believer.” The Divine showed itself to me in a way that I simply could no longer deny. There wasn’t really a lot of choice in the matter at first for me. Eventually I came around and deliberately decided it wasn't such a bad idea to take it on. (Still doesn’t mean I can prove this “Divinity’s” existence though.)
Some have asked me over the years if I don't feel a moral imperative to share my belief in a God with others – much like Mr. Dawkins or Mr. Collins have done -- so that others might be “saved” or live better lives. But I tend to shy away from such actions unless specifically requested by someone to tell a story or two or to relate to them why I have found a relationship with a God beneficial to me. I don't necessarily believe that all humans need to be “saved,” and even if some do, I certainly don't believe that there is only one way to save them.
I must admit I get a little hot and bothered under the collar by some of my peers’ insistence that we need to “save” the “souls” of people for the sake of their existence in the “afterlife.” Since we haven't as of yet been able to prove the concept of this “saving,” nor the “soul” idea, and neither the “afterlife” concept, why go there at all? I prefer to save people here now who need actual saving here now. If someone loses a home and all of their belongings I do feel some unexplainable need to help save them the hardship by lending a hand to rebuild their home for them. Or in times of good money I like sponsoring kids in dire need when a mere $30 a month feeds them that entire month and that amount is far less than I spend on Frapucinos anyway. If we can afford Starbucks, Jamba Juice, or Netflix, or even cable or satellite TV, then certainly we can afford to keep at least one other human being eating enough food to stay alive month to month. That’s “saving” to me. We’ll leave the “afterlife” to those IN the afterlife. They’ll let us know if they need saving. So far they haven't spoken up.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sharing. In fact I enjoy doing it; in those situations when asked to do so. It is after all an amazing experience to live life with a sort of conscious and unconscious understanding, knowing, and feeling that we have a direct line with something awe-inspiring and powerful that is forgiving, all-good, and deeply understanding of our fate in life. I find the belief to be a healthy one. But just because that applies to me, I would never presume to believe that would apply to everyone else who shares the planet or solar system with us. I know plenty of people who have no such belief system in their conscious mind or thought processes and who lead admirably moral and exemplary lives. More so than myself, some of them. So...
That is another aspect to this ongoing debate that is irksome. Humankind’s relationship with a Divine power is a very personal thing. Something only each and every individual themselves can relate to or understand. And that includes those who choose to NOT have a relationship with any Divine power as well. For surely that is as much of a relationship as one who prays everyday to something. An atheist is still a theist. Not intelligent enough to be agnostic. Not wise enough to shut the hell up; very similar to evangelicals or extremists who give more thought-out Christians or Muslims a bad name by their blind ambition to convert those who do not agree with them.
We could go on and on of course, which is the nature of philosophy, and theology. A never ending dialogue about things guessed and conjectured but essentially, by their very essence, and inherently man-made and improvable. Fun and intellectually enticing and titillating, but rather wasteful of precious human energy if indulged in too much – especially if we are going to eventually get down to the real tasks at hand like using the best of what we have to make the world a better place in the short time we are here together.
It is not that “The God Delusion” is an illusion per se. It is simply an idea that has been around for tens of thousands of years. Nor is the pursuit of “The Language of God.” Both concepts and pursuits are as real as the inventors of the ideas, the authors of the books, and their respective readers care to make them in their personal lives. Sort of like “life after death.” Not a bad idea at all. In fact, I would submit that it is quite the comforting thought. But certainly not something one can prove or disprove, and certainly not something to spend a lot of time writing or reading about as if from some secret knowledge or impassioned faith. Better to get on with the living of the “life before death” and leave life after death in its proper place – AFTER death.
If it ever is to occur that one of the millions of us who die each year should ever find a way to communicate with those of us still “living” certainly they will be so kind as to let us know that “life after death” does indeed exist. While they're at it, they can also confirm or deny for us the idea of the soul, reincarnation, chakras, free-will versus determinism, the astral plane, the spirit world, and even vampires, angels, and big foots.
In the meantime, current statistics tell us that every 3.9 seconds of every single day someone who is living among us dies from either starvation or thirst on our small planet. For those who have a God, by all means PRAY. But let us also not forget to roll up our sleeves and take action. Mother Theresa, a celibate, dedicated, penniless, female-priest of the Catholic faith tradition taught us that valuable lesson. For all the prayers to a God in the world that we can muster, we still need real-world action if we are to make real progress as the fledgling Gods that we are ourselves in THIS world. But a little prayer here and there certainly won't hurt either.
I find the whole trend as fascinating as I do annoying. I can’t get my head around why anyone in their right mind would dedicate the necessary time required to read a few hundred pages written by a man they don't know about why he doesn’t believe in “the God concept.” If a girl down the block wrote a book about why she doesn’t believe in big foot, would we care? We have been talking and writing about why we do or don't believe in the God concept for thousands of years. We have also invented thousands of names for this God, whether real or imagined. And through the millennia we have invented hundreds of religions and religious and ceremonial practices around these various Gods. None of which have ever helped us in our pursuit to prove or disprove these Gods’ existence.
We can no more debate with any degree of success the existence or non-existence of a “God” than we can the equally evasive concepts of “the ego” or “the id” or “the sub-conscious” or “the afterlife” or “the soul.” They are all intriguing concepts but neither provable nor disprovable. Ideas such as reincarnation, human beings having “souls,” astral projection, near death experiences, a spirit world, the list goes on and on. The minds of human beings are filled with ideas and concepts that remain no more than that: ideas. Ideas are not necessarily bad things. But they certainly are not real except in the fact that we may or may not be able to one day measure their existence with brain scans or more advanced technology. Even when we are able to prove the existence of ideas themselves, which we inevitably will at some point in the future, that does not imply that we will be able to do much more with them other than to know that so and so has one. It certainly will not mean that we or he or she will be able to prove their idea has any merit or truth to it.
It always annoys me a tad when someone tells me that they are feeling a little unbalanced and are thinking that they “might need to get their chakras aligned.” A good friend told me a few months ago that a psychic told her that if she worked really hard and mediated everyday she could have her “fifth chakra” balanced and empowered within five years. I was aghast. She made the comment so casually, with such certainty and conviction, as if chakras were as well-researched and proven a commodity as bread or milk or cheese.
Of course there are also vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and angels too. Brilliant ideas. Interesting ideas. But hard to prove or disprove. So most simply don't go there. Though some do. Vampires have been all the rage for hundreds of years. And angels for thousands of years. Though no one has yet to capture one with their cell phone and post it to YouTube. That will certainly be the day for us all. Talk about “millions of views.” Think of the instant celebrity for that lucky bastard.
The idea of a Loch Ness Monster captivated my attention for at least a day or two when I was a youngster, but I certainly wouldn’t read a book by someone now trying to prove or disprove the existence of a Loch Ness Monster. Now if someone manages to yank one up out of the deep one day, I'll be the first to forward that news link to friends and family the world over, but until that fateful day, I just have no interest in listening to someone pontificate about it.
By the end of my sophomore year in college as a budding young philosophy major I resolutely decided I was done being a philosopher. Or better put, I would be a philosopher for life, but I was done majoring in the art of debating the improvable. Much to my professors’ disappointment. They thought I would make a fine philosopher. But I switched majors to World Literature which I felt offered me a little more in the “real” department ironically enough. In those first two years we were introduced to many fine concepts. “Freewill versus determinism, the understanding of fallacies, the proper use of a killer syllogism. It was valuable learning. But I still did not think the study of things improvable was a worthy pursuit for a life well lived. At least not my own.
One of the assignments I remember that really nailed the coffin shut for me was when we were studying the philosophical dilemma of trying to prove whether or not WE existed or not. This is in academic circles a very real and seriously taken philosophical dilemma and one that hundreds of thousands of books and papers have been written about; both trying to prove and disprove the theory. Descartes attempted to prove this ancient dilemma by proclaiming “Cogito, ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I am.” One of the most famous philosophical utterances of all time. And one that many a man has used to prove to himself that he does indeed exist. (Which is of course inherently a joke in and of itself. If you are trying to prove anything to yourself, chances are YOU probably fucking exist. So leave it alone already.)
If I had stayed a philosophy major I would have proven my own existence to my professor by simply walking up to him and slapping him in the face a few times and asking him in the process if I existed or not. We can safely assume that eventually he would have had to give in, proclaim my existence to get me to stop slapping him, and given me an A in the process.
When people ask me, both religious and non-religious alike, how I can feel this way and still claim to be “spiritual,” have faith in a God, and regularly practice a religious faith tradition – currently a Christian-Buddhist fusion – I respond by saying “How can you practice being an honest, moral, good decent person without knowing or being able to prove with certainty that it’s necessary to be this way? You ARE an honest, decent, good, moral person aren't you?” Many attempt to live this way. One would wish that more did... But still, many do, and for what reasons specifically other than that it simply feels like the right thing to do? What more can they say? We have no proof that there is any real need to be honest or moral or kind or decent or ethical. Nor can anyone for that matter give a real proof regarding why they might be spiritual, religious, or attempt in their daily lives to connect with a higher power in the universe.
Of course I also tell them that I love, cherish, and have a very close and special connection and relationship with a God. Or at least I BELIEVE I do. And therefore I believe in the “God concept.” But that connection and the inherent belief in it that follows is very hard to even fully fathom, let alone put into words. And it is certainly not something I can prove to anyone other than to relay certain stories or anecdotes from throughout my life that have seemed to be slightly peculiar or coincidental, serendipitous, transcendent, synchronistic, providential or Divine in some way.
One day a few years ago a pastor that I admire and look up to very much commented that “One does not find God. God finds us.” He asked us to stop and think of the ramifications of this idea in our own lives for a moment. Besides the fact that I nearly idolize this man, for his insight, his brilliant mind, his passion for the Divine in all things, his tender open heart, and his example as a human being, I still found his statement and question very apropos to my own personal experience of “God finding me.” It was, in essence, exactly what happened to me. Something I have already spoken about in the past. It wasn't that I was not seeking, it was just rather unexpected and sublimely more impactful and transcendent an experience than I expected it to be when “God found me.” Something I will never forget. And quite probably something that will keep me a believer in the God concept for the rest of my life. And also keep me attempting to connect more deeply with He/She/It as much as I can as well.
When friends in my business ask me how I can possibly believe in a God – for there is no more secular nor liberal place in the world today than in the arts and entertainment business – I always respond that I completely understand and relate to the atheist and agnostic identity. I wore it for years. I dig it. It’s a very cool, practical, logical, and intelligent place to live. But for better or worse it is not a luxury I am able to afford now. God simply wouldn’t allow it. He found me alright. Yanked me up by my hair and dragged my ass into being “a believer.” The Divine showed itself to me in a way that I simply could no longer deny. There wasn’t really a lot of choice in the matter at first for me. Eventually I came around and deliberately decided it wasn't such a bad idea to take it on. (Still doesn’t mean I can prove this “Divinity’s” existence though.)
Some have asked me over the years if I don't feel a moral imperative to share my belief in a God with others – much like Mr. Dawkins or Mr. Collins have done -- so that others might be “saved” or live better lives. But I tend to shy away from such actions unless specifically requested by someone to tell a story or two or to relate to them why I have found a relationship with a God beneficial to me. I don't necessarily believe that all humans need to be “saved,” and even if some do, I certainly don't believe that there is only one way to save them.
I must admit I get a little hot and bothered under the collar by some of my peers’ insistence that we need to “save” the “souls” of people for the sake of their existence in the “afterlife.” Since we haven't as of yet been able to prove the concept of this “saving,” nor the “soul” idea, and neither the “afterlife” concept, why go there at all? I prefer to save people here now who need actual saving here now. If someone loses a home and all of their belongings I do feel some unexplainable need to help save them the hardship by lending a hand to rebuild their home for them. Or in times of good money I like sponsoring kids in dire need when a mere $30 a month feeds them that entire month and that amount is far less than I spend on Frapucinos anyway. If we can afford Starbucks, Jamba Juice, or Netflix, or even cable or satellite TV, then certainly we can afford to keep at least one other human being eating enough food to stay alive month to month. That’s “saving” to me. We’ll leave the “afterlife” to those IN the afterlife. They’ll let us know if they need saving. So far they haven't spoken up.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sharing. In fact I enjoy doing it; in those situations when asked to do so. It is after all an amazing experience to live life with a sort of conscious and unconscious understanding, knowing, and feeling that we have a direct line with something awe-inspiring and powerful that is forgiving, all-good, and deeply understanding of our fate in life. I find the belief to be a healthy one. But just because that applies to me, I would never presume to believe that would apply to everyone else who shares the planet or solar system with us. I know plenty of people who have no such belief system in their conscious mind or thought processes and who lead admirably moral and exemplary lives. More so than myself, some of them. So...
