The Major

Author: FourMajor

  • This Time Last Year

    This time last year, I was living in the Tenderloin. Peter-man was “the guy on the couch” (or the floor, or the air mattress). It was good times. I had only recently met Mags, I think about a week previously, and I had a major crush on her but I waited about another week to take action. My birthday was celebrated with Fun-yuns and Slim Jims at the Brown Jug Saloon in the Tenderloin, along with a sandwich party in Dolores Park. Last year’s celebration was a lot of fun, but I dropped the Brown Jug, kept the sandwich party, and added a small meal with a couple of guests at home for this year.

    I was working at IS Logistics, and generally enjoying that. I was probably about 8 pounds lighter. Oh, and another major difference is that a year ago I had basically no savings, but that has changed drastically. I am much better with my money now.

    Also one year ago I was going to school and working at the same time, both full time, which gave me three near-breakdowns. Not doing that again 🙂 I value my mental health too much.

    Overall, I had a good life one year ago, and I have a better one now. I am working at EFF, living happily with Mags and two great roommates in Glen Park. I am about to move my Mom out here, and I am excited about what is going to happen on that front. Also, I am becoming more politically active, and I have made a lot of new friends.

    If it is this good at 26, could it possibly get better at 27? Well, I’m not going to worry about that too much. I am just going to do what feels right.

  • Last Night’s Critical Mass

    Last night, I met up with a couple of awesome Couch Surfers for Critical Mass. The weather was absolutely perfect. Since it was oppressively hot, by San Francisco standards, during the day, it was just pleasantly warm by 6pm when we left the ferry building.

    There were a good number of us, and spirits were high, as always. Three guys had fog machines on our bike, which I initially mistook for someone’s electric assist bike catching on fire. As we rolled down Market Street, a young woman tisk-tisked us, talking about how there were more emissions because of us from the idling cars. Oh, sorry! Our fault. Because we’re the ones that drove the cars to begin with… And climate change is the only reason any of us ride…

    Anyway, moving along. We went through Union Square, then down to the ballpark, where a game was getting ready to start. There were so many pedestrians that I think they could have had a critical mass of their own, if they had asserted themselves in crossing the street, that is…

    At one point, I saw my good friend Derrick, all dressed up in his shirt and tie after work. I talked with him briefly and then escorted him across the road through the mass! That was funny. Another time, in SOMA, a young woman in an SUV honk-honk-honked at us, which only makes us cheer, wave, and flash the peace sign. This, of course, pissed her off even more, because – damn! – she couldn’t get under our collective skin! She flashed us the most pissed off look accompanied by two middle fingers… Even with a few annoyed people, the vast majority of the pedestrians and drivers, even, were in a celebratory mood with us, cheering and smiling, giving us high fives.

    We made our way through the wiggle and then through Golden Gate Park. We ended with a perfect sunset at the beach.

    All in all, this Critical Mass ride was right up there with the Halloween ride as the most fun.

    It was also exactly what I needed. I found myself getting more and more bitter every day. I was thinking about politics and the negative aspects of society all the time. But Critical Mass is adding something positive instead of combating something negative, and I need to make sure I make this type of activity a mainstay of my life so I don’t get too depressed just thinking about everything else. So, I certainly have some ideas on how to bring this about, and I’ll be working on it!

  • Man’s Economic Motivation

    This is a great quote from Karl Poyani, in The Great Transformation:

    The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social assets.

    This idea is central to the concept of an anarchist gift economy, and it is great to see a non-anarchist historian talk about it. I’d love to read more about research on this idea.

  • This is How Us Hippies Shop for a Party!

    Bike Trailer Shopping!
    Bike Trailer Shopping!

    Yes, that is a whole box of firewood strapped to the bike trailer.

    Wait, you are coming to our housewarming party tonight, right?

  • As I Chill on Derrick’s Couch…

    Derrick is cooking in the kitchen. I got here super early, the rest of the guests will arrive in about an hour. What better opportunity to do some political blog reading?

