Is the Wierd Coming Back?

When I first moved to the Bay Area in 2000, there were a lot of wierd people here. There were more art cars, for example. How Berkeley Can You Be? was at its height. Remember the guy in the pink leotard? Where did he go? And the crime in particular was really weird. You want some examples? How about:

1. The Sausage Factory owner who killed 3 food inspectors. My memory may have an over-active imagination, but I recalled that he processed their bodies as well.

2. The Family in Marin County. You will be not so thrilled to hear that Winnfred Wright has been paroled. (How f-ed is it that child abuse is a non-violent offense?)

3. The human trafficking/death of an Indian girl, discovered by a Berkeley High student reporter. And guess what? Lakireddy Reddy has been paroled too.

4. The vaccuum salesman killer. This may be my over-active imagination again, but I recall that in 2000 or 2001, someone was either posing as a vacuum salesman or killed a salesperson at their door.

5. The Lesbian Killing Dog F***ers. To recap: two SF lawyers bought Presa Canarios dogs from an Aryan/White Brotherhood dude in Pelican Bay and then also adopted that dude and staged elaborate sexual tableaux involving themselves, the Aryan, the dogs and various medieval costumes/weapons. The dogs then mauled and basically tried to eat a neighbor, who happened to be a lesbian who lived in their building. Got all that? I won't bother you with the self-representation fiasco. Search the blog and I'm sure I've written on this topic before.

Where are they now? Marjorie Knoller is still in prison, but Robert Noel served his time fro involuntary manslaughter and is somewhere in the East Bay, baking our morning bread. Their "son's" cellmate just settled a dispute over whether he can publish a book about his role in breeding the dogs (among other insights).

And that doesn't even include Scott Peterson or the wackos who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard.

My view is that things have gotten less wierd around here, but I'm wondering if we won't see any uptick soon in the wierd. It's only a matter of time before the mountain-unicyclist is out there in a pink leotard, I'd wager.

Photo Dump 2

This is totally unrelated to the post below. We recently visited Salt Lake City, and the new Museum of Natural History - Rio Tinto Center, and it was totally awesome. A must-see if you are in SLC, and worth planning a trip if you are a dinosaur nerd. My pictures can't do justice to the exterior of the building. Visit the website to see that. My photos below are of the wall of ceratops, an allosaurus re-enactment, and the view from one window.

Photo Dump

This is a post (or series of posts) for the two of you that refuse to join Facebook. I dumped close to 200 pictures from our camera and phone tonight, so I thought I would share a few gems.

What's this, you wonder? Why, it's a mountain-biking unicyclist. He and his buddy (also on a unicycle) were hurtling down a pretty steep hill in Joaquin Miller Park a few weeks ago. Some of my hiking companions stopped to chat with them at the bottom of the hill, but I was too inherently judgmental of their fake sport to get the scoop. I was also soon riveted by an insane colony of lady bugs, all mating wildly and acting pretty unladylike, if you know what I mean.

My older son (the dour We Demand-er in front) protesting in honor of MLK Jr. Day at his school.

I can't take credit for this. Don't even know where I got it. But if you aren't on Facebook, you probably haven't seen it. 

Totally Random

Regarding the State of the Union address: I only have one novel thing to say about it. Much was made by liberal tweeters and bloggers that this was the most hawkish peacetime SOTU address they'd ever heard, or that they couldn't believe that civil institutions were being called on to act like the military. They either feared the civil liberties implications of that, or thought it diminished what the military is fighting for. That is, the military is disciplined so that we can have an unruly civil democracy. Those were the critiques of his frequent military references.

 I actually think Obama was trying to make a subtler point, which is that Congress and its members chose to serve their country - were elected to do so - and yet exhibit very little of the organization and sacrifice that our soldiers show. I think he was contrasting Congress with the military as being do-nothing, even unpatriotic, in their resistance to any bi-partisan compromise. Or maybe that is just what I'm reading out of it because that is what I think.