That is another aspect to this ongoing debate that is irksome. Humankind’s relationship with a Divine power is a very personal thing. Something only each and every individual themselves can relate to or understand. And that includes those who choose to NOT have a relationship with any Divine power as well. For surely that is as much of a relationship as one who prays everyday to something. An atheist is still a theist. Not intelligent enough to be agnostic. Not wise enough to shut the hell up; very similar to evangelicals or extremists who give more thought-out Christians or Muslims a bad name by their blind ambition to convert those who do not agree with them.
We could go on and on of course, which is the nature of philosophy, and theology. A never ending dialogue about things guessed and conjectured but essentially, by their very essence, and inherently man-made and improvable. Fun and intellectually enticing and titillating, but rather wasteful of precious human energy if indulged in too much – especially if we are going to eventually get down to the real tasks at hand like using the best of what we have to make the world a better place in the short time we are here together.
It is not that “The God Delusion” is an illusion per se. It is simply an idea that has been around for tens of thousands of years. Nor is the pursuit of “The Language of God.” Both concepts and pursuits are as real as the inventors of the ideas, the authors of the books, and their respective readers care to make them in their personal lives. Sort of like “life after death.” Not a bad idea at all. In fact, I would submit that it is quite the comforting thought. But certainly not something one can prove or disprove, and certainly not something to spend a lot of time writing or reading about as if from some secret knowledge or impassioned faith. Better to get on with the living of the “life before death” and leave life after death in its proper place – AFTER death.
If it ever is to occur that one of the millions of us who die each year should ever find a way to communicate with those of us still “living” certainly they will be so kind as to let us know that “life after death” does indeed exist. While they're at it, they can also confirm or deny for us the idea of the soul, reincarnation, chakras, free-will versus determinism, the astral plane, the spirit world, and even vampires, angels, and big foots.
In the meantime, current statistics tell us that every 3.9 seconds of every single day someone who is living among us dies from either starvation or thirst on our small planet. For those who have a God, by all means PRAY. But let us also not forget to roll up our sleeves and take action. Mother Theresa, a celibate, dedicated, penniless, female-priest of the Catholic faith tradition taught us that valuable lesson. For all the prayers to a God in the world that we can muster, we still need real-world action if we are to make real progress as the fledgling Gods that we are ourselves in THIS world. But a little prayer here and there certainly won't hurt either.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Hank Moody
Still mildly obsessed with this slight though acute Californication addiction. Catching up on all the episodes I missed of season 2 on On Demand. We all have our demons. And Hank Moody is one my many. His character hits a little too close to home sometimes. Not necessarily the thing a man needs when he's on the straight and narrow. That influence. But we’ve all had our fair share of being the bad influence on others. So it’s a bittersweet love affair we have. We used to live mirrored lives of one another. But the new me now is scared shitless that one day I will unwittingly glance in the mirror and see the reflection of our once shared lifestyles staring back at me once more. But one day at a time. And I've never been one to run and hide from anything regardless of the potential danger. Life isn't worth living without it.
There is of course the matter of 16 year old Mia stealing the manuscript for the first book he's managed to write in almost five years and publishing it as if it were her own and it taking off and becoming a best seller. Only he can’t actually come out and tell the world that it is actually his new book, not hers, because he's formerly had sexual relations with the hot little pubescent and if he does out her she's threatened to tell the world about their secret. When the reviews start pouring in and the book appears that it is going to be a smash, I couldn’t help but wonder if the writers of the show hadn't somehow managed to find a way to spy on the life of yours truly and the odd and cataclysmic series of events that have befallen me over the last few years.
At one point when Hank reads the New York Times review of his new novel that the rest of the world thinks is actually the work of this crafty young wench without scruples Mia, he exclaims “Holy fuck. Well I'll be dipped in dogshit.” "Oh yes. I can relate to that," I thought. Proud that he finally got a new book out. Proud that it is actually getting good reviews. And probably twisted up torn up and tattered on the inside about the wicked irony of his fate. He still broke. Her giddily receiving all the money and glory for his five years worth of hard labor. And he unable to do a damn thing about it.
I had to hit pause on the Tivo. “What the fuck? Are they following me?” I couldn’t help but see the resemblance. But as much as it stung it also somehow made me smile. “You aint the only cowboy beaten up by the young and the restless beeyotches of the world Fishy,” it seemed to say to me.
It reminded me of a recent event that brought the pain and tragedy all back to haunt my ass one more time. About a week ago I went to the local vitamin shop innocently enough to purchase a few bottles of Resveratrol – my newest anti-aging supplement obsession – when I noticed sitting on a shelf staring right in front of me a beautiful box of UltraMax Gold, one of the most cutting edge anti-aging supplements on the market today. I can safely say this because I developed, formulated, and designed this very product eight years ago. Three years ago the company I founded to sell millions of aforementioned boxes of the pure holy ghost of youth in a bottle called UltraMax Gold was sold out from under me by none other than Cleopatra Ecstasy, the once young beautiful and innocent girl of mythic grace but wicked potential lurking within that I once called “fiancé.” The same girl glorified in countless songs on many of my finest albums over the past ten years before I discovered just how deadly that poison of blind love can be.
One day I had more money collected than I knew what to do with. Real estate worth millions, and five smooth sailing companies. One, a solid multi-national that when sold would guarantee that I would never have to work another day in my life. My family would be taken care of. My future children would be taken care of. Life was good. Moving to New York and leaving the business in the hands of the ex was a gamble I knew. But six inches of signed contracts and agreements later, I felt that we were both protected enough that we could go our separate ways and still manage to run our vast little empire from two different locales.
Two years into moving to the big apple I was about to get an ass full of sour grapes when I learned that every bank account that I had had been changed, my name taken off, my American Express gold card maxed out and unpaid, and worst of all our company sold to a larger publicly traded company in the same industry, Naturade. I didn't even learn of the sale of my own company till three months after it happened truth be told. Infinito told me over an MSN chat congratulating me on the great news. “DUDE! Congratulations man! You sold Ageless Foundation Laboratories! You are truly a rich man now! How does it feel?”
“Uh, well, it feels like shit bro because I have no idea what you are talking about.” He shot me over the link to the SEC filing and sure enough the tight-hearted little wench had somehow managed to physically sell the company behind my back, without my signature, authority, or even knowledge. All the while we spoke everyday and she continued to assure me that everything was going fine at HQ and that it would only be weeks, maybe even days, before we closed on the biggest deal of our shared business collaboration. This went on for nine months. Three months after she had sold the damn thing already. Why she kept up the front for so long after the dastardly deed had been done I have no idea. When I finally learned of her folly I immediately called her. “I knew you'd be mad,” is all she could say. She blamed it on her husband Flyboy and her attorney. Ahe said that they coerced her into doing it. She was speechless for a while and then eventually just became defensive and tried to defend her action, promising to make good on her “mistake” and pay me. Naturade as it would turn out later didn't even know I existed anymore. They were under the assumption that I had sold out years before. I was speechless. Dumbfounded. In shock.
The term for it is "white collar crime." Fraud. Grand larceny. Embezzlement of corporate funds and assets. And there's not a damn thing the police can do when someone steals that much money from you unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a law firm. That's an ironic twist to American capitalism. Steal a TV and you go to jail. Steal a few million dollars and you have a good chance of walking away free as a bird.
It was a blow to my clueless head so hard and shocking that I fell into a downward spiral of denial, disbelief, and utter stupification. There was simply no way that anyone would do that to someone they were so close to for so long. Or so I thought. But I began to understand another meaning of the old adage “different strokes for different folks.” What might seem unthinkable to one person may seem perfectly acceptable for another if the situation presents itself and they think they can get away with it.
So the once wealthy Ambassador known as Fishy who sped around South Beach in his turbo fueled BMW 330 icc convertible smoking ten dollar cigars found himself dead flat broke overnight and locked out of all possible means of getting access to any of his hard earned cash because the bitch had changed all his bank accounts, maxed out his cards, sold their business, and was holding his real estate hostage. Crisis? Hell yeah. Someone call 911. I've fallen and I can't get up.
I learned a lot from the experience, I'll confess. I learned how dishonest I was myself. By having to deal with someone giving me an ass fucking so heinous and cruel and heartless I was forced to face my own transgressions and indiscretions and moments of dishonesty towards others. It was my only way out of the pain I was in. I needed to cleanse myself, my own inner demons, first to better deal with the battle I was now facing against a group of ethically challenged foes that I was never prepared in life prior to ever do battle with. And the only way I could do it was to clean myself out first.
I also learned the value and meaning of true friendship. Friends came to my aid like I had just spontaneously combusted and burst into flames, came running from all four corners of the globe. Some gave me money to keep going. Some gave me daily moral support. My brother, mother, college friends and roommates, and numerous former-girlfriends of the past called on a daily basis just to check up on me and see how I was doing. This was something that I will never forget. Eighty years old in a rocking chair on my front porch I will still look back on that year and the friends and family that came to my rescue in awe and with gratitude. I was born with a lucky star over my head man.
One day while walking in the rain down a wet Manhattan street I was cursing God, “Why have you done this to me? What am I meant to learn from this?” A voice whispered in my ear. “God didn't do this to you Fishy. People hurt other people. That's life. God has graced you with more friends than you know what to do with to get you through this. That's God. you have it reversed.” I got it. I understood. God was grace.
More lessons than I could ever write about in one blog post at 3:30 in the morning. But more than anything I learned that one day life can seem utterly perfect and stable and in a matter of weeks it can turn to utter shit turmoil and chaos and downright desperation sometimes. People are not always what they seem. And no matter what someone is telling you to your face it doesn’t necessarily mean that that is what is actually happening. I can honestly say that if you would have told me that three years ago I would have told you that you had it all wrong. That if we are good, then only good things would happen to us. Because that is all I had ever experienced before in my life. I walked around in a blind hippy ynew age daydream of a life. Felt like an angel skipping through the world spreading love and light and peace and joy and inspiration and receiving nothing but the same in return. I never imagined that something bad could happen to me, especially not by another person. And especially not by someone I had been so close to for so many years.
But life is long. Goddamn is life long. And we live it if we’re lucky enough. And we learn. One of the most important things I learned was to come back down to earth and realize that I was just another raindrop in a sea of humanity. I had been rich for too long. I was lost in sea of materialism and felt separate from most of the people around me. Everyone was either poorer than I was or wealthier. I had lost perspective. In the last three years I often joke with my friends that I again feel “at one with the people.” I can feel them. Smell them. Feel like one of them. I can smile with them. Joke with them. Talk with them. Laugh with them. It feels good. I am happy. I am starting over again financially at a time when I thought I would be living in a townhouse of my own in Soho half the year and a villa in Tuscany the other half the year. But I am still happy. I may have lost the empire. But I didn't lose the brain and guts and heart that built it to begin with. Which means i can do it again.
That was until a week ago when aforesaid box of UltraMax Gold stared me right in the eye at this particular health food store. I asked the sales clerk how the product was selling. He said “pretty good.” I told him who I was. He couldn’t believe it. He had never met any of the owners of a vitamin manufacturing company before. He only sold our products. He wanted to learn as much as possible about the industry as I could tell him. It was fun revisiting the old school so to speak. I picked up the box. Right there on the side of the box was our 800 number. The same toll-free 800 number I had ordered from AT&T back in my bedroom of my small rented little apartment way back when I first started the company. And here it was still on the box being sold by another company and I wasn't receiving a dime for the sales. The bitter pill made me choke a little but I attempted to keep my cool and kept examining the box, revisiting the memories of what created such an amazing fortune and life for me and so many others.
I turned the box over and looked at the back. There on the back was our mission statement. My mission statement. The one that took me three weeks to write, perfect, and finally release to our marketing department. “At Ageless Foundation Laboratories we believe that anti-aging is more than just extending the final years of our lives...” I read the whole thing. “God that is fucking good,” I thought. And here it is. Still on the box. My logo. My formula. My box design. It was all too much.
I rushed out of the store to get some fresh air. I called G2 who has worked for me for over ten years now. He started working at our company when it was just a fledgling little sapling of a tree. Back when there were only three or four of us. By the time we peaked we were doing 4 million a year and had 35 employees. He still works for Naturade and still works on the UltraMax product line that I created way back when. He could relate.
“G2 I'm looking at the box and the damn thing even has my original promotional ad copy still on it!” He responded: “Dog, not just that. They’ve got your formula, your logo, your name, its all you on that box man. They got it all.” “Dude I'm so sad... how am I supposed to feel bro? I'm torn up inside. This is fucked up.” “Yes it is my brother. Yes it is. Just try to be patient and diplomatic. Perhaps one day it will work out man. But keep taking the high road. It will work out.”
