Notes from a "Post-Racial" America

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Monday December 24, 2012 · 6:02 PM PST

2012/12/24 · 18:02

It's been awhile since I posted... Hope everybody's been well... I felt like I should share.

Here goes.

Violence is an oddly surreal thing when it happens. Not bombs dropping on a war zone, shearing limbs and blooding faces, 'holy shit-this-is-terrible', violence; I'm talking about random, brief altercations that flare up and disappear before you even have a chance to process them.

Why don't I tell you what I'm talking about instead of babbling in generalities?

I was at the posh, soul-sucking torture chamber, better known as The Grove, a destination only avoiding Dante's 10th circle by having not been invented yet. It's a mall in Los Angeles, with a pointless trolley that travels less than 100 years and artificial grass; where 40 year-old women bring tiny dogs and tourists take pictures of the outside of the Gap. I often hold back the urge of tapping them on their shoulder and saying, "You know this is a mall, right?" It's a horribly shallow and unauthentic consumerist tar pit, and I love it.

artofstarving

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Saturday October 11, 2008 · 3:04 PM PDT

2008/10/11 · 15:04

I just came from CNN where they are reporting that Sarah Palin owns major stock in a pitchfork company. Could this be angry mob-profiteering from our little snow princess of the north? Perhaps she's not whipping her zombie following into a epithet-screaming, racist riot for the political gain but the monetary. I mean, there must be something else behind it because it sure hasn't helped McCain's or her polling numbers. The more paranoid and ridiculous Sarah or John get, (palling around with terrorist?) the more reasonable Americans are saying to the McCain/Palin ticket, "Yuck.... Thanks but no thanks."

I did some more research and discovered that a few years ago McCain had invested in a machine that turns human hate into life-force! It is my opinion that McCain is now sucking the wrath out of his crowds and using it to become younger. There is a chance, my friends, that McCain doesn't care about the election but is just using it as a venue to steal my father and his friend's already fading vitality.

artofstarving

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Friday July 11, 2008 · 10:23 PM PDT

2008/07/11 · 22:23

Bone-eyed tired I walked to get some coffee, stumbling over cracks like a somnambulist, the afternoon sun picking spots on my pupils to besiege. "Just another day in the city," I heard a voice say and strangely it was my own. What is this? Vertigo. Am I dreaming?

A large trailer passed with an old man's face on it grinning at me. His left cheek sort of punched out from within. It asked us to vote for him.

Have I mentioned that McCain gives me the willies.

I haven't slept much the last couple of days. I think that's what's getting to me. Maybe it's also the fact that my State is burning up and this feels like the summer of hell with the gas prices and mortgage crises and fires and all my political vices --I start rapping unintentionally I'm so lost in my own Twilight Zone right now.

LET ME SAY IT AGAIN
I HATE MCCAIN.

artofstarving

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Friday June 06, 2008 · 6:18 PM PDT

2008/06/06 · 18:18

The price of a barrel of oil shot up 10 dollars. The Dow dropped 400 points. Unemployment spiked a half percent. Communities continue to be hollowed out by the mortgage crises.

It all hit the fan today.

There's no shade of lipstick for this pig of an economy.

What a fine Friday!

Watching the news today felt like some Clockwork Orange-type torture. It was painful. Crippling. It made me want to throw up, but I just couldn't turn away, my eyes clamped-open on my own volition.

Has the dreaded day we've all been fearing finally come?

artofstarving

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Monday May 05, 2008 · 12:56 PM PDT

2008/05/05 · 12:56

Another Sunday, another week asunder...

L.A is sleepily rising from Saturday night.

The breeze blows gently on the palm fronds outside, the smog stirs.

The roads are less busy. It's Sunday. People are taking it easy.

I wish every day people took it easy.

Three stories down on Moorpark St. a young couple in cargoes and polo shirts cross the street, holding hands, their eyes softly shielded from the sun by aviators. The man's shirt is meringue color. They're not too much younger than me, I'm guessing ten years, so chances are good that at least one of them will live longer than me. My money's on the girl.

artofstarving

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Saturday March 29, 2008 · 3:08 PM PDT

2008/03/29 · 15:08

There was a young man in Melbourne who had a party. "A little get-together with mates", he called it. The problem was, he posted it to Myspace and hundreds of kids showed up trashed and rambunctious.

Of course, the cops were called and they rolled up with the dog squad to put a clamp on things. The party didn't end there, though, it spilled out into the streets, into a mini riot of sorts. Broken windshields. Taunting of police.

