TIDE? OR IVORY SNOW? - Arundhati Roy

Public Power in the Age of Empire

I've been asked to speak about "Public Power in the Age of Empire."
I'm not used to doing as I'm told, but by happy coincidence, it's
exactly what I'd like to speak about tonight.

When language has been butchered and bled of meaning, how do we
understand "public power"? When freedom means occupation, when
democracy means neo-liberal capitalism, when reform means repression,
when words like "empowerment" and "peacekeeping" make your blood run
cold - why, then, "public power" could mean whatever you want it to
mean. A biceps building machine, or a Community Power Shower. So,
I'll just have to define "public power" as I go along, in my own
self-serving sort of way.

In India, the word public is now a Hindi word. It means people. In
Hindi, we have sarkar and public, the government and the people.
Inherent in this use is the underlying assumption that the government
is quite separate from "the people." This distinction has to do with
the fact that India's freedom struggle, though magnificent, was by no
means revolutionary. The Indian elite stepped easily and elegantly
into the shoes of the British imperialists. A deeply impoverished,
essentially feudal society became a modern, independent nation state.
Even today, fifty seven years on to the day, the truly vanquished
still look upon the government as mai-baap, the parent and provider.
The somewhat more radical, those who still have fire in their
bellies, see it as chor, the thief, the snatcher-away of all things.

Either way, for most Indians, sarkar is very separate from public.
However, as you make your way up India's social ladder, the
distinction between sarkar and public gets blurred. The Indian elite,
like the elite anywhere in the world, finds it hard to separate
itself from the state. It sees like the state, it thinks like the
state, it speaks like the state.


In the United States, on the other hand, the blurring of the
distinction between sarkar and public has penetrated far deeper into
society. This could be a sign of a robust democracy, but
unfortunately, it's a little more complicated and less pretty than
that. Among other things, it has to do with the elaborate web of
paranoia generated by the U.S. sarkar and spun out by the corporate
media and Hollywood. Ordinary Americans have been manipulated into
imagining they are a people under siege whose sole refuge and
protector is their government. If it isn't the Communists, it's
al-Qaeda. If it isn't Cuba. it's Nicaragua. As a result, this, the
most powerful nation in the world - with its unmatchable arsenal of
weapons, its history of having waged and sponsored endless wars, and
the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs - is
peopled by a terrified citizenry, jumping at shadows. A people bonded
to the state not by social services, or public health care, or
employment guarantees, but by fear.

This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction
for further acts of aggression. And so it goes, building into a
spiral of self-fulfilling hysteria, now formally calibrated by the
U.S government's Amazing Technicolored Terror Alerts: fuchsia,
turquoise, salmon pink.

To outside observers, this merging of sarkar and public in the United
States sometimes makes it hard to separate the actions of the U.S.
government from the American people. It is this confusion that fuels
anti-Americanism in the world. Anti-Americanism is then seized upon
and amplified by the U.S. government and its faithful media outlets.
You know the routine: "Why do they hate us? They hate our freedoms" .
. etc. . . . etc. This enhances the sense of isolation among
American people and makes the embrace between sarkar and public even
more intimate. Like Red Riding Hood looking for a cuddle in the
wolf's bed.


Using the threat of an external enemy to rally people behind you is a
tired old horse, which politicians have ridden into power for
centuries. But could it be that ordinary people are fed up of that
poor old horse and are looking for something different? There's an
old Hindi film song that goes yeh public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai (the
public, she knows it all). Wouldn't it be lovely if the song were
right and the politicians wrong?


Before Washington's illegal invasion of Iraq, a Gallup International
poll showed that in no European country was the support for a
unilateral war higher than 11 percent. On February 15, 2003, weeks
before the invasion, more than ten million people marched against the
war on different continents, including North America. And yet the
governments of many supposedly democratic countries still went to
war.

The question is: is "democracy" still democratic?

Are democratic governments accountable to the people who elected
them? And, critically, is the public in democratic countries
responsible for the actions of its sarkar?

If you think about it, the logic that underlies the war on terrorism
and the logic that underlies terrorism is exactly the same. Both make
ordinary citizens pay for the actions of their government. Al-Qaeda
made the people of the United States pay with their lives for the
actions of their government in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and
Afghanistan. The U.S government has made the people of Afghanistan
pay in their thousands for the actions of the Taliban and the people
of Iraq pay in their hundreds of thousands for the actions of Saddam
Hussein.

The crucial difference is that nobody really elected al-Qaeda, the
Taliban, or Saddam Hussein. But the president of the United States
was elected (well ... in a manner of speaking).

The prime ministers of Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom were
elected. Could it then be argued that citizens of these countries are
more responsible for the actions of their government than Iraqis are
for the actions of Saddam Hussein or Afghans for the Taliban?

Whose God decides which is a "just war" and which isn't? George Bush
senior once said: "I will never apologize for the United States. I
don't care what the facts are." When the president of the most
powerful country in the world doesn't need to care what the facts
are, then we can at least be sure we have entered the Age of Empire.

