Category: Uncategorized

Tidying Up My Office for Peace

Initially, I thought to offer them gratis to whomever wanted them, but the postage and packaging for them could get quite costly.

I was trying to figure out how to BlogBlastForPeace when I realized I had a more pressing issue. I need to tidy up my office while passing the peace without spending a fortune. Here’s my situation.

Back in late 2002, I was attending weekly vigils in front of the NYS Capitol in Albany, against the buildup that would, in March 2003, become the Iraq war. Somebody had made up a bunch of these nifty green buttons with white lettering that said, Choose Peace. Rather like the buttons being sported by my friend Dave and me at a massive antiwar rally in New York City in mid-February 2003.

At some point, the informal group started running out of these buttons. Somehow, I ended up ordering (and paying for) more of them. And you know it’s cheaper to buy in bulk, so I ordered 500 or 1000 of them; I don’t recall. I gave away a LOT of them.

Anyway, the war began, and I stopped going to peace rallies a couple of months later. So I have several dozen buttons left, in a bag in my office, which I would like to give away.

Initially, I thought to offer them gratis to whomever wanted them, but the postage and packaging for them could get quite costly, and time-consuming to boot.

Now, if you can use a number of them, and promise to distribute them to others, or just want one or two, I’ll send them to you. If you want to help me out on postage and packaging – and this is not required – I can send you some PayPal bill for some nominal amount – say, $1 for one or two buttons, $2 for a bulk order in the US; $2/$3 to Canada or Mexico; $3/$5 to the rest of the world; or you can mail me a check or international money order. Just e-mail me with the contact info. And if you’re local and want one or some, let me know, and I’ll give them to you as well.

My officemates will thank you.

Making Music, Literally

It’s just my pushback against W.W.C.T.G.Y.T.B.N.C.O.S.Y.A.O. – the World Wide Conspiracy To Get You To Buy New Copies Of Stuff You Already Own.

I used to occasionally buy music from Amazon. But since I canceled my Amazon credit card – because the issuing bank was going to slap on some minimum payment every month even if I had no balance – thus denying me access to some Amazon points I’d get from purchasing from them, I’ve been less inclined.

Still, I occasionally need new music. Or music that is new again to me. I have a bunch of LPs in the attic I cannot access because the area is under long-delayed refurbishing, including insulating.

The thing to do: go to the library, take out albums I already have on vinyl, copy them, then listen to them. Understand that I have absolutely no guilt about doing this.

I have purchased the music; I still have the music in my possession. It’s just my pushback against W.W.C.T.G.Y.T.B.N.C.O.S.Y.A.O. – the World Wide Conspiracy To Get You To Buy New Copies Of Stuff You Already Own.

These are some of the albums I’ve checked out, and copied, recently:

Pinups – David Bowie. This is an album of covers of songs made noteworthy by the Who, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things and more. LISTEN to Friday On My Mind, originally done by the Easybeats.

Diver Down – Van Halen. The only VH I ever owned, it shares a common song with Pinups: Where Have All the Good Times Gone? , a Kinks song. It also features Dancing in the Street and the Roy Rogers theme, Happy Trails. LISTEN to Big Bad Bill (is Sweet William Now), a song from 1924.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere – Neil Young. Two very long songs dominate this album. But LISTEN to the minor hit single Cinnamon Girl.

Fresh Cream – Cream. The debut album from the group featuring Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. LISTEN to I’m So Glad, a Skip James blues tune from the 1930s; they would perform this live to greater effect on the Goodbye album.

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. – Bruce Springsteen. Oddly, I couldn’t find any studio recordings on YouTube from this album except a couple that were lousy recordings. I was planning on using Blinded by the Light, which was covered successfully by Manfred Mann.

Led Zeppelin III. Always liked this largely acoustic album with songs such as Friends and Tangerine. LISTEN to Gallows Pole, a cover of a Leadbelly song.

Q: Are we not men? A: We Are Devo!-Devo. This is the premiere album of the group, which featured Mongoloid, Uncontrollable Urge, and functionally, the title song, Jocko Homo. LISTEN to (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, a cover of the big Rolling Stones hit.

Legalize It – Peter Tosh. LISTEN to the title track of the 1975 reggae album by one of the seminal figures in the genre.

Songs for Beginners – Graham Nash. Nash’s first solo albums, after his time with the Hollies and while he was still with Crosby, Stills, and (sometimes) Young. LISTEN to Chicago/We Can Change the World, which has hints of sounding quite current.

Petition for better US elections

The voting system used by the US, called “plurality voting”, is notoriously flawed. Voters who favor a third-party candidate are forced into a dilemma: they can either vote sincerely and “waste” their vote on a third party, or vote defensively and pick the lesser of two evils.

“A well-funded group called Americans Elect is planning to hold a national primary election on the Internet with the aim of nominating a centrist third-party candidate for president in 2012.” According to the Los Angeles Times, they are considering New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, or even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Assuming this gets off the ground – Bloomberg and Clinton are on the record as not wanting the job – the way the US elections are stacked, they could not win. Theoretically, though, a third party could play a role as a spoiler. George Wallace in 1968, John B. Anderson in 1980, H. Ross Perot in 1992, and Ralph Nader in 2000 may have made a difference in their respective races.