On a totally different topic, here's my best maternal wisdom from today, "If there isn't vomiting and diahrea at the same time, I don't think you can call it the worst day ever." In fact, we had neither. Just an over-dramatic 8 year old and his over-dramatic mother.

What else can I tell you about? That KeN album I mentioned in the prior post? Meh. It sounds like a late Tsunami album baked too long. But it's definitely about having kids. I will probably enjoy it on shuffle. I wish Carrie Brownstein had kids and loved something over than Rock And Roll, because the Wild Flag album completely kicks ass. It just doesn't make me feel cool. It makes me feel like she's cool. In re: Florence and the Machine. My cousin said, "No men like Florence and the Machine." Which is true but a little wierd because it sounds like if Queen were women. (In my head, men like Queen. Not sure why I think that). I don't like it as much as Wild Flag.

Oh, and I watched some Mitch Hedberg on YouTube. Funny. Not like make-me-wet-my-pants funny, but more Steven Wright-chuckles. So Thanks, Mario, wherever you are.

Riot Moms, part 2

Out of curiosity, I am trying to track down music by rocker moms - women who were making music when I was in high school and college. I started at the beginning (of my musical interests) and looked for Jenny Toomey and Kristen Thomson of Tsunami. Toomey works for the Ford Foundation, after founding the Future of Music Coalition with Thomson. She doesn't seem to make music anymore, at least that she publishes.

Thomson lives near Philly, and has a going concern called KeN. First rocker mom discovered (I snooped on Facebook; she definitely has a kid or 2)! I downloaded their 2006 album. I will let you know if it's any good.

Any suggestions for lady rockers I should similarly snoop on?

New Year's Resolutions 2012

It used to be something of a ritual around here that I would review my old New Year's resolutions and then write some new ones. I never got around to it last year, but one resolution was to find a new job, and I did that, so I feel like it was an accomplished year.

It's hard to know where to go with resolutions this year. I don't want to rest on my laurels, but I've come to like a lot of things about myself, and I don't really like sacrifice all that much. On New Year's Day -- well, actually later that same night -- I made an insane list that has items like

26. Watch some Mitch Hedberg stand-up

27. Thank Mario

I'm actually so mortified about what else I may have put on that list that I am afraid to go back and look at it. And it suggested a modest but obvious resolution of

1. Drink a bit less.

Which hasn't been all that taxing so far.

One friend we saw this weekend held the view that effective resolutions had to meet certain criteria. First of all, they need to be specific. He's right; "I will lose 5 pounds by exercising 3 times a week and eating 100 fewer calories a day" is more effective than, "Lose some weight." But it's also a little boring to make goals like that.

Another criteria, they should not be boring. He said that after he'd challenged himself to do a 100 mile bike ride, and then did it again, that really crazy resolutions do not exist. Many people can do most things (putting aside major barriers). The only stuff left is Jackass-type stuff. But if you set goals that make you less boring than you end up a better or at least more interesting person at the end of the year. He was considering trying out guitar (he's already a pianist, so not a stretch) or writing a book about a really weird case he worked on. In that vein, I am thinking about taking singing lessons. Actually I think I will resolve to:

2. Take a singing lesson

I think I have maxed out my resolution making abilities for the night. What did you resolve to do in 2012?

What Else Did I Want to Blog About?

The major lack of mom rock in this world, and no, I do not mean Adele. Why are there not more non-country mom bands, singing convincingly of what a pain in the ass early middle aged parenting is? Literally dozens of great bands sang about the trauma of suburban teen existence. Where are the riot grrls now? I want some decent punk mom rock.

Totally Annoyed About Today

Okay, not totally. I thought I had posted a few blog posts recently via their mobile/email capabilities, but here they aren't. Not sure they were worth recreating. One concerned a proposal to blog 300 words three times a week, which I obviously have not accomplished.

So what else is annoying me?

1. The fact that, re-reading my Oct 17 post re: the Occupy movement, I was clearly right, and yet no one, even my spouse or closest friends read this blog, so it does not fracking matter. Oh well.