Wise words. And in a few hours I was back into the new life of The Ambassador. Doing my thing. Actually I was smack dab in the middle of filming a Bed-In for Peace 2008 style to learn more about and support peace all over the world and especially in the suffering Middle East. This is my new life. And it felt good. I soon forgot about my pain and resentment and realized that somehow over the last three years though I lost it all at the drop of a hat simply by trusting too much and not looking ahead enough I had somehow managed to create an entirely new life that was bigger and better and more exciting than I ever imagined it was going to be. Africa, Iran, meetings at the UN, TV shows, new albums, new loves and old loves, good friends and supportive family, and a deeper connection with The Divine than I ever thought possible.
So I'm watching Californication. Hank Moody is getting his heart ripped out by reading a stellar review of his first new novel in five years but its authorship is credited to a heartless young nymphet who takes a devilish pleasure and pride in the fact that she ripped him off and got away with it. Sounds familiar. He's left with a bottle of vodka, a cigarette, and countless romps in the hay with strange nameless women to drown his sorrows and bitterness. And in that moment I realized that I wasn't Hank Moody anymore. My days of bottle drinking, cigarette smoking, and romps with nameless women to numb my pain are behind me. Somehow I have managed to free myself from most, but not all, of the ache and resentment. “Keep moving forward” I tell myself. “Even when you feel like you can’t move a muscle, move one anyway. Just take another step. It’s only getting better from here. Truth is we never know what’s right around the corner.”
Goodbye Hank Moody. At least until next season. Let us hope for both of us that Season three offers us both a better script. And if it doesn’t, we’ll rewrite the fucker ourselves. Amen.
There is of course the matter of 16 year old Mia stealing the manuscript for the first book he's managed to write in almost five years and publishing it as if it were her own and it taking off and becoming a best seller. Only he can’t actually come out and tell the world that it is actually his new book, not hers, because he's formerly had sexual relations with the hot little pubescent and if he does out her she's threatened to tell the world about their secret. When the reviews start pouring in and the book appears that it is going to be a smash, I couldn’t help but wonder if the writers of the show hadn't somehow managed to find a way to spy on the life of yours truly and the odd and cataclysmic series of events that have befallen me over the last few years.
At one point when Hank reads the New York Times review of his new novel that the rest of the world thinks is actually the work of this crafty young wench without scruples Mia, he exclaims “Holy fuck. Well I'll be dipped in dogshit.” "Oh yes. I can relate to that," I thought. Proud that he finally got a new book out. Proud that it is actually getting good reviews. And probably twisted up torn up and tattered on the inside about the wicked irony of his fate. He still broke. Her giddily receiving all the money and glory for his five years worth of hard labor. And he unable to do a damn thing about it.
I had to hit pause on the Tivo. “What the fuck? Are they following me?” I couldn’t help but see the resemblance. But as much as it stung it also somehow made me smile. “You aint the only cowboy beaten up by the young and the restless beeyotches of the world Fishy,” it seemed to say to me.
It reminded me of a recent event that brought the pain and tragedy all back to haunt my ass one more time. About a week ago I went to the local vitamin shop innocently enough to purchase a few bottles of Resveratrol – my newest anti-aging supplement obsession – when I noticed sitting on a shelf staring right in front of me a beautiful box of UltraMax Gold, one of the most cutting edge anti-aging supplements on the market today. I can safely say this because I developed, formulated, and designed this very product eight years ago. Three years ago the company I founded to sell millions of aforementioned boxes of the pure holy ghost of youth in a bottle called UltraMax Gold was sold out from under me by none other than Cleopatra Ecstasy, the once young beautiful and innocent girl of mythic grace but wicked potential lurking within that I once called “fiancé.” The same girl glorified in countless songs on many of my finest albums over the past ten years before I discovered just how deadly that poison of blind love can be.
One day I had more money collected than I knew what to do with. Real estate worth millions, and five smooth sailing companies. One, a solid multi-national that when sold would guarantee that I would never have to work another day in my life. My family would be taken care of. My future children would be taken care of. Life was good. Moving to New York and leaving the business in the hands of the ex was a gamble I knew. But six inches of signed contracts and agreements later, I felt that we were both protected enough that we could go our separate ways and still manage to run our vast little empire from two different locales.
Two years into moving to the big apple I was about to get an ass full of sour grapes when I learned that every bank account that I had had been changed, my name taken off, my American Express gold card maxed out and unpaid, and worst of all our company sold to a larger publicly traded company in the same industry, Naturade. I didn't even learn of the sale of my own company till three months after it happened truth be told. Infinito told me over an MSN chat congratulating me on the great news. “DUDE! Congratulations man! You sold Ageless Foundation Laboratories! You are truly a rich man now! How does it feel?”
“Uh, well, it feels like shit bro because I have no idea what you are talking about.” He shot me over the link to the SEC filing and sure enough the tight-hearted little wench had somehow managed to physically sell the company behind my back, without my signature, authority, or even knowledge. All the while we spoke everyday and she continued to assure me that everything was going fine at HQ and that it would only be weeks, maybe even days, before we closed on the biggest deal of our shared business collaboration. This went on for nine months. Three months after she had sold the damn thing already. Why she kept up the front for so long after the dastardly deed had been done I have no idea. When I finally learned of her folly I immediately called her. “I knew you'd be mad,” is all she could say. She blamed it on her husband Flyboy and her attorney. Ahe said that they coerced her into doing it. She was speechless for a while and then eventually just became defensive and tried to defend her action, promising to make good on her “mistake” and pay me. Naturade as it would turn out later didn't even know I existed anymore. They were under the assumption that I had sold out years before. I was speechless. Dumbfounded. In shock.
The term for it is "white collar crime." Fraud. Grand larceny. Embezzlement of corporate funds and assets. And there's not a damn thing the police can do when someone steals that much money from you unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a law firm. That's an ironic twist to American capitalism. Steal a TV and you go to jail. Steal a few million dollars and you have a good chance of walking away free as a bird.
It was a blow to my clueless head so hard and shocking that I fell into a downward spiral of denial, disbelief, and utter stupification. There was simply no way that anyone would do that to someone they were so close to for so long. Or so I thought. But I began to understand another meaning of the old adage “different strokes for different folks.” What might seem unthinkable to one person may seem perfectly acceptable for another if the situation presents itself and they think they can get away with it.
So the once wealthy Ambassador known as Fishy who sped around South Beach in his turbo fueled BMW 330 icc convertible smoking ten dollar cigars found himself dead flat broke overnight and locked out of all possible means of getting access to any of his hard earned cash because the bitch had changed all his bank accounts, maxed out his cards, sold their business, and was holding his real estate hostage. Crisis? Hell yeah. Someone call 911. I've fallen and I can't get up.
I learned a lot from the experience, I'll confess. I learned how dishonest I was myself. By having to deal with someone giving me an ass fucking so heinous and cruel and heartless I was forced to face my own transgressions and indiscretions and moments of dishonesty towards others. It was my only way out of the pain I was in. I needed to cleanse myself, my own inner demons, first to better deal with the battle I was now facing against a group of ethically challenged foes that I was never prepared in life prior to ever do battle with. And the only way I could do it was to clean myself out first.
I also learned the value and meaning of true friendship. Friends came to my aid like I had just spontaneously combusted and burst into flames, came running from all four corners of the globe. Some gave me money to keep going. Some gave me daily moral support. My brother, mother, college friends and roommates, and numerous former-girlfriends of the past called on a daily basis just to check up on me and see how I was doing. This was something that I will never forget. Eighty years old in a rocking chair on my front porch I will still look back on that year and the friends and family that came to my rescue in awe and with gratitude. I was born with a lucky star over my head man.
One day while walking in the rain down a wet Manhattan street I was cursing God, “Why have you done this to me? What am I meant to learn from this?” A voice whispered in my ear. “God didn't do this to you Fishy. People hurt other people. That's life. God has graced you with more friends than you know what to do with to get you through this. That's God. you have it reversed.” I got it. I understood. God was grace.
More lessons than I could ever write about in one blog post at 3:30 in the morning. But more than anything I learned that one day life can seem utterly perfect and stable and in a matter of weeks it can turn to utter shit turmoil and chaos and downright desperation sometimes. People are not always what they seem. And no matter what someone is telling you to your face it doesn’t necessarily mean that that is what is actually happening. I can honestly say that if you would have told me that three years ago I would have told you that you had it all wrong. That if we are good, then only good things would happen to us. Because that is all I had ever experienced before in my life. I walked around in a blind hippy ynew age daydream of a life. Felt like an angel skipping through the world spreading love and light and peace and joy and inspiration and receiving nothing but the same in return. I never imagined that something bad could happen to me, especially not by another person. And especially not by someone I had been so close to for so many years.
But life is long. Goddamn is life long. And we live it if we’re lucky enough. And we learn. One of the most important things I learned was to come back down to earth and realize that I was just another raindrop in a sea of humanity. I had been rich for too long. I was lost in sea of materialism and felt separate from most of the people around me. Everyone was either poorer than I was or wealthier. I had lost perspective. In the last three years I often joke with my friends that I again feel “at one with the people.” I can feel them. Smell them. Feel like one of them. I can smile with them. Joke with them. Talk with them. Laugh with them. It feels good. I am happy. I am starting over again financially at a time when I thought I would be living in a townhouse of my own in Soho half the year and a villa in Tuscany the other half the year. But I am still happy. I may have lost the empire. But I didn't lose the brain and guts and heart that built it to begin with. Which means i can do it again.
That was until a week ago when aforesaid box of UltraMax Gold stared me right in the eye at this particular health food store. I asked the sales clerk how the product was selling. He said “pretty good.” I told him who I was. He couldn’t believe it. He had never met any of the owners of a vitamin manufacturing company before. He only sold our products. He wanted to learn as much as possible about the industry as I could tell him. It was fun revisiting the old school so to speak. I picked up the box. Right there on the side of the box was our 800 number. The same toll-free 800 number I had ordered from AT&T back in my bedroom of my small rented little apartment way back when I first started the company. And here it was still on the box being sold by another company and I wasn't receiving a dime for the sales. The bitter pill made me choke a little but I attempted to keep my cool and kept examining the box, revisiting the memories of what created such an amazing fortune and life for me and so many others.
I turned the box over and looked at the back. There on the back was our mission statement. My mission statement. The one that took me three weeks to write, perfect, and finally release to our marketing department. “At Ageless Foundation Laboratories we believe that anti-aging is more than just extending the final years of our lives...” I read the whole thing. “God that is fucking good,” I thought. And here it is. Still on the box. My logo. My formula. My box design. It was all too much.
I rushed out of the store to get some fresh air. I called G2 who has worked for me for over ten years now. He started working at our company when it was just a fledgling little sapling of a tree. Back when there were only three or four of us. By the time we peaked we were doing 4 million a year and had 35 employees. He still works for Naturade and still works on the UltraMax product line that I created way back when. He could relate.
“G2 I'm looking at the box and the damn thing even has my original promotional ad copy still on it!” He responded: “Dog, not just that. They’ve got your formula, your logo, your name, its all you on that box man. They got it all.” “Dude I'm so sad... how am I supposed to feel bro? I'm torn up inside. This is fucked up.” “Yes it is my brother. Yes it is. Just try to be patient and diplomatic. Perhaps one day it will work out man. But keep taking the high road. It will work out.”
Wise words. And in a few hours I was back into the new life of The Ambassador. Doing my thing. Actually I was smack dab in the middle of filming a Bed-In for Peace 2008 style to learn more about and support peace all over the world and especially in the suffering Middle East. This is my new life. And it felt good. I soon forgot about my pain and resentment and realized that somehow over the last three years though I lost it all at the drop of a hat simply by trusting too much and not looking ahead enough I had somehow managed to create an entirely new life that was bigger and better and more exciting than I ever imagined it was going to be. Africa, Iran, meetings at the UN, TV shows, new albums, new loves and old loves, good friends and supportive family, and a deeper connection with The Divine than I ever thought possible.
So I'm watching Californication. Hank Moody is getting his heart ripped out by reading a stellar review of his first new novel in five years but its authorship is credited to a heartless young nymphet who takes a devilish pleasure and pride in the fact that she ripped him off and got away with it. Sounds familiar. He's left with a bottle of vodka, a cigarette, and countless romps in the hay with strange nameless women to drown his sorrows and bitterness. And in that moment I realized that I wasn't Hank Moody anymore. My days of bottle drinking, cigarette smoking, and romps with nameless women to numb my pain are behind me. Somehow I have managed to free myself from most, but not all, of the ache and resentment. “Keep moving forward” I tell myself. “Even when you feel like you can’t move a muscle, move one anyway. Just take another step. It’s only getting better from here. Truth is we never know what’s right around the corner.”
