11.28.2003

Yesterday, the President did what may have been the second admirable thing of his term (the first being the pledging of AIDS funds to Africa) in visiting the troops in Baghdad. Despite my severe criticism of his domestic and foreign policy, I do have to give him credit for putting himself into a greater degree of danger in order to improve the morale of his troops. I'm very impressed by this action.

But I would be more impressed if this visit didn't show up in the 2004 campaign, which it undoubtedly will.

I'd be more impressed if I could be convinced that it was a coincidence that he visited Baghdad one day before Hilary Clinton's visit, rather than a politically motivated plan to preempt her in the news cycle.

I'd be more impressed if he'd been in a little more danger - if he'd have actually appeared outside the extremely-secure airport, if he'd flown in a military helicopter without the sophisticated countermeasures found in Air Force One, if he'd have put himself in something remotely approaching the level of danger America's soldiers are facing every day in that country.

And I'd be most impressed if, having faced that danger, he decided that we really can't go it alone, that the costs are simply too great to the American people to secure a country he was responsible for making into a threat, and he allowed the UN to take sovereignty over Iraq and usher the interim government into place in due time.

But we didn't get all that. Instead, all we got was one rather impressive action. On its own merits, it's a wonderful symbolic move, and one that many Presidents before him - LBJ, Nixon, Bush I - have undertaken before him. This was a very admirable thing for him to do. But, compared to the admirable things he could have done, and to the many ignorant and despicable things he and his administration has done, he still falls woefully short of the standard to which I will hold my President in 2004.

Side note: The Two Towers Extended Version is incredible. I advise seeing it before Return of the King opens in theatres in three weeks.

posted by jimmy at 17:25 - Read comments here!

11.25.2003

First off, will someone please tell me how allowing gay people to marry will in any way weaken marriages? Please note here that I'm not talking about the so-called "institution of marriage," because a monolithic concept called "Marriage" is nonexistent or at best undiscoverable, and we have to deal with marriage as interpreted and realized by actual couples in the actual world. So could someone please enlighten me as to how allowing gay people to marry will affect an actual married couple, say, my parents, or my friends Luke and Marla? Will they one day look at each other and say "gay people are getting married, so this isn't worth it"? The argument that gay marriage weakens marriage as a concept somehow is ridiculous; show me an actual marriage that will be ruined or in any way affected by gay marriage.

Second off, will someone please tell me how Max Lucado and other Christian writer/speaker types always get seated next to interesting and spiritually-curious people on airplanes, while I get to sit next to a medical insurance inspector who just wants to tell me all about his job and an econ/law student who buries himself up to the neck with homework the minute he sits down? I've heard story after story about these people and how they strike up a conversation with the person in the next seat, and it turns out that they're talking to a divorcee or a widow with three kids and a starving grandmother, and they somehow convince said divorcee/widow that it's okay and lead them to Christ. Why does this never happen to me? True, I did sit next to a Swedish theology professor and her husband on the flight out to PA, and we had an interesting conversation, but still. Why are the metaphorical windows of opportunity never opened to me? Or,conversely, why don't Lucado et al. tell us about the boring flights where all they did was sit and read, or where they tried to strike up a conversation only to get drawn into something boring like economics or particle physics?

Third off, will someone please tell me why anybody should care about Michael Jackson? It's not like he's done anything good since, say, Dangerous, and that was twelve years ago. True, Thriller is one of the best pop albums ever, but should we really care about him now when the peak of his career was twenty-one years ago? All he is now is just weird and washed-up, releasing album after album repackaging the stuff he did ten or twenty years ago. And he looks like some kind of alien or other-worldly being... he's just not natural. So... why do we all want to read about this, and not about the disgusting commercial the GOP is running in Iowa, or about the latest deaths in the Liar's War in Iraq? When will America start caring about the important stuff?

I think it has something to do with the fact that no matter how weird one truly is, one always can point to Michael Jackson as evidence that there's someone weirder out there...

posted by jimmy at 11:16 - Read comments here!

11.24.2003

So, first things first... I know you've all been waiting to hear what I have to say about our state's second most illustrious resident, Michael Jackson. My only comment at present is actually addressed to the parents of Jackson's accuser:

WHAT THE HECK WERE YOU THINKING??!!

I mean, seriously, what rational parent would allow their child to hang out with Michael Jackson? Even if he didn't molest that kid ten years ago, he's still quite possibly the weirdest person on the face of this planet, and he looks like a freaking alien to boot. I'd never let my kids anywhere within 500 feet of him.