2. Threat marketing. What is this, you say? This is when a company markets to you by threatening you. Here's an example. I cancelled a Capital One credit card about six months ago. We'd paid off the balance and the rate was not favorable, blah blah blah. Anyway, since then, every few weeks, Capital One emails me with an enticing offer, like 0% interest and a really high credit line, and then they give me a date by which I must accept the offer. Before that date, they send me escalatingly shrill emails threatening me that this is my last chance, I am making a huge mistake, I will never see a rate like this ever again, etc etc. It feels like an abusive relationship writ very small. Honeymoon, threat, bigger threat, deadline, cooling off. Honeymoon, threat, bigger threat, and so forth.

Another example: we get San Francisco magazine, a very glossy affair which purports to showcase SF's upper echelon. We never ordered this magazine, and yet every month, it comes with a paper wrapper declaring that our subscription has ended and we must contact them to renew. The whole thing is in a plastic bag. If I had an ounce of energy for this, I would beg them to stop sending me the whole thing, since SF's "upper echelon" is among the lamest "upper echelons" that have existed since the beginning of time.

I do not understand a marketing strategy that berates people for not buying something that they do not want. The only plausible evidence that this works is in Dr. Suess's Green Eggs and Ham, and I don't even find the ending believable in that book.

An Idea for the Occupy Movement

Let me be pretty upfront about this: I don't know very much about the Occupy Movement. Here are some things I know about it.

1. There have been a lot of Occupy demonstrations in different cities lately.

2. They use a human bullhorn, which is annoying and awesome and brilliant (since you'd expect the social movement of the social media generation to be hamstrung by restrictions on electronic gear).

3. The NYT is treating them like a font of adorable Style section content.

4. They don't have a set of political demands.

This last part seems to be annoying a lot of people, including some folks within the Occupy Movement. It annoys me too, a little bit. I agree with them (I think) but I have some fears about this component of the movement. Fears include:

1. A lack of coherent platform along with sporadic violence and the presence of Naomi Klein suggest a WTO/Seattle riots anarchist movement that could backfire on sympathetic Dems.

2. It's easy for this to get boring and stale and marginalized.

3. So much energy being wasted on committees for basic life functions has doomed other movements.

There's an article on this particular conundrum (Protesters Debate What Demands, If Any, to Make) in today's NY Times (see above). I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed, "“Like Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ ”

So how can the Occupy Movement make demands (as they probably must) without undermining the core element that make it unique (it has no demands)?

Let's look at Douglass's maxim, and ask, "who does the Occupy Movement see as having power?" The first and more obvious answer is, "Wall Street." But a second, almost as obvious answer, "The People," since they are mobilizing people to assert their critique, and believe it is "The People" or "the 99%" who should rule our country. They do NOT think that "the Government" has power right now. Or if the Government has power, it is being mobilized by Wall Street against the interests of the 99%.

In this view, demands made on the Government are pointless because the Government does not have the power or will to act on behalf of the 99% or against the interests of Wall Street. That's why the Occupy Movement does not have political demands of the Government. Demands made of Wall Street are being made, but are not being acceded to: agree to be taxed, be prosecuted, be redistributed. These are not demands to which Wall Street will willingly accede, and the Government will mobilize in Wall Street's favor to ensure no other means are used to press those demands (i.e. the police would not allow violence by protestors).

I'm just guessing here. I have spoken to no actual Occupy movement participant and have not read any of their literature or websites or anything like that. That said, . . .

The best and most original course of action would be for the Occupy Movement to make its demands of "The People". A good first one is, move your money to credit unions. I will accede to that. They should demand that people vote, that people shop at farmer's markets, and local stores. Vote their stocks. If they can explain to me how to do that in concert with other shareholders, I am totally in. If this is a people's movement, than it should be about the deconsolidation of wealth via the (buying and saving) power of the people. They should set up a Kiva or Kickstarter for people's mortgages and student loans.

