Mark's Observatory

November Update

2011-12-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

Mona and I went to visit Nick and Tonya in Alexandrian, Virginia for Thanksgiving. Alexandrian is just a couple of miles from DC so we got to see pretty much everything including the White House, The Mall, The Natural History Museum, Library of Congress, Congress, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, Supreme Court, Pentagon, and pretty much all the government departments including the EPA (where Tonya works), the Justice Department (where Nick works), Agriculture, FBI, etc. We were also able to walk around and see some of the cooler neighborhoods in DC. Anyway, Thanksgiving turned out wonderful and it was great to see Nick and Tonya again.

Mona’s friend Nancy flew into town a couple of days ago. We mostly hung out around town and I finally made it to Melts Bar and Grill to try one their cheese melts. Mona and I have been exploring Lakewood and have made it a point to try a new place every time we go out. Still no good Mexican food! We also found that the Lakewood Art Center has an attached coffee shop where residents can show off their talents including playing music and pictures. The place is great to walk around and is free to the public. Mona and I were also able to go to a concert on the east side of Cleveland. I was worried that nobody would come to town and for the most part, that seems to be the case. You almost have to go to Detroit, Chicago, DC, or New York to see a show. Oh well, that just means we’ll have to do more travelling:D

The weather is really dropping and it’s snowed a couple of times but nothing is sticking around for more than a day. All the leaves are officially gone and we are transitioning between seasons. We made a trip to Pennsylvania for coats since they don’t have a sales tax. We drove through Amish country which was interesting. There were people riding around on horse pulled wagons. I’m hoping this weekend; we’ll take a trip down to Amish Country which has the biggest population of Amish folk.

Zola’s language skills are way ahead of her age. At 2 years of age, you are supposed to know 40-50 words. We think she knows 400-500 words. She’s also starting to learn her colors, shapes, and says small sentences. Viola is now sitting up and mostly rolls around the floor to get around.

I’ve been getting back to writing my book which I haven’t done since I was in Arizona. The chapter I’m working on deals with the subject of “public manipulation industries.” By public manipulation industries, I’m talking about public relations, think tanks, front groups, advertising, etc. and how they’ve played a large role in our society. I start off the chapter by asking whether one can live in a truly free society when billions are spent on controlling the public mind. It is interesting that most people are unfamiliar with this subject since these industries shape anything that is media or information related. Basically, “the truth” and “knowledge” has become a commodified where the biggest funder decides what is true and what is false.

This subject is also very close to consumerism as an actual ideology and goes into the history of how and why consumerism plays such a focal point in any state capitalist society. The history is quite interesting because in the early 1920’s private companies actually had to create what they called “manufactured wants” because people bought things for practical reasons not because they were cool or fashionable. Instead, companies would focus on the superficialities in life. It’s fascinating to see the internal papers of companies and how they consciously manipulated the public. In their words, they would say things like, “We have to move America from a ‘needs’ to a ‘wants’ society.” The idea was to get consumers to focus on the superficialities in life like clothes, style, class rather than practical needs. If you just turn on the television for 2 second, you realize that they who won that little war.

Okay, that’s it for now.

Zola in October

2011-10-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest video of Zola. This footage is from the last couple of weeks. As you can see, the leaves are changing.

Zola in September

2011-10-09T08:27:00.001-07:00

This is a video I made of Zola. I took clips from the last couple of weeks and put them together. They are filmed at 3 different parks around Lakewood. Enjoy!

New Home

2011-09-06T11:13:00.001-07:00

Well, we told some people that we were moving to Arizona but plans changed for the better. I won't explain all the details since they're pretty boring. Anywho, we now live in Lakewood, Ohio.

I love this town. Everywhere I go, I'm constantly meeting new people. There is so much to do, see, and explore. The best part is the prices of everything from homes to products at the grocery store. Plus, there's lots of outdoor activities.

Here's a stupid little video I made on the quick.

Best Parts:

- Meeting new people every day.
- Walking distance to the lake which actually looks like the ocean.
- Cool historical homes.
- When it rains its like the monsoons in Arizona. Thunder, lightening, huge downpour and then sunny skies.
- Huge homes that only cost 100 thousand.
- Has the feel of a small town and an urban city at the same time.
- Zola, Viola, and Mona love it.
- Almost everything is walking distance.
- Cool downtown area with live music and farmers market.
- Excellent parks. You can feel like you're in a big city and walk to a river, go fishing, or comb through the forest.
- Rated coolest suburb, best place to raise a family, great schools, and low crime.

The bad.

- We are so far from friends and family.
- No good Mexican food. Seriously!

Well, I haven't experienced the winter yet, so my list of the bad may change. Although, from everyone I've talked to, people here seem to celebrate the changing of the seasons whatever it is. Once you're sick of one, it ends and then you get a new season. Also, people are fanatics about the holidays. I guess Halloween is a big deal which I guess is celebrated the way Christmas is in other states.

Tons of News

2011-05-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

It’s been awhile but I have lots to say and I probably won’t get to most of it. First Mona and I will be moving to Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Why would anyone move there? That’s what I was thinking. Well, this whole thing came about when I was doing some research on the cheapest places to live in the US. To make a long story short, Cleveland is really high on the list and Mona can get a transfer there. But you might be thinking, yeah dude, of course it’s cheap it’s Cleveland!!!

Actually, we are looking at two areas that are just outside of Cleveland. They are Lakewood and Shaker Heights. Lakewood is considered a New Urbanist dream. For those of you who are not familiar with New Urbanism, it’s the idea that communities should be walkable. Where you buy food, go to work, and enjoy entertainment would all be within walking distance of where you live. For example, Mona and I live in a New Urbanist neighborhood now since we can walk everywhere. In many ways, I’ve made walking very central to my life. Almost every morning, I take Zola to the original Farmers Market (where we see Mario Lopez filming the show Extra!), La Brea Tar Pits, The Grove, and Pan Pacific Park. It’s amazing that I don’t get sick of my walks. In fact, I still walk around thinking this place is amazing. I love all the art deco architecture, the variety of plant life, and all the originality. (I actually just got home from a one hour walk around my neighborhood at around midnight. Still tons of people out walking their dogs or just enjoying the night air. It feels totally safe even though we are about 5 miles from downtown LA and about 3 mile from where two of the most violent gangs started).

We traveled out last weekend to check out the areas. Lakewood is a really amazing place and we ended up talking to a bunch of the locals. Everywhere we went, people were striking up conversation with us. You are right on Lake Erie and everything is within walking distance. The downtown is pretty cool and they say that most people spend lots of time on their front porches which means you might be friends with your neighbors. I also hear that block parties are pretty common and most people celebrate the Fourth of July by going to the town parade and then spending the day shooting off fireworks in the neighborhood. I guess some folks will spend thousands to give a show for the whole block. So you are in an urban environment with a small town feel. Its even gotten awards for coolest suburb in the US and also an awards for being the best place to raise your family. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.

The second place is like the Beverly Hills of Ohio. Oh yeah, many of the homes in this area go for around $100,000! You can’t even buy a 1 bedroom condo in South Central Los Angeles for that much! Both places are amazing. Lakewood is all about community while Shaker Heights is about privacy and feeling … well… rich. There are real trade offs on both. It will be a tough decision.

About 8 months ago, Mona and I had looked at this really great home in Gilbert, Arizona. The place was huge, nice clean area, brand new house, lots of shopping nearby. The house was a great deal especially since it had a pool and it looked out into a park and the original price had been cut by half. However, I wasn’t excited about it. Why? Well, it took me awhile to figure this out but it’s because I find Phoenix suburbs to be absolutely alienating. I’m not sure if it’s just in Phoenix or all suburbs. Either way, I just get this overwhelming sense of alienation while I’m there. The feeling is like the type of weather you really don’t like but at least weather eventually changes. So for my sanity, I need to be somewhere to eliminate that “emotion.” My quality of life actually increases when I live somewhere I enjoy.

I’ve been working on my latest book with mixed news. The stuff I have so far is excellent. However, it’s taking me much longer than I thought. Writing fiction is so much easier. When you write non-fiction you still need to be entertaining but you also need to make sure what you are saying is logical, consistent, clear, and true. That means a lot of research is involved and I’m constantly reading journals for information. One of the great things about my work is that I have access to most journals that have been written. Even better is that I get about 6 hours a night to write. Anyway, I was just rereading some of my work and some of it is so radical (but true) that I really had to set down the pages to absorb the material. That’s good in my book… ha ha get it!

For those of you that don’t know, I’m writing a book on political philosophy. One thing that really sucks is that the language used by political philosophers have almost the exact opposite meaning to most people. To a political philosopher, a liberal (which is usually considered to be someone on the Left) is a Libertarian (which is someone who is one the far Right). I usually refer to myself as a Left-Libertarian. But most people think you can’t be a Left-Libertarian because they are opposites. Sometimes I’ll say I’m a Libertarian-Socialist but socialism here also has its opposite meaning. A socialist is usually defined as someone who advocates for state ownership. I advocate no such thing. I advocate for workers’ self-management. Instead of the state owning the workplace, all the workers are part owner. Also, I sometimes refer to myself as an Anarchist. Again, the opposite meaning. Most people who hear Anarchist think chaos, disorder, destruction while the word should be associated with a completely organized society. The word actually means anti-authoritarianism and nothing more. Anyway, you can read more about it when you buy my book for yourself and all of your friends and family:D

It has been almost a year since I’ve posted anything. That’s pretty bad. Things in LA have been good. Zola is making all sorts of progress. She is starting to talk and just in the last few weeks she started walking. Mona and I have been to quite a few concerts. Our last one was Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Fox Theater in Pomona. A couple of months back we saw Blonde Redhead for the second time at the Hollywood Music Box. I think the best show that we’ve seen so far was Do Make Say Think at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. We went to some other concerts but I can’t remember them right now. Oh yeah, no road-trips in the last year which is extremely rare for us. I think we’ve just been too busy.