Second, this weekend. This weekend was great... it was so awesome to see Alison and George get hitched, despite all the Catholic trappings involved. Alisa was crying throughout the whole wedding. It was slightly humorous. Oh, and Alisa caught the bouquet and I caught the garter. This was her life's goal, to catch this bouquet, so I'm wondering how she's going to fill the chasm left in her heart now that it's been fulfilled. Whether or not one actually believes in the superstitions of our being the next two people to get married (don't worry, Mom, no rings have changed hands) one has to admit that it's kinda cute that we caught them. One also has to admit that a 150-year-old DJ who sings along to the music he plays and has a box of sound effects is significantly less cute. Particularly when he's playing anything by Kool & The Gang.

As I've been spending a great deal of time on airplanes this weekend (what with flying to Pittsburgh and back) I've been thinking of how I don't read nearly as often as I should. I read more than most, but still when I'm hard up for entertainment I'll play a video game or flip on the boob tube. I need to read more for pleasure. It's helpful, though, that I've got two bookshelves full of good old nonfiction (I'm not a huge fiction fan) that I actually want to read. I just need to buckle down and do it rather than sitting in front of glowing boxes...

...which is what I'm doing now...

posted by jimmy at 01:31 - Read comments here!

11.19.2003

Growl.

If you live in the California area, I strongly urge you not to bank with Washington Mutual, and if you do, to pull your money out of there. They cancelled my account yesterday because one check I deposited - from my former landlady - bounced. Because I'm a new customer, they considered that reason enough to unilaterally close my account and no longer do any business with me - without notifying me or discussing this with me, despite the fact that I've deposited a great deal more money into their bank that hasn't bounced. The only reason I knew about this was that I went in to make another deposit and my ATM card didn't work; if I hadn't found out then, the situation could have been much worse, particularly since that would limit me to the amount of cash in my pocket - $37 - for almost a month. The fact that they closed my account without even so much as a phone call - four weeks after the deposit was made - is, at the very least, terrible customer service. So I urge anybody and everybody out there to take your business away from Washington Mutual Bank.

On to other companies I urge my readers not to support, for less personal reasons - and this might have more of an impact on those not in the West - Wal-Mart. I have always been aware of the fact that they pay their workers less than poverty wages in order to keep costs down, but I didn't know the extent to which they persecute those who try to unionize. Their attempts to block the legal right of their workers to organize are nothing less than reprehensible, and it not only affects their employees but employees of other stores as well. Right now, in LA, 70,000 grocery workers are on strike because their employers want to cut their pay and benefits. Why do the employers want to do this? Because Wal-Mart is moving into town, and can undercut the local grocer's prices because Wal-Mart doesn't have to worry about paying its workers a fair wage or giving them healthcare.

So it isn't just about workers choosing to work at Wal-Mart for a low wage - it's also about the worker at the other store whose wages are cut because their employer wants to stay in business. It's about the local stores that Wal-Mart undercuts and drives out of business, all because the local stores have a sense of community responsibility and responsibility to their workers. We need a national movement to boycott Wal-Mart until it freely allows its employees to unionize and starts paying them a living wage, and divests itself of its stores in favor of locally-owned franchises (like the much-more-responsible IGA or Safeway corporations.) Sam Walton is rolling in his grave right now to see what his successors are doing to his company.

While I'm on the subject of labor, I think it's time to institute a larger guest-worker plan, particularly for Mexican citizens, and crack down on illegal immigration. My father is right in that undocumented immigrants represent a huge security threat - but those who want to severely limit immigration, I think, scarcely realize the extent to which US citizens are dependent upon undocumented immigrants for, as an example, cheap produce. If we're going to crack down on illegal immigration in this country (which I think should be done) we also need to institute a guest-worker program, which would (a) provide jobs to those who are now coming to the US illegally, while still allowing us to keep tabs on them, and (b) allow us to keep tabs on their employers as well, which would cut down on abuses of guest laborers and allow us to demand that they be paid a living wage. Would produce prices go up? Yes, but not as severely as they would if we totally cut immigration out of the picture. Plus, we'd be able to eat with a clean conscience, knowing that those who picked the lettuce in our salad were given a fair day's pay for a fair day's labor.

I was told last night by two very close sources (aka the mom and the ladyfriend) that I need to not be so serious all the time and be more easygoing. I prefer to think of myself as "festively intense," but that's just me. Do those in my reading audience agree with Mum and the lady, or with me? If you haven't been bored to tears with all my political talk and are still reading this, chime in below.