So what does public power mean in the Age of Empire? Does it mean
anything at all? Does it actually exist?

In these allegedly democratic times, conventional political thought
holds that public power is exercised through the ballot. Scores of
countries in the world will go to the polls this year. Most (not all)
of them will get the governments they vote for. But will they get the
governments they want?

In India this year, we voted the Hindu nationalists out of office.
But even as we celebrated, we knew that on nuclear bombs,
neo-liberalism, privatization, censorship, big dams - on every major
issue other than overt Hindu nationalism - the Congress and the BJP
have no major ideological differences. We know that it is the
fifty-year legacy of the Congress Party that prepared the ground
culturally and politically for the far right. It was also the
Congress Party that first opened India's markets to corporate
globalization.

In its election campaign, the Congress Party indicated that it was
prepared to rethink some of its earlier economic policies. Millions
of India's poorest people came out in strength to vote in the
elections. The spectacle of the great Indian democracy was telecast
live - the poor farmers, the old and infirm, the veiled women with
their beautiful silver jewelry, making quaint journeys to election
booths on elephants and camels and bullock carts. Contrary to the
predictions of all India's experts and pollsters, Congress won more
votes than any other party. India's communist parties won the largest
share of the vote in their history. India's poor had clearly voted
against neo-liberalism's economic "reforms" and growing fascism. As
soon as the votes were counted, the corporate media dispatched them
like badly paid extras on a film set. Television channels featured
split screens. Half the screen showed the chaos outside the home of
Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party, as the coalition
government was cobbled together.


The other half showed frenzied stockbrokers outside the Bombay Stock
Exchange, panicking at the thought that the Congress Party might
actually honor its promises and implement its electoral mandate. We
saw the Sensex stock index move up and down and sideways. The media,
whose own publicly listed stocks were plummeting, reported the stock
market crash as though Pakistan had launched ICBMs on New Delhi.

Even before the new government was formally sworn in, senior Congress
politicians made public statements reassuring investors and the media
that privatization of public utilities would continue. Meanwhile the
BJP, now in opposition, has cynically, and comically, begun to oppose
foreign direct investment and the further opening of Indian markets.

This is the spurious, evolving dialectic of electoral democracy.

As for the Indian poor, once they've provided the votes, they are
expected to bugger off home. Policy will be decided despite them.

And what of the U.S. elections? Do U.S. voters have a real choice?

It's true that if John Kerry becomes president, some of the oil
tycoons and Christian fundamentalists in the White House will change.
Few will be sorry to see the back of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld
or John Ashcroft and their blatant thuggery. But the real concern is
that in the new administration their policies will continue. That we
will have Bushism without Bush.

Those positions of real power - the bankers, the CEOs - are not
vulnerable to the vote (. . . and in any case, they fund both sides).

Unfortunately the importance of the U.S elections has deteriorated
into a sort of personality contest. A squabble over who would do a
better job of overseeing empire. John Kerry believes in the idea of
empire as fervently as George Bush does.

The U.S. political system has been carefully crafted to ensure that
no one who questions the natural goodness of the
military-industrial-corporate power structure will be allowed through
the portals of power.

Given this, it's no surprise that in this election you have two Yale
University graduates, both members of Skull and Bones, the same
secret society, both millionaires, both playing at soldier-soldier,
both talking up war, and arguing almost childishly about who will
lead the war on terror more effectively.

Like President Bill Clinton before him, Kerry will continue the
expansion of U.S. economic and military penetration into the world.
He says he would have voted to authorize Bush to go to war in Iraq
even if he had known that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He
promises to commit more troops to Iraq. He said recently that he
supports Bush's policies toward Israel and Ariel Sharon 100 percent.
He says he'll retain 98% of Bush's tax cuts.

So, underneath the shrill exchange of insults, there is almost
absolute consensus. It looks as though even if Americans vote for
Kerry, they'll still get Bush. President John Kerbush or President
George Berry.

It's not a real choice. It's an apparent choice. Like choosing a
brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they're both
owned by Proctor & Gamble.

This doesn't mean that one takes a position that is without nuance,
that the Congress and the BJP, New Labor and the Tories, the
Democrats and Republicans are the same. Of course, they're not.
Neither are Tide and Ivory Snow. Tide has oxy-boosting and Ivory Snow
is a gentle cleanser.

In India, there is a difference between an overtly fascist party (the
BJP) and a party that slyly pits one community against another
(Congress), and sows the seeds of communalism that are then so ably
harvested by the BJP.

There are differences in the I.Q.s and levels of ruthlessness between
this year's U.S. presidential candidates. The anti-war movement in
the United States has done a phenomenal job of exposing the lies and
venality that led to the invasion of Iraq, despite the propaganda and
intimidation it faced.

This was a service not just to people here, but to the whole world.
But now, if the anti-war movement openly campaigns for Kerry, the
rest of the world will think that it approves of his policies of
"sensitive" imperialism. Is U.S. imperialism preferable if it is
supported by the United Nations and European countries? Is it
preferable if UN asks Indian and Pakistani soldiers to do the killing
and dying in Iraq instead of U.S. soldiers? Is the only change that
Iraqis can hope for that French, German, and Russian companies will
share in the spoils of the occupation of their country?