Tipped-over bird baths.

artofstarving

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Tuesday March 18, 2008 · 9:11 PM PDT

2008/03/18 · 21:11

I wrote about it last week.

In another blog.

I analyzed road trips, past and present. Got a little carried away.

I was excited about a pending trip to San Francisco. I rambled carelessly on the subject, breathing in the road, the smell of rain on asphalt, the long periods of day dreams that road trips allowed, and how they always cheer me up. I mused about the open highways. Big rigs. Windmill farms. Themed restaurants... the like.

The whole Jack Kerouac experience.

I practically salivated over the keyboard as I imagined the good time that lay ahead.

Buckle up with me for a ride down The Ghosts of Road Trips Past

artofstarving

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Sunday March 16, 2008 · 12:13 AM PDT

2008/03/16 · 00:13

I like to think of media as a storm.

All the various forms of communication and marketing work together, and off of each other, like elements that form a type of weather. Like weather, the conditions of the storm affect us all. A swirling mass of radio and television signals, newspapers in Starbucks, the scrolling headlines in supermarket checkout lines, the storm is impossible to avoid.

grab a raincoat and come with me for a Saturday night meditation on Ashley Dupree, Media and Myspace.

artofstarving

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Thursday February 28, 2008 · 3:35 PM PST

2008/02/28 · 15:35

I just finished reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

It's a terrific, compelling, and quick read. (Its brevity is actually quite ironic given the book is about how television has cheapened and maniplated public discourse - resulting in the political soundbite and the paper USA Today)

The book is over twenty years old but its theme is even more relevant today; basically, that we're becoming a culture of individuals, molded by television's mode of communication, that expect our Education, Religion, and Politics to be delivered quick and entertainingly, bite-sized and easily digestible; and without any need for exposition or context, causing a harmful deterioration in our modern public discourse.

Step over the speed bump to hear more about this prescient novel.

artofstarving

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Saturday February 23, 2008 · 5:52 PM PST

2008/02/23 · 17:52

It's looking more and more like Barack Obama vs. John McCain. A choice between a fresh approach to solving our problems and a stubborn, static view of the world.

Idealism vs. Curmudgeonism.

Not to beat a dead meme, but Barack is the future; whereas McCain is an actual living relic and, politically, doesn't offer anything new.

The latest dust up over Cuba says it all.

Sail with me over the hump.

artofstarving

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Sunday February 03, 2008 · 7:56 PM PST

2008/02/03 · 19:56

California votes next Tuesday. Super-Duper-Whatever Tuesday.

The Golden State has a golden opportunity. We can finally have a major impact in chosing our party's nominee. Let's not let it go to waste.

We could be the difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Not only are the Democrats going to make history this year, it could be California that decides what kind of history.

The choice before us is not between the first African-American male or the first white female. It's whether we'll go with a youth-driven message of hope, or the entrenched politics of the status quo.

The battle is not black and white, despite Bill's and the media's best intentions.

The battle is generational.

artofstarving

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Saturday December 08, 2007 · 10:36 PM PST

2007/12/08 · 22:36

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."
-- Mitt Romney

This is America in the year 2007. A Mormon running for president, whose God prevents him from ever removing his special long johns, even if vacationing in the Caribbean, has the nerve to state that Freedom requires religion.

Mind you, immediately before this he brought up the battle versus the Islamic terrorists, who, last time I checked, are having no trouble conducting their religion in less-than-free societies and governments. A war he supports along with the Patriot Act, a measure that has done more to threaten our freedoms and civil rights than any terrorist.

Mitt? Are you really so blind that you can contradict yourself so easily, seamlessly, spectacularly? Are you composed atomically of such nuclear pandering that you can’t help it, and when religion comes up you detonate and didactic debris of trite hits us all?

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Notes from a "Post-Racial" America

BREAKING: Sarah Palin Owns Stock In Pitchfork And Torch Company; John McCain Creates Zombies

Tired...

Talking to Birds About the Economy, and other Entertaining Tales of Madness

Small Bits of Our Lives Are Lost in Traffic

The Party Boy Rorschach Test

The Ghosts of Road Trips Past

Ashley Dupree and The Buzz of Myspace

Thoughts on Amusing Ourselves to Death 20 Years Later

McCain and Castro: Can't Get Enough Of That Good-Old Cold War

CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Barack Obama

Deck The Halls With Boughs of Romney