Too Much Time on Facebook

Video Find of the Day

Because Timothy Harris, Real Change Director, confessed to joining Facebook, I was deeply concerned, and went in after him, to help shove him in a van and deliver him to the de-programmers.

Once in Facebook I became lost. I made friends with people I thought were already friends. But now, I can poke them, send them kisses, and write on their walls.

Because of the extraordinary amount of wasted time all this represents, today's video find reduces to a plea that pole dancing finally be accepted as an Olympic sport. I mean, look at this. Really. This beats the parallel bars with a two-by-four.

Pantera pole dance act 3 for Hysteria @ noc noc on 7.23.08

King Jr., St. John, Nietzsches, and Me

Doing It, Religiously

[Above: Russian nesting dolls originated in the 19th Century. They were inspired by earlier Japanese dolls that depicted nested series of Japanese gods -- a polytheistic image.]

Anitra and I spoke Friday at Tim Harris' University of Washington class on poverty and homelessness. After the class, Tim drove me back to the Real Change office while Anitra ran off to spend all her money on tomato plants. In the car Tim played the recording (see A True Revolution of Values) he made of himself backing up Martin Luther King Jr.'s Riverside Speech on the guitar.

The speech contains this passage:

"This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."

The call for love is great, but at the risk of once again prompting the question "So, Wes, when did you first decide to worship Satan?" (answer: The first time some idiot asked me that question) I am going to heap disrespect upon the monotheological underpinnings of King's call to fellowship and offer a polytheistic perspective.

Consider this a continuation of my rant, begun with Extremes of Worship, in which I complained about the notion that all religions are fundamentally the same, that we all worship the same God, blah, blah, blah. Notions that invariably disregard whole swaths of hard-core polytheists.

Oh sure, King is fine with Hindus and Buddhists, as long as they agree with him in the existence of an ultimate reality. But he would compare to "Nietzsches of the world" anyone who doesn't buy into that ultimate reality, and guess who those people include? Me. And I'm not a Nietzsche of the world.

King supports his view with a quote from St. John, the same guy (?) who put the words "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" into Christ's mouth. Way to kiss up to the non-Christians. Not.

My own polytheistic view, (not to be confused with all of them, which is an undelimitable generality of no significant application) is at odds with all the great religions of human-kind but nevertheless still ends up agreeing with the call to love, is that there is no ultimate reality.

In fact, a large class of the gods can be identified with the individual realities "on the shelf."

Realities are narratives about what is, and decide what is. The decisions as to what is are mindful. Without mind there is no what is. There is no reality.

There is no singular ultimate mind. There are minds and states of minds and realities, plural. There are realities within realities, gods within gods. There are realities that are unstable, that transform into other realities, which transform into others.

The gods (of this class) are metaphors for these realities, or they are these realities. The distinction doesn't matter, since the word "god" is totally up for grabs since nobody else ever gives it a legitimate definition anyway. (A legitimate definition being one which allows you to identify whether an entity is a god or not, as opposed to naming an entity that is presumed to exist, declaring it to be unique, and listing attributes.)

So where does that put us? No ultimate reality, so Martin Luther King Jr.s call for love, in so far as it's based on a presumed ultimate reality that doesn't exist, is BS.

John's assertion that Love is God, becomes, to the polytheist, Love is A god.

So how can I still agree with King?

The answer is that even though polytheists do not believe in any ultimate reality, we are not thereby forced to be naive relativists, granting equal value to all that calls itself value in any reality that comes down the road.

I am NOT Nietzschean! In spite of sharing some superficial similarities. I use exclamation points and short one and two sentence paragraphs, yes, but there are such things as Wes realities distinct from Nietzsche realities. I am someone else.

[Right: Not me.]

My realities have grown out of my life, and I have been my realities, and I, or rather my realities, have chosen how we were to grow, and we (the realities that I consist of) have histories and dynamics and we grow into each other and we have identities within identities, and we can own ourselves and what we are.