Just as none of their protest techniques are unique (except maybe that bullhorn), none of the "demands" that they should be making of us are unique. Their use and development of these and similar ideas as a platform for a new movement would be, though. And I think the 99% are listening. Or at least a majority of them are.

Conundrum

For as long as I can remember, I have been against music nostalgia, especially in people who didn't experience particular bands in their initial heyday. Specifically I am talking here about Deadheads.

(Aside, people who like music that sounds like it ought to be from another period, e.g. jam bands, also annoy me. On the other hand, people who like Yma Sumac, the Limelighters, Julie London and Mario Lanzo do not annoy me. So maybe it's just Deadheads and jam band fans who annoy me. But that doesn't let me address my conundrum so my aside is not relevant.)

Let me start again. I've always thought that people should like the good music that is being made "now". At least, I thought that until I thought the music that is made "now" is not as good as the music that was made "when it was good." I think the late 80s through mid-90s were a particularly golden period for music, both rock and rap, and my musical tastes haven't evolved much past that time. I hadn't really noticed that I had become a music nostalgic though, until a friend sent me a link to Riot on the Dance Floor, a documentary about City Gardens, a punk club from my youth. The interviews are with bandmembers from some of my favorite bands, and wow, does everyone look old. Okay, so they were older than me then, but it didn't seem like it.

I'm not gonna go on punk nostalgia trip here. Actually I am worried that the strict cultural moral code of my youth now requires me to reject myself, hate me, find me to be stupid and flaccid and lame. Which of course I don't, but out of affection for myself want to embrace. Does that make any sense? I love my younger self like a child, and like the parent of that child want to agree with her!

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Critical Thinking

Bill Keller has an editorial in the NYT Magazine called The Twitter Trap, which bemoans the decline of, well, everything due to the rise in social networks. He basically blames Twitter and Facebook for the death of critical thinking, I think. While I know some who may share that sentiment, I would argue that curmudgeons have bemoaned the death of critical thinking before such a thing was born. I think it is probably the plot of Bye Bye Birdie (girls besotted with pop star can focus on nothing else). Back-in-my-day-ness requires a near-distant utopia of critical thinkers who've evolved unwittingly into idiots due to the rise of the printing press/telephone/Xerox machine/computer/etc.

But why is Bill Keller picking on Twitter? I can think of at least 10 things off the top of my head which are easily more to blame for the death of intellect. For example,

1. Spending too much time with one's children. In our utopian past, multiple generations raised our children, freeing us to commune with eachother, engage in political organizing, and become economically literate. Now I spend a solid 6 hours of the day discussing Star Wars and sharks. Critical faculties: DOA.

2. The length of professional sports' seasons. WTF hockey and basketball? Go away.

3. talk radio

4. laundry. Have you noticed how much there is, and how the clean stuff never gets folded?

5. video games*

6. MTV*

7. bridge, canasta, Trivial Pursuit, Settlers, etc. Basically any board game that grown-ups will meet to play.

8. Email*

9. matching our shoes to our bags

10. the casinos (basically pathological #7)

* These are pastimes which once wasted huge hours of my life, and no longer do, except for video games, which have migrated through every platform I've used. You can read about it in my autobiography: From Frogger to Tetris to Farmville to Cut the Rope: One Woman's Journey through Non-Violent Videogames.

Anyway, my point? Keller is sounding an alarm that has been sounded so many times that no one really believes it or cares. This too shall pass. Twitter will just get absorbed and shelved in its rightful place in the world, and people will be roughly as smart and as stupid as we've ever been.

Finally Having a Thought Longer Than a Tweet

Can't promise it will be any good, though.

I finished A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan the other night. I'm becoming such an old lady that I promptly began referring to it as The Geek Squad, until Mr. Scobie reminded me that that is actually a commercial service provided by a major electronics chain and not a Pulitzer-prize winning novel. And why is it P-p winning? If it is truly the best fiction book written this year, then I definitely don't feel bad for not having read the others.