Is this actually better or worse for those of us who live in subject
nations? Is it better for the world to have a smarter emperor in
power or a stupider one? Is that our only choice?

I'm sorry, I know that these are uncomfortable, even brutal
questions, but they must be asked.

The fact is that electoral democracy has become a process of cynical
manipulation. It offers us a very reduced political space today. To
believe that this space constitutes real choice would be naïve.

The crisis in modern democracy is a profound one.

On the global stage, beyond the jurisdiction of sovereign
governments, international instruments of trade and finance oversee a
complex system of multilateral laws and agreements that have
entrenched a system of appropriation that puts colonialism to shame.
This system allows the unrestricted entry and exit of massive amounts
of speculative capital - hot money - into and out of third world
countries, which then effectively dictates their economic policy.
Using the threat of capital flight as a lever, international capital
insinuates itself deeper and deeper into these economies. Giant
transnational corporations are taking control of their essential
infrastructure and natural resources, their minerals, their water,
their electricity. The World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and other financial institutions like
the Asian Development Bank, virtually write economic policy and
parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and
ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile,
interdependent, historically complex societies, and devastate them.

All this goes under the fluttering banner of "reform."

As a consequence of this reform, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,
thousands of small enterprises and industries have closed down,
millions of workers and farmers have lost their jobs and land.

The Spectator newspaper in London assures us that "[w]e live in the
happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history."
Billions wonder: who's "we"? Where does he live? What's his Christian
name?

The thing to understand is that modern democracy is safely premised
on an almost religious acceptance of the nation state. But corporate
globalization is not. Liquid capital is not. So, even though capital
needs the coercive powers of the nation state to put down revolts in
the servants' quarters, this set up ensures that no individual nation
can oppose corporate globalization on its own.

Radical change cannot and will not be negotiated by governments; it
can only be enforced by people. By the public. A public who can link
hands across national borders.

So when we speak of "Public Power in the Age of Empire," I hope it's
not presumptuous to assume that the only thing that is worth
discussing seriously is the power of a dissenting public. A public
which disagrees with the very concept of empire. A public which has
set itself against incumbent power - international, national,
regional, or provincial governments and institutions that support and
service empire.

What are the avenues of protest available to people who wish to
resist empire? By resist I don't mean only to express dissent, but to
effectively force change. Empire has a range of calling cards. It
uses different weapons to break open different markets. You know the
check book and the cruise missile

For poor people in many countries, Empire does not always appear in
the form of cruise missiles and tanks, as it has in Iraq or
Afghanistan or Vietnam. It appears in their lives in very local
avatars - losing their jobs, being sent unpayable electricity bills,
having their water supply cut, being evicted from their homes and
uprooted from their land. All this overseen by the repressive
machinery of the state, the police, the army, the judiciary. It is a
process of relentless impoverishment with which the poor are
historically familiar. What Empire does is to further entrench and
exacerbate already existing inequalities.

Even until quite recently, it was sometimes difficult for people to
see themselves as victims of the conquests of Empire. But now local
struggles have begun to see their role with increasing clarity.
However grand it might sound, the fact is, they are confronting
Empire in their own, very different ways. Differently in Iraq, in
South Africa, in India, in Argentina, and differently, for that
matter, on the streets of Europe and the United States.

Mass resistance movements, individual activists, journalists,
artists, and film makers have come together to strip Empire of its
sheen. They have connected the dots, turned cash-flow charts and
boardroom speeches into real stories about real people and real
despair. They have shown how the neo-liberal project has cost people
their homes, their land, their jobs, their liberty, their dignity.
They have made the intangible tangible. The once seemingly
in-CORP-o-real enemy is now CORP-o-real.

This is a huge victory. It was forged by the coming together of
disparate political groups, with a variety of strategies. But they
all recognized that the target of their anger, their activism, and
their doggedness is the same. This was the beginning of real
globalization. The globalization of dissent.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of mass resistance movements in
third world countries today. The landless peoples' movement in
Brazil, the anti-dam movement in India, the Zapatistas in Mexico, the
Anti-Privatization Forum in South Africa, and hundreds of others, are
fighting their own sovereign governments, which have become agents of
the neo-liberal project. Most of these are radical struggles,
fighting to change the structure and chosen model of "development" of
their own societies.

Then there are those fighting formal and brutal neocolonial
occupations in contested territories whose boundaries and fault lines
were often arbitrarily drawn last century by the imperialist powers.
In Palestine, Tibet, Chechnya, Kashmir, and several states in India's
northeast provinces, people are waging struggles for
self-determination.

Several of these struggles might have been radical, even
revolutionary when they began, but often the brutality of the
repression they face pushes them into conservative, even
retrogressive spaces in which they use the same violent strategies
and the same language of religious and cultural nationalism used by
the states they seek to replace.