Hey, I'm light and easygoing. I read Boondocks and Doonesbury every day.

posted by jimmy at 15:17 - Read comments here!

11.18.2003

It's 11:30. I couldn't get to sleep last night until 5, but I did come up with a workable first draft of something. It's really absurd, and I'm not sure it's going to go down all that easy, so I might just end up writing something else this afternoon so we've got options. It's about language, and deconstruction, and sex. Just like every other play written in the last ten years.

I am the infinite monkey on the infinite typewriter... or something like that.

posted by jimmy at 11:27 - Read comments here!

Right now, I have just over 15 hours to write a play.

It was a mixture of my hubris and my stupidity that got me into this thing... we were all set to do a David Ives piece when our third actor dropped out of the show, and now I'm left with two actors to direct for a show this Friday. So I thought, "hmm, it would just be easier if I could write something so that we wouldn't have to worry about rights or anything, and we can just have a show tailor-made for this time and venue." And I said those fateful words: "Yeah, I'll have something for you by 5pm tomorrow."

So here I am, at 2am, and I'm stuck for ideas. I have so many things I could write about - but nothing I feel like I can write about with any degree of expertise, or wit, or humor, or depth, or great meaning. So I'm wasting time posting to this blog, when I should be writing a play.

Hmmm.

And to think this was a light school week too...

posted by jimmy at 01:59 - Read comments here!

11.16.2003

So I'm under pressure to update again... here goes.

Last night the band I'm in (still nameless) had a gig at a Fuller coffee house, and it was really good. My guitar wasn't going through the sound system for our first song, but we got that fixed up and everything was peachy. I'd have to say the highlight of our set was Kara and I singing a duet of the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine;" is it a scary thing that in the two songs I've sung for this band, I've been Will Smith in one and a lesbian woman in the other? Regardless, I'm really excited to be working with Kara... she and I make a great musical team.

The rest of the coffeehouse was also really cool. My buddy Jorge read some poems in Spanish, and I was really impressed despite my knowing about three words of said language. He really brought out the rhythms of the language. I was also impressed with my friend Luke's songs... he wrote a few songs and set some older poetry to music, and it was really very good. He also sang a song to his wife that almost made me weep. Sometimes I wish I was a songwriter...

I'm not sure what else there is to say. Things are good here... I'm really glad I'm out here in California, in this community, with these people, because for the second time in my life (the first time was at Calvin) I feel realized as an artist. That's an incredible feeling.

Plus, it's so much warmer here, despite the freak occurrences of that "weather" stuff my dad warned me about...

posted by jimmy at 11:33 - Read comments here!

11.12.2003

I'm a bit freaked out right now.

As I left class today, the strangest thing was happening. Water was falling - from the sky! It was like when I water Planty, only it was happening all over the place! Unsure of what to do, I huddled under the nearest eave until the nightmare had passed. Then I said an Ave Maria and ran home as quickly as possible, trying to dodge the few wet missiles still falling to the ground. Alas, I was not completely successful, and now my hair is wet. What a strange experience.

I wonder what would happen if the falling water were to freeze en route?

posted by jimmy at 15:09 - Read comments here!

11.10.2003

I tried a new church last night, called Tribe, and I think it's the coolest church experience I've had in a long time... I don't know that I've had an experience that's more like the New Testament church in a long time, perhaps ever. The group meets in the pastor lady's house, starts with a drum circle/chant worship, then has a period of discussion and sermony stuff, then a period of meditation, and then shares the Lord's Supper around actual tables and follows with a shared meal. The fellowship, the atmosphere, the mood, the worship... all utterly incredible. Not to mention that the house is absolutely beautiful... it's an old adobe type, decorated with all sorts of artwork (some of which was painted during the services) and absolutely filled with candles. So I think I've found a new church community.

I'm also getting to appreciate some friends in my life more, particularly my musical partner and close friend Kara and my theatre buddy Damian. It's really cool to have great friendships with other artistic people, people I can bounce ideas off of. It's also cool to have people to go out drinking with... not that we do incredible amounts of drinking, but we do enjoy going out together, and we have really cool conversations. So that's another positive thing in my life.

So, yeah. I'm going to have to go back to other forms of procrastination on my New Testament paper, my Church History outline, and about two hundred pages of reading... maybe if I wait long enough, all the work will do itself...