Goon Squad isn't bad, per se. It just isn't memorable, or novel. It's structured like a set of short stories which are entangled by shared characters and referenced situations (i.e. something that happens in one chapter/story will be referred to in another). The styles of the stories differ, as does the voice - one of the better ones is actually a Power Point presentation by a 12-year-old. Which is adorable and brilliant, right? But let me ask you something: would any of the following writers ever have written a Power Point presentation to get at the loveliest denouement of their novel: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Bellow, Roth? How about Jane Austen pr Joyce Carol Oates? How about Judy Fracking Blume? No, they would not have done that. Why? Because they are masters of voice and narrative and don't have to resort to trickery and stylishness and something that seems vaguely like magical realism but is really just spacy, lazy omniscience.

This is all the rage now. The "good" books are all jump-cut and we are expected to be kept off-base by switching stories and narratives. This is why I didn't like (and didn't finish) Cloud Atlas. It was too precious that it was a set of nesting stories. Ditto The Imperfectionists: although better written than Goon Squad, it took way too long to begin weaving its stories together. Hell, since I didn't finish that either, it maybe never did.

I want to be told long, involved character-driven stories. I don't even mind if they are, in fact, magical realist. Or scifi. Take Infinite Jest. I've decided IJ is probably science fiction. That's okay with me. It has a consistent style, strong characters, limited enough in number to be really engrossing, a distant but familiar world where politics and technology are ours, magnified. And the subplots are woven together, not mashed up or folded in on eachother without actually touching.

Why am I going on like this? I'm annoyed that I have nothing to read, and that maybe the books that I should be reading are the ones I had already written off. It's also possible that I am jealous of these writers. I have this sense that I could tell a better story but fear that I can't. Or won't.

15 Seconds of My 15 Minutes of Fame

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I had the distinct pleasure of getting to sing The Day that Paddy Murphy Died to my kids in the car this morning. They were baffled. It put me in the mind of this, from Season 1 and Season 5 of The Wire. (Profanity, so don't watch if that's not your bag).

Some Thoughts on Wisconsin and the Labor Movement

Those of you who know me well may wonder why I am not on the ramparts (at least rhetorically) about the Wisconsin labor war that has reminded people that collective bargaining is actually controversial and necessary. Don't get me wrong: I think that workers' rights to join unions, collectively bargain or otherwise join together for their mutual aid and benefit, is fundamental. Freedom of association, speech, to contract - it's there in the U.S. Constitution. I recommend you read Section 1 of the National Labor Relations Act. The United Nation's recognize these as inalienable human rights; this puts the Wisconsin legislature on par with Colombia and China, where workers are deprived of these rights, and activists are subject to aggression by the state.

And/so/but what? What do the unions have to do with all this? What do the unions, as the legal institutions charged with enforcing these rights (rather than the government), have to offer in furtherance of collective bargaining rights? Even if the right side ultimately prevails in this war- and even if Scott Walker was using the budget shortfall as a Trojan horse for the deprivation of these rights - many state and local governments are hamstrung financially by their collectively bargained pension and healthcare obligations.

I'll be blunt: unions have been part of the problem. And workers aren't really buying what unions are selling. Unions blame a range of factors for their organizing and public image problems: bad labor and immigration laws ("if we just pass EFCA!"), dirty employer tricks, the proliferation of individual rights, worker fear, weak Democrats, etc. etc. The fact is, unions had it much harder at the turn of the century. No laws or laws criminalizing unions, actual violence against workers, no political power. But people wanted collective bargaining power (not unions per se) and they were willing to stand up for it, the way folks in Wisconsin are today.