Oh yeah, and my predictions in my last blog all came true even though the media was saying the economy was about to pick up again. Some of my views have changed but I still think I got it right. In fact, to write my book I’ve had to become familiar with Classical Economics, Austrian economics, Neo-classical economics, Keynesianism, Post-Keynesianism, Marxism, institutionalism (old and new), abundance economics, green economics, and I’m sure there are more. When I say I had to learn these, I’m not saying I picked up some intro book at Barnes and Noble. I had to special order in depth books on these topics and none of them were easy to read. They were all pretty technical. Plus, I disagreed with most of them. Yeah, not fun at all.

I’m going to try and post some video in the next couple of days from our trip to Lakewood and Shaker Heights. Until next time…

Oh, and Mona's having a baby in the next few weeks. Right. I keep forgetting. Too much going on!

Reporting for Duty

2010-11-11T13:49:00.001-08:00

Sorry my blog has been down for so long. I'm back up and running. Anyway, I'll write later. I've been writing a book so I've been very busy.

The Economy

2009-07-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system"
George W. Bush

I think there has been a lot of misunderstanding about the latest financial crisis. The media tend to emphasize deficits and the stock market. They also seem to confuse the real economy (jobs, employment rate, CPI, GDP, PMI, etc.) and the financial economy (stock prices, bond yields, interest rates, credit spreads, etc.) Lately, the media have been cheerleaders because of the rising stock market (financial economy) while the real economy has been taking a major dump. Unemployment is now at 9.5 percent but the picture gets even worse. If we include discouraged workers and partially-employed workers, the unemployment rate is already above 16 percent. Firms are also inducing workers to reduce hours and hourly wages. Plus, job losses should continue for the next year and a half and peak somewhere near 11 percent.

At the center of this whole crisis is the $8 trillion housing bubble. Again, the media have been focused on stock market. Since 1996, the housing prices started to rise and ever since then we’ve been listening to people scream about the deficit. We listened to the deficit hawks whine about a problem that really wasn’t that big (at least by comparative standards) and they let the bubble continue.

Well, the deficit hawks are back. They say you and your children and their children and on and on will have to pay back $12 trillion. Are you terrified yet? You shouldn’t be. Don’t change your underwear just yet. Let me break this all down.

It should first be noted that almost 100 percent of this money is in the form of loans. It’s not like the government is just giving this money away. So, no, your children won’t being paying this back. The people who got the money will be paying it back and paying interest on it. This potentially means that the government will make money.

About $1 trillion of that money is in the form of TARP. This program was the creation of the Bush Administration and is still being injected into the failing banks. Why were the banks failing? Because they were gambling with Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and loaning out massive amounts of leveraged cash in the form of Credit Default Swaps. After the government let Lehman Brothers fall, just about every bank in the country stopped lending out money. It turns out that all these banks are highly connected. Not just here but around the world. That means nobody, not even large institutions could get a loan. What most people don’t understand is that most major corporations receive loans everyday. Some companies might take 10 or 15 loans out everyday because they just don’t have the cash on hand. At the time, even McDonalds couldn’t receive a loan.

I know it’s popular to say, “just let the banks fail,” and I would love to agree. But our whole system as we know it would fall into a dark spiral without the rescue plan. Not only would all money in the US freeze up, there would be a domino effect in the corporate world. Every bank in the US would have to let their employees go. Everyone invested in these companies would take a huge hit. Because all these companies are so tightly knit, both smaller and larger businesses would fall. “Too big to fail,” isn’t some nice little statement. It’s a new reality. One that needs to be dealt with.

Everybody thought it would be okay if just one large bank failed. It turned out they were wrong because after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the entire world banking system, along with the financial economy, headed straight down.

This is why Hank Paulson, somebody who was famous for saying, “The best government is no government,” agreed to the bailout.

The second part of the rescue plan has been Obama’s stimulus package. This will cost $787 billion over the next 10 years. Again, people have many misunderstandings about this. Close to 1/3 of this bill goes out in the form of tax cuts. That’s already taken place. Instead of giving this money out in one large payment like the Bush Administration did, they are opting to have the money trickled into each paycheck. They did this because it turned out that most people who got their $500 dollar check in the mail saved that money which isn’t a stimulus at all.

So far, more than 60 percent of the stimulus takes the form of lower tax rates and higher benefit levels for programs like unemployment insurance. The lower tax rates and higher benefit levels already went into effect at the start of the spring. This means that people already have higher take-home pay or government benefit checks.

More than a quarter of the remaining stimulus is devoted to state and local government stabilization funds. This spending will limit the cutbacks at the state and local level, but will not lead to additional growth. The remaining funds are projected to be spent out at an $80 billion annual rate over the course of 2010.

Even if we assume that we are starting from zero spending at the moment, this is a boost of just over 0.5 percent of GDP. By contrast, the collapse of housing construction trimmed $450 billion or 3.0 percentage points of GDP from annual demand. The decline in consumption due to the loss of bubble wealth is in the range of $600 billion to $800 billion a year.

In other words, the remaining stimulus is an order of magnitude too small to give much of a boost to the economy. It should be noted that this was completely expected by economist but has somehow confused the media and the pundits.

The last part of the rescue plan is by far the biggest. One trillion was pushed by the Bush Administration, $787 billion by Obama, but the Federal Reserve is spending the remaining 10 trillion. The government has no control over the FED. They can do whatever they want as opposed to what most people think.

So, what are they doing? Because the banks are no longer lending out money, the FED has stepped in and started doing what the banks use to do: lend money to companies. Again, they aren’t giving the money away. They are just loans.

Since there was a $8 trillion dollar hole blown into the economy, the FED has started printing more money. Many people say this will lead to massive hyper-inflation. This is highly doubtful. At the moment, we’re having a problem with deflation. Plus, the US, compared to some other countries are not that far in debt. Other countries, including Japan and Canada have been further in debt and they didn’t see the inflation that people are talking about today. I should also mention that fact that the FED is sending money to the bank who are just sitting on that money because they don’t want to lend it out. Eventually, the FED will get it back so in reality, the FED isn’t really spending the money.

Many of you know that I was talking about the housing bubble in 2004. It seemed pretty obvious even though just about every economic pundit was saying that everything was okay even while everything was falling apart. What’s really annoying is that the media is talking to the economic pundits who got everything wrong about that economy and they continue to talk to them. At the same time, they completely ignore the people who both predicted the crash and everything that happened afterwards. Instead, they opted to talk to fear mongering deficit hawks. The reason for this might be simple. Everybody can relate to debt. We know it’s bad. End of story. It’s like when they talk about Iraq. The coverage is terrible. It mostly come down to how many soldiers died that day. They don’t talk about the all the different political factions and statistical information because it’s just too hard to grasp.

Last, I should mention all the hype about how Obama is turning the US into a Socialized country. This is all nonsense. Especially since Republicans practically invented corporate bailouts. Historically, Republicans have done the same thing. PLEASE CHECK OUT THIS CHART. The US has taken over many companies including Nixon's takeover of the railroad industry. Almost every bailout in history has turned a profit for the US government. Obama has said he has absolutely no intension of running these institutions and when they are better, he will sell them back to private hands. So unless there is some conspiracy I don’t know about, that is likely to happen.

What does the future look like? Well, it’s hard to say. I’m predicting, that home prices will continue to drop another 10 percent. This is pretty large since it has already dropped about 30 percent. The next year and a half, unemployment will continue to drop but should peak at around 11 or 12 percent. Growth will also be sub par with maybe 1 percent in 2009 and 2010.

If the unemployment rate is going to peak around 11 percent next year, the expected losses for banks on their loans and securities are going to be much higher than the ones estimated in the recent stress tests. You plug an unemployment rate of 11 percent in any model of loan losses and recovery rates and you get very ugly losses for subprime, near-prime, prime, home equity loan lines, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, leverage loans, and commercial loans – much bigger numbers than what the stress tests projected.

It’s bad but the country is by no means going to go bankrupt. You don’t have to worry about your kids being strapped with $12 trillion in debt. By 2011, things should start to pick up. Until then, things will be slow economically. Anyway, go change your underwear and stop worrying.

My World

2009-06-29T03:48:00.001-07:00

Much has happened since my last post. Mona and I went to Missouri for Josh’s wedding. We hooked up with Nick and Tonya and stayed in the same hotel. We got to see the St. Louis Arch and checked out the city. I was surprised to see that you can still buy a five bedroom home in a wonderful neighborhood for $80,000 especially since a one bedroom in our neighborhood goes for around $500,000.

Josh’s wedding was over-the-top. He told me it would be nice but I had no idea. The wedding was at some exclusive country club. It was the kind of place you could imagine some old guys smoking cigars and sipping brandy while talking about their yachts. I didn’t get much time to talk to Josh but that’s okay. With that many friends and family plus the wedding itself, I was excited just to say hello.

After the wedding, we headed to Huston to Mona’s brothers. Texas was humid. It was awesome to finally meet Mona’s brother Mckay. We got along really well. He showed us the jail which was quite an experience. It was also great to see Evan who I haven’t see in awhile. We had some great conversations.

Yesterday, I saw a mountain lion at work. At first I thought it was a coyote until I got a little closer. I was driving so I pulled up next to it. That’s when I realized that my widow was completely down and the lion was only about five feet from me.

Here is a short list of the animals I’ve seen:

Deer
Skunks
Possums

I see these almost every night. The following are animals I see less often.

Scorpions
Raccoons
Bucks
Snakes (King Snake, Rattlesnake)
Foxes

Animals I’ve seen once:

Tarantula
Mountain Lion

Also, yesterday, Mona and I went to see Explosion in the Sky. In my last post I said they would be playing at the Orpheum Theatre. I was wrong. We ended up at the Hollywood Palladium on Sunset. The building has an art deco style and felt a little bit like a roller skating rink. The show turned out really well. I hate when I go to a concert and the band only plays stuff from their latest release. Explosion played all their best stuff that night.

Going to work afterwards was a bit difficult. I always drive down Sunset but I hit a snag when I got to Bel-Air. There was some huge memorial/shrine for Michael Jackson. Apparently, MJ lived close to my work.

Other than that, I’ve been working on a series of YouTube video. Hopefully, I have some posted in the next couple of days.