Many of the foot soldiers in these struggles will find, like those
who fought apartheid in South Africa, that once they overcome overt
occupation, they will be left with another battle on their hands - a
battle against covert economic colonialism.

Meanwhile, as the rift between rich and poor is being driven deeper
and the battle to control the world's resources intensifies. Economic
colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback.

Iraq today is a tragic illustration of this process. An illegal
invasion. A brutal occupation in the name of liberation. The
rewriting of laws that allow the shameless appropriation of the
country's wealth and resources by corporations allied to the
occupation, and now the charade of a local "Iraqi government."

For these reasons, it is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S.
occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists or insurgents
or supporters of Saddam Hussein. After all if the United States were
invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a
terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite?

The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle
against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle.

Like most resistance movements, it combines a motley range of
assorted factions. Former Baathists, liberals, Islamists, fed-up
collaborationists, communists, etc. Of course, it is riddled with
opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we
are only going to support pristine movements, then no resistance will
be worthy of our purity.

This is not to say that we shouldn't ever criticize resistance
movements. Many of them suffer from a lack of democracy, from the
iconization of their "leaders," a lack of transparency, a lack of
vision and direction. But most of all they suffer from vilification,
repression, and lack of resources.

Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct
their secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should
shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allies
government to withdraw from Iraq.

The first militant confrontation in the United States between the
global justice movement and the neo-liberal junta took place famously
at the WTO conference in Seattle in December 1999. To many mass
movements in developing countries that had long been fighting lonely,
isolated battles, Seattle was the first delightful sign that their
anger and their vision of another kind of world was shared by people
in the imperialist countries.

In January 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 20,000 activists, students,
film makers - some of the best minds in the world - came together to
share their experiences and exchange ideas about confronting Empire.
That was the birth of the now historic World Social Forum. It was the
first, formal coming together of an exciting, anarchic,
unindoctrinated, energetic, new kind of "Public Power." The rallying
cry of the WSF is "Another World is Possible." It has become a
platform where hundreds of conversations, debates, and seminars have
helped to hone and refine a vision of what kind of world it should
be.

By January 2004, when the fourth WSF was held in Mumbai, India, it
attracted 200,000 delegates. I have never been part of a more
electrifying gathering. It was a sign of the social forum's success
that the mainstream media in India ignored it completely. But now,
the WSF is threatened by its own success. The safe, open, festive
atmosphere of the forum has allowed politicians and nongovernmental
organizations that are imbricated in the political and economic
systems that the forum opposes to participate and make themselves
heard.

Another danger is that the WSF, which has played such a vital role in
the movement for global justice, runs the risk of becoming an end
unto itself. Just organizing it every year consumes the energies of
some of the best activists. If conversations about resistance replace
real civil disobedience, then the WSF could become an asset to those
whom it was created to oppose. The forum must be held and must grow,
but we have to find ways to channel our conversations there back into
concrete action.

As resistance movements have begun to reach out across national
borders and pose a real threat, governments have developed their own
strategies of how to deal with them. They range from cooptation to
repression.

I'm going to speak about three of the contemporary dangers that
confront resistance movements: the difficult meeting point between
mass movements and the mass media, the hazards of the NGO-ization of
resistance, and the confrontation between resistance movements and
increasingly repressive states.

The place in which the mass media meets mass movements is a
complicated one.

Governments have learned that a crisis-driven media cannot afford to
hang about in the same place for too long. Like business houses need
a cash turnover, the media need crises turnover. Whole countries
become old news. They cease to exist, and the darkness becomes deeper
than before the light was briefly shone on them. We saw it happen in
Afghanistan when the Soviets withdrew. And now, after Operation
Enduring Freedom put the CIA's Hamid Karzai in place, Afghanistan has
been thrown to its warlords once more.

Another CIA operative, Iyad Allawi, has been installed in Iraq, so
perhaps it's time for the media to move on from there, too.

While governments hone the art of waiting out crisis, resistance
movements are increasingly being ensnared in a vortex of crisis
production, seeking to find ways of manufacturing them in easily
consumable, spectator-friendly formats.

Every self-respecting peoples' movement, every "issue" is expected to
have its own hot air balloon in the sky advertising its brand and
purpose.

For this reason, starvation deaths are more effective advertisements
for impoverishment than millions of malnourished people, who don't
quite make the cut. Dams are not newsworthy until the devastation
they wreak makes good television. (And by then, it's too late).

Standing in the rising water of a reservoir for days on end, watching
your home and belongings float away to protest against a big dam used
to be an effective strategy, but isn't any more. The media is dead
bored of that one. So the hundreds of thousands of people being
displaced by dams are expected to either conjure new tricks or give
up the struggle.

Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are
not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when
soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto
ships and aircrafts, when people boycott the economic outposts of
Empire that are strung across the globe.

If we want to reclaim the space for civil disobedience, we will have
to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of crisis reportage and its
fear of the mundane. We have to use our experience, our imagination,
and our art to interrogate the instruments of that state that ensure
that "normality" remains what it is: cruel, unjust, unacceptable. We
have to expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things -
food, water, shelter and dignity - such a distant dream for ordinary
people. Real pre-emptive strike is to understand that wars are the
end result of flawed and unjust peace.