Goodbye Hank Moody. At least until next season. Let us hope for both of us that Season three offers us both a better script. And if it doesn’t, we’ll rewrite the fucker ourselves. Amen.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
What the F is wrong with CNN?
CNN was at one time a news station. I remember this. I am not that senile; nor that brain damaged from a life of a debauched and reckless rock and roll lifestyle. It cannot all be in my imagination that CNN at one time in the distant past fashioned itself “a news station.”
But times have changed. I am not sure WHAT exactly CNN is now, but it certainly does not deliver much news. And even worse for wear we all are when we begin to wonder where exactly should we go to get the latest news of the world?
I have kept CNN on for the last six hours while working in my office. Currently a hot little minx they call Campbell Brown is on the screen offering a something she calls “No Bull. No Bias.” Her top headlines?
“Burris Blocked From the Senate.”
“Gaza Humanitarian Crisis.”
“Al Franken announces victory but not sworn in.” and
“CNN’s own Sanjay Gupta possible Surgeon General?”
and
“Obama’s Stimulus Package.”
Problem? At 7PM the ever increasingly blustering Lou Dobbs, whose show preceded Ms. Brown’s, reported the same five stories. Two hours before that at 5PM Pussy Cat Blitzer reported those same five stories in his “Vomitorium Room” not once but TWICE each. Before that Don Lemon also came on a few dozen times telling the world about those same five stories. Later tonight at 9PM Larry King will tell us how “Oprah” is planning on losing weight yet again. Now that’s some important world news for sure. Tivo that shit. After that Anderson Pooper promises to do what? Tell us all about “the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Burris getting blocked by the Senate, Al Franken declaring victory but not getting sworn in, and the potential pitfalls of President Elect Obama’s new 800 billion stimulus package.”
The pure guts of that man’s journalistic integrity. Such boldness. Stepping out on a limb like that to report on such rarely reported stories. NOT! He just repeats what we’ve already heard all day long from other CNN reporters. And he's not going to do it once. He's going to do it twice. Once in his first hour and once in his second. I cannot honestly understand how he can do it. And I mean that. For all the money in the world I wouldn’t myself personally do it. Unless I was drunk as hell, didn't give a fuck, and pretended that I was someone else 24 hours a day. The man has got to be brain-dead. No offense to brain dead people. I know he’s “just doing his job.” Ever heard of Edward R Murrow? So was he. Everyone at CNN can “just do their job” and still report the freaking news if they would simply stand up to the suits who run CNN who are telling them to run the same damn narrowly focused five stories ad nauseum all day long.
Speaking of nausea by the way, if bulimia is your thing, then CNN has got you covered because at midnight just in case you haven't barfed up EVERYTHNG you ate today they will replay the SAME Larry King show from earlier AND the SAME Anderson Pooper Scooper show. Doing what? Yep. Reporting the same damn five news stories they’ve shoved down our throats all day long.
So what’s up with “the most rusted name in news?” What caused CNN to jump the shark and run with celebrity wannabe puppet heads dressed up in different costumes repeating the same five stories all day instead of reporting news stories from all over the world? There certainly isn't a lack of news worthy events happening on planet earth. Life in today’s times is anything but boring or uneventful.
So what gives? Fuck if I know. And fuck if I care at this point. None should. We’ve given CNN enough time and attention and like the Bush-Cheney regime that illegally invaded Iraq and the White House it is simply time to pull the plug. CNN is a giant overstuffed corporate behemoth that talks too much, carries way too much weight, tries to pass its news anchors off as celebrities, and doesn’t deliver much except loud mouths, and questionable opinions rather than objective news reporting.
But let it be said that the people of the world would love to be able to have one place to go to gain access to comprehensive and objective news reporting from all over the world across a broad spectrum of subject matter. We have 193 countries on planet earth today if we count Palestine, which we should. So chances are there are more news worthy events happening each day in our world than one station could possibly deliver to the people even if they didn't repeat one news item more than once in a 24 hour period. That's a lot of news. And there are plenty of people who would love to hear it.
So that's the vision: One TV news station serving the people of planet earth 24 hours a day with the latest, greatest, and most up to date news items from around the world leaving no stone unturned, and preferably offering nary an opinion, but simply objective news reporting. Hey, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
Ambassador over and out.
But times have changed. I am not sure WHAT exactly CNN is now, but it certainly does not deliver much news. And even worse for wear we all are when we begin to wonder where exactly should we go to get the latest news of the world?
I have kept CNN on for the last six hours while working in my office. Currently a hot little minx they call Campbell Brown is on the screen offering a something she calls “No Bull. No Bias.” Her top headlines?
“Burris Blocked From the Senate.”
“Gaza Humanitarian Crisis.”
“Al Franken announces victory but not sworn in.” and
“CNN’s own Sanjay Gupta possible Surgeon General?”
and
“Obama’s Stimulus Package.”
Problem? At 7PM the ever increasingly blustering Lou Dobbs, whose show preceded Ms. Brown’s, reported the same five stories. Two hours before that at 5PM Pussy Cat Blitzer reported those same five stories in his “Vomitorium Room” not once but TWICE each. Before that Don Lemon also came on a few dozen times telling the world about those same five stories. Later tonight at 9PM Larry King will tell us how “Oprah” is planning on losing weight yet again. Now that’s some important world news for sure. Tivo that shit. After that Anderson Pooper promises to do what? Tell us all about “the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Burris getting blocked by the Senate, Al Franken declaring victory but not getting sworn in, and the potential pitfalls of President Elect Obama’s new 800 billion stimulus package.”
The pure guts of that man’s journalistic integrity. Such boldness. Stepping out on a limb like that to report on such rarely reported stories. NOT! He just repeats what we’ve already heard all day long from other CNN reporters. And he's not going to do it once. He's going to do it twice. Once in his first hour and once in his second. I cannot honestly understand how he can do it. And I mean that. For all the money in the world I wouldn’t myself personally do it. Unless I was drunk as hell, didn't give a fuck, and pretended that I was someone else 24 hours a day. The man has got to be brain-dead. No offense to brain dead people. I know he’s “just doing his job.” Ever heard of Edward R Murrow? So was he. Everyone at CNN can “just do their job” and still report the freaking news if they would simply stand up to the suits who run CNN who are telling them to run the same damn narrowly focused five stories ad nauseum all day long.
Speaking of nausea by the way, if bulimia is your thing, then CNN has got you covered because at midnight just in case you haven't barfed up EVERYTHNG you ate today they will replay the SAME Larry King show from earlier AND the SAME Anderson Pooper Scooper show. Doing what? Yep. Reporting the same damn five news stories they’ve shoved down our throats all day long.
So what’s up with “the most rusted name in news?” What caused CNN to jump the shark and run with celebrity wannabe puppet heads dressed up in different costumes repeating the same five stories all day instead of reporting news stories from all over the world? There certainly isn't a lack of news worthy events happening on planet earth. Life in today’s times is anything but boring or uneventful.
So what gives? Fuck if I know. And fuck if I care at this point. None should. We’ve given CNN enough time and attention and like the Bush-Cheney regime that illegally invaded Iraq and the White House it is simply time to pull the plug. CNN is a giant overstuffed corporate behemoth that talks too much, carries way too much weight, tries to pass its news anchors off as celebrities, and doesn’t deliver much except loud mouths, and questionable opinions rather than objective news reporting.
But let it be said that the people of the world would love to be able to have one place to go to gain access to comprehensive and objective news reporting from all over the world across a broad spectrum of subject matter. We have 193 countries on planet earth today if we count Palestine, which we should. So chances are there are more news worthy events happening each day in our world than one station could possibly deliver to the people even if they didn't repeat one news item more than once in a 24 hour period. That's a lot of news. And there are plenty of people who would love to hear it.
So that's the vision: One TV news station serving the people of planet earth 24 hours a day with the latest, greatest, and most up to date news items from around the world leaving no stone unturned, and preferably offering nary an opinion, but simply objective news reporting. Hey, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
Ambassador over and out.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Implementing Plan B -- Maintaining Relationships 21st Century Style
A few days ago I hit the Send/Receive button to download email, a task that has become so ubiquitous in our lives, so obligatory, that one would assume that by now someone would have come up with some way to profit from it. After all if everyone and their brother is doing it, why not make some money from it. For all the would be entrepreneurs out there, the idea is yours. Take it and run with it. I'm too fucking busy. Which is the primary theme of today's rant. Indeed, anyone with half a brain should be able to think of some way to generate a decent and regular revenue stream just from attaching a product or service to anything that people do on a regular basis. Right before our eyes, sending and receiving email has turned into one of those tasks. Think of the possibilities in regards to other activities that we currently do on a regular basis. There's toilet paper. Someone is making money there. There is food in general. Not to mention the boundless collection of accoutrement that accompanies human beings' need to eat daily. Tissue paper is one of those "if only I would have thought of it products. Simple, brainless, cheap and easy to make. And yet something that will never go out of style; unless of course we eventually evolve to a point where we no longer require noses to breathe with. Shoes are another. Human beings leave their places of shelter on occasion and when they do they are accustomed to not walking around barefoot anymore as in times past. Make shoes, make money. Human beings walk on a daily basis. Create a cheap and simple product or service that attaches itself to human beings newest daily obsession -- sending and receiving email -- and a rich man you will soon be.
But alas that is not the point of this ramble. Consider it a freebie in case you are right at this very moment plum ripe and ready for a new idea to make millions with and let us move on. Spam be damned, there are at least on most occasions a few hundred emails that pour into our lives relentlessly, unceasingly, and without mercy each day, for some of us each and every God for saken hour, that are actually important and require our attention. When did it happen? Truth be told I don't think anyone really knows. Long gone are the days when email was a novelty. That was quickly replaced by email being a luxury. And then that was soon replaced by email being a downright necessity. And I may be slightly ahead of the curve on this one, or perhaps just as always three steps past eccentric and downright off the chart crazy. But I am done with email. I dug email when it was a novelty. It gave me a sense of belonging to a special elite that could get things done faster and more efficiently than most. And I relished the ease at which I could communicate with more people at a faster rate than one ever could with traditional phone, fax, and letter writing.
When it became less novelty and more of a luxury I still enjoyed it. Even appreciated it. It gave me the freedom to not have to answer the phone nor make calls anymore, nor even write letters or send and receive faxes. And we still accomplished more than ever before. But something changed. Pretty soon the whole world had email and our lives have turned into one giant button pushing nightmare. Worse yet, we have added yet another "thing to collect" to our already over-crowded lives. Thousands and thousands and more thousands of emails. Now that email has become a necessity, an annoying bastard of a necessity at that, right up there taxes and presidents and the United States Post Office, I am thoroughly entirely and adamantly over it.
My friends laughed when I first announced that I was through with email. They thought I was joking. A few days ago I hit that send/receive button just for the sheer fuck all of it -- I had no intention of actually doing anything after I did so. After all, I hadn't actually read an email since August 5th and here it was September 2nd. Don't get me wrong. I still download them into my inbox. I might glance at them. But with over 5000 unattended and unreplied to and 1300 of them still unread, there just isn't much I can do at this point about it. One thing I did happen to notice as I watched the little demons speedily pour into my inbox like rats into a half rotted corpse was the subject line of an email from one of my employees. It said something to the effect of "If you are not going to answer my emails!!!"
"Uh oh" I thought. Better click on that one and see what's up. He was mad as hell. Turned out that he was the author of at least two or three of those 1300 unread emails that had already invaded my overcrowded and overwhelmed life. I read his email. The majority of it comprised of his personal feelings regarding how dare I not even bother to reply to him. Truth was I explained to him I just wasn't doing email anymore. It wasn't a personal reflection of how I felt about him. It wasn't a conscious decision mind you. It was just sort of something that happened. I travel too much. Work too much. Play too much. And after some reflection on the matter I realized that at some point in the last few months I had already made this subtle transition to texting being my preferred method of communication. Again it wasn't intentional. It just sort of happened. Upon further reflection I came to realize as reported above that I had not actually read an email since august 5th. I might give them a glance now and then. But I just cannot bring myself to do anything with them. There are just too many of them, and how do you decide whose to reply to or not? It is all so overwhelmingly unfair seeming. So one day I just stopped.
I explained to my friend and fellow conspirator that if he needed to reach me for something that he could either text me, or Facebook message me. He already knew I didn't answer my phone, check my voicemail, or return calls. That had stopped just about one year ago to this day. So it was useless to suggest that. He knew better. So after really thinking about it long and hard I decided that if he had to email me, he could always Skype, Facebook message or IM, or text me to alert me to the fact that he had indeed sent an email that I needed to attend to. In the real world what else can we really do at this point? Email is just so 2006. And there is no way that one person can sort, handle, and reply to all the email they receive everyday. At this point each of us need at least two to three people to be doing this task for us. And then what would THOSE people helping us do about their own email? A challenging dilemma for sure.