Perhaps there's some kind of solitaire game installed on this computer...

posted by jimmy at 19:01 - Read comments here!

11.05.2003

Today's Nugget O' Wisdom(tm):

A lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

So if vegetarians eat only vegetables, what do humanitarians eat...?

posted by jimmy at 23:58 - Read comments here!

11.04.2003

This is Planty.



Planty is my pet Dracaena plant. I was in Target and I saw Planty for $3.99 and there he was, wagging his tail and licking my hand, and I knew that Planty was for me. I love Planty. One day he's going to grow big and tall and eat all my leftovers off the floor.

Good ol' Planty.

posted by jimmy at 19:59 - Read comments here!

So, here I am back in sunny California, and the only problem is that it's cold... a high near 60 today. Brrr. I made the mistake of leaving my apartment windows open over the weekend and when I returned to my place it was extremely cold, so I had to bundle up as I slept last night (I couldn't figure out how to get the little heater in my place to work.)

The weekend was just about as good a weekend as one can have in Ohio. I got to see Playhouse people I haven't seen in forever, got to go to my old church in BG and hold my tongue, got to see the family and take back to CA with me all the things I'd forgotten to bring over the first time as well as engage in lively political and theological debate (much to the chagrin of the ladyfriend). But mostly, I got to spend a lot of time with the ladyfriend, who makes me really really happy. I'm trying to talk less and less about my inner life, mostly because it represents a level of self-absorption I'm trying to scale back on in my life (in that I would be tacitly assuming that anyone should care how I feel), but I'm going to make an exception here and say that I'm crazy about that lady, and I don't care who knows it.

Thoughts are formulating in my mind about American culture and how detached from reality we really are. They're not fully-formed yet - when they are, I'll post them in more detail here - but suffice to say that I think we as a culture have so separated ourselves from "real life," so insulated ourselves from things that really count, that our culture is in atrophy and allows terrible abuses in the name of ignorance. Thus far, I've thought about:
--The food we eat, and how it's processed and manufactured, and how far from anything "pure" it really is...
--The work we do, and how manufacturing and farming jobs are moving out of this country and making it largely a service economy, and how that has separated us as a society from believing that work has meaning...
--The sanitization of America, where every surface our children touch is sprayed down with Lysol beforehand, and how I think that is weakening our national immune system and its ability to fight off contagion...
--The vicarious pursuit, wherein we escape the meaningless of our own lives through television and film, and watch others live real emotional lives and struggle with life and death so that we can continue to rationalize our own ignorance and failure to engage the life and death around us, and how that has caused the atrophy of our national justice muscles in the name of "postmodernism" or "realpolitik".

Those are a few of the directions I'm going in... I'm not sure what this will pan out as yet, really right now it's just a bunch of ideas floating aimlessly about in my head.

Maybe some will run into each other... it's bound to happen eventually, no?

posted by jimmy at 09:50 - Read comments here!

11.01.2003

So here I am in cloudy, drizzly Ohio. It's cloudy. It's drizzly. But I'm with a pretty darn cool person, my awesome, beautiful, and talented ladyfriend Alisa, so it's all good.

Last night I saw the aforementioned ladyfriend in her musical performance, and let me just say that she was in-fricking-credible. I mean, I knew she could write and direct, but I didn't know she could sing and dance and act, and there's only one person who can do all that, and that's Barbra Streisand. (That's a quote from a movie... 15 bonus points to anyone who can guess which one and whose name isn't Alisa because she's with me as I write this.) But seriously, she knocked my socks off, she was so good. I almost cried right there in my seat. No, not really. But she was good.

I was also reunited (and it feels so good) with several of my old Huron buddies, and that was cool... I missed them. Particularly Alison Show, who rules the school, and Chriiiiiiiis Kateff, who reads - and comments - on this page sometimes, which is certainly a sign of good moral character. I'm going to see more Huron people - including my favorite gay couple EVER - tomorrow, along with my family (whom I miss, and whose house holds many things I want/need to take back to CA with me), my buddies from church in BG, and three or four cheese coneys from Skyline Chili, which you may or may not have heard is the best thing ever.

Plus, while I'm gone, it's low-60's and raining in CA, which takes care of those pesky wildfires as well as watering the trees to make them grow and causing flash floods and mudslides that will no doubt cause even more property damage. w00t.

Maybe we'll have an earthquake next...

posted by jimmy at 12:34 - Read comments here!

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