As far as mass resistance movements are concerned, the fact is that
no amount of media coverage can make up for mass strength on the
ground. There is no option, really, to old-fashioned, back-breaking
political mobilization.

Corporate globalization has increased the distance between those who
make decisions and those who have to suffer the effects of those
decisions. Forums like the WSF enable local resistance movements to
reduce that distance and to link up with their counterparts in rich
countries. That alliance is an important and formidable one. For
example, when India's first private dam, the Maheshwar Dam, was being
built, alliances between the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the NBA), the
German organization Urgewald, the Berne Declaration in Switzerland,
and the International Rivers Network in Berkeley worked together to
push a series of international banks and corporations out of the
project. This would not have been possible had there not been a rock
solid resistance movement on the ground. The voice of that local
movement was amplified by supporters on the global stage,
embarrassing and forcing investors to withdraw.

An infinite number of similar, alliances, targeting specific projects
and specific corporations would help to make another world possible.
We should begin with the corporations who did business with Saddam
Hussein and now profit from the devastation and occupation of Iraq.

A second hazard facing mass movements is the NGO-ization of
resistance. It will be easy to twist what I'm about to say into an
indictment of all NGOs. That would be a falsehood. In the murky
waters of fake NGOs set up or to siphon off grant money or as tax
dodges (in states like Bihar, they are given as dowry), of course
there are NGOs doing valuable work. But it's important to consider
the NGO phenomenon in a broader political context.

In India, for instance, the funded NGO boom began in the late 1980s
and 1990s. It coincided with the opening of India's markets to
neo-liberalism. At the time, the Indian state, in keeping with the
requirements of structural adjustment, was withdrawing funding from
rural development, agriculture, energy, transport, and public health.
As the state abdicated its traditional role, NGOs moved in to work in
these very areas. The difference, of course, is that the funds
available to them are a minuscule fraction of the actual cut in
public spending. Most large funded NGOs are financed and patronized
by aid and development agencies, which are in turn funded by Western
governments, the World Bank, the UN, and some multinational
corporations. Though they may not be the very same agencies, they are
certainly part of the same loose, political formation that oversees
the neo-liberal project and demands the slash in government spending
in the first place.

Why should these agencies fund NGOs? Could it be just old-fashioned
missionary zeal? Guilt? It's a little more than that. NGOs give the
impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating
state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their
real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as
aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right.

They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims
and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of
buffer between the sarkar and public. Between Empire and its
subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the
facilitators.

In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the
people they work among. They're what botanists would call an
indicator species. It's almost as though the greater the devastation
caused by neo-liberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing
illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S.
preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go
in and clean up the devastation.

In order make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the
governments of the countries they work in will allow them to
function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework more
or less shorn of a political or historical context. At any rate, an
inconvenient historical or political context.

Apolitical (and therefore, actually, extremely political) distress
reports from poor countries and war zones eventually make the (dark)
people of those (dark) countries seem like pathological victims.
Another malnourished Indian, another starving Ethiopian, another
Afghan refugee camp, another maimed Sudanese . . . in need of the
white man's help. They unwittingly reinforce racist stereotypes and
re-affirm the achievements, the comforts, and the compassion (the
tough love) of Western civilization. They're the secular missionaries
of the modern world.

Eventually - on a smaller scale but more insidiously - the capital
available to NGOs plays the same role in alternative politics as the
speculative capital that flows in and out of the economies of poor
countries. It begins to dictate the agenda. It turns confrontation
into negotiation. It depoliticizes resistance. It interferes with
local peoples' movements that have traditionally been self-reliant.
NGOs have funds that can employ local people who might otherwise be
activists in resistance movements, but now can feel they are doing
some immediate, creative good (and earning a living while they're at
it). Real political resistance offers no such short cuts.

The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a
well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks
thrown in. Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.

This brings us to a third danger I want to speak about tonight: the
deadly nature of the actual confrontation between resistance
movements and increasingly repressive states. Between public power
and the agents of Empire.

Whenever civil resistance has shown the slightest signs of evolving
from symbolic action into anything remotely threatening, the crack
down is merciless. We've seen what happened in the demonstrations in
Seattle, in Miami, in Göthenberg, in Genoa.

In the United States, you have the USA PATRIOT Act, which has become
a blueprint for antiterrorism laws passed by governments across the
world. Freedoms are being curbed in the name of protecting freedom.
And once we surrender our freedoms, to win them back will take a
revolution.

Some governments have vast experience in the business of curbing
freedoms and still smelling sweet. The government of India, an old
hand at the game, lights the path.

Over the years the Indian government has passed a plethora of laws
that allow it to call almost anyone a terrorist, an insurgent, a
militant. We have the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Public
Security Act, the Special Areas Security Act, the Gangster Act, the
Terrorist and Disruptive Areas Act (which has formally lapsed but
under which people are still facing trial), and, most recently, POTA
(the Prevention of Terrorism Act), the broad-spectrum antibiotic for
the disease of dissent.