The outcome is, I can agree with King not because God is within me, but because THAT god is one of me, and I have chosen to embrace it.

The difference between the polytheist decision to embrace a god and the monotheistic decision to embrace that aspect of The God, is the difference between a free choice (modulo the understanding that we are our choices) among alternatives and a decision to surrender to an irresistible power.

The god of love is NOT an all-powerful god. It IS weak, as the "Nietzsches of the world" would have it. But I differ from the Nietzsches of the world in that I consciously take the side of this weak god over stronger ones, to add my strength to it. Weak, yes, cowardly, no.

[Below: Cat-gods within cat-gods.]

Angry Grandpa Look

Video Find of the Day

Tuesday, a bunch of us from the Real Change Organizing project (RCOP) and friends went to a meeting of the Public Safety, Human Services, and Education committee of the Seattle City Council, and spoke during the public comment period. Committee chair Tim Burgess was very generous with the time, letting us speak nearly 20 minutes, twice the time we were supposed to have.

[Above: Anitra tells 'em what for.]

When we planned it, we planned two designated speakers who would use time reserved by others in the group. Apparently that's how its done for other council meetings, but we found out they don't do it like that at the old PSHS&E so we adapted on the fly, and instead of two speak long, eleven of us took turns at it, trying to cover all the points we had previously discussed.

I can't or don't know how to embed the video, but I will have a link to it below. It's at the Seattle Channel website for now and will probably be there for at least a few months.

The whole video runs over 2 hours and 40 minutes. I've only seen the first 23 minutes of it that has the public comment period. I'll be wanting to look at some of the rest of it, because it should have some comments by Bill Block on the Ten Year Plan to Plan Planfulness, and I'm sure I would benefit from seeing that.

Some notes regarding the public comment portion:

The public comments start at about 2:30 (2 minutes 30 seconds) on the video.

The first guy who speaks about his proposal, to put to death 4 time drug crime convicts, is not one of our group. We never saw him before in our lives. All the other speakers came in with us.

The first RCOP speaker is vendor Michael Garcia, at around the 4:50 mark. He was one of the two original speakers we had intended to take all our time. Burgess let him run longer than the two minutes alloted. I was next on the list but deferred as planned to my woman, Anitra Freeman, who was our other designated speaker, and that was when Tim Burgess said they don't do things that way. So Anitra adjusted by giving a shorter speech than anticipated, although it still went over two minutes. She starts about 7:20. You should definitely see that part, because you don't always get to see Anitra so angry in public.

After that they ran through the list of the others of us who had signed up. Each person spoke around a minute or two. When the list was used up Burgess let others who hadn't signed up also speak. That included Real Change Director Tim Harris who appears at about 18:30.

Doug McKeehan follows Tim, and I rounded up the lot of us, speaking last at around the 21:00 mark for a mere one minute 15 seconds. For Cindy Holly is my Muse, and she is the Muse of Few Words. It may look like I'm reading a script but the paper in my hand is just a crossword puzzle I was working on. My eyes are lowered because I'm channeling a scolding grumpy grandpa.

[Above: Grandpa is very, very, disappointed with the behavior of you children.]

For the record, and to make up for not bringing the mic up closer, here's a transcript of my off-the-cuff remarks with the "uhs" and "ahs" deleted, and with some attempts at added clarity:

"I would like to agree with Tim -- I think that the protocols are illegitimate.There's [been] no input from the community that is affected by the rules. The rules of [a] government should reflect the participation of the people that are ruled over."

"Also, there's a lot of secrecy involved in this. We didn't even know about the protocols that were originally established until months after they were established, and we found out because of a FOIA -- by using the Freedom of Information Act -- and that's outrageous. That we're talking about it now at all is because we raised hell about that [forcing the administration to revisit the protocols in a more public way.]"

"And there's still secrecy involved. We don't know how many people have been swept in all of this [or how many camps.] We haven't been able to get that information. I think the City Council has an obligation to make sure that the secrecy ends."

The video is here.