Oh, I almost forgot. The college I work at is one of the new locations for Beverly Hills 90210. The school is going to be West Beverly High and from what I understand, we are the main location. They should be here (I'm writing this at work) in the next two hours.

The Week

2009-05-18T00:58:00.000-07:00

Mona and I went to the doctors on Thursday and found out there’s a 90 percent chance that we’ll being having a girl. Stellar news, I must say. After, we headed up through wine country to San Luis Obispo. We had a nice lunch and just relaxed around town. Our hotel was just a couple of blocks away from the beach and we took advantage of that the next day. There was so much fog you could only see about 50 yards before everything faded to white.

On Saturday, we saw Mogwai again but this time at the Orpheum Theatre. Los Angeles has tons of incredible concert location but this one was by far the best. The Orpheum is located in downtown and was built in 1926. We will be going back in June to see Explosion in the Sky.

At the moment, I’m at work just relaxing. There’s a lot of fog tonight. I can see a deer eating grass about 20 feet away from me. All the girls are out for the summer so I’m free to do whatever I want. It’s strange being here by myself since I’ve made so many friends at the school. But that’s okay since I’m more productive on my own.

Next week, we are going to Missouri for Josh’s wedding and then to Texas to see Mona’s two brothers. Hopefully, I’ll have some pictures and stories to tell. Well, that’s all folks. Just a quick update.

Our Trip

2009-04-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo so we finally went. Here are a couple of pictures from the trip. While we waited for the zoo to open, we discovered Balboa Park. It started sprinkling while we walked around checking out all the old buildings. After the zoo, we went to our beach hotel and just relaxed.

Banktron

2008-10-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. - Robert Frost

Mogwai & Glass

2008-09-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

We're still taking advantage of all the opportunities in this city. Sometimes, I feel bored like nothing ever happens around town. And then a take a moment and think about the last month and all the stuff we've done.

I should go back...

A couple of weeks ago, Brittany, Scott, Mona, and I went to see the music of Philip Glass at the Hollywood Bowl. Incredible. The music was so layered and the atmosphere was pristine. Sitting there, you feel like you're in the middle of the forest but then you look over to see the Hollywood Sign. I've been listening to Glass for years and the watched countless movies he's done soundtracks for. While I'm writing my novel, I need music with no lyrics and so Glass has been a companion many late nights. Here is a sample of his work (not performed by Glass).

I took Brittany to Knott's Berry Farm. This park is perfect for me. It's a mix between Six Flags and Disney Land. I think we both agreed that the old wooden roller coaster at the edge of the park was the best. I swear that thing is ready to break. At one point, I remember thinking that the coaster jumped the tracks.

My novel is coming along. Some chapters are better than others. I'm behind but what's new? This whole process has really solidified my understanding of all the different aspects of fiction. If you lack in any area you pay the consequences by boring or confusing your audience.

MOGWAI

Last Tuesday, we went to see Mogwai in concert at the Wiltern. This was by far the best show yet. Mogwai is an instrumental band, meaning no singing, with dreamy compositions. After awhile, your head is swimming somewhere else, not really sure if what's happening is real. This video is just static but the music is there.

On Saturday, Mona and I are going to go see Chuck Palahniuk at Borders down the street. He's probably my favorite writer at the moment. He wrote the book Fight Club which was eventually made into the movie (one of my favorite movies).

I was going to put this last part as another post but while I'm here I'll just post it. Please check out these two articles by Matt Taibbi. This guy rocks. It's great to finally find somebody who sees the election process the same way I do. He spends time ripping on both candidates and how money influences their policies, something that's been completely ignored by the press. People keep talking about candidates flip-flopping over issues for strategic gain. How is that strategic? Maybe that $800,000 dollars endorsement from Citybank had something to do with it.

Taibbi 1
Taibbi 2

Underwear Parade

2008-08-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of pictures from the last week. There was an underwear parade on our street. Brittany and I sat on the roof while it went by. It was pretty funny. Most people dressed up in costumes and danced around in the streets. I guess it was to raise money for any cancer below the waist.

I took these two pictures at the LACMA's Jazz Festival.

So in the last week, we went to play miniature gold, batting cages, arcade, taking pictures, waiting in line for the new Stephenie Meyer book, the observatory, and a bunch of other stuff I can't think of. On Thursday we head to Knott's Berry Farm.

Homecoming

2008-07-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to imagine that she’s all grown up but she is. Five years. That was the last time we saw her. Brittany is back.

Last week, Jen, Stephanie, and Lindsey were in town. We went San Diego, stayed up late into the night, listening to the crashing waves at our beach hotel, talking about whatever. It was great. The next day we played around Sea World, walking through underwater tubes and riding the rides.

Brittany and I have been taking pictures together. Here are a couple of my pictures.

This is one of Brittney’s pictures. (Click on image!)

Bye Stephanie -

2008-06-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

Three O'clock in the morning comes and Stephanie and I find ourselves drifting around the neighborhood taking pictures of anything. The only people out are the drunks or the homeless shoveling through piles of trash looking for plastic bottles for tomorrow's fix.

It's the next morning and the memory is faded from the night before. I imagine my hippocampus must look something like a turd after 20 days of little sleep and playing the Wii in a high tech carnival atmosphere.

But we had fun and that's all that counts.

Time to Relax

2008-06-03T17:11:00.001-07:00

I finished my first novel last night. At the moment, it's about 200 pages but will probably be expanded another 30 pages during the rewrite. I'm currently trying to figure out what my next project will be. I'd like to write another script but unfortunately book ideas are easier to create.

For the next week I hope to take a little break and write a little more on my blog and maybe get out and take some pictures.

June Quote

2008-06-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

Any man who pays more for labor than the lowest sum he can get men for is robbing his stockholders. If he can secure men for $6 and pays more, he is stealing from the company.

Stockholder of American Wollen (Lawrence, Massachusetts) 1911

Catch 22

2008-06-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

McClatchy news agency has an article outlining how both presidential candidates are exaggerating claims about Iran. Apparently both McCain and Obama are running around the country telling everyone that, "Iran is developing nuclear weapons." I'm sorry, but has everyone gone completely crazy? The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, that's a group of 16 US intelligence agencies, have concluded, "that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."

It's funny that everyone asks how the intelligence on Iraq was so inaccurate. So once again, the UN weapons inspectors are freely walking around Iran, checking facilities, talking to people, and looking for trace elements of nuclear chemicals. They have found absolutely nothing. Nothing. Sound familar? So all the best reporting on Iran says they're not developing nuclear weapons and yet our only options for president are already misleading the country.

On another topic, it looks bad for McCain this year. Bloomberg features a story that Bush's business donors are shunning McCain for Democrats. As I wrote before, almost all political funding comes from corporations and that the candidates with the most money almost always win (94% of the time for House members and 85% for the Senate).

Rama

2008-06-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I read a book called Phantom in the Brain by VS Ramachandrin. I named one of my characters in my novel after him. Anyway, I don't expect anyone to read the book but here's a documentary about his work.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10.

What he's documented is that the will, feelings, thoughts, language, and even consciousness (awareness) are just aspects of the brain.

April Quote

2008-04-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

Jay Gould
US financier & railroad businessman (1836 - 1892)

Insomnia

2008-04-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

Wake up. Go to work. Stare at a monitor. Be creative. Go home. Watch a movie. Go to bed. This is my life. Tic. Toc. It's all fading away. Two months since my last post but who cares? Nothing to say except that I'm halfway finished with my novel. Big news, I guess.

Enough of that. Time to get out.

Last night we went to see Caribou in Concert at the El Rey. Here's a clip of the preshow I found online.

Noise. Repetition. Once again, the UK pushes the edge of music.

Tomorrow we head to the beach. Next week we'll be going to go see Real Time with Bill Maher. I've never been in the audience of a television show. I wonder if I'll like it.

Quote of the Month

2008-02-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

"If you sell a candidate the same way you sell a cinnamon roll, is the candidate a cinnamon roll ?"

Election

2008-02-09T05:05:00.000-08:00

I really can't wait for the political season to be over with. It's all so boring to listen to people spout out bumper sticker slogans like robots.

It was just Super Tuesday and I'm proud to say that I didn't vote. Yes, I'm not one of those jerks that walks around with a little sticker that says, "I Voted" while patting myself on the back all day. Anyway, I don't think people understand how politics works so here's my little version.

Here we go. If a candidate wants to be a contender they need to raise massive amounts of cash. We're talking millions of dollars. In fact, Senators have to raise an average of $34,000 a week, every week, for six years to stay in office. Politicians actually spend more time looking for money than anything else. So why is money so important? During the 2000 congressional election, 94 percent of the House of Representatives and 85 percent of the Senators with the most cash won the election. Yes. You read that right. It's not about a person with a moral compass or what someone believes but how much money can be raised. (I recommend the site http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1633488_1633530_1633568,00.html for anyone interested in this information. This nonpartisan group has done an incredible, absolutely amazing job of following money in Washington.)

In order to raise all that cash, politicians have to find constituents to support them so they head to where the big money is: the corporations. Fortune magazine runs an article every year highlighting the biggest corporate whores of the year. This year, "business is betting on" Hillary Clinton. She has been able to get support from the likes of Morgan Stanley, Anheuser-Busch, and Sun Microsystems. Here is a small list of her Top Contributors and Top Industries.

Why do corporations hand out so much money? Well, the only goal of corporations is to maximize profit. They give to buy and influence our politicians and our policies. For instance, Enron was the biggest contributor to the Bush's presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. For giving so much Bush hired some of their employees and associates including Alberto Gonzalez as White House counsel, Thomas White for Secretary of the Army, Lawrence Lindsay as Chief White House Economist, Patrick Wood as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Harvey Pitt in charge of the SEC.

Former CEO, Kenneth Lay gave Dick Cheney a memo (click here for actual memo) that said, "The administration should reject any attempt to re-regulate wholesale power markets by adopting price caps." He also gave a wish list of eight policy recommendations. Of the eight, seven were made into law. This heavy deregulation led to the California Energy Crisis.

That's one example.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but Clinton´s idea of Universal Healthcare is a scam. She says she's going after the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Sounds good to me. These bastards have been raping the sick and dying for years. It turns out that's she's doing the exact opposite. Hillary has managed to raise, "more financial backing from health-related industries than her opponent."