Well the old boy got the message and chose to Skype my phone with a text message relaying the content of his concerns. It worked like a charm. I was able to then Facebook message him the information he needed and all was well that ended well.
But it did get me thinking. I had been formulating a little something I had been referring to as "Plan B" over the last few months and just had not as of yet had a chance to officially implement it. What I had noticed was the following: There were more people I loved and cared about on the planet than I had time to engage with on a regular basis. Blogging certainly helps with that. So does YouTubing. Both vehicles allow us the opportunity to communicate with large numbers of our friends and fans in one go, at least just to say hello and fill them in on our latest goings on.
Texting is also a good way to do this. I have found that after a long day I might sit for ten to fifteen minutes and text ten to twenty people a hello and anything else that might be relevant to our respective relationship. Just to touch base or to pass on needed information. Facebook -- thank God and pray that he saves and preserves the sacredness of this beloved miracle app -- is also another great way to keep tabs on and stay in close proximity to our closest friends no matter how many miles separate us. The reason that the clean, pure, simple, and elegant Facebook so quickly gobbled up the cluttered, heavily commercialized, dragged down, messy, sloppy nuisance once called MySpace was that Facebook -- at least as of this writing -- actually helps us accomplish something -- quick, efficient, authentic and sincere communication with those we work with or love or care about. The interface is simple and clean and they keep the advertisements to a minimum. There is also the tendency for those of us who live and die within the confines of that beloved app to only make friends with those who we are actually friends with. No competition for who has the most friends nor the obligation to accept friend requests from people we don't know. Facebook is not about a popularity contest. It is about real communication with real people that we actually know AND care about. Let us pray it stays that way, or I can guarantee that the whole lot of us will be off that bandwagon as quickly as we jumped off of MySpace.
But still I did notice that in the last year my life had become so busy so quickly that I was letting my life get in the way of my living so to speak -- so much so that there were many, many people who I just was not finding the time to communicate with as much as I would have preferred.
They would call and I just always felt that I never had the time to answer. They would leave messages and again I just never had the time to check voicemail, let alone actually return calls. They would email, and by the time I saw the email months had passed. I found that I was missing out on one too many invitations to things and even more disturbing I was no longer connected to the outside world much at all. Not even to my own family or closest friends. Life had become more of a marathon. A mad dash so fast-paced that it turned weeks into feeling like days, and days that seemed to only last hours.
I first observed this when a close friend mentioned to me that she and the crew didn't bother inviting me to things anymore because I was so busy that they felt guilty inviting me out because they didn't want to make me uncomfortable by always having to decline the offers which she said I almost always invariably did. This made me sad. A few days later I learned that another friend was due to be married in less than a month and that I had completely missed the announcement and invitation. (I had stopped reading regular post mail about six months prior, choosing instead to just let it pile up in gigantic stacks all over the floor around me. So people already knew not to bother to send me anything by post.) A few days after this, one of my favorite friends -- a man I refer to as a brother and feel truly honored to do so -- gave me a real bitch slapping over the phone about how many times he had called me and not received a call back. He actually went so far as to warn that if I didn't make more effort in regular communication with him that he was going to write me off. I was obviously aghast. Shaken AND stirred. I loved The King. There wasn't much use in being The Ambassador without The King by my side. And lest we forget my mom's assertion that she felt that there was simply "no sense in calling you anymore. You never answer or call back. I just assume you are too busy and I just hope that you will still come home for Christmas." Sad really.
But the truth was and still is that I, being (at least in name) the so-called Ambassador, absolutely love people. Especially my close friends and family, of which I am lucky to have many. But I was quickly recognizing that if I didn't do something about this information and communication overload that had led me to this state of tuning out from the civilized world, that pretty soon there wasn't going to be anybody in my life to tune out.
I also noticed something else. I wasn't the only one in this disturbing predicament. I noticed that there were plenty of people in my life who were also feeling the time crunch and not taking calls or replying to emails anymore. As much as I wanted to be mad and lay down some guilt speech on them, I simply could not because I was probably the worst of all of us. And for good reason. We are all just too damn busy these days. Especially those of us who live in big metropolitan cities with too much to do and not enough money to clone ourselves yet.
After some quiet and sincere contemplation of the situation, and a few discussions with others about the matter I came to understand that one of the driving forces behind this new found isolation and lack of feeling free enough to even be able to take a phone call from a good friend was this subconscious feeling we were harboring that stated that "it has been so damn long since I have talked to so and so that when we DO finally talk it will have to take a long time and I just simply don't have the time to catch up with them right now. So I won't take their call right now, but I will call them "when I have the time."" The problem with this belief is that "when I have the time" never comes around. So we simply avoid reaching out because we are afraid that we "don't have the time." Before we know it, a year passes by. We wake up one day and realize "My God, I haven't talked to so and so in over a year. How could that be? Where did the time go?"
Well once I got clear on what the real problem was I decided that something needed to be done about it. This was the impetus of what I began to refer to as Plan B. Seeing that Plan A -- regular and consistent communication with our friends and loved ones through traditional means -- just wasn't working anymore. A few weeks ago I was deep in the mountains and forests of the Great Northwest taking some much needed time off from my regularly hectic life in a literal oasis of a destination spot overlooking a giant hundred story waterfall and river. That place is called Snoquami falls by the way and I recommend it to anyone who needs a week to shut down and recharge. I received a call from our good friend and sister whom we call Tuesday here in the Diaries. She was in shock that I answered the phone. "I can't believe you answered the phone! I thought I was just going to leave a message! If you're mailbox wasn't full that is..."
"Well Tuesday, welcome to Plan B," I replied. "What's Plan B?" she asked. "Simply put Tuesday Plan B states that we are all way too busy, overwhelmed, and overbooked these days and none of us are taking enough time in our days to even say hello to those most dear to us anymore. And this is a problem. Life is moving faster than it ever has it seems and one day I'm just afraid we are going to wake up and realize that we haven't spent enough time with those we love."
She agreed and we both had a good laugh acknowledging the strange tendency, for New Yorkers especially, to take pleasure in making plans to lunch, dine, see a movie, or just hang out with each other and then cancel at the last minute. If one doesn't live in New York they might find this hard to understand. But it is a very common trend amongst New Yorkers and one that many of us take for granted. Absolutely nothing is off limits in this game we all play with one another. Tuesday and I talked about the reasons for this new trend and decided that making the plan was enough to still give one that sense of security and friendship but that due to our hectic lifestyles that we actually gained more pleasure and satisfaction from being able to cancel and just get some quiet time than we would if we trekked off to some meeting or dinner with someone. Odd yes. But very common here in the big apple. It is not uncommon to book one's entire week both day and night with one thing or another to the point of jam-packed and overflowing and then cancel more than half of the things you agreed to attend. It's just the nature of life in the big city where there is always more to do than one can possibly fit in unless one has at least one to three clones to stand in for them for various different activities. (Note to the scientists out there: get working on cloning will ya! We need it!)
After our near hysterical laughing subsided, I proceeded to explain to Tuesday the details of Plan B and invited her to share it with others, spread it virally as quickly as possible, and also to actually partake in it with me so we could in fact see each other more than once a year. Remember this is Manhattan. None of us live more than a mile or two from each other. And yet it is very easy to go an entire year without actually hooking up. My hot and sexy, smart, cool and sassy pseudo-cousin Samantha and I were just Facebook IMing today and to our horror came to discover that we have not actually seen other face to face in three years and yet we live exactly 1.3 miles from each other. That is just so New York. If it weren't so goddamned typical it would be downright tragic. But neither of us reacted at all negatively, but rather just found it hilarious. We made plans of course to have dinner next Sunday but I'd be a fool to assert that I truly believe that either of us will actually make it to that dinner. "Next Sunday" might as well be 2010 as far as New York living goes. God knows what will happen between now and then. But it sure was good making the plan. That in and of itself is a big step. Just committing to an actual day and time (which we didn't actually do).
But living breathing life forms on planet earth must inevitably adapt and evolve in order to survive. And this is where Plan B comes into play. It is an evolvement in order to do nothing less than secure our very survival. Remember the old adage yours truly once one-offed in a loud, noisy, crowded bar to an uproarious response of high fives and laughter from his friends and lovers: "Your net-worth is equal to your network." Meaning, the more people you regularly communicate with the more successful and wealthy you will be. It is a simple matter of mathematics and one of the foundational principles of networking and success. Plan B is a desperately needed emergency strategy to guarantee not only our continued wealth, happiness, and success, but also our very survival. Without friendship, love, the care of others, and real sincere human contact, we have nothing.
Simply put Plan B states this: Life is too short not to spend time and regularly communicate with the people in our lives that we love. But as we have already covered we are all just too busy and deathly afraid that if we take the time to reach out that it will require too much time that we feel we don't have in any one moment to "catch up." So we subconsciously avoid reaching out or even answering the phone and worse yet we are now reaching a stage where even email has become too burdensome and time-consuming. So it is time to implement Plan B. If you think of someone, call them, or at the very least text them. Don't put it off. It doesn't have to be a long conversation. Let go of the need to feel that we need to "catch up." Catching up is yesterday's fashion. Give it away to Goodwill. Those of us who are living life to its fullest just don't live in a world where we have time to "catch up" anymore. Just pick up that phone and say "hello, I was just thinking about you. Listen, I don't have a lot of time. But how are you? I miss you."
And the same goes for when that phone rings. If you don't recognize the number, let it go to voicemail. There is no harm in that. But if you look down and it's someone that you know and love, or someone that you work with, or someone who would be good for your career, take the call. Let them know you're busy as all hell but you love them and miss them, or that their call is important to you, and you just didn't want them going to voicemail. Spend a minute or two touching base and let that be that. No need to harbor the illusory belief that you two need to spend an hour on the phone. Just chat for a minute or two, support each other, positive talk each other, sincerely communicate together, and let it be. When Tuesday and I were hammering out this plan we both wholeheartedly agreed that we would rather talk three times a week for five minutes each than once a month for an hour. And I feel that way about so many people. We both agreed that email just doesn't cut it. Email has now been relegated to where letter writing and receiving used to be. It's a necessary evil. Not a place where our friends belong. Nope. The sweet voice heart and soul of our friends belong in our ear, if not in front of us face to face. Or at least in a text message at the least.
So far it has worked like a charm. Since implementing Plan B in my life over the last two to three weeks I have noticed my "missed call" log reduce by hundreds of calls. I just simply pick up the damn phone. Today I spoke with Weather Girl for all of three minutes. But that was fine. We talked. She got the message that I was busy, but she also got the message that I cared about her. That her calling was important to me. Today I sent a two-line email to a dear elderly woman who has acted as a mentor and godmother to me for decades now. Didn't have a lot of time but I made the time to just write "Hi there, I've been thinking a lot about you lately. How are you? I hope well. Please always feel free to call me if you ever want to talk or if you need anything. Ok. I love you." And that was that. That's Plan B in a nutshell.
You know I bet after some time that many people will come up with more ideas to add to this new method for staying connected to our friends and loved ones 21st century style. If you are one of those people, please feel free to post a comment with your idea(s). Don't expect me to comment back of course. LOL! But please know that at some point I actually do read all comments. It just might take me a few years. But let's all make this a new habit. A New Years resolution right smack dab in the middle of the year. Then again, knowing how busy YOU are, you might not actually be reading this till New Years anyway. Well regardless, let's do it. We owe it to ourselves. Life is good. It's a blessing and then some if there ever was such a thing. But life is even better when it's filled with friends and family and lovers and real honest to god sincere and authentic communication with the people we love.
Here's to Plan B. Let's do it.
But alas that is not the point of this ramble. Consider it a freebie in case you are right at this very moment plum ripe and ready for a new idea to make millions with and let us move on. Spam be damned, there are at least on most occasions a few hundred emails that pour into our lives relentlessly, unceasingly, and without mercy each day, for some of us each and every God for saken hour, that are actually important and require our attention. When did it happen? Truth be told I don't think anyone really knows. Long gone are the days when email was a novelty. That was quickly replaced by email being a luxury. And then that was soon replaced by email being a downright necessity. And I may be slightly ahead of the curve on this one, or perhaps just as always three steps past eccentric and downright off the chart crazy. But I am done with email. I dug email when it was a novelty. It gave me a sense of belonging to a special elite that could get things done faster and more efficiently than most. And I relished the ease at which I could communicate with more people at a faster rate than one ever could with traditional phone, fax, and letter writing.