Michael Howell, Part V

Michael Howell's Homeless Art Gallery was a great success for him. By May 1992 there were displays up for about 7 artists, counting Michael. Michael had half the display space, the rest of us shared the other half. Many more people came in to get free lessons from Michael and ask for space. Michael always said he would "think about it," or he would critique their art, being mostly positive and encouraging, and then end with, "Pretty soon you'll be doing something we can put up." He was a genius at stringing people along with flattery and promises.

He expected flattery in return. Every time I saw him he fished for compliments. When I finished a painting he would always say how interesting it was, or how he liked the use of color, or the composition, sounding quite sincere until the next words out of his mouth were, "So what do you think about the color [or composition, etc.] of this one?" showing me one of his. If my compliment for him wasn't at least as good as his for me, he'd make a sour face, acting offended.

At least he was conscious about it. He freely admitted he liked having me around because I came off as an intellectual and it made him look intellectual to be associated with me.

His desire to be regarded as intellectual clashed with his bigotry at times. An example involved some uncomfortable moments at the Burke Museum in 1993. I was with Michael and Stan Burriss at the U District Burger King. It was after the free meal and Michael had a few hours to kill before an appointment. I told them I was leaving to go to an exhibit of contemporary Maori art at the Burke Museum on campus. Michael decided he had to go to learn what all this Maori art is about. He talked Stan into coming with us.

On the walk over (just 4 blocks) Michael talked about how anything a native can do a non-native can do. It's just a matter of wanting to. I couldn't see any way to argue against that sort of reasoning, but I also couldn't see what the point of reasoning it was.

The exhibit was awesome to me. Two of the artists especially stood out, Cliff Whiting and Manos Nathan. Manos Nathan did beautiful carved clay pots which he allowed to be exhibited for a year and then destroyed to respect the sacred clay they were made from.

Predictably, Michael had no more interest in that bit of cultural trivia than in the art itself. I spent the next hour and a half constantly moving away from Michael to avoid hearing him carp about how he could do better than this or that in half the time, "if he wanted to."

In general Michael was interested in whatever he could trivialize or master. If he could master it, it was genius. If he couldn't, it was beneath him.

By the end of '93 the fact that women at Noel House with clear talent weren't getting display space and growing frustration with Michael's dismissal of crafts (what he called women's art when they weren't listening) led to meetings with Michael and Archdiocesan Housing Authority officials to try to work some arrangement out that would better accommodate the women at Noel House. Michael expressed sharp bitterness about these meetings to me. He told me he planned to stonewall them. He would keep going to their meetings but he would find objections to all their proposals and wear them down.

It didn't work. When he was uncooperative, the AHA simply sent a social worker. Her name was Barbara Brownstein. She was short, thin, darkhaired, energetic, female, and of a suspect orientation. Michael Howell's noncooperation extended to Barbara. He avoided speaking to her as much as possible.

I don't remember how long it took but the next thing I recall is that Barbara and Michael were opening the gallery on different days. I think it was in the Spring or early Summer of 1994. It was maybe a month after Tim Harris came in and told me of his plans to begin a street paper similar to a Boston paper he'd started up a few years earlier.

Barbara took no answer for a yes whenever she consulted Michael about adding members, or rearranging displays, so Michael's sulking noncooperation backfired. By the end of Summer we had a total of twelve artists working in the gallery and displaying, in addition to artists who were old friends of Michael who never had to check in order to get their work displayed.

The new artists included, as I remember, at least 3 women. One of them, Jonna Taylor, had a piece that was an assembly of items on a level board on a table, webbed with string with bits of paper with writing on them. Michael's reaction to it was at first just that it was junk. Then he noticed that one of the items forming the piece was a black dildo. I was watching him when he saw it. His face turned lobster red and he said that it was disgusting, and we had to get it out of the gallery.

[Above Right: Not a good enough picture of it to see the dildo, but at least it conveys how busy it was. Anitra wrote about Jonna when she passed away a few years ago.]