The reason drugs are so cheap in Canada and elsewhere is because there are government regulations that tell companies that they can't take something that cost 5 cents, and turn around and sell it for 50 dollars. Instead, Clinton's plan works much like car insurance. Buy it or be penalized. (Oh yeah, she also gives poor people a little tax break for buying the health insurance. Too bad, they can't afford the insurance in the first place.) So, if I was an insurance company, Clinton would be a savior. People are forced to pay for insurance and insurance pays for the pharmaceuticals. Everyone wins...except the public who will be footed with the bill. Hillary's plan is Universal but it looks more like corporate welfare to me. Of course, I guess it makes sense when the pharmaceutical and insurance companies back you.

Another strategy for winning election is to hire Public Relation goons. Clinton has hired the PR firm Burson-Marsteller. These thugs work for the likes of Philip Morris and Saudi Arabia. They actually helped clean up Saudi Arabia's image after 9/11 when it turned out that 15 of the 19 hijackers were of Saudi decent. Freedom House ranks Saudi Arabia just under North Korea as far as freedom is concerned.

For a PR company, selling candidates is just like selling any other product. They aren't selling beliefs or issues but image. That's why politicians say stuff that 100 percent of the public believes in. Freedom. Democracy. Support the Troops. Whatever. Everyone believes in these things so politicians say them over and over again to win votes. And marketing people know that when you hear these things you get goose bumps and get all emotional and froth at the mouth.

Marketers teach candidates to be vague on every issue. I still can't figure out what Clinton thinks about Iraq. She says she wants to start taking out troops out in the next year. So does Bush. She won't guarantee troops out by 2012. And as far as I can tell, she wants permanent military bases in Iraq. So what is the difference between the Bush and Clinton plan? I can't tell. She constantly rips on Bush's handling of the war but what is her plan? To leave... eventually. Again, that's Bush's plan.

So wrapping this whole thing up, I'm really tired of hearing people say things like, "I think we need Change. That's why I'm voting for Obama." Or how about, "I think Clinton has more Experience so I think she'll be a better president." Or, "That McCain's a real Straight Shooter; he says what he thinks." That, and all the other stuff about 500-dollar haircuts or who would make a great leader and who had the ultimate comeback during the debate. It's all window dressing dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator.

These are strategies that sell politicians. Clinton is betting on the angle of Experience, while Obama is using Change. These have absolutely nothing to do with the issues. In the end, what upsets me most is that voting, democracy itself, is really nothing but sideshow. In the end, the candidate with the most money wins anyway. And in order to get that money the public must be subverted.

Corporation

2008-01-22T08:11:00.001-08:00

From the documentary, "The Corporation."

Book Review

2008-01-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

I thought since I read so many books I would do a little review of some of my favorites. I’ve tried to stick to mostly non-technical stuff.

My first book is “Public Opinion,” by Walter Lippmann. The book was written in 1922, so it’s a little dry at times and I wouldn’t recommend buying it. Much of the book has techniques on manipulating public attitudes. So why did I put it on the list? I think Lippmann brilliantly describes the power structures within a liberal democracy (that’s lingo for the system of government we live in). Lippmann says that there are three classes in society. The largest class is about 90 percent of society, what he refers to as the “bewildered herd”. They are the workers and voters and exist to be exploited. They’re too dumb to understand the world so they need it explained to them by more sophisticated people. This is the job of a much smaller group of people (about 7 percent of society) called the Specialized Class. They are the second group and are the technocrats, the intellectuals, the managers, the politicians, etc. They make sure that the world functions for the Owners of Society: the bankers, the business owners, etc. In this system, power works backwards at least according to how a democracy should work. In this case, the smallest class tells the rest how the world will function by manipulation.

This structure keeps everything and everyone in line. Lippmann believed this is the way society should function. I disagree. But I do believe his analysis about how societal hierarchy works is dead on.

My second book is the classic 1929 book “Propaganda,” by Edward Bernays. I’ve written about this one already so I’ll just leave you with the opening quote.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

The word Propaganda has gotten a facelift under the new name of Public Relations. Bernays masters many of the techniques used today by both the PR and marketing firms. Flip to any part in this book and be shocked!

Bernays and Lippmann weren’t some weird guys on the fringes of society. They both worked for Presidents and some of the biggest companies. They might not be household names but they were the brains behind society in their day.

The third book, which I’m currently reading, is called “Captains of Consciousness,” by Stuart Ewen. Ewen describes how the US became a consumer culture. It’s often said that this culture came about naturally as an outgrowth of capitalism. In fact, it was completely designed by the Captains of Consciousness (people like Bernays and Lippmann) for the Captains of Industry (people like Ford or Rockefeller). The history starts around 1910 and continues to the mid 1930’s and by the 40’s the US was completely entrenched in a consumer society. One of the big techniques they used was to establish patriotic feelings with a consumer society. So if you didn’t like consumer society, by default you were anti-American. This idea is still used heavily today.

I’m really interested in the 1920’s. It is sometimes referred to as the Progressive Era. Democrats claim they’re an outgrowth of the Progressive Era. This is total nonsense. The eight hour workday, women’s right to vote, labor rights, initiative, recall, referendum, and voting for senators originated from the third parties.

I think two forces were at work during the early 1900’s. Around 1875, universal education was instituted and the public was suddenly able to read the newspapers. For the first time the masses wanted a say in how their society worked. They started protesting and arguing for more rights. They were making huge progress and the elite establishment (for lack of better words) were becoming terrified. They were losing both control and money. Muckrakers were describing the elite as Robber Barons.

I think when people like Bernays showed up on the scene the business community was relieved because they were able to put the public back in its place. Lippmann called the public “spectator’s of democracy” a place we remain today.

For a more up-to-date book on the manipulation of the public, read “Trust Us, We’re Experts!” by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. These guys are the experts on the PR and Marketing industry today. This book is easy to read and thoroughly researched. Much of the book describes how “scientists” have manipulated science to say just about anything for anyone who’ll pay. Check out the PR Watch website or see an excellent Frontline episode written by Douglas Rushkoff that discusses these subjects.

“Culture of Fear,” by Barry Glassner is one of my all time favorites. Easy to read, well researched, and totally funny. The book, in many ways, reminds me of “Fast Food Nation,” which is another book I recommend. Anyway, this book tells how fearful the US population has become in recent years. Many of these fears are completely unfounded. Some myths covered are: the US crime rates, kids getting razor blades in Halloween candy, medical diseases, drug hysteria, terrorist, crazy mothers, delinquent kids, etc. He also describes how fear is used to manipulate people for policy purposes. For example, fear of high crime (which is a myth) is used by lobbyist who work for the prison industry to get public subsidies (your tax dollars) to make more prisons that we don‘t need.

Check out “Globalization and its Discontents,” by Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winner in economics, headed the World Bank, and economic advisor to Bill Clinton while he was president. He has now turned against the Clintons and advocates against neoliberal policies. The book illustrates how the IMF and World Bank function. (Just quickly, the IMF says whether a country can get loans from the World Bank.) If you want a loan you must do what the IMF says which usually means privatizing everything including schools, water, and social security. It also means that you must open up your borders to both transnational corporations and currency speculators. Currency speculation led the Argentina government (which was the poster child of the IMF) to claim bankruptcy. The East Asian Crisis resulted from policies advocated by the IMF. Most third world countries see the IMF as an imperial force. Unfortunately, these countries are desperate for money and will do just about anything to keep afloat. So who controls the IMF? It’s basically an extension of the transnational corporations (I’m simplifying here) which means it works not for the benefit of the people in those countries but to the corporation who control the IMF. People don’t like to see their borders opened and then see their resources raped. Strange, eh?

About a year ago, China wanted to buy Unocal in the US. Congress freaked out and used protectionist measures to keep that from happening. If another country tried this it would be seriously punished. I don’t mean punished like a slap on the wrist. I mean economic strangulation. I mean people die.

“Web of Deceit,” by Barry Lando is an intense piece of history. The book covers much of the declassified history of Iraq. Lando covers western support of Saddam Hussein from countries like the US, France, Germany, and Russia. Even before Saddam, dictators in Iraq were supported by everyone from Churchill to JFK. As Saddam was finally coming to power, through a sea of carnage, the CIA describe him as “a presentable young man.”

James Baker, the first Bush Administration’s Secretary of State, in his own memoirs states that, “Our Administration’s review of the previous Iraq policy was not immune from domestic economic considerations…Had we attempted to isolate Iraq we would have also isolated commercial opportunities.” At the time, Iraq was buying one quarter of American’s rice exports; altogether , it was the ninth largest purchaser of US food products in the world.

One declassified document, “U.S. Policy Toward the Iran-Iraq War” signed by Ronald Reagan, states that “It is present United States policy to undertake whatever measure may be necessary to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to internal shipping.” That document again was called “U.S. Policy Toward the Iran-Iraq War.” We find out that supporting Saddam was about defending “critical oil productions and transshipment facilities in the Persian Gulf.” Reagan doesn’t even mention what the public was being told at the time. They were saying supporting Saddam was about isolating Iran from taking over the region. (This is something I’ve seen with declassified documents over and over again. The public is told one thing but behind the scenes something completely different is taking place.) This isn’t information by some crazy radical. This is straight from Reagan himself. Supporting Saddam was about economics. Please read the document for yourself. It makes me so angry when people talk about support for Saddam as trying to contain Iran. If that was true, why the support both before and after the war? Here is the infamous Rumsfeld video of them shaking hands.

This was shortly after Saddam “gassed his own people.” The transcript and declassified documents show that Rumsfeld never mentioned anything even though both the CIA and State Department mentioned it to him.

Here is Clinton’s Madeline Albright stating that Clinton’s sanctions and the killing a half a million children in Iraq was “worth it.”

She doesn‘t even try to argue the facts. The sanctions actually strengthened Saddam since everyone during a crisis huddles beneath their leaders.

Enough of politics. On to Philosophy. One of the most influential books for me was Bertrand Russell’s “The Problems of Philosophy.” The book’s about 100 pages and pretty easy to read for a philosophy book. Russell is credited with integrating mathematics with logic. Not an easy task.