When it became less novelty and more of a luxury I still enjoyed it. Even appreciated it. It gave me the freedom to not have to answer the phone nor make calls anymore, nor even write letters or send and receive faxes. And we still accomplished more than ever before. But something changed. Pretty soon the whole world had email and our lives have turned into one giant button pushing nightmare. Worse yet, we have added yet another "thing to collect" to our already over-crowded lives. Thousands and thousands and more thousands of emails. Now that email has become a necessity, an annoying bastard of a necessity at that, right up there taxes and presidents and the United States Post Office, I am thoroughly entirely and adamantly over it.
My friends laughed when I first announced that I was through with email. They thought I was joking. A few days ago I hit that send/receive button just for the sheer fuck all of it -- I had no intention of actually doing anything after I did so. After all, I hadn't actually read an email since August 5th and here it was September 2nd. Don't get me wrong. I still download them into my inbox. I might glance at them. But with over 5000 unattended and unreplied to and 1300 of them still unread, there just isn't much I can do at this point about it. One thing I did happen to notice as I watched the little demons speedily pour into my inbox like rats into a half rotted corpse was the subject line of an email from one of my employees. It said something to the effect of "If you are not going to answer my emails!!!"
"Uh oh" I thought. Better click on that one and see what's up. He was mad as hell. Turned out that he was the author of at least two or three of those 1300 unread emails that had already invaded my overcrowded and overwhelmed life. I read his email. The majority of it comprised of his personal feelings regarding how dare I not even bother to reply to him. Truth was I explained to him I just wasn't doing email anymore. It wasn't a personal reflection of how I felt about him. It wasn't a conscious decision mind you. It was just sort of something that happened. I travel too much. Work too much. Play too much. And after some reflection on the matter I realized that at some point in the last few months I had already made this subtle transition to texting being my preferred method of communication. Again it wasn't intentional. It just sort of happened. Upon further reflection I came to realize as reported above that I had not actually read an email since august 5th. I might give them a glance now and then. But I just cannot bring myself to do anything with them. There are just too many of them, and how do you decide whose to reply to or not? It is all so overwhelmingly unfair seeming. So one day I just stopped.
I explained to my friend and fellow conspirator that if he needed to reach me for something that he could either text me, or Facebook message me. He already knew I didn't answer my phone, check my voicemail, or return calls. That had stopped just about one year ago to this day. So it was useless to suggest that. He knew better. So after really thinking about it long and hard I decided that if he had to email me, he could always Skype, Facebook message or IM, or text me to alert me to the fact that he had indeed sent an email that I needed to attend to. In the real world what else can we really do at this point? Email is just so 2006. And there is no way that one person can sort, handle, and reply to all the email they receive everyday. At this point each of us need at least two to three people to be doing this task for us. And then what would THOSE people helping us do about their own email? A challenging dilemma for sure.
Well the old boy got the message and chose to Skype my phone with a text message relaying the content of his concerns. It worked like a charm. I was able to then Facebook message him the information he needed and all was well that ended well.
But it did get me thinking. I had been formulating a little something I had been referring to as "Plan B" over the last few months and just had not as of yet had a chance to officially implement it. What I had noticed was the following: There were more people I loved and cared about on the planet than I had time to engage with on a regular basis. Blogging certainly helps with that. So does YouTubing. Both vehicles allow us the opportunity to communicate with large numbers of our friends and fans in one go, at least just to say hello and fill them in on our latest goings on.
Texting is also a good way to do this. I have found that after a long day I might sit for ten to fifteen minutes and text ten to twenty people a hello and anything else that might be relevant to our respective relationship. Just to touch base or to pass on needed information. Facebook -- thank God and pray that he saves and preserves the sacredness of this beloved miracle app -- is also another great way to keep tabs on and stay in close proximity to our closest friends no matter how many miles separate us. The reason that the clean, pure, simple, and elegant Facebook so quickly gobbled up the cluttered, heavily commercialized, dragged down, messy, sloppy nuisance once called MySpace was that Facebook -- at least as of this writing -- actually helps us accomplish something -- quick, efficient, authentic and sincere communication with those we work with or love or care about. The interface is simple and clean and they keep the advertisements to a minimum. There is also the tendency for those of us who live and die within the confines of that beloved app to only make friends with those who we are actually friends with. No competition for who has the most friends nor the obligation to accept friend requests from people we don't know. Facebook is not about a popularity contest. It is about real communication with real people that we actually know AND care about. Let us pray it stays that way, or I can guarantee that the whole lot of us will be off that bandwagon as quickly as we jumped off of MySpace.
But still I did notice that in the last year my life had become so busy so quickly that I was letting my life get in the way of my living so to speak -- so much so that there were many, many people who I just was not finding the time to communicate with as much as I would have preferred.
They would call and I just always felt that I never had the time to answer. They would leave messages and again I just never had the time to check voicemail, let alone actually return calls. They would email, and by the time I saw the email months had passed. I found that I was missing out on one too many invitations to things and even more disturbing I was no longer connected to the outside world much at all. Not even to my own family or closest friends. Life had become more of a marathon. A mad dash so fast-paced that it turned weeks into feeling like days, and days that seemed to only last hours.
I first observed this when a close friend mentioned to me that she and the crew didn't bother inviting me to things anymore because I was so busy that they felt guilty inviting me out because they didn't want to make me uncomfortable by always having to decline the offers which she said I almost always invariably did. This made me sad. A few days later I learned that another friend was due to be married in less than a month and that I had completely missed the announcement and invitation. (I had stopped reading regular post mail about six months prior, choosing instead to just let it pile up in gigantic stacks all over the floor around me. So people already knew not to bother to send me anything by post.) A few days after this, one of my favorite friends -- a man I refer to as a brother and feel truly honored to do so -- gave me a real bitch slapping over the phone about how many times he had called me and not received a call back. He actually went so far as to warn that if I didn't make more effort in regular communication with him that he was going to write me off. I was obviously aghast. Shaken AND stirred. I loved The King. There wasn't much use in being The Ambassador without The King by my side. And lest we forget my mom's assertion that she felt that there was simply "no sense in calling you anymore. You never answer or call back. I just assume you are too busy and I just hope that you will still come home for Christmas." Sad really.
But the truth was and still is that I, being (at least in name) the so-called Ambassador, absolutely love people. Especially my close friends and family, of which I am lucky to have many. But I was quickly recognizing that if I didn't do something about this information and communication overload that had led me to this state of tuning out from the civilized world, that pretty soon there wasn't going to be anybody in my life to tune out.
I also noticed something else. I wasn't the only one in this disturbing predicament. I noticed that there were plenty of people in my life who were also feeling the time crunch and not taking calls or replying to emails anymore. As much as I wanted to be mad and lay down some guilt speech on them, I simply could not because I was probably the worst of all of us. And for good reason. We are all just too damn busy these days. Especially those of us who live in big metropolitan cities with too much to do and not enough money to clone ourselves yet.
After some quiet and sincere contemplation of the situation, and a few discussions with others about the matter I came to understand that one of the driving forces behind this new found isolation and lack of feeling free enough to even be able to take a phone call from a good friend was this subconscious feeling we were harboring that stated that "it has been so damn long since I have talked to so and so that when we DO finally talk it will have to take a long time and I just simply don't have the time to catch up with them right now. So I won't take their call right now, but I will call them "when I have the time."" The problem with this belief is that "when I have the time" never comes around. So we simply avoid reaching out because we are afraid that we "don't have the time." Before we know it, a year passes by. We wake up one day and realize "My God, I haven't talked to so and so in over a year. How could that be? Where did the time go?"
Well once I got clear on what the real problem was I decided that something needed to be done about it. This was the impetus of what I began to refer to as Plan B. Seeing that Plan A -- regular and consistent communication with our friends and loved ones through traditional means -- just wasn't working anymore. A few weeks ago I was deep in the mountains and forests of the Great Northwest taking some much needed time off from my regularly hectic life in a literal oasis of a destination spot overlooking a giant hundred story waterfall and river. That place is called Snoquami falls by the way and I recommend it to anyone who needs a week to shut down and recharge. I received a call from our good friend and sister whom we call Tuesday here in the Diaries. She was in shock that I answered the phone. "I can't believe you answered the phone! I thought I was just going to leave a message! If you're mailbox wasn't full that is..."
"Well Tuesday, welcome to Plan B," I replied. "What's Plan B?" she asked. "Simply put Tuesday Plan B states that we are all way too busy, overwhelmed, and overbooked these days and none of us are taking enough time in our days to even say hello to those most dear to us anymore. And this is a problem. Life is moving faster than it ever has it seems and one day I'm just afraid we are going to wake up and realize that we haven't spent enough time with those we love."
She agreed and we both had a good laugh acknowledging the strange tendency, for New Yorkers especially, to take pleasure in making plans to lunch, dine, see a movie, or just hang out with each other and then cancel at the last minute. If one doesn't live in New York they might find this hard to understand. But it is a very common trend amongst New Yorkers and one that many of us take for granted. Absolutely nothing is off limits in this game we all play with one another. Tuesday and I talked about the reasons for this new trend and decided that making the plan was enough to still give one that sense of security and friendship but that due to our hectic lifestyles that we actually gained more pleasure and satisfaction from being able to cancel and just get some quiet time than we would if we trekked off to some meeting or dinner with someone. Odd yes. But very common here in the big apple. It is not uncommon to book one's entire week both day and night with one thing or another to the point of jam-packed and overflowing and then cancel more than half of the things you agreed to attend. It's just the nature of life in the big city where there is always more to do than one can possibly fit in unless one has at least one to three clones to stand in for them for various different activities. (Note to the scientists out there: get working on cloning will ya! We need it!)
After our near hysterical laughing subsided, I proceeded to explain to Tuesday the details of Plan B and invited her to share it with others, spread it virally as quickly as possible, and also to actually partake in it with me so we could in fact see each other more than once a year. Remember this is Manhattan. None of us live more than a mile or two from each other. And yet it is very easy to go an entire year without actually hooking up. My hot and sexy, smart, cool and sassy pseudo-cousin Samantha and I were just Facebook IMing today and to our horror came to discover that we have not actually seen other face to face in three years and yet we live exactly 1.3 miles from each other. That is just so New York. If it weren't so goddamned typical it would be downright tragic. But neither of us reacted at all negatively, but rather just found it hilarious. We made plans of course to have dinner next Sunday but I'd be a fool to assert that I truly believe that either of us will actually make it to that dinner. "Next Sunday" might as well be 2010 as far as New York living goes. God knows what will happen between now and then. But it sure was good making the plan. That in and of itself is a big step. Just committing to an actual day and time (which we didn't actually do).
But living breathing life forms on planet earth must inevitably adapt and evolve in order to survive. And this is where Plan B comes into play. It is an evolvement in order to do nothing less than secure our very survival. Remember the old adage yours truly once one-offed in a loud, noisy, crowded bar to an uproarious response of high fives and laughter from his friends and lovers: "Your net-worth is equal to your network." Meaning, the more people you regularly communicate with the more successful and wealthy you will be. It is a simple matter of mathematics and one of the foundational principles of networking and success. Plan B is a desperately needed emergency strategy to guarantee not only our continued wealth, happiness, and success, but also our very survival. Without friendship, love, the care of others, and real sincere human contact, we have nothing.
Simply put Plan B states this: Life is too short not to spend time and regularly communicate with the people in our lives that we love. But as we have already covered we are all just too busy and deathly afraid that if we take the time to reach out that it will require too much time that we feel we don't have in any one moment to "catch up." So we subconsciously avoid reaching out or even answering the phone and worse yet we are now reaching a stage where even email has become too burdensome and time-consuming. So it is time to implement Plan B. If you think of someone, call them, or at the very least text them. Don't put it off. It doesn't have to be a long conversation. Let go of the need to feel that we need to "catch up." Catching up is yesterday's fashion. Give it away to Goodwill. Those of us who are living life to its fullest just don't live in a world where we have time to "catch up" anymore. Just pick up that phone and say "hello, I was just thinking about you. Listen, I don't have a lot of time. But how are you? I miss you."
And the same goes for when that phone rings. If you don't recognize the number, let it go to voicemail. There is no harm in that. But if you look down and it's someone that you know and love, or someone that you work with, or someone who would be good for your career, take the call. Let them know you're busy as all hell but you love them and miss them, or that their call is important to you, and you just didn't want them going to voicemail. Spend a minute or two touching base and let that be that. No need to harbor the illusory belief that you two need to spend an hour on the phone. Just chat for a minute or two, support each other, positive talk each other, sincerely communicate together, and let it be. When Tuesday and I were hammering out this plan we both wholeheartedly agreed that we would rather talk three times a week for five minutes each than once a month for an hour. And I feel that way about so many people. We both agreed that email just doesn't cut it. Email has now been relegated to where letter writing and receiving used to be. It's a necessary evil. Not a place where our friends belong. Nope. The sweet voice heart and soul of our friends belong in our ear, if not in front of us face to face. Or at least in a text message at the least.