I said I thought it should stay, it's art and it makes a statement. Michael scoffed at that. Then he said, "Well, it has to go. It's offensive to women. Women don't want to see disgusting things like that. The dykes downstairs won't allow it."

He hadn't read the signature. I said, "How can you say it's offensive to women if it was done by one? It was put together by one of the Noel House women. The staff already know about it."

It was true. The staff was fine with it. It was controversial with the residents but the majority liked it. Only two of the residents ever objected. All of the claims that the piece was offensive to women in general came from Michael and from male friends of his he could line up on his side. Michael couldn't get Barbara Brownstein or the Noel House staff to support him in barring the piece.

He could have come in alone after hours and hauled the piece out and trashed it. But he knew he would be the only suspect, so he wanted someone else to take credit with him when the accusations were made. So the next time I was at the gallery he followed me out and tried to persuade me in joining him in a trashing party. I said no.

He became so angry he drew me around the corner at what is now the the Qwest Building at 2nd and Lenora and crowded me up against the wall. A foot from my face he demanded to know why I was supporting that "lesbian garbage." I said I was supporting it because it was art. He said it wasn't art it was offensive. I burst out laughing, as I do sometimes, I can't always help it, and I said, "You know, actually, I like the piece, but even if I didn't I wouldn't trash it." He then told me that I was a disgusting pervert and he would never speak to me again. He was mistaken about that last part.

In the next few days Michael complained to Noel House staff that another of the items in Jonna's piece, a ball peen hammer painted silver (representing Maxwell's) was his hammer. He was missing a hammer, Jonna's hammer looked just like his hammer, therefore she had stolen his hammer.

When those charges were disregarded, a few more days passed, and the hammer disappeared. Michael denied taking it. He convinced staff that just anyone could have walked up and snatched it.

Nickels Must Go

Over on Apesma's Lament, Tim Harris -- speaking entirely for himself, ha! -- calls upon Greg Nickels and the city to stop the secret homeless sweeps that have been going on. (See also Swept Clean, but Still Dirty, in the Oct. 31 Real Change.) I already complained about the policy in this week's Adventures in Irony, but reading about it further in Tim's blog got my ire up again, and I wrote this comment, which I'm reproducing here just for the record.

"The fact that this is being done without the knowledge of CEH doesn't relieve them of one iota of culpability. They created the atmosphere.

Greg Nickels belongs in jail for doing this at all. The fact that he has been doing this secretly means he's that much more of a crook. He compounds a crime against humanity with a crime against the open government we are entitled to. He has proved that his contempt for the rights of homeless people extends to an equal contempt for the rights of all the residents of Seattle to know what their government is doing in their names.

Nickels must be recalled."

Technorati Sucks, Week 16

Technorati has found a new way to suck! I don't know how they can be so creative!

Since Tim Harris registered his blog Apesma's Lament with Technorati, I naturally favorited it with them. Not because I needed Technorati to help me keep tabs on Tim's blog (I knew I'd be reading it regularly anyway) but because I wanted to see Technorati doing something right, to serve as a comparison when they screw things up.

Tim hasn't had any of the trouble I've had with Technorati, and up till now their updates of Apesma's Lament have been in order.

But today when I check "Posts from my 1 Favorite sorted by freshness" the freshest post of Apesma's Lament, the one posted today, wasn't there.

No problem I thought, anybody can be behind a little bit in updates. And in fact, all the other recent posts were listed. So, big deal, they just hadn't updated for this one day yet. By tomorrow everything will be there.

But then I noticed that the "freshest" post listed, "Tragedy Strikes, Cops Screw Victims" was listed as having been posted 4 days ago. That would mean it was posted July 9.


Well... ---->

Technorati is backdating Tim's posts for him! They couldn't have got the Tragedy Strikes post logged on their system before yesterday, because that's when it appeared. Tim didn't predate it. He didn't postdate it. He predated posts on an altogether different blog he just started up to feature his old Classics Corner column.

Could Technorati suck so bad it could predate posts just because it can? Just to screw up in new way for the sheer hell of it?


Yes!