I think I read this book at a perfect time. I use to be an idealist, which means I thought that somehow (not even sure what I was thinking!) the mind could influence the world around me. Stupid, I know! Anyway, the thought has been around for awhile. This book is mostly about Epistemology which relates to how we can know whether something is true or not. His arguments are simple but powerful.

The last book is Noam Chomsky’s “On Nature and Language.” This book is mostly interviews and can be highly technical. Where to start with Chomsky. In the 50’s he revolutionized the field of linguistics and thereby psychology. Chomsky mentions a concept and another person will take that concept and write a famous book about it. Jerry Fodor took Chomsky’s idea of Modularity and wrote Modularity of Mind - another great book but highly technical. Colin McGinn and Marc Hauser are other examples. Steven Pinker has pretty much translated Chomsky’s material to the lay person and is now probably the most famous psychologist today. Chomsky Hierarchy is basic in computer science courses and Niels K. Jerne who won the Nobel prize in medicine said he basically stole Chomsky’s Hierarchy and applied it to medicine. Chomsky also contributed in the field of logic.

So what does Chomsky say about language? He says that language is innate meaning the rules for language, what he calls Universal Language, are built into our brains. At the time everybody thought that parents teach their kids language. Chomsky asked how a child could learn all the rules of language, rules even the best linguist don’t understand, in such a short period of time. It turns out that English has only superficial differences from Japanese or any other language. Languages are all basically the same. We are hardwired with the basic rules in our brain. This simple understanding, the idea of innateness, has rocked the world of psychology. It overthrew Behaviorism and launched into the field of cognitive psychology. Scientist and psychology are starting to merge because of Chomsky’s work. Scientist are in a race to find out what’s innate and subtracting that from what we learn from our environment. It turns out that almost everything about us is built into our DNA. From twin studies we know that personality traits have more to do with our genes than where or how we grow up. Child psychologist are breaking from the idea that parents play a very big part in a child’s development. All this stuff is being empirically verified and eventually the public is going to have to deal with this subject. It won’t be easy.

Here is a great interview on the subject.

The Third Parties

2008-01-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

I'm really a third party person. Watch this stupid speech by Hillary Clinton. It completely lacks any kind of content. She just strings together a bunch of feel good statements.

How annoying! Now watch Ralph Nader (Green Party) and Michael Peroutka (Constitutional Party). I definitely disagree with some of the stuff they mention but hear how they actually talk about issues in a smart and intelligent way. They also come across as being sincere where as the presidential candidates this year have sounded totally phony.

Interesting Fact of the Day

2007-12-31T00:59:00.000-08:00

In 1914 Henry Ford created what is sometimes referred to as the Five Dollar a Day program. This program was designed to pay employees five dollars daily and the creation of an 8 hour work day. For this wonderful gift, Ford felt it was okay to check up on his employees. He created a Sociological Department to make regular visits to make sure his employees were keeping their homes clean and living by moral standards. Like most authoritarian types, he said he did this because he loved his people and he just wanted what was best for them and blah blah blah… (You know the routine.) It turns out when the program became too expensive it was terminated. So much for his undying love. I think Ford must have had some really warped definition of the word Liberty.

It also turns out that Ford was anti-Semitic. Here is the front page of an article he wrote about the Jewish people. And here is a quote he mentions, not from Hitler but from The New International Encyclopedia!

“Among the distinguishing mental and moral traits of the Jews may be mentioned: distaste for hard or violent physical labor; a strong family sense and philoprogenitiveness; a marked religious instinct; the courage of the prophet and martyr rather than of the pioneer and soldier; remarkable power to survive in adverse environments, combined with great ablility to retain racial solidarity; capacity for exploitation, both individual and social; shrewdness…”

This is just a little more proof that contrary to what just about everyone says, the world is actually becoming better and more humane place to live.

2007-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

"It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil, whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters, who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? 'He is free,' you say. That is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters: that is, need. It is this that that reduces them to the most cruel dependence."

- Simon Linguet

2007-12-19T23:38:00.000-08:00

The movie The Least Among You is being filmed at my work this week. The film stars Lauren Holly (Jim Carrey’s x-wife) and Lou Gossett Jr.

We had a wonderful time in San Diego. The last time I was there I didn’t really have time to look around but on this trip we did some exploring. Downtown San Diego is pretty impressive with lots of cool shops and relatively clean streets.

I’m off to Phoenix in the morning for a quick trip. I’ll be there on Thursday and Friday. Hopefully, I'll take a couple of pictures to post to my Flickr site.

2007-12-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

Check out my latest on Flickr!

2007-12-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

Mona and I are taking a trip to San Diego tomorrow for our anniversary and the next week we will be heading to Arizona for a quick visit to see the family. I wish I could stay longer but everybody at work is asking for days off.

I’ve been taking pictures again and hope to post some new stuff to my Flickr site. It feels great to get out again and I’ve got quite a few ideas lined up for shots. Unfortunately, I don’t have many people who are willing to model for me.

Yesterday, Scott and I went to see Will Smith put his hands in the cement at the Mann Chinese Theater. Surprisingly, Tom Cruz showed up for the event. Will Smith was pretty excited about the whole thing and spent a lot of time with his fans (who are all insane). Here are a couple of pictures I took.

As a side note, the most underreported story of the month was Chevron settling for its role in the Oil-for-Food scandal. The company paid 30 million in fines. Funny that there was no outrage or calls for a boycott. Actually, tell someone about the story in a year and they’ll think you’re a conspiracy nut even though the source comes from the SEC.

If I told you that Philip Morris paid scientist to do research for them you probably wouldn’t trust the research findings. In fact, big tobacco use to claim that smoking was healthy! So what if a company paid a newspaper millions in the form of advertising? Can you trust that newspaper to do objective reporting?

What if a company paid millions to lobby in Washington? Or what if a company paid both political parties hefty donations over the years? Or what if somebody from the Executive Branch use to be on the board of directors of Chevron?

Do you see a problem with this? This is only one company!

2007-11-12T00:57:00.000-08:00

Mona says I post too many Youtube videos so I’ll just post one and link the rest. Below are six videos produced by the BBC on Edward Bernays. As far as I can tell, this is the only documentary on this subject. I disagree with many parts especially the emphasis and influences of Sigmund Freud on Bernays.

Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.
Part 5.
Part 6.

2007-11-11T08:48:00.001-08:00

Why do people believe the things they do? Why believe that aliens built Stonehedge or that magnetic bracelets cure everything from diarrhea to arthritis? It seems that most people don't understand what constitutes good evidence from bad evidence or even good logic from the bad. People tend to think - at least implicitly - that seeing is believing. Below are 5 videos showing how people can be deceived.

2007-11-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

I love this city. We’ve been taking advantage of the fact that we’re here and been going out consistently for the last couple of months. On Friday, I went to Ameba Records to buy the new CD for Do Make Say Think who we will be seeing on Sunday. After, we hooked up with Scott and headed to Sharky’s for some Mexican food. The next morning we woke up early and left for Santa Barbra. I was totally blown away by the beauty of the city and beaches. We hung around most of the day taking pictures and walking around.

When we retuned to LA we walked down to the LACMA to see the new Salvador Dali exhibit. I expected to see couple of his pictures but was impressed to see they had most of his major work. It’s amazing how long you can just sit and stare at his paintings. Your eyes never sits still always being led to the next place. After the exhibit we sat outside listened to a band playing improvised jazz.

Before next weekend we’ll be seeing the new Sigur Ros documentary. I can’t wait until they come to town. I first heard them on the Invasion trailer. Here is a preview of the Documentary and some of their music.

Until next time…

2007-09-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

The next month should be filled with all sorts of excitement. But I should start off by mentioning the Air concert last week at the Greek Amphitheater. It hasn't rained all summer long and when it finally decided to we were driving to the concert. No matter. The rain just enhanced the experience even though we were sitting outdoors. Mountains and trees surrounded the theater and the night was beautiful. I had only heard one of Air's CDs so I wasn't sure if it was smart that I bought the 50-dollar tickets. Here are 3 of their videos so you can see the diversity of their music.

On October 1st, I'm going to go see Steven Pinker give a lecture at Borders. I actually disagree with about 55 percent of the stuff he says but he has popularized linguistics for general audiences, which is pretty amazing. I just found this clip of him talking about how violence has decreased not increased over the years. FINALLY! Everybody seems to live in this mythical fantasy that things are so terrible and crazy. This clip isn't about linguistics but I just had to show it. Again, I disagree with quite a bit of what he says but when he gets it right he really nails it.

On October 4th, I'm going to see Seymour Hersh at UCLA. I'm never really sure what I think about this guy. He's won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for uncovering the My Lai Massacre. He broke the original story on Abu Ghraib and is usually considered the best journalist along with Bob Woodward. Some of his stuff seems so far out but it usually turns out to be true such as the overthrow of the Chilean government. I started reading his book the Dark Side of Camelot, which chronicles the Kennedy's womanizing, lies, and plans for assignations (Castro and Lumumba).

October 15th, is my 30th birthday. We'll probably go see Rilo Kiley in concert.

October 25th is the Blonde Redhead concert. This is not one of their better songs.

Short Story

2007-09-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

I just started working on this story the other day. I thought I'd just give a little sample of what I've been writing. If you see any problems with points-of-view or tenses changing... that's your problem, not mine. It's long enough that you might want to just print the thing.

If you haven't visited my blog in awhile, there are some recent posts below this story that you might want to skip over to, including some pictures from my work.

[NO TITLE]

Adolescence. Mark receives messages from a box and tube, little flickers telling him what to think, what to say, what to be. Mom’s hooked on junk, gristle in her mouth, caffeine in blood, nicotine in her patch. She’s hooked on men; hooked on diet pills with money back guarantees. Dad’s gone, lives somewhere else, but sits in the corner, rusty wheelchair, drool on his face. But it’s okay. TV. Inculcation. Repetition. Buy this. Buy that. Invisible beams, space satellites, people from unknown lands, raise this adolescence into a unit, a man, a cog.