    I just subscribed to the Fire Dog Lake RSS feed today. I think I like… from today’s post, titled The Anti-Bush, Or Bush Lite?:

    If Obama were a Democratic Dubya doppelganger, he would have made it clear from Day 1 that he would not settle for anything less than big wins on financial and healthcare reform, economic stimulus, and carbon emissions, and he would have used the presidential megaphone to make the case for them loudly and aggressively. He’d talk about his mandate from the American people, lean on Congress, accuse the Republicans of obstructionism, and refuse to sign any bill that was not to his liking. If he failed, so be it, but at least he’d go down swinging.

    I find myself thinking to myself more and more, about Obama: I told you so (1, 2, 3, etc)

    It would be funny if it weren’t so horrific.

  • Why I Do Not Subscribe to the Ideas of Mainstream Economics

    Of course, there are other reasons, but this is probably the biggest one. It is nicely summed up in two paragraphs in the article Whirlpools and Turbulent Flows by Geoff Olson in the September/October issue of Adbusters:

    David Suzuki is another skeptic and he offers a great anecdote about economic thinking. While at the University of British Columbia, Suzuki figured it would be a good idea to supplement his academic background in biology with an understanding of economics. During the first class, Suzuki’s instructor stood at the blackboard drawing lines in chalk to show the flow from the resource base into the market, with subsidiary industries adding value and creating wealth for investors.

    Suzuki pointed to the side of the blackboard that was empty of equations, the resource base, and asked whether the calculations took into account the effect of human activity on the environment, the diminishing reserves and growing waste that Suzuki reasonably regarded as a cost mortgaged into the future. “That’s an externality,” the instructor responded drily. In other words, the environment is something external to the grand human workings of the market and not worth factoring in. Suzuki left the class on the spot.

  • Thoughts on the Chevron Protest in Richmond

    I was at the protest against Chevron on Saturday in Richmond, CA, at the Richmond BART station and at the Chevron refinery. Among the various charges made on that day against Chevron:

    • Chevron has been damaging the health of Richmond residents for decades, causing major problems like asthma.
    • Chevron has been tasked by the city of Richmond with cleaning up the emissions from their refinery. Instead, they are also retrofitting their plant to be able to process dirtier crude.
    • Use of fossil fuel is a huge part of the global warming problem. As one of the most profitable corporations in the world (~$24 billion last year), Chevron is a critical piece of this.
    • Chevron has a hand in the death and exploitation of workers in oil-producing nations around the world, such as Burma
    • Chevron is an active war profiteer, processing Iraqi oil that has been stolen from the people of Iraq

    This long list of charges motivated many groups to coalesce against Chevron on Saturday.

    The events of Saturday were disorganized and largely ineffectual. The day started off with a music, food, booths, etc, at the Richmond BART station parking lot. There was much singing, dancing, and overall merriment. Yes, a good time, but I don’t agree with the several people who said that we were celebrating our resistance. Guess what? Protests of this kind happen very infrequently, and when they do happen, they don’t last long, and everyone goes home afterward. That’s nothing to celebrate.

    I was at the protest with the Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) “contingent,” which was basically nonexistent. From DASW, there was myself and two other people. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was also there, and I spent my time hanging out and marching with them.

    We marched the 2.5 miles to the Chevron refinery where there were more speakers. Towards the end of the speakers, some commotion broke out. Thirteen courageous individuals took it upon themselves to rush around the side of the police line and into the Chevron parking lot with cleaning supplies. The cleaning supplies were to add a message of “we’re going to clean up Chevron” to their action. They then played dead in the Chevron parking lot, surrounded by cops. At this point, the mass of people moved over towards that side of the parking lot and people lined up behind the police tape. The tape eventually fell down and people inched forward a little bit. I was right up at the front, feeling more angry than scared. The cops were remarkably frightening. They were all armed with billy clubs that they had out and ready. Some had large tear gas guns. Most of the cops were absolutely huge men. There were probably about one hundred police officers in full riot gear, guarding the Chevron facilities.