There are other steps that are being taken, such as court judgments
that in effect curtail free speech, the right of government workers
to go on strike, the right to life and livelihood. Courts have begun
to micro-manage our lives in India. And criticizing the courts is a
criminal offense.

But coming back to the counter-terrorism initiatives, over the last
decade, the number of people who have been killed by the police and
security forces runs into the tens of thousands. In the state of
Andhra Pradesh (the pin-up girl of corporate globalization in India),
an average of about 200 "extremists" are killed in what are called
"encounters" every year. The Bombay police boast of how many
"gangsters" they have killed in "shoot outs." In Kashmir, in a
situation that almost amounts to war, an estimated 80,000 people have
been killed since 1989. Thousands have simply "disappeared." In the
northeastern provinces, the situation is similar.

In recent years, the Indian police have opened fire on unarmed
people, mostly Dalit and Adivasi. Their preferred method is to kill
them and then call them terrorists. India is not alone, though. We
have seen similar thing happen in countries such Bolivia, Chile, and
South Africa. In the era of neo-liberalism, poverty is a crime and
protesting against it is more and more being defined as terrorism.

In India, POTA (the Prevention of Terrorism Act) is often called the
Production of Terrorism Act. It's a versatile, hold-all law that
could apply to anyone from an al-Qaeda operative to a disgruntled bus
conductor. As with all anti-terrorism laws, the genius of POTA is
that it can be whatever the government wants. After the 2002
state-assisted pogrom in Gujarat, in which an estimated 2,000 Muslims
were savagely killed by Hindu mobs and 150,000 driven from their
homes, 287 people have been accused under POTA. Of these, 286 are
Muslim and one is a Sikh.

POTA allows confessions extracted in police custody to be admitted as
judicial evidence. In effect, torture tends to replace investigation.
The South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center reports that India
has the highest number of torture and custodial deaths in the world.
Government records show that there were 1,307 deaths in judicial
custody in 2002 alone.

A few months ago, I was a member of a peoples' tribunal on POTA. Over
a period of two days, we listened to harrowing testimonies of what is
happening in our wonderful democracy. It's everything - from people
being forced to drink urine, to being stripped, humiliated, given
electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up
their anuses, to being beaten and kicked to death.

The new government has promised to repeal POTA. I'd be surprised if
that happens before similar legislation under a different name is put
in place. If its not POTA it'll be MOTA or something.

When every avenue of non-violent dissent is closed down, and everyone
who protests against the violation of their human rights is called a
terrorist, should we really be surprised if vast parts of the country
are overrun by those who believe in armed struggle and are more or
less beyond the control of the state: in Kashmir, the north eastern
provinces, large parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, and
Andhra Pradesh. Ordinary people in these regions are trapped between
the violence of the militants and the state.

In Kashmir, the Indian army estimates that 3,000 to 4,000 militants
are operating at any given time. To control them, the Indian
government deploys about 500,000 soldiers. Clearly, it isn't just the
militants the army seeks to control, but a whole population of
humiliated, unhappy people who see the Indian army as an occupation
force.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows not just officers, but
even junior commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers of
the army, to use force and even kill any person on suspicion of
disturbing public order. It was first imposed on a few districts in
the state of Manipur in 1958. Today, it applies to virtually all of
the north east and Kashmir. The documentation of instances of
torture, disappearances, custodial deaths, rape, and summary
execution by security forces is enough to turn your stomach.

In Andhra Pradesh, in India's heartland, the militant
Marxist-Leninist Peoples' War Group - which for years been engaged in
a violent armed struggle and has been the principal target of many of
the Andhra police's fake "encounters" - held its first public meeting
in years on July 28, 2004, in the town of Warangal.

It was attended by about hundreds of thousands of people. Under POTA,
all of them are considered terrorists. Are they all going to be
detained in some Indian equivalent of Guantánamo Bay?

The whole of the north east and the Kashmir valley is in ferment.
What will the government do with these millions of people?

There is no discussion taking place in the world today that is more
crucial than the debate about strategies of resistance. And the
choice of strategy is not entirely in the hands of the public. It is
also in the hands of sarkar.

After all, when the U.S. invades and occupies Iraq in the way it has
done, with such overwhelming military force, can the resistance be
expected to be a conventional military one? (Of course, even if it
were conventional, it would still be called terrorist.) In a strange
sense, the U.S. government's arsenal of weapons and unrivalled air
and fire power makes terrorism an all-but-inescapable response. What
people lack in wealth and power, they will make up with stealth and
strategy.

In this restive, despairing time, if governments do not do all they
can to honor nonviolent resistance, then by default they privilege
those who turn to violence. No government's condemnation of terrorism
is credible if it cannot show itself to be open to change by to
nonviolent dissent.

But instead nonviolent resistance movements are being crushed. Any
kind of mass political mobilization or organization is being bought
off, or broken, or simply ignored.