College. Marriage. The Work Place. Something is wrong. And then, the transmission is interrupted.

Mark sat there in his cookie cutter cubicle thinking cookie cutter things. But his cookie thinking was about to transform and grow into something never seen or thought of in the history of the most disgusting creature: the Homo sapiens sapiens. The change doesn’t happen right now though, not in the presence of his buffoon friends, but far off into oblivion, another universe you might say: that is now my history. But for now, before the making, he sits idle, talking with his cubicle buddies. There are four of them.

The person to the left of myself (or Mark) is Mack. His head is perfectly round like the cantaloupe, symmetrical, not colored consistently around the curves, and dented with pock marks. When Mack goes home, he asks his wife, "How was your day?" She responds like a robot, "It was okay. How was yours?" At this point, Mack, responds like a robot, "It was okay." After this they will eat and watch TV. TV makes their relationship beautiful and healthy and even tender. They turn on the box and turn off the three pounds of meat that lurks behind the eyes. The couple will live vicariously through bad actors, realistic sets, blazing colors, and ridiculous plot lines.

Sitting next to Mack is Bill. The funny thing about Bill is that he resembles a typical Bill. He parts what he says is genuine hair to the side, wears a blue hand-me-down suit that he thinks is new, is in his mid to late 40’s, fat, and looks like he wishes he wasn’t married. In fact, later that night, he won’t be.

The fourth unit is Niles. His creamy flesh, ocean eyes, chiseled contours, and teethy smile make you wish you were him. But you’re not. After work, he will go home to watch men wearing uniforms: Broncos, Bears, Dolphins, Beavers, or some other deranged animal, prance around all sweating, grabbing each other, hugging, holding and sometimes even fondling. This makes him "a man" for reasons even the greatest of philosophers still don’t understand. Niles claims he has slept with a different female every week. His claim is valid with the exception of that onset of latent chickenpox about a year ago.

I would tell you the details of what they are working on but it’s too dull and too blah and so awful that it really doesn’t matter. They look at spreadsheets, run numbers, and wonder to themselves what it’s all about. You see, the Four are just stupid cogs in a stupid machine in a company they don’t understand. All they know is that they work in insurance and are constantly told they are making the world a better place. They all believe this too.

The problem with these four gentlemen in this absolutely true story is that they don’t actually exist. Well, they do, but only in Mark’s head. Because right now, Mark is comatose in the dream-state. And even this might not be true. Or, it could be the other way around.

It’s important to move back into history, a history so far back, it goes beyond the Medieval Age, the Ice Age, the Dinosaur Age, and keeps going back to the beginning, to that single point: the dot, and going further, behind time and out the other side into a parallel universe where things are real. We are no longer dreaming, my friend. This is Reality.

Mark’s eyelids creased open allowing cascading floods of photons to swarm inside and onto the retina. Rods and cones ignite sending impulses rupturing in streams down the bundle of twisted meat of the optic nerve and then into the occipital lobe. Chemicals and networks of beautiful drugs swim, frolic, dance, and even communicate.

Mark is awake. He wipes crusties from his puffy lids.

He finds four men sitting at cubicles. They are Mark, Mack, Bill, and Niles. Bill says something like, "Hey Mark, did you check out Nascent Group?" Mark says nothing because he is trying to understand something he’s not capable of understanding. What I was trying to understand wasn’t about clapping hands or falling trees or any of that nonsense, but about why I felt so normal.

Finally, Mark says, "Yeah. I’m going there today."

Nascent Group makes drugs that effect other drugs inside the skull. I will be their toad for a week as I sign my body over to them for tests. Big Money. They claim their new pill will make dreaming feel totally authentic, meaningful, real, existent. Conscious awareness and memory mimic normal waking life. This is what I am told.
Nascent: just another building, dank as dirt, stained like coffee teeth, piled in city of leaning towers and dirty air. Mark sits beneath the fluorescent lights as the glare green, hues, and other unnatural colors, all of them horrible, descend upon him. The room is square and white-filled and has filthy diseases passed on by other patients, the germs creeping around in invisible worlds. You can smell the rot of overly used antiseptics and pesticides that no longer work. A doctor stands across from him touching Mark’s wiener and then scoops underneath and then fingers inside. "Okay, cough," he says with a smile. Gloves float through air before landing inside the garbage. "Swish," says Doctor Ramchandrin and then continues, still grinning with his Santa’s beard and devil eyes, "I think you’re ready, Mark." He writes on paper. "I need to warn you about the side effects. They can be intense. Sometimes euphoria sometimes paranoia but always powerful." Mark says okay, pulls up his trousers and takes his paper to the lab.

The lab is also square, windowless, and without humanity. Mark is met by a single bed, two doctors wearing white uniforms and a closet bathroom. Mark sees the restraints on the bed while blood pumps thickly through his heart. "Don’t worry, Mark. We’ve never had to use the restraints."

The next thing I know, I’m strapped down to the bed screaming about something. Not really sure what I was saying or if it was even English. A doctor who appears to be 18 feet tall jam-packs me full of a beautiful narcotic. I sleep.

Mark finds himself sitting on a paisley couch of orange and yuck. A television talks to him about war and death and famine and other things he will never appreciate. Two pictures hang above the tube with awful images of mutinous nature and the wood floors sit there waiting to be walked on. He is home. The lady next to him is his wife. She looks indifferent to him. Her soothing skins now looks rough, her makeup cracked, so thick he can smell it on her face.

What happened? He accidentally thought instead of moving his tongue.

"What happened?" he asks.

René’s head twists from the shoulder like a haunted ventriloquist and says in monotone, "Oh, good. You’re doing better." Her head turns back to the TV while her eyes glitter and fill with infotainment. All is glorious inside René’s head.

"How did I get back here?" Edges of insanity and grief and disbelief spilling from Mark. This time her body, flabby cheeks, tall forehead, wiry hairs, all animate as a whole. She is a homely home mother. She wears something like a moo-moo with stubbles of hair stuck in her armpits and flip-flops instead of slippers.

Her face changes from absence to genuine concern and then running on in relief: "Oh good. You’re okay. I mean you kept asking ‘How did I get here?’ And I’d say ‘Get where? You’re home.’ But then you would ask again two minutes later." She pauses. "You look different now. "

"I don’t remember asking about getting here," I say.

"Man, you really had me scared. I talked to the doctors and they kept insisting you would be fine. They want you to go back tomorrow. I said, 'no way, José'. You’re not setting feet in that place again. Comma. Period. Explanation point. I really told them."

"Okay. Fine. But, how did I get back here?"

"Get where? You’re home. What did I tell you?"

And then suddenly everything was back to the norms of life.

The home is small. The ceiling shoots up to 5 feet and 3 inches so Mark has adapted a spine that looks like a question mark. It is a house with two bedrooms, one with trashy furniture, the other with equally trashy furniture, living room built around the Tube, and a kitchen made for a large midget.

Slouched in the kitchen, he sets the table. He tells René, "I love you," while thoughts wander back to when they met. It was in the year 40-pounds-ago. They had biology together, but he had seen her before. He eyed her in Ninth. Mark pulled tricks and jokes all completely immature, some about body noise and some about babies being crushed or strangled. They were all funny. He found that René liked the morbid funnies and so he was attracted to her even more.

René was simple minded, believed anything she was told, kooky, and little deranged in a cookie cutter sort of way. Her father was raw, a beast really, and had even touched her groinal region on numerous occasions. She blamed all of her problems on father: the weight, the depression, the bad acne, and her antisocial disposition, all of it and anything. But it wasn’t her father’s fault. Like many people, she just had defective genes.

She cooked and he ate. Potatoes smashed with a splatters of butter, green sticks of bean stacked like pick-up-sticks, and the white gland juice from a cow’s teat swished around in a translucent mug. All was right.

Green vines on orange, little pink flowers, chaotic, trashy, all of these things were the wallpaper. "You seem okay to me. But can you really tell fact from fantasy? How do you know this isn’t a dream? That you’re not in the experiment right now? " René asked. Her brightly lit moo-moo matched the brightly lit paper behind her. Mark focused his cornea, only seeing René’s lumpy head, while the rest of her was camouflaged in the thickness and tackiness that was behind her. Her head seemed to squeeze from the wall itself. "Come on. Tell me. How do you know this isn’t a dream?" René’s face was now in his face, her eyes like tunnels of blackness burrowing down into infinity, her mouth moved violently, "How do you know? Come on. How do you know? Tell me. Tell me now! Are you dreaming?" She flopped back in her chair proud of herself, happy to dominate him as usual.

René's face, every muscle, everything expression, calmed into a blizzard of serenity. "How do you know this?"

"Because everything feels too real to be a dream."

That’s when I woke up.

The lady next to me has a soft snore like a generator in some far off land. Silk worm hair, skin from the gods, smell of nature’s water, beauty all wrapped up, bundled and cocooned. My René. I had awakened from a godless nightmare. I was back home, my abode, this was real time, real life. But what happened? Why did my dream feel so vivid?

Alarm. Snooze. Brush teeth. Brush hair. Socks. Shoes. Kiss goodbye. Mark in the lobby of some insurance uber-corporation, stands, gawks and feels standard, normal, ununique. People walk by. They look like replicas of himself, like he stands in a hall of mirrors. He desires his dream and even misses its terrible agony and fits of madness and that terrible clausterstranglation.

File. Print. Memo here, memo there. Who cares? Coffee. Eat. Leave. He sits at home with a book of yellow pages before him. Nascent Group. He finds and peels. He remembers the company from somewhere transparent.

It’s morning, the sky sighs, the clouds melt, the morning tingles under the skin with its nippiness. Nascent: a building among members, shines in light, colored by sky, a friend of city. Suite number 201: Reception. "Hello," says a voice behind plastic glass and pressed wood. She smiles, her grin too blissful for morning. Plump like hippo, soft as the fur, she awaits his answer. "Yeah, um, this might sound crazy, but I heard about this place from a dream and I’m just wondering what you do here exactly." Now he waits for her to talk.

A moment passes and then, "I’ll put you down as a walk-in. Have a seat, please."