There is a petition to the White House – did you know you could create an electronic petition to the White House? – to create a fairer voting method:

The voting system used by the US, called “plurality voting”, is notoriously flawed. Voters who favor a third-party candidate are forced into a dilemma: they can either vote sincerely and “waste” their vote on a third party, or vote defensively and pick the lesser of two evils.

Plurality voting suppresses new ideas and encourages campaigns built around negative attacks. The effect of this system is to virtually exclude all but two political parties (The last third-party president was elected in the 1850s).

The solution is well known and deceptively simple: rewrite our ballots to use a fair system such as “instant runoff voting”. This voting system is used in several US cities and worldwide with great success [see, for example, fairvote.org/what-is-irv].

There can never be a sustainable third-party movement in the United States as long as there is plurality voting. I support instant runoff voting as a viable option to the status quo. It can’t be implemented nationally in time for 2012, although it is already used in several locales in the United States and around the world.

P is for Peeved Parent

*to take care of someone’s baby or child while that person is out, usually by going to their home
*a person engaged to care for one or more children in the temporary absence of parents or guardians

I was reading the May 2011 Parenting: School Years magazine that had been abandoned in the common lunchroom, when I came across this advertisement.

Now I’ve been a parent for a while now. And, at least since the latter part of the 20th Century, I’ve noticed that there has been a concerted effort, at least in the United States, for fathers to be treated like parents too. Just this semester, there was an event in Albany, NY for fathers to walk their children to school, and in some schools, to stay for breakfast. This was also a message that had been spread in the Daughter’s preschool.

So messages like the one above, in my opinion, undercut the message. I’ve also been peevish with General Mills for quite a while, with their tag for KIX cereal – “Kid tested, Mother approved,” which you can see in this commercial and this one, among many others. And in these examples, not an adult, of either gender, in sight.
How about “kid tested, parent approved”? Doesn’t even change the scansion.

In that same magazine, an article naming moms in the title, but in the actual article, visits from either or both parents are cited.

Early on in this blog, I noted another pet peeve: when I took off from work to watch my daughter, someone said, “Oh, you’re going to babysit Lydia.” Can you babysit your own child? It didn’t resonate correctly with me. To the dictionaries to look up babysitting/babysitter:

to take care of someone’s baby or child while that person is out, usually by going to their home
a person engaged to care for one or more children in the temporary absence of parents or guardians
*a person who cares for or watches over someone or something that needs attention or guidance
OK, so there’s some wiggle room in the third definition.

But I asked my wife “Has ANYONE EVER said to you, ‘Oh, you need to babysit Lydia [because she’s sick, etc.]?” And the answer, as I suspected, was “No.” SHE watches, SHE tends to, SHE cares for. And I babysit? Nah, I watch, I tend to, I care for. I really believe the linguistic distinction matters. When she’s ready to be in a relationship and have children HUNDREDS of years now, I want her to have a partner who is a caregiver, not a babysitter.

Finally, a song: Be Kind To Your Parents. I had a different recording of this song, on pink vinyl. My sister Leslie and I used to sing it, though we changed the lyrics somewhat…
Be kind to your parents. You know they deserve it. Remember that grownup’s a difficult stage of life… They’re apt to be nervous and overexcited, confused from the daily storm and strife. Just keep in mind, though it sounds odd I know, most parents once were children long ago. INCREDIBLE!!! So treat them with patience and sweet understanding in spite of the foolish things they do. Someday you may wake and find YOU’RE A PARENT, TOO!
[So is THAT how it happens…]

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

All Hallows Eve

I shaved my beard and a mustache, Susan and a couple of her friends made me up, with a dress from a second-hand store, a wig and shoes from somewhere, and we went to the party, she as “Sid”, and me as “Shirley”.

The odd thing about Halloween, as I think back on it, is that I have almost no recollection of the costumes I wore while trick-or-treating as a child. I’m sure I went, mostly in my grandmother’s neighborhood, but as to what I wore, it’s a total blank. It doesn’t help that most of the photos from my childhood were lost, so I have no cues. And I pretty much gave up the gig by the time I was a teenager, though I may have been called upon to take my baby sister, who was (and still is!) five years younger than I.

I may have donned a costume once or twice in college, but it was in my mid-twenties when I really began dressing up.

One year I wore a Frankenstein mask and a seersucker suit; really stylin’. Another time, I had a skeleton mask with a wizard’s hat and my college graduation gown; there’s a great picture somewhere of me leaning on a car reading the Daily News Sunday funnies in this outfit.

But my all-time favorite outfit was one planned by my girlfriend at the time, Susan, when I was 25. I shaved my beard and a mustache, Susan and a couple of her friends made me up, with a dress from a second-hand store, a wig and shoes from somewhere, and we went to the party, she as “Sid”, and me as “Shirley”.

The outfit, along with my affected high-pitched voice actually fooled people; no one knew who I was, though they were confused as to what I was dressed up as. It wasn’t until later in the evening, when my “five o’clock shadow” started to appear, that people started figuring things out.
Sid and Shirley

I don’t dress up now, but the daughter does. I enjoy the holiday more vicariously now.
***
Samurai Frog’s Halloween posts over the years. Mucho posts.
For Thom Wade, Halloween lasts at least four weeks. My favorite post: The Top 10 Horror Themes in movies
An Open Letter to Pumpkin-Flavored Seasonal Treats
A recipe for candy corn.
Reader Wil on traditions.
And since nothing says Halloween to me like Mussorgsky, LISTEN to Night On Bald Mountain

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