Video footage in front of Chase bank. Occupation of the financial district is ongoing!
There Are People Protesting in San Francesco Right Now! Occupy Wall Street! Occupy the financial District!
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Category Archives: life
I Love to Hate LA
As a resident of Northern California I take on the proud tradition of hating Los Angeles. There are many reasons to hate LA. It’s filthy. It’s superficial. The rats and roaches breed in abundance. The weather is hot and filled with foul smog but the ocean is still too fucking cold to dip a toe in. They put concertina wire around the freeway to keep out the graffiti artists. It’s nothing but mini malls and freeways from end to end. Traffic, traffic, traffic, that never seems to end with nothing of interest to look at but maybe some palm trees that aren’t native to the region in the first place. But who cares about that, no one is from LA, not really, people go there to fail at big dreams. It’s a fucking desert; the only things that truly belong there are tumbleweeds and rocks.
I first decided I hated LA long before I ever lived on the West Coast. In Hollywood I saw a bunch of homeless punks holding signs that said “Photos with freaks $5.” I thought, these punk describe this place: everything is a commodity. Even the punks here are superficial: anarchist on the outside, capitalist on the inside. Further exposure only increased my disdain. Did you know that old Hollywood is in disrepair? They have so much land that instead of reviving it, they just built a new Hollywood further down the road. That’s how people in LA think. No appreciation for history or tradition, even when it’s for the thing that made their city a destination in the first place. Why fix up that dirty old hole where countless movie stars made their mark? Why bother? In their minds, newer is better.
But it occurs to me now that I take too much pleasure in my hatred. Truly, I love to hate LA. They are so counter to everything that Northern California stands for that we can hold them up like a gleaming beacon in opposition to our NorCal selves. When Stephen Merritt sings:
See them on their big bright screen
tan and blonde and seventeen
Eating nonfood keeps them mean
but they’re young forever
If they must grow up
they marry dukes and earls
I hate California girls
I can take comfort in my suspicion that everything he describes is SoCal. LA is the Yin to our Yang. We declare what we are by pointing South and exclaiming that that is what we are not.
If you don’t live on the West Coast, perhaps you are unaware of this rivalry. You may associate all of California with New York and Vermont and the stereotype of the liberal elitist. It’s true that we embrace our liberalism and drink lattes and eat tofu. But when Midwesterners accuse the left coast of being shallow, when they say we’re obsessed with fashion and celebrity, San Francisco replies, “Oh, no–you’re thinking of our sister, Los Angeles.”
Not only do I love to hate LA, I shockingly discover that I am proud to have this den of iniquity within the borders of my great state. Because Hollywood is worshiped by the rest of the country. In some ways LA is like Texas–all the worst things about American culture, and proud of it. The Texans are proud of being big and conservative while LA is proud of fast cars, big budgets, new money, fake tits and tans. Though the rest of the US wants to roll their eye’s at NorCal’s dirty hippies chowing down on government subsidized organic produce, it’s a plain fact that those same Americans are in love with California’s nether regions. They read celebrity gossip on their lunch breaks and talk about TV at the water cooler. They blog about all that goes into making the next summer blockbuster. Children suckled on the teat of Teen Beat grow up to gawk at paparazzi photos in People. If LA were wiped off the map tomorrow, this celebrity-obsessed country would have little to talk about besides Saturday night football.
Of course, we NorCal types want nothing to do with all that. We watch more TV than we admit, and the stuff we see on the big picture is described as “films” which we scrutinize for underlying social messages. But I do like that the culture of California is subtly distilled in a nation raised by television. I love that The Lost Boys setting of Santa Carla is actually the NorCal town, Santa Cruz. I love that the Sunnydale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is most likely based on the Bay’s Sunnyvale. I laughed when Lafayette on True Blood slept under thick velvet blankets. In Louisiana he would bake snuggling under a blanket like that but leave it to a set dresser in LA to think they know what hot weather is. I don’t want Americans to be obsessed with the fake lives of fake people. I moved here to get away from all that. But I get the best of both worlds. I’ve escaped the monster, but the place they keep it chained is a one-hour puddle-jumper flight away.
Maybe that’s why Los Angeles is most appealing to me when it is falling apart. It is only pretty when it’s seedy, when there’s a patina covering all that glamor. LA is only likeable viewed through the lens of David Lynch or distorted through the Raveonettes grungy guitars. Only when the swimming pools and shopping malls are empty and covered in spray paint will a new America be ready to be born.
Getting published: See Yourself in Print #1
Because books are my bread and butter folks occasionally ask me how they might get into the business of being a writer. There are a lot of things you can do to get your polished prose in the hands of booksellers. Note that this isn't about self-publishing, but getting your book printed the old fashioned way.
This Week's Tip to Becoming A Bad-Ass Author: Establish Yourself as An Expert
The more you can do to convince the publisher that you're an authority in that area, the easier it will be for them to sell you to Barnes & Noble.
The simplest way to do this is to start a blog. A lot of potential author's worry about "giving away" too much info on a blog, so that there is nothing left for their book. Unless you write poetry, this is a non-issue and obsessing over it only looks unprofessional. It turns out people have no problem buying a book that reproduces the content of a blog they can read online for free. Go figure. And if consumers will buy it, somewhere there's a publisher who will publish it. Sites like Stuff White People Like, XKCD, and the Oatmeal don't worry about giving away too much. Of course, once you're a blogger you have to start worrying about SEO and keeping up with other people's blogs and all kinds of HTML nonsense that has fuck all to do with writing your manifesto. Starting a blog is in some ways like joining a virtual, global community. If you're not interested in the existing community that exists around the glockenspiel, why would you expect anyone to read your potential book, Stop, Drop and Glock: How the Glockenspiel Will Set Your Roof on Fire? So while it is a lot of work, that work is seeding potential fans of your obsession (It is an obsession, right? If not, why bother?). Another way to establish expertise is to write guest posts on other people's blogs, or articles for local newspapers. However, this is easier to set up if you already have a blog in the first place. Otherwise, what can you point them to that shows you have something to say on the subject? Local organizing can be useful as well, but remember publishers are looking to sell your book all over the country. A monthly meet-up of thirty people isn't going to impress Simon & Schuster. Building expertise is less true with fiction, but it is still true. Many writers now are experimenting with keeping up a blog about their process. This can include research notes, advice, and inspiration. There are sites like Urbis.com where writers upload pieces of their draft to be critcized by other writers. This is another way of joining communities and building a fan base. This seems like a lot of work, doesn't it? It is. But if you've chosen your subject matter wisely it turns out to be just another way to immerse yourself in a subject you are passionate about.Comparing Tumblr and Posterous
I wrote a guest post on 40Tech.com comparing Tumblr and Posterous.
Check it out here: http://bit.ly/itr436.
Posted via email from Tech-ish
Who is to Blame for America’s Budgetary Woes?
Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. [7] By 2019, we estimate that these two policies will account for almost half — nearly $10 trillion — of the $20 trillion in debt that will be owed under current policies.[8] (The Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 also will substantially increase deficits and debt, but we are unable to quantify these impacts due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues, which will account for less than $2 trillion (less than 10 percent) of the debt at that time. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers.