Terrifying News!

Want to read about something terrifying? I read in the paper about something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. When you're walking down the street and you see all the soda cans and plastic bags and cigarette butts in the gutter, you're not thinking, “where does it all go?!” if you're a regular person and not an environmentalism nut, but it turns out that it all goes into the ocean and not only that, but there's sort of a big catch-all area almost twice the size of Texas, where every bit of garbage that was in the ocean ends up, more or less, so I can add that thing to the list of things to sit around and worry about when I'm not busy worrying about what I'm going to do with my life. And if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch doesn't make you panic! fleeing over the hills to some place you might think is the last safe space, other topics on the list include terrorist attacks on the subway (esp. poisonous gases), global warming, murderers breaking into our apartment while we're asleep and murdering us in our beds, nuclear attack and insects that crawl into your mouth while you're asleep and lay eggs embedded in the soft flesh that makes up the inside of your cheek.

In school, in this class I took on ecological history, someone started yelling about how cars are just big metal boxes on wheels! and that's a totally crazy thing to say, if only because there's a lot of complex mechanics and technology going on under the hood of a car. Also, because people can't all be idealistically perfect all of the fucking time. He also said that everyone should drive hybrid cars, which is a totally awesome idea, if not for the fact that most people probably can't afford a hybrid because they're expensive and most mechanics don't yet know how to repair them so you would have to go back to the dealership if you had to get it fixed. Then other people in the class started to say things like, “yeah, and nobody should use plastic bags anymore and we should all recycle and yell at people who don't” and I'm thinking that this is the thing – the thing- that I hate about people with a strong belief system. It's cool with me if they want to believe in something, but if they're going to go and make other people feel bad for not believing in the same something, and if they're going ignore the fact that some people just can't afford -either monetarily or otherwise- these proposed “solutions,” then they're not really solutions, are they? Just like those plates and cups and things that are made out of corn and they're supposed to be biodegradable, but they actually don't break down at all, so how is this cutting down on our waste? It just isn't, but it makes people feel better about themselves, like they're working towards something.

Even so, this Great Pacific Garbage patch is really bothering me a whole lot, because it's not going to get any smaller, although at least it's not moving, because when I heard about it first, someone told me that it was like a whirlpool that was headed our way and it seriously freaked me out, but it's just sitting there, accruing more garbage. Which is awful, and there isn't any way to fix it. That's the thing with all the stuff on my list: I'm completely powerless to prevent any of it from happening, except maybe being attacked by a murder in my sleep, because we have a chain that goes on the door and I'm not sure why anyone would want to break into our apartment and kill us anyway.

The Driver of the Eternally Late B71 Bus Might Be Thinking This:

Instead of driving this bus around responsibly, so that it might reach its many destinations in a timely manner, I will drive extremely slowly, even stopping randomly in the middle of a block so that I might enter into a conversation with another bus driver, also very late to his many destinations. By the time I reach it, the bus will have already missed the stop four times and will then appear to be early for the fifth run, thus deluding patrons of the MTA that the bus does come on time occasionally, making them run to get there on time so they do not miss their bus, only to leave them waiting for upwards of an hour. I vow to do this so many times that the entire bus system will be in shambles by the end of my career. Why? Why do I do this? I revel in chaos. I abhor a routine. I live for the moment. It isn't because I am lazy; far from it, I work hard at what I do. Rather, I want to make people's lives exciting. I want people to be shaken from their everyday routines, from the little lives they lead, and to think that everything they know and rely on can change. That we might live in a concrete world, but underneath is a seething mass of molten rock ready to explode, showering us with its beauty.

Reality

I watch a lot of T.V. this summer. I read a lot, too, though. I'll still be sharp when I enter The Work Force (which makes me think of a large group of men, muscular and gigantic, marching in the street, identically suited and shiny-shod, briefcases in hand ready to go out and do something). The thing about watching this much television is that it really rots your mind; this isn't just some lie your parents fed you when you were little, it's the god's honest truth. The filth that they put on T.V. is astonishing! Can you see the executive director of a channel saying to himself, “Yes, yes, it's brilliant! We'll have a bunch of vapid and voluptuous girls compete for the attention of a man but- here's the catch!- his mom is the one who gets to pick out the girl and they don't even know it! And, improbably, they all think he's rich but he's really a construction worker, or vice-versa! And maybe he's actually a transsexual as well!Or, wait, he's actually in jail for murder, although they think he's a millionaire! And they haven't a clue!”( Not that, of course, I would think that a television executive would have enough knowledge to use words like “voluptuous” or “vapid” or even “improbably.” And you can forget about “vice-versa,” too!)

Now, here's what I think would be a swell turn of events for reality T.V.: they might have real people in them, but when television writers go on strike, they go off the air because they're all scripted. The network executives are thrown into a panic and they replace reality T.V. with nature programming, which is completely unscripted and also completely uninteresting, because it's not reality T.V., it's real T.V. Real life is a lot less interesting than reality on television. People keep waiting for the drama and excitement to begin, but a lot of it is of animals sitting around cleaning themselves and producing excrement. When it comes right down to it, a lot of peoples' lives are spent sitting around and cleaning themselves and producing excrement. That's what I think should happen to the reality television industry. No more! Throw it away! Burn the negatives! Toss it out into the street where it belongs and never give it a second thought!

Things I was doing at work in a public garden when someone shouted, "Look, she's planting!" presumably to educate their child about gardening

Weeding (i.e., pulling plants out of a garden. That is, the opposite of planting.)

Watering

Raking woodchips in a path

Picking dead leaves out of a garden bed and putting them in a large plastic bucket

Scooping leaves with net out of a small pond

Making a fence by hammering bamboo poles into the ground (Is this really what people think planting looks like? Really?)

Pruning (i.e., cutting things off of plants)

Bonus: While I was walking through a gate with a tub full of dead leaves, a mother shouted, "Look, honey! She's.... gardening."

True that.

Blogging for school is over, but I really like the name of this blog, and apropos of that as well as a total lack of anything to do, I'm going to continue to use this space for my own things. Here come the lists.

Thin vs. Living Democracy

Frances Moore Lappe's description of a 'Thin Democracy' reminded me of Alexis de Tocqueville's warnings in his 1835 book, Democracy in America, that democracy, when not vigilantly attended to can turn into 'soft despotism.' Furthermore, that conformity to the majority and complacency among its citizens can lead to the downfall of a democracy. How incredible, that hundreds of years later, we're still writing about the same problems in America! What I found most interesting about these worries is that they could easily be found in literature from the fringes of either political party-- ironically, those most opposed to each other are essentially afraid of the same thing.

Unemployment is an Adaptable Challenge

My brother is making a documentary on unemployment among college grads/students and here's my interview. I hope it's enjoyable and not thoroughly depressing, but according to my brother's report of his class as they watched the interview, everyone was incredibly depressed and miserable afterwards. I've spent so much time in class (and out of it) talking about and analyzing the effects of unemployment that I think I'm not going to say much here about how it relates to leadership, I'm just going to let the interview stand on its own. Enjoy?