So far it has worked like a charm. Since implementing Plan B in my life over the last two to three weeks I have noticed my "missed call" log reduce by hundreds of calls. I just simply pick up the damn phone. Today I spoke with Weather Girl for all of three minutes. But that was fine. We talked. She got the message that I was busy, but she also got the message that I cared about her. That her calling was important to me. Today I sent a two-line email to a dear elderly woman who has acted as a mentor and godmother to me for decades now. Didn't have a lot of time but I made the time to just write "Hi there, I've been thinking a lot about you lately. How are you? I hope well. Please always feel free to call me if you ever want to talk or if you need anything. Ok. I love you." And that was that. That's Plan B in a nutshell.
You know I bet after some time that many people will come up with more ideas to add to this new method for staying connected to our friends and loved ones 21st century style. If you are one of those people, please feel free to post a comment with your idea(s). Don't expect me to comment back of course. LOL! But please know that at some point I actually do read all comments. It just might take me a few years. But let's all make this a new habit. A New Years resolution right smack dab in the middle of the year. Then again, knowing how busy YOU are, you might not actually be reading this till New Years anyway. Well regardless, let's do it. We owe it to ourselves. Life is good. It's a blessing and then some if there ever was such a thing. But life is even better when it's filled with friends and family and lovers and real honest to god sincere and authentic communication with the people we love.
Here's to Plan B. Let's do it.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
When in Doubt, We Remember These Words by Martin Luther King Jr.
When in doubt as to whether or not I should stand up for or defend something I believe in when it appears it may pose a threat or a challenge or be controversial, I remind myself of the words below by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote this speech at the same age I am now. I am humbled by his willingness to act and press forward compared to my own tendencies to retreat and take no action even though there are times when I know I should.For better or worse our lives here on earth at this time in our history are filled with examples of injustice and inequities. They are all around us; though I do not believe it will always be this way. The measure of each of us, of the very lives we were blessed with, is whether or not we make the most of what we were given to make things that much better for all while we are here. Sometimes this is as easy as a smile, a hug, a phone call, a thank you note, a donation, a sponsorship, or a helping hand to someone in need. Other times standing up for what we believe in can appear much more daunting and challenging, even frightening or life threatening.
There is not one of us who is not faced with this dilemma on an almost daily basis. But let us all as friends and lovers and associates and coworkers be inspired that the path has already been forged for us by others as the speech below reminds. And let us each commit to one another in our hearts in silence or aloud that before we pass that we will each do our absolute best. Together there will be no stopping us from creating a truly enlightened world for ourselves and for those who will come after us. --Ed Hale
“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.
"You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.
"You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.
"Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.
"And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
"You died when you refused to stand up for right.
"You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
"You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967
Thursday, July 31, 2008
FUCK THE OLYMPICS
Fuck the Olympics? What? C’mon man. Why would you say that? The Olympics are important. As important as life itself! Oh, hold on, scratch that. Actually the Olympics are MORE important than life itself. Evidently. At least according to the powers that be who approved the clusterfuck of a decision to allow Communist China to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in light of the atrocities they continue to commit on an almsot daily basis in the peaceful country of Tibet. In preparation for the festivities the banner that China is currently hanging all over Bejing by the hundreds reads “Human life is not nearly as important as some of you are want to believe.” They are proud of their banners. That is why they are hanging them everywhere. Its a sort of welcoming sign to all the millions of visitors hey expect this year for that whore called The Olympics. (They might also add to it: “At least not unless your “human life” happens to be attached to big money or a means to get your hands on some.”)
A sleepy Sunday morning. What DID we do last night? Wrote a beautiful song… my god what a gorgeous melody. Stayed up till dawn madly scribbling notes as fast as i could… transcribing the dialogue of a forum between Arthur C. Clark, Stephen Hawking, and Carl Sagan about physics and cosmology till i couldn’t keep my eyes open. Pen dangling. Dropping to the floor. Woke up in time to catch battered and war torn Tom Brokaw, so sold out and bought in to the system that when he commented on NBC’s Meet the Press “…at least we hope that everyone will be tuned in to watch the Summer Olympics here on NBC next week,” he didn’t even blink an eye at the irony of the statement. Perhaps there might be a reason for people NOT tuning in Tom?
The lunacy. The hypocrisy. The spoils made possible by the idiocracy. Mansions and Mercedes bought on credits earned for not telling the truth. Just say what we tell you to. That’s a god boy. Read the prompter. No no. No need to check out the facts. That’s a good boy. Yep. There you go. “Olympics start next week! Catch them right here on NBC!” Tom relaxes into his chair. “Can I get that drink you promised me now?” No need to mention that China is cited as one of the biggest violators of human rights abuse issues on planet earth today, not to mention their ongoing cruel, inhumane, and illegal occupation of Tibet - which for the life of most thinking people everywhere no one can figure out why there is no Operation Tibetan Freedom coming out of the White House or anywhere else for that matter. Ssssshhhhh. Pretend Tibet doesn’t exist and run that Budweiser commercial again! The people will laugh. They’ll forget. Tibet doesn’t matter and neither do the Tibetan people. Nor do the tens of thousands tortured, imprisoned, or murdered by the Chinese government in their own country.
Sssshhhh. Cue the prompter. Roll the tape. “Bob let me get a close up of that young white gymnast smiling and then zoom out and pan over to anyone black or asian! No i don’t care who. Just do it! Now! Oh it’s Olympic Gold old buddy! A great shot. Everyone will make money! My God man! Will somebody get rid of this dead rotting corpse I keep tripping over in the control room?! I don’t care if this IS China, i can’t work around piles of dead bodies! They’re starting to smell. “
The truth. Money. The truth. Money is what keeps the dictatorship of China alive and kicking. And it’s what brought the Olympics to China. Slave labor, sweat shops, midnight murders in dark back alleys for speaking your mind or telling the truth. The athletes are human man. What about the athletes? We have to respect the athletes. But human life means nothing in the bigger picture analysis of it — including to the athletes. If human life or basic human rights DID mean something to them, they would have all strategized a giant boycot of the event itself. The athletes might as well be robots at this point.
One day humanity will look back, as it always does, and ask itself the question, “Is it true that we really let Communist China host the Olympics in 2008 when we KNEW about all of their human rights abuses?” And we will tell ourselves that that was THEN, and this is NOW, and we would never be so ignorant or inhumane NOW. But wait. Now IS NOW! We don’t have to look back and feel confusion and remorse for the error of our past as we always do. That future-past is actually our here-right-now. We just forget sometimes.
Because they try their damndest to make us forget. And they do a good job of it. Speaking of which, did you catch that latest episode of Mad Men the other night?
Nah, sorry man, I was out killing some Chinese political activists… A few Tibetans too. But i Tivo’d it, so it’s all good.
Oh too bad. It was fucking great.
Hey when in Rome…
But isn’t it up to each and every one of us on the planet to make that decision? I mean, the Olympics in Nazi fucking Germany and the whole world just played along… And now again. Right here. Right now. What does that mean? Well, when the USA and France and Germany and Spain and the UK and all the other big countries of the world stand up in those giant stadiums with all their pomp and spectacle, how about a few thousand rotten eggs, tomatoes, apples, watermelons, and jackhammers hit them all in the face on live TV? That would be a good place to start… a new twist on a rather tired routine. Not the end all be all but a damn nice place to start.
“Holy Mary mother of God! Did you see that? Quick cut to a commercial!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States of America!” BAM! A big shit pie in his face in front of millions. His face covered in brown runny feces. It’s in his mouth. In his ears. In his nose. He can taste it. “Ladies and genetlemen, last year’s gold medal winner in fuck-all from Germany!” BAM! A giant watermelon smashed over his head. What a thing of beauty it could be if the humans woke up one day and realized that they were all actually the same…. Each one a living breathing minute particle of the bigger whole. “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Goo goo goo joob.”
We’ve already been told countless times in the last twelve months: “Despite promises to improve its human rights record, China has become increasingly repressive in the run up to the Olympics. Human rights activists are detained without trial, journalists are harassed and imprisoned, “re-education through labor” programs continue unabated and China remains the world’s leading executioner.”
To pretend that you don’t care about the torture or abuse of one is to admit that you don’t care about being tortured or abused yourself. But they don’t get it yet. That’s the thing. They don’t realize it until it actually happens to them personally. Wanna know why it is so easy to manipulate and control the humans by the billions when they are clearly the majority? Re-read this paragraph again.
Crazy? Childish? Sophmoric? Desultory? Silly? Radical? Anarchistic? Sure. The dictionary is filled with adjectives. But the question still remains naked and yet to be answered: when is the human race going to step up and actually walk its talk rather than just talk it? For me personally, I’m tired of talking about “helping to send a message to stop human rights violations.” I’m gonna start walking.
There’s a bridge from one side to the other mind you. Careful not to walk too far onto it. Nah, it’s not unstable, but once on the other side, you will notice that you can’t and don’t want to go back to that other side from whence you came. I crossed that bridge. then burned it down. The matches are still in my pocket as a reminder of why the hell I’m still here. We’ve got work to do. Plenty of it too. And choices to make.
The long-standing historical significance of the Olympics? Or basic human rights and dignity towards ALL HUMAN BEINGS regardless of money to be made? Respect for the athletes who worked so hard to get to the Olympics? Or standing up to save the lives of our fellow brothers and sisters innocently slaughtered and imprisoned needlessly and wrecklessly by a savage nation so wealthy that everyone is a wee bit scared to speak up? These are real choices. These are the choices we are being asked to make at this time in human history.
A few billion of us now. Roaming around from here to there on a relatively small sphere floating out in the middle of god knows where in outer space. It’s a grim picture at times. We don’t even know where the fuck we are. But we give it all a name anyway. But in reality we’re not some intelligent extraterrestrial life forms from another galaxy with special powers able to read each other’s minds or anything. Just a bunch of ape-like bipeds eating, drinking, shitting, reading, writing, praying, raping, murdering, plundering, thieving, canniving, imprisoning each other and then covering it all up as best we can. We have a name for that too. Humans love naming. Revisionist history. Loosely translates to “he who has the money writes the history no matter how heinous their actions, and everyone else pretends they agree with that history for fear of being attacked or killed.”
In the name of freedom and democracy is a good one. In the name of commerce is another good one. For the good of the economy. Brilliant. For the good of the nation and the people. They’re all good. Human’s are good like that. They can watch another human just like them be burned alive and hang from a tree grasping for his last breath and be alright with it if they’re told that it’s for God, Country, or fuck-all. ”Tibetans are being killed? What? Holy shit did you see that triple twist that guy just pulled off? Man I LOVE the Olympics!”
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Those wild rebels with shovels, pitchforks, pick axes, pots and pans of the French Revolution showed us that. Try fucking with the French people now. Their government doesn’t even dare think it.
Don’t have the money to fly to China and throw a few dozen eggs at the Prime Minister of England when he stands up and pretends that he’s ok with China’s blatant disregard for basic human values and ethics? Well let’s hope someone else does. But in the meantime, then take another action. At the very least, whoever you are, wherever you are, if you’re human and not entirely bought in to the point that you can’t even see the insanity of the charade, then TUNE OUT the Olympics. Do it in solidarity for every single innocent life tortured, kidnapped, murdered, or imprisoned in the unholy land where the world will finally wake up and say “Fuck the Olympics.” Don’t watch. Don’t listen. Don’t read about them in the paper. “What Olympics?” you ask. Exactly. Now you get the point. There are no Olympics this year. Revisionist history.
The Olympics is about sport. At some point surely this was true. But it is more about money. Money is everywhere. Every pocket gets a little. Everyone is looking forward to making money over the next few months from the sport now called “the Olympics.” Human life be damned, everyone is out to make a bloody fortune. Bloody being the operating word. China itself will make a killing. An angelic pun. Each of the countries represented who will win Gold. The TV stations, the vendors, the newspapers with all those fancy high-priced ads with the Olympic rings around that brand new plasma screen TV you just gotta have from Best Buy…. It’s all about money.
The Olympics is about sport. At some point surely this was true. But it is more about money. Money is everywhere. Every pocket gets a little. Everyone is looking forward to making money over the next few months from the sport now called “the Olympics.” Human life be damned, everyone is out to make a bloody fortune. Bloody being the operating word. China itself will make a killing. An angelic pun. Each of the countries represented who will win Gold. The TV stations, the vendors, the newspapers with all those fancy high-priced ads with the Olympic rings around that brand new plasma screen TV you just gotta have from Best Buy…. It’s all about money.
But there’s that voice in the back of our minds… in the back of our throats wanting to scream “Fuck them all. Human life and human dignity is not something to disregard and make money in spite of.”
The hard cold facts of the reality of the situation hit our faces like a 30 degrees below zero wind chill in a Chicago winter. Can you feel it? It stings. It burns. It smells of rotting flesh. It smells of sweat shops and men and women behind bars in prisons with no lawyer, no phone call, no sense of security or justice, no basic human rights, no civil liberties. It smells like China. And if you ask most people it smells like shit. The American president can still taste it. God bless the heroic young activist who took aim and fired his homemade shit pie and had the courage to show the world what courage really is.
If you want to “send a message to U.S. president Bush and the rest of the world with your voice of dissent against china’s human rights abuses” as our esteemed colleague, friend, and mentor Larry Cox of Amnesty International suggests below, don’t just write a letter. DO SOMETHING MORE. Sure Larry makes a good point below. And he is doing it from a truly heartfelt and compassionate space. Diplomacy. But diplomacy isn’t all its cracked up to be sometimes. Sometimes it takes more. Times have changed. Leave the letter writing to the old ladies who aren’t able to do much else. At this time in human history, even the elderly are standing up and taking action. They’ll write plenty of letters. Leave it to them. Amnesty International shold be asking for more than letter writing at this time in human history if they are seriously concerned about the mission they claim to be.
Get out and spread the FUCK THE OLYMPICS AND FUCK CHINA message out in your local community. Scream it, shout it, talk about it at the bar as you turn a blind eye to the TV attempting to titilate you with so and so’s historic 100 yard dash in between commercials trying to woo you into buying that new Ford truck. Spray paint it on every wall you walk by on your way home from work. FUCK CHINA. FUCK THE OLYMPICS. In fact, spray paint it any damn where you choose. If someone even mentions “the Olympics” to you in the next 30 days, respectfully and politely but resolutely respond “Fuck the Olympics.” Sure they might think you’re crazy.
But what’s crazy? How long will we as a collective species endure lies, errors of judgment, inhumane schemes of money and economics, overt deceptions, and be forced into pretending we don’t see the giant pink elephant in the room called “fucking a! They’re torturing and imprisoning people up the arse over there! What can we do??? Oh? nothing??? Sit down and shut up and watch the Olympics because they say so?” Rather, when will we create and demand that WE ALL get treated equally well? With equal respect. With equal rights. And with equal civil liberties for all regardless of how ruthless, wealthy, or powerful the governing body of the moment happens to be?
The answer to that question is this: we don’t need to wait anymore. Imagine day one of the 2008 Olympics. Chinese president Hu Jintao is introduced to a stadium of 100,000 people. He steps up to the podium and the stadium goes quiet. Instead of applause, just total and utter silence. There will not be one soul in that stadium audience who is not guilty of being fully or at least partially aware of how inhumane and unjust the Chinese government is and has been towards Tibet AND its own people as well, right here right now.
Will they heed the call to defend themselves and all of humanity by remaining silent in one giant act of unified civil dissobediance? Or will they jump up and down and applaud like ignorant little monkeys because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do? Telling their intuition or higher self - that voice in the mind of each of us, our sixth sense - to please be quiet… “SHHHH can you please be quiet?! Yes yes i know that China is a cruel and inhumane dictatorship who have killed tens of thousands of Tibetans and destroyed thousands of temples and all that horrible imprisonment stuff… but I’m trying to watch the Olympics!”
Point made. Most WILL play along. Sad but true. They’ll jump, dance, shout, scream, yeehaw, yahoo, grin, laugh, cry, spin around in circles… each one of them being careful not to step on one of the tens of thousands of dead bodies piled all over the fucking place. “No mam, that’s not blood. That’s just paint. Our flag is red you know.”
The 2008 Olympics did NOT have to be held in China. The Olympic Committee made this choice. And they did so knowing full well of what heinous crimes China has committed to the people of Tibet and to their own people as well. Remember, this was their choice. No mercy. So no mercy in return. This year they made a conscious decision to turn the Olympics into a canniving manipulating beat up old dirty needle marked whore with the look of decades of guilt and shame in her tired sagging blooshot eyes. So when someone says FUCK THE OLYMPICS this year, well, I’d think twice about taking it literally. I wouldn’t get my clean machine within a thousand miles of the wench.
There are a few of us out there roaming the small planet along with the others who see the blood, not the paint. In fact there are more than most of us realize at this point. Millions. There is a Facebook Group you can join called FUCK YOUR OLYMPICS CHINA. Yes… that’s more like it. The times have indeed changed. When they light that torch in a few days there are those who will understand what it really means. They will be horrifed and more than a bit nauseated. Inspiration and awe will not enter their minds.
In the meantime, Amnesty International IS asking us to sign a petition below. A noble goal. Just not a very bold action. So sign the petition. But don’t let it stop there. Step up. Take more action.
Sincerely,
Sincerely,
The Raconteur
With the Olympics just around the corner, act now and hold China to its word.Tell President Bush to speak out against China’s human rights violations before the Games begin.
Dear TuneInTurnOnHelpOut.org members,
Torture. Long-term detentions without charge or trial. Censorship of the internet and media. Does this sound like a country that’s trying to improve its human rights record?
Ye Guozhu, a human rights defender in Beijing, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for taking action against forced evictions related to the Olympics. Amnesty International fears he has been tortured while in detention. He was due to be released on Saturday, July 26 but will now remain imprisoned until October, after the end of the 2008 Olympic Games.Chinese authorities have stepped up their repression of human rights defenders in order to “clean up” Beijing. With the Olympics only 10 days away, take action and urge China to create a positive human rights legacy.
Dear TuneInTurnOnHelpOut.org members,
Torture. Long-term detentions without charge or trial. Censorship of the internet and media. Does this sound like a country that’s trying to improve its human rights record?
Ye Guozhu, a human rights defender in Beijing, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for taking action against forced evictions related to the Olympics. Amnesty International fears he has been tortured while in detention. He was due to be released on Saturday, July 26 but will now remain imprisoned until October, after the end of the 2008 Olympic Games.Chinese authorities have stepped up their repression of human rights defenders in order to “clean up” Beijing. With the Olympics only 10 days away, take action and urge China to create a positive human rights legacy.
In 2001 China made a promise to improve its human rights record if given the honor of hosting the Olympic Games. Instead, China has become increasingly repressive with crackdowns on dissent and the rounding up and arrest of human rights defenders. Citing “security”, China has imprisoned individuals for doing nothing more than drawing international attention to ongoing human rights violations.
President Bush will attend the opening ceremonies of the Games on August 8. Before he leaves for Beijing, tell President Bush to make a public statement condemning the human rights violations perpetrated in preparation for the Olympics.
He went to prison and was tortured for defending human rights.
He went to prison and was tortured for defending human rights.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Intuition, Visions, the God Particle, and Gravity-Free environments
Fascinating... Allow me to explain. I first started getting visions of free-gravity environments in 1995. It was January to be precise. I will never forget the moment. I was in the living room of my mother's house, visiting. I just all of a sudden saw this vision that things in the room at some point in the near future would start "floating" -- that we would invent a new anti-gravity device or system and that it would enable us to make much better use of vertical space. For example desks could be placed mid-level in the room above another desk etc - and there would be no need for what we now use as "stairs." I have by now actually so worked it into one particular novel because i have been taking it for granted for so many years now -- just assuming it was bound to happen soon, but not knowing the specific science behind how we would do it. Just knew it. Saw it. Think about it now and then. And voila, here it is. As in Meet Joe Black, "Yes."
I will go further regarding the idea of "visions" or what we might refer to as tapping into the intuitive mode of consciousness or our intuition - and then paste the specific science notes regarding the "God Particle" below that help to explain this rant.
Visions... yes, a big subject. But simply put, how to tell if we are indeed having "visions" of the future or "premonitions" - or, if we are simply mad or insane? Yep. That's the big question. But remember that Arthur C. Clark envisioned satellites, laptop computers, email, and many other things long before they existed and he was not a scientist. But rather a writer of pulp science fiction from a postal employee family. But nonetheless, he envisioned many of the things that we take for granted today. The space station even. Etc.
In 1992 while writing in the journals that would eventually become the novel The Adventures of Fishy, I wrote these words, "This of course transpires just after the Middle East attacks the financial district of New York City in the United States at the turn of the century which precipitates the economic collapse and this great holy war that our hero and the rest of humanity is now engulfed in."
Well less than eight years hence we all watched it happen. Was that a vision? Or just a lucky guess? Either way, what i wrote was so damn "on" that it scared the hell out of me when i saw it live on TV - and yet as i watched, i also was keenly aware that i had already seen it hundreds of times in my mind because i had already "seen" it and knew it was going to happen eight years prior... and was already working on a giant novel series where it really does happen so I was already taking it for granted. Eerie. Sure. At first.
Over the last fifteen years since, the envisioning process has become easier and easier for me. Now i take "visions" for granted. Meaning simply that I trust my intuition. I have so many of them about so many things that I do not question it anymore.
The most difficult aspect of this paradigm? After all, what are we really speaking of? Tapping into an aspect of our own consciousness that already exists, our intuition. Just as we tap into "love" - which is another aspect of consciousness, or "hate" or any of the other things that we now call "our senses."
I firmly posit that intuition is what we now loosely refer to as "the sixth sense." That "seeing" or "having visions" is nothing more than simply being aware of the fact that we DO NOT HAVE FIVE SENSES, but in fact AT LEAST SIX. I would guess we have many more than that. WE just haven't labeled them as such yet.
Just as we were once taught that there were NINE PLANETS. Well at this point, who really knows... some say Pluto is no longer a planet. And then there were those two others they found a few years ago... so at this point there is no general consensus about it. So we were taught WRONG. Just as once people were taught that the Sun revolved around the Earth because Aristotle told us it did. But unfortunately for human scientific advancement, we were all just plain wrong. And for hundreds of years. Thousands really.
I believe the same thing will eventually be common knowledge with this whole silly notion of teaching "ourselves as children" that "we have five senses." It is silly when the sense of intuition so obviously exists. To some people it comes in visions that they see. In other people it comes more in voices that they hear. In still others it comes in something that they FEEL. It is a phenomenon at this point that we are still just feeling our way into and still discovering. Or "creating." Depending on how you look at it...
Anyway, people ask me all the time, "how can i tell the difference between my intuition and "an impulse." And my answer is always that for me personally i just "know." I can tell the difference. Sometimes. Operative word there. I believe it is still something that we need to do much work on still - we need to practice using it. We need to cultivate it. A good start would be officially acknowledging it scientifically in what we refer to as the "medical community" - so we can stop telling ourselves that we only have "five senses." That would be a good place to start.
Philosopher/author Harry Palmer, the man who created the Avatar courses and knowledge base which is now becoming so popular in mainstream society, (and who much of the above is greatly indebted to) once remarked that when we step into a room we can "feel" the energy of the room... we can FEEL if there was an argument or fight that just took place in the room... etc. Or we can feel if there is a lot of "love" in the room. Makes sense. No need to go into it, for we have all had that experience... So there it is in a nutshell. It is something we take for granted as a real experience for us as human beings... but we just don't label it medically or biologically yet... but we will. And soon.
Let us begin to cultivate this sixth sense of ours and perfect it just as we take seeing or hearing or tasting or smelling for granted... and then soon enough we shall see.
Now here below is an excellent summary of the God Particle work that prompted this particular post. It was written by Simdul Bala Shagaya and called Finding the God Particle:
inding the God Particle
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Friday, April 25, 2008 at 4:52am
A few friends asked about the God Particle. It is notoriously difficult to explain this facet of physics but here's my stab at it.
The God Particle (aka the Higg's Boson) was proposed over 40 years ago. Its existence explains why everything has mass in the universe. Without allowing for this particle, everything should be "weightless" (if you can imagine that) and gravity would be non-existent and there would be no life in the universe.
The God Particle existed a few moments into the creation of the universe when things were very very very hot. But as the Universe cooled down, mass was conferred on everything by the Higg's Field (although some stuff - like photons/light - escaped the effect of Higg's and are thus weightless).
Anyhow, CERN is a cutting edge research institute that is building a large machine that will replicate the first few moments of the universe. This machine - the LHC - took about 25 years and $16 billion to build. It is undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious experiment ever carried out by humanity. It will be turned on at some point this summer.
Its aim is to ascertain the existence of the God particle. If the particle is found, it will answer some very deep questions about the universe and open the door to some pretty profound applications. Some of those applications may be:
1. Humanity will be on the way to being able to manipulate gravity by in turn manipulating the Higg's Field. In English: levitation may be possible.
2. It would mean that the traveling faster than the speed of light may be possible as the confines of the famous E=MC^2 will not apply any longer. Within the confines of this law, it would require infinite energy to move a mass towards the speed of light. But what if we could get rid of mass altogether? Then you could accelerate matter to and past the speed of light. Meaning Inter-Stellar travel to other galaxies may be possible some day.
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