    A short while later, a reverend with the West County Toxics Coalition (the local folks who have been fighting Chevron for years) stepped forward closer to the police, and unable to provoke them by his advance, negotiated his arrest. At that point, Dr. Henry Clark, the leader of the West County Toxics Coalition, grabbed the bullhorn and told the crowd that we had accomplished what we had come for. This completely diffused the anger of the crowd, and the crowd slowly dispersed.

    While this protest had some positive elements to it, I think it and most other protests misses the point. The point is that this isn’t a game. We shouldn’t be out just to feel good about ourselves, eat, drink, listen to music, and then go home. These issues are vitally important.

    The anti-war movement and the environmental justice movement need to step up their games. These protests need to have increased seriousness and frequency. I am currently reaching out to like-minded individuals to get serious about accomplishing our goals. We are at a critical moment for our society, for us as individuals, for our communities, our country, and for the world. Let’s not mess around.

  • WordPress Automatic Upgrade Error

    In trying to automatically upgrade WordPress to 2.8.3, I got the following error: “Missing zlib extensions”

    I am using apache 2.2.11 and FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE-p3.

    To fix…
    cd /usr/ports/archivers/php5-zlib
    make install
    apachectl restart

    Voila…

    Posted to fix the nonexistent Google results, hopefully.

  • Radio

    Now that everyone and their dog is hooked up to the Internet, over-the-air radio stations don’t get much ear time, especially among my demographic of young tech workers living in big cities. But I still like it for its simplicity. You hit the power button and it is on. It also isn’t as completely overtaken with utter crap like television is.

    Usually the only place that many people listen to the radio is in their car, that place where audio technology lags behind the home by a good ten years. Well, thankfully, I rarely drive. And I am not about to put ear buds in when I am on my bike. No, that wouldn’t be safe 🙂

    When I was in New York City last summer for a week or so, my first Couch Surfing host had a radio in her bathroom that she kept on most of the day. I had an awesome Grundig radio sitting around that I wasn’t using, so in our new place I’ve put it to use in the bathroom.

    So far I have been just listening to KQED, 88.5, San Francisco’s NPR station with some of its own local programming as well. I have been getting pretty frustrated with it lately, because of problems that I already knew existed. NPR is essentially a bull horn for the government’s propaganda machine, even though they do it while attempting to sound respectable by leaving out the yelling, the majority of ads, and the fancy sound effects and gimmicks. Surely, this is an improvement over corporate TV news, but what really matters is the substance of the broadcast, and in this area they are just as bad as corporate TV news.

    In multiple mentions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have not heard talk of the civilian death toll, which is probably over a million combined, or the United States’ responsibility for this death toll. These things are by far the most important aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention the war in Pakistan, which gets no mention). The guests interviewed or quoted for NPR’s pieces on these wars are US, Iraqi, or Afghan government and military officials, never representing or discussing the will of the people of any of these countries.

    I wonder what would happen if NPR brought on Dahr Jamail, Amy Goodman, or the unthinkable – the parent of one of the countless children that had been murdered by the US war machine.

    I think I will be learning how to set the station favorites on my radio and trying out KPFA and KPOO.

    Update: And, of course, Pirate Cat Radio, which is what inspired this post to begin with.

  • Creating More of my Own Content

    I realized yesterday, not for the first time, but maybe most poignantly so far, that I spend almost all of my waking hours consuming someone else’s ideas. Even in my downtime, I am often reading. In the many times per day when I have the opportunity to be occupied solely by my own thoughts, I often break out the iPhone to read emails, RSS items, or Twitter updates.

    Even at work, I am implementing someone else’s software.

    Sure, I do create my own things from time to time, but this creativity is not frequent enough and it is often small in scale. Posting a tweet, designing a system or network, discussing my ideas with someone… these are the kinds of things that are usually my only creative outlet.

    Things I would like to do, just off the top of my mind, are blogging, journal writing, meditation, building a bike trailer, contributing to open-source software projects, and DJing.

    Hopefully these thoughts of mine will mean more posts here 🙂