Meanwhile, governments and the corporate media, and let's not forget
the film industry, lavish their time, attention, technology,
research, and admiration on war and terrorism. Violence has been
deified.

The message this sends is disturbing and dangerous: If you seek to
air a public grievance, violence is more effective than nonviolence.

As the rift between the rich and poor grows, as the need to
appropriate and control the world's resources to feed the great
capitalist machine becomes more urgent, the unrest will only
escalate.

For those of us who are on the wrong side of Empire, the humiliation
is becoming unbearable.

Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child.
Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of
their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were
humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in
a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are
victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process,
which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.

The mandarins of the corporate world, the CEOs, the bankers, the
politicians, the judges and generals look down on us from on high and
shake their heads sternly. "There's no Alternative," they say. And
let slip the dogs of war.

Then, from the ruins of Afghanistan, from the rubble of Iraq and
Chechnya, from the streets of occupied Palestine and the mountains of
Kashmir, from the hills and plains of Colombia and the forests of
Andhra Pradesh and Assam comes the chilling reply: "There's no
alternative but terrorism." Terrorism. Armed struggle. Insurgency.
Call it what you want.

Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanizing for its perpetrators, as
well as its victims. But so is war. You could say that terrorism is
the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketers of war.
They are people who don't believe that the state has a monopoly on
the legitimate use of violence.

Human society is journeying to a terrible place.

Of course, there is an alternative to terrorism. It's called justice.

It's time to recognize that no amount of nuclear weapons or
full-spectrum dominance or daisy cutters or spurious governing
councils and loya jirgas can buy peace at the cost of justice.

The urge for hegemony and preponderance by some will be matched with
greater intensity by the longing for dignity and justice by others.

Exactly what form that battle takes, whether its beautiful or
bloodthirsty, depends on us.

Dark and gloomy Tuesday. Filing must be done today, as must the completion of the Fabulair business plan. I plan to bake bread, and such. A day with tasks, and no schedule!

I'm going to copy and paste an article from an Indian man which is very moving -

Joel has wandered off to check on a job application and walk the dogs, so I have a brief period alone. I don't think I'll be able to go get my car battery until after 5:00 tonight, so I have to finish my homework, write something for Mitch, and work on the business plan for Fabulair AND replace my battery and drive up to Spring before 7:00 tonight. Today has been just frenetic.

Okay .. it's a bit later. I got Mitch's thing done, got my homework done, and now am waiting for Mikey to come over to take me to get a new battery for Ruby. Joel and I are on our way out to the car to see about taking the battery OUT. Good lord.

The coffeepot is gurgling, and the stray is up and about. Two hours until Guy's birthday brunch (observed.) Yesterday felt so like Sunday ALL day.

Spent a few hours at Donna and Paul's yesterday, talking about business opportunities, and about social and political events and trends. This afternoon, going to the UH Wellness center with Guy to get weighed and BMI measured (I'm scared) and to look at a house we could rent. Then, Joel needs to go up off 1960 to meet his ex-boyfriend and pick up a notebook, and then ..

Will I get my homework done today?

I went through everything in the other dresser yesterday, making room for Joel's stuff. I have about a dozen posters to be framed .. and no wall space to hang them. Some of the stuff is REALLY great.

I have to create some money really fast this week. I had a little thing I thought I had to write up for a client by tomorrow, but she seems to have found someone else to do it.

Thursday that's going much better than last.

Today, I have to do some clean-up work, and then tonight at 6:00, I have a seminar about the tax law changes for 2004. Tomorrow, a hearing on my tax deal, an appointment with a business plan client from three weeks ago at 2:00 -

I picked him up about 6:00, then took him "home" to where he had been staying. Oh, my God. What a nightmare! The "roomie" was sitting alone, in the dark, with the doors locked. We went in, Joel turned on a light, and I was horrified at the condition of the place - it looks like someone has just moved in and not yet unpacked. Joel went to take a shower, leaving me in the living room with the roommate, who looks like he should be collecting tolls under a bridge. The roomie whined in a voice that could cut slate until he suddenly jumped up and went into the bathroom where Joel was showering.

The roomie then tried to convince Joel not to leave by promising that he (the roomie) was seeking help. I was just horrified that the guy interrupted Joel's shower to impose himself in that manner. Yikes. Anyway, a few minutes later, Joel was ready to leave, and we dashed out of there. He asked me how I felt about having been there, and I said that I had no idea that there was a male gay version of my Aunt Mary Lou.

I took him over to Barnaby's for dinner, and we talked for about an hour and a half. He's very much like me - hyper-intelligent, self-critical and unfocused. He's been going through a lot for the last couple of years, and he's just feeling like he's never going to have any options. He keeps talking about engaging in self-destructive jobs, like bartending or driving a cab, or something. Ugh. Do I ever know what THAT'S like. Anyway.

I told him, flat out, I was never letting him go back to that vile place. I told him that if he did, he'd die.