I sit among the vacant seats. It’s quiet, like god removed my eardrums.

Suddenly, Mark finds himself in a large doctors office with the man from his dream, named Doctor Ramchandrin. Everything is clean, peaceful, and rearranged, at least compared to his dream. Is it the same place? He thinks so, but his thought are lies, so he doesn’t trust them. His heart goes thumpety-thump so brutal and so hasty he thinks maybe the doctor can hear the muscle pumping even through the chest plate.

"So, you were wondering what we do here?" the Indian man said. The Good Doc described neurons and dendrites, and chemicals here and chemical there, all with such detail and precision. But Mark would never fully understand.

"You make dreams feel real? With a drug?" I asked.

"No. Drugs don’t do that. We use a CXV machine. But I’m not sure if I can help you."

Confused, I questioned, "Why not?"

"Well, because you’re already dreaming." A moment of silence. And then Doctor starts laughing, all at Mark, all in his direction. A long arm with long dirty fingers reaches behind Mark’s ear and uncovers a buffalo nickel. "See, you can’t do that in a dream."

"Yes, you can," Mark says matter-of-factly.

"Okay, then. Let’s get you set up."

I’m in a room with two doctors who stand before a Victorian bed. Lining the wall are large windows, framed with elegant purple drapes of majesty that open to display the clearness and beauty of the city below. They say something and I lay on the bed. They are gone and Doctor Ramchandrin connects things to my head and then helmets me. "Are you sure you want this, Mark?"

I say, "Yes."

A movement. And then a tickling starts in my right cheek and then a burning, so much, so painful, that it reminds me of fire. "Wake up, man! You’re dreaming!" And then I realized the Doctor had slapped me like a new born babe. "How do you feel?" he says "How is it to be dreaming, dude?"

"It feels the same."

"Right!" The Doc says waving wilding, displaying the room with his hands. "That’s because you’re already in a dream. I’m not real. I’m you. This room is you. Welcome to you!"

I don’t know what I’m saying but I say it anyway, "How do I get back? How do exit a dream?"

"There’s something wrong with you, don’t you see? This is a psychiatric hospital not some Get High Get Low Let’s Have Fun With Our Dreamy Drugs kind of place. You have to find you and what’s wrong and how to fix this whole thing, that’s the way out. Now go and tell René you’re dreaming or you’re insane or whatever."

"But -"

"Just remember you’re trying to find yourself. Just a hint. Mark is not what he sees because he can observe color and texture. He is not hearing because he can observe sound. He is not the senses because he can observe them. Go to the source. Listen. Our time is up. I have my next appointment," and then Doctor Ramchandrin froze solid not blinking not moving, imitating one of those statues of great antiquity.

Mark returns home to tell his René the disgusting news. The house has many rooms, some with antique furniture, some with furniture minimalized and amplified, all the wallpaper is exquisite and says something like, "I’m classy, which means you’re classy."

The living room ceiling reaches high toward infinity, but stops at 17 feet and 2 inches. Chandelier of ruby and diamonds with a mixture of other Chinese cut glass dangles loosely over husband and wife. Husband tells Wife the story of dreams and axons and dendrites never really understanding the ramifications or that he might loosen her psyche. He knows she shall believe. But she does not.

"You’re flipping crazy," she says, wanting to say something else, but after all, this is not her dream. "You’re not dreaming. I’m not in your head. I have thoughts and feelings and a history. This is not trees falling in the forest, this is flesh," she smacks her skin, "this is real. When you leave I think about things. I watch TV. I eat. I sleep. I even have dreams. How do you think I got this perfect body. By just sitting around. No. I work out! I think about having babies. But no, that’s not for you, is it?"

"But -" And then for a moment I thought about how we met. It was in biology class. She was brilliant in all kinds of ways, not just in class but with everything. Everybody wanted to be by her, to talk to her, to touch her, to just be in her presence. She always dominated our conversation while I, a commoner, sat back, quiet, reserved. Something worked because she pursued me. She asked me out. She dominated me. And then I heard a voice, not in biology, but somewhere else, somewhere that was not in my memory.

"But what?" she says, and then continues her wicked dialogue from before I went to La La Land. "How do you know this isn’t the real thing and your dreams are. How do you know this? Wake up, Mark!"

I drive into the city and see people watching me from other cars, from the sidewalks, from inside the windows of storefronts. I sit with the Four. I am one of them, one of these subtle permutations of reality or whatever that other place is.

Bill peered up, sneaking a peek, looking for character, looking for suspicion while Niles bites and crunches on pieces of fingernail. He spits one onto his desk and then, "So, Mark? So, I’m hearing we’re just all inside of your head."

Mark gawks, composes and then, "What? Where did you hear such a stupid thing?"

"Bill told me."

Affirming his guilt, Bill erupts: "Dog gone it, Niles! I told you not to say anything," turning to me he cowers, "Sorry, man. The word’s getting around. I saw it on TV."

Niles says with his beautiful mouth, "Why did you have to get us involved. I don’t want to be here. I’d rather be someplace else."

Mack, using his cantaloupe, begins to speak of all things rational, non-confrontational. "Listen, we all have a job here. Let’s just get back to work and do our thing."

Niles says, "What thing? We’re in his head stupid. There is no thing." He turns to Mark. "Why couldn’t you dream up something more interesting, something with pizzazz and naked flesh and ..."

"I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It’s not my fault."

Bill, timidly, "Are we any different? I mean from the other place, your waking world?"

"Yeah. I think so. But I can’t really remember that well. Seems like the other place is dreary,"

Bill: "Well there you go, Niles. Things are better here."

"Well, how dreary are we talking about, Mark?" asks Niles.

"It’s pretty bad. Our whole lives are just routines and subroutines."

And then I remembered something. Something an Indian man told me about reality and characters and how everything is just in my head…

And then Niles says, "So, how do you know that you weren’t already in a dream and you’re dreaming inside a dream?"

Mark has no answer.

He returns home. He goes to bed, next to magical eyes and ears and other body parts, all them lean, all of them tender, and wakes up next to a slab of fat and gristle with chalky hair, loose parts and breath that kills rodents. Her name is René and they live in a two bedroom house. She constantly insists that Mark look at all of her flaws. She grabs hunks of fat and says, "See? I just can’t seem to loose it no matter how hard I try." And then she bites into brownies, portion for three, covered in caramel, sprinkled with walnut. She says, "the walnut has the good kind of fat."

When Mark finally responds, he says, "Oh."

At work, I realized I was just in a complicated assembly line and then a name came to me: Eli Whitney. Founder of the Cotton Gin, the assembly line, and white slavery. I sketched some diagrams on paper for a time machine.

I was going back to kill that bastard.

Suddenly, god delivered all the working parts, the bending of space-time, quantum tunneling, all the crazy mechanics, all realized, all given to me. I thrashed away on paper as god’s beauty, all pouring from my soul, came delicately from the end of my pen. I understood what Luke and John and Matthew must have felt. I would change things. I would save the world and humanity would sing with…

"Hey, Mark." And then the god’s gift dissolved, draining from this diseased mind. Once again, I was just a cog.

To Be Continued
___________________________________

Thanks for reading. Please check out:

David's short story

David's Short Story #2

Pilot

2007-08-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

Remember when I wrote about a TV pilot being filmed at our apartment complex? Well, it's finally done. CLICK ME TO WATCH! Unfortunately, Fox decided not to run with the show. But I did find part of the episode. The first shots of the apartment start when Jamie Kennedy is fighting with his girlfriend. The apartment is the same model as ours. After he leaves he walks from the front door of the building and onto Detroit and then Sixth. This is when Lee Majors pulls up. They drive down Miracle Mile before reaching Beverly Hills. End Shot.

I also noticed that the director, Paul Dinello mentioned me on his blog. Mona and I were huge fans of Strangers with Candy which Paul helped write and act.

My Work

2007-08-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I realize that the stitching on these two pictures is horrible. I was lazy, so I left the camera on Auto. This is view from where I work. The top image shows downtown LA (all the way to the left) and the bottom image is the Getty Museum.

I completed my summer goals. I wrote 150 pages of short stories. The next month is about editing and then sending out my material. Plus, I'm trying to complete my final edit of my script before the movie "I Am Legend" comes out since the material is somewhat similar.

Click on image to make larger!

Blog Entry

2007-06-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone! No, I’m not dead, maimed, or even crippled. I’ve just been busy doing OT at work and writing.

Let’s see, I guess I should update everyone. I’m working at Mt. Saint Mary’s college (pictures one and two). It’s a girls catholic college located in Brentwood which is next to Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The school is situated on the top of a hill that overlooks Los Angeles. To the east, I can see downtown and to the west I can see the ocean. I’m working the nightshift again so I run into quite a bit of wildlife. There are deer that graze the area every night. I’ll usually run into about 5-7 a night. I also see coyotes, skunks, and the occasional raccoon.

I’m working on a book of short stories that I hope to finish by the end of the summer. I’m about 75 pages in. My style is slowly developing but I feel it still needs a little work. With all the work I’ve done you’d think my grammar and spelling would’ve improved. Nope. Good thing Mona’s a great editor.

I pretty much finished my script. My second draft turned into a complete overhaul. When I get a chance I’m going to finally finish the stupid thing. Anyway, the second draft turned out great. It definitely needs some work but I think it’ll get there soon.

I haven’t been reading much nonfiction lately. With the exception of a couple of economic books, it’s been mostly fiction for me. I have concluded that I actually like nonfiction better. People look at me strange when I say this. Nonfiction is faster paced and more interesting. Besides, reading fiction is almost like watching TV. The only reason I’m currently still reading fiction is because that is style I’m working on.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been taking any pictures. This is partly due to the fact that I have been working so much overtime. The other reason is just plain laziness. I’m going out this weekend so hopefully I’ll update my Flickr site soon.

I feel like I pretty much spend my days (or nights) doing the things I love. I’m still growing as a person and constantly reanalyzing everything. In short, things are going good.

Paprika

2007-06-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

This is the best movie I've seen in a very long time. Link.
I will update soon. Sorry for the absence.