So what can unions do about it? I don't claim to know the answer. But I have some ideas. First of all, unions need to change the way they offer services to their members. Currently, unions assign staff based on their members' employer. These people are responsible for knowing all of the collective bargaining agreements with each employer, and enforcing the agreements with grievances. They might also collect dues or do political fundraising, and might know a little bit about their members' benefits. Some unions also have an external organizing staff that is trying to organize new members. Staff are chronically stretched, and are expected to have a super-human range of skills (legal advocacy, negotiations, employee benefits, counseling, organizing, political skills, communications skills) with hardly any staff development opportunities. In reality, 80-90% of their time is spent dealing with 2% of their members, "the squeaky wheels" who have grievances pending. Union staff take their frustrations out on the employers they interact with. The "Employer" becomes the cause of all their problems. They associate their work with the problems of their members vis a vis their employer, and never consider the underlying work, or industry itself. They also fail to advocate for their silent majority of members, who have a diminishing sense of the value their union brings to them.

Unions need to organize themselves differently. They should have advocates who litigate grievances, negotiators who bargain all contracts, employee benefit specialists, political departments who advocate for legislation and regulations that benefit both workers - in their work - and their industry, and external organizers. They should have extensive training and education departments committed to upgrading worker skills based on the latest technology (rather than fighting it). Each of these departments would offer services to union members without regard to their employer, and would regularly confer with one another about their industry norms, standards and future.

This wouldn't fix everything, but it isn't lipstick either. Until unions take responsibility for the things they can control, they aren't going to be perceived as relevant to most American workers. I wouldn't want to join an organization which claims to be (or seems to be) powerless about the very problems about which I seek its counsel and protection, either. (I say this as a member of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, Local 32035)

I've tried to focus these thoughts on areas where unions are solely responsible (internal bureaucracy/governance). But there are other areas where unions are, or could be, jointly responsible. Public pension investment, for example. A co-worker yesterday asked me, rhetorically, "Who thought it was a good idea to invest public pension dollars solely in the private sector, without government regulation? Why didn't the unions stand up and say, there needs to be a framework for how this is invested? It is the public's trust but it's governed by Wall Street." Failing to raise that question soon after the Taft-Hartley Act was passed (or any time before the Great Recession) is a factor in pensions becoming a huge liability for public employers. Wall Street treated pension funds like slush funds in ways that no state treasury could ever be abused.

In a similar vein, why are mandatory subjects of bargaining limited to wages, hours and working conditions? Why are unions NOT required to bargain about industrial and employer issues? If an employer has a problem, they currently solve it in a vaccuum without any input from the union other than (1) don't lay off our members or (2) don't cut our wages/benefits. What if an employer said, "Hey union, look at this pile-of-shit problem I have. It's yours, too. You must solve it with me." This actually happens on the boards of some Taft-Hartley benefit plans and in some labor management partnerships (and some other countries) but by and large, unions are like petulant teenagers, grieving everything and demanding bigger allowances. Outside of apprentice programs (operated separately from unions), very little thought is given to the state of the workers' crafts or the state of the industry in which they labor.

Scott Walker and the state of Ohio have actually played this wrong. By trying to eliminate collective bargainig, they've reminded workers of what they wanted all along. If Walker had demanded that the unions be jointly accountable for Wisconsin's budget problems and had them sit at the table, he either would have had a partner in solving his problems or he would have been able to demonstrate that the unions are incapable of true collective bargaining. The only party that loses that gamble is the unions themselves. . . .

Bummer

This from a local listserv: "Anyone know where to buy Bisquick-Gluten-Free (a relatively new product) around here?  Our baseball team is gluten-free, dairy free and chocolate-free, and I’m up first on snack!  (Stuck out at Whole Foods, Berkeley Bowl…)"

Mother-in-Law, forgive the profanity

'cause Honey Badget don't give a shit.

3 hours well-spent

I need someone to admit that my homemade reusable snack bags are adorable, so that I can admit that they are probably not functional

The Uber Taunt

On the day before the Super Bowl, my 4 year old says to his father: "Who's winning the Super Bowl?"

"Nobody. The game isn't until tomorrow," says Mr. Scobie.

"So you don't even know who's winning?!" says the kid in his most sarcastic voice.

This is on top of both kids being basically nonplussed that the Pats lost 3 weeks ago, and claiming that they will be rooting for the Steelers tomorrow.

Dream of the 90s