2007-03-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

2007-03-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

Me & Lee

2007-03-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

I spent the day on the set of "Me & Lee," a pilot show for fox starring Jamie Kennedy and Lee Majors and directed by Paul Dinello. They were shooting at my apartment building in the street and apartment above me. There were four semi-trucks and a crane.

I went out to innocently take some pictures of the pandemonium for my wife, who had to work. People thought I was the official photographer (who had the same camera as me) and kept coming up to me asking questions or needing help. Since I was on the set for so long, I usually knew the answers to the questions and when it started to rain suddenly, I helped put the equipment to safety.
I had the opportunity to talk to most people involved, including Lee Majors and Jamie Kennedy. I felt like even though I wasn't really supposed to be there, I helped make a movie today. It was fun.

night

2007-03-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

Well, we're here in Hollywood. Finally.

The new place is great. We live walking distance from all sorts of food establishments, grocery stores, shops, and most importantly, Blockbuster.

We didn't know it, but we found out that we have a stairwell that leads to the roof that we can go up on. We went up last night late and caught some photos of our view. It is phenomenal both day and night. We have a clear shot of the Hollywood sign, downtown, and out in every direction. I will have to get some day shots for you soon.

(click on picture to see large)

I love the neighborhood. All the art deco architecture, including our own building... much more interesting than the cookie cutters I'm used to.

I just found a massive rock climbing gym down the road that I can't wait to check out. Things are going great.

2007-03-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Pictures

2007-01-17T18:44:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen my latest pictures please click HERE!

The Primordial Condition

2007-01-17T18:42:00.000-08:00

The Primordial Condition, originally uploaded by Mark McCowen.

Kissing the Heavenly Alchemy

2007-01-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

Kissing the Heavenly Alchemy, originally uploaded by Mark McCowen.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays, everyone. It has been a busy season this year. Mona just graduated from ASU, finally, with a degree in Mathematics. I'm very proud of her. We celebrated our first anniversary and things are better than ever. Our relationship seems to get stronger over time. Overall, this has been a very good year for us. We went on many roadtrips, got into photography, and I wrote the script. So a lot of productivity and that's always good.

We are looking into a pretty uncertain future where all our plans lead up to now and we aren't completely sure what is supposed to happen now. We look forward to starting a new life in LA.

We are spending christmas with my family. We had a big special breakfast yesterday, Mexican food meal last night, and we anticipate a special breakfast this morning and a big ham dinner later. I think that after this, I will never eat again.

The Latest

2006-11-21T00:58:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody! Sorry I haven't written in so long but things have been a little hectic. I have been spending my days taking pictures, reading, and doing a little writing. I still haven't finished my script but hope it will be finished by the end of the year. I should mention that I haven't even picked it up since I wrote the rough draft. I have many ideas for short stories and I hope to be working on those soon.
We will be moving to Los Angeles in the next 3 months. That should be very exciting. Mona and I have been on 4 road trips recently. We went to Flagstaff, Sedona, Fossil Creek, Payson, plus we went to the State Fair and many smaller trips around the Phoenix area. After Thanksgiving we are taking a trip to Vegas and Monument Valley. I want to see everything there is to see in Arizona before we leave.

2006-11-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

Mona and my mom. Taken on my birthday.

US and the World

2006-10-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do a little comparison of US statistics compared to other counties. The first sets are from the OECD. I used them since they produce middle of the road data. The second part is from the NationMaster web site. They collect data from a large sampling of different sources.

- The US has the highest GDP of the OCED nations. The entire EU 15 is still listed below us.

- The US ranks number 2 in GDP per person. That means as individuals we get paid more per year then everybody except Luxembourg.

- Unfortunately our wealth isn't distributed very equally. The US has third world standards when it come to distribution of its wealth.

- The US gives the most in dollar value with 27.46 billion dollars but as a percentage of the GNI the US ranks next to last of the OECD countries.

- In Math test the US ranks 24th of the 29 OECD nations. Finland, Korea, and the Netherlands top the list.

- Strangely the US spends more than the other nations on education but still ranks low.
Throwing money at the problem isn't necessarily the solution.

- The health situation in the US is terrible. The US spends 15.3 percent of its GDP on health care. That's the highest in the OECD and 15 percent of the country doesn't have health issuance and a large chunk of insurance is worthless.

And what do you get for spending more than socialist countries.

- Life expectancies comparable to Mexico.

- Terrible Infant Mortality rates.

- Hardly any doctors and accute care beds.

Oh yeah, and the US is the most obese nation in the world. Good job fatty.

- The US spends more than all the countries in the world combined in Military Spending. The figure listed is old. It is now at 494.3 billion and that doesn't include Iraq or Afghanistan. Our two biggest threats, China and Russia spend 102 billion combined. And they're our allies!

- The US is the most Nationalistic nation with 77 percent saying they are very proud.

- Venezula is the happiest coutry. The US is at number 8 out of 50. Not bad.

- The US has the highest divorce rate and the most plastic surgery.

- Out of the 62 countries the US ranks 24 for the number of murders per capita. This sounds pretty good until you see countries like Romania, Yemen, and India with better murder rates.

- Of the 18 nations surveyed the US is number 8 when it comes to beer drinking. I thought this one would be higher.

We are also the 3rd highest high country. That's right, Cannabis use ranks even over the Netherlands where marijuana is legal! Good thing we spend more on the "War on Drugs" then every country in the world.

2006-10-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

Finals

2006-10-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

I did some final edits of Mona's pictures. Check them out at my Flickr account.

Photo Shoot

2006-10-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

Mona and I sat down and had a nice little photo shoot this morning. It only took about an hour but the shots turned out great. What you see below are a direct feed from my camera. Tonight at work, I'll be taking the pictures into photoshop to see what can be done with them.

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2006-10-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

This is where I spend most of my nights. Kind of ironic that the security guards always get the biggest office in the building.

2006-10-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

This is Marlow. We spend half of the night talking. Totally cool guy. He has a masters degree, a plane, and two horses. He doesn't fit the standard "security guard profile" so the other guards sit around and wonder why he's here. That's okay, because he will be moving into a site supervisors position soon.

2006-10-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

This is Rebecca Harley. She's going to school and writing a novel...or maybe it's a short story. I'm not really sure. Anyway, Harley's is pretty quiet and doesn't say much.

Flickr

2006-10-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Please check out my new Flickr account!

2006-10-02T08:26:00.002-07:00

Lake

2006-10-02T08:26:00.001-07:00

Tempe Lake

2006-10-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Pattern

2006-09-25T08:32:00.001-07:00

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2006-09-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Driving

Fun Videos

2006-09-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

I finally found this video of a guy who has made a sport out of jumping. That's right, jumping. From what I can see, it's a new fad in Europe and elsewhere.

Jumping One
Jumping Two
Jumping Three
Jumping Four

Check out this guy do a backflip in a wheel chair.

The last video is an Asian clip on a nifty new way to fold shirts.

Saddam-bin Ladin Connection

2006-09-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

If you happened to miss Saturday's news, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence finally declassified conclusions on the Iraq-al'Qaida link. This committee is bipartisan with 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats. I've been reporting most of their conclusions since before the war and people always looked at me like I've been going on some madman conspiracy theory. But the facts have always been there. I think Tony Snow said it perfect when he referred to the report as "old news." True it's very old news except to the American public. So what was the Iraq-al'Qaida link?

According to a CIA paper drafted before the war, "Saddam has viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a threat, and his regime since its inception has arrested and executed members of both Shia and Sunni groups to disrupt their organizations and limit their influence" (p 63). In January 2003 (two months before the war), the CIA concluded the "Saddam Husayn and Usama bin Ladin are far from being natural partners" (p 64) and "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Ladin" (p 67). At one point, "the Iraqi regime issued a decree aggressively outlawing Wahabism [the Islamic sect bin Laden belongs to] in Iraq and threating offenders with execution" (p 67).

You're probably telling your self this can't be true since al-Zarqawi was a major link between bin Laden and Saddam. Let's start with the bin-Ladin connection. The report states "al-Zarqawi had religious differences with bin Ladin's singular focus against the United States" and that "al-Zarqawi had rebuffed several efforts by bin Ladin to recruit him" (p 90). So that link has been decimated. What about the al-Zarqawi Saddam connection? Again,"documents seized after the war show that the IIS Headquarters [Saddam's intelligence service] passed a written order to track and capture al-Zarqawi and his associates" (p 91). Saddam saw al-Zarqawi as dangerous to his regime, not as an ally.

Again, all these facts have been reported again and again.

This Iraq-al'Qaida myth has been debunked by the 911 Commission Report, Defense Intelligence Report, British Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, Israel Intelligence, Senate Reports, Pentagon studies, and just about anyone who has taken two seconds to find the facts. So how does this myth keep prevailing? Dick Cheney, the very day after the Commission Report on the lack of connection, claimed this: "the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in a US air strike this year, was in Baghdad before the war was evidence that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda." Because Cheney said it, this was reported even though the claim has been investigated and debunked.

If your lazy you can just read the newspaper review of the document.

Debunking

2006-08-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

You must have high-speed to enjoy these video links.

I found a bunch of supernatural busting videos. The first is James Randi, who offers the million-dollar prize to anyone who can prove (scientifically) supernatural phenomenon. In these clips he busts Uri Geller, who claims to be able to bend spoons with his mind. The second video goes after the claim of fire walking. In the next clip, James Randi tricks a bunch of New Agers into believing in a fake psychic. The next footage should close the book on water dowsers and this lady claims to be able to live on air. Now watch how UFO Abductees have memories implanted into their heads. The last clip debunks Near-Death Experiences (must forward to 15 min).

Most of these charlatans and naive people claim that "science" proves supernatural phenomenon. They confuse pseudo-science with actual science. Real science empirically verifies phenomenon and puts experiments up for peer review. Pseudo-science does not follow the scientific method and most of the claims can never be proven true or false. The naive listeners of Art Bell and Coast-to-Coast, are spreading supernatural nonsense like crazy. Unfortunately, there are not enough skeptics to counter all their claims.

Dog

2006-08-29T03:20:00.000-07:00

The following are pictures of the dog my parents brought home from Kansas.

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Video

2006-08-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Video