I brought him home around 9:30, and we watched "The Adventures of Priscilla," which he had never seen before. He laughed a lot. I gave him an anti-anxiety pill and put him to bed around midnight. He's still asleep. I hope he wakes up soon, I'm hungry.

Cleaning house - waiting for Joel to call. He's coming to stay a few days here. Got a meeting with Roosevelt Mortgage today at 2:00 to talk about the commercial lending thing, and then trying to get a meeting with a business broker about doing some more work. Contacted another old client about doing some tax amendments for him, and ..

I'm actually doing something with this computer this morning other than just wasting time. And, I have been cleaning the house up (trying to locate the source of negative scent and negate same.)

Ruby, it seems, is in awesome shape, and needs to have her rear air ride system worked on. I didn't know she had adjustable rear shocks!

Okay, time to focus!

The next ride de divo - Guy calls it "Ruby's wealthier aunt" 

And a Happy Good Sunday morning to you .. it's been a few days since I created an entry, and I'm now drinking coffee and mentally preparing myself for the church's "annual" membership meeting, which I must leave to attend in about 90 minutes.

later

The meeting went better than I could have expected. We have some clear guidance from the membership on what they want and don't want, and hopefully, this will translate into some good things in the months ahead.

Cleaning up here at the casita. So far, so good. In a short while here, I'll start printing file folder labels, and actually finishing the filing cabinet job. WHOOIE!

It seems that Arafat just died. Interesting.

I've been talking to Joel again - he's been in the hospital for two weeks - violent naseua which has produced pneumonia. I think he's not happy in his new living situation. He hasn't had a chance to look for a job, because he's been sick, and his "room mate" is in love with him. Like that wasn't predictable.

I'm going to go see him at Memorial Hermann tonight, I think.

All Hail the Victorious Leader ..  

Well, it's over. No more screed. The conservatives have total control of the organs of government, and except for rare procedural blocks, the moderates can do nothing to prevent any action on the part of the government. They have at least four years to eliminate government, "stimulate" the economy by cutting taxes and regulation, continue to eliminate union representation, reduce civil rights to increase the effectiveness of courts and police, reduce public education funding, shift more government functions to the private sector, and increase the deficit to fund military ventures.

They have their wide-open crack at Social Security, and at abortion. They have their "wins" in same-sex marriage.

They have their wide open shot at drilling in national park lands. Eliminating pollution controls. Reversing 75 years of law considered carefully by hundreds of men (and women) who made decisions based on problems that were then facing society. Eliminating programs that care for people who cannot take care of themselves. They're almost done with this work, and now, it only remains to finish the job.

Pursue imperial expansion into Syria - we know they're next on the list. Continue to use selective judgment on foreign policy matters.

Withdraw from the United Nations - in fact, kick them out of New York and make them establish themselves on friendlier soil. Withdraw from more treaties that limit our freedom to act.

Do everything you think will make life better and the economy more productive. Have at it, already. Don't ask questions, you've been given the mandate from the American people. Appoint the judges you wish to see on the bench.

In four years, no excuses about what you weren't able to accomplish, or why it didn't work. It's all about your performance now. Best wishes. At the end of the four years, if this doesn't work, I want to hear from you about what DIFFERENT you will do to MAKE it work. No more excuses.

Rainy Monday morning. Already started on getting things DONE around here. Had a GREAT day yesterday, but got no substantive work accomplished. Drinking coffee, then have to start making some headway.

Still can't get my printer to recognize the lower paper tray. PLEH. I finally just disabled the lower paper tray so I can print anything else.

Hopefully, this will be a good day to get things accomplished. I have to start with my homework for tonight.

Ugh. Cold coffee. Warm oatmeal, though. I love the rain.

Laundry is in, now it's time to clean up and start on all of this office mess.

Happy Halloween!

I moved the computer and printer around yesterday, and now the printer won't print. It says that I need to "check casette #2" - uh, there it is, man. What more do you want?

I guess I'll have to pull EVERYTHING apart, check all the connections, blah, blah, blah. Irritating. Oh, well. The computer is in a MUCH better spot now than it was. So is the printer.

Didn't go to church today. They're racing back to the past to do what didn't work before, and I just don't want to play. So, today, I'll clean house, do homework, work on stuff .. I guess.

Should I leave the Halloween stuff out until tomorrow? I guess that makes sense.

Well, I'm on my second mug of coffee. I quit the church in Clear Lake last night, in the middle of a four hour panic attack last night. Was up until 5:00. Very fun.

I wrote a post this morning, but .. my session had expired, and everything I had typed was lost. I love that.

Last night (about 4:00 a.m.) I was thinking about dropping my cell number, changing my email address. I may yet. I don't know.

Talked to Matt in Orlando this morning a while - he sent me a picture of his fabulous Halloween costume - I looked into using miles to fly out there today, but it's just too late.

Nicole has other plans tonight, so I'm without anyone to attend the theater party that I always go to. Last year, I only had her to talk to, so I'm staying home this year. Half of the party are straight friends of the host, and they can't handle a 6'4" red fairy on roller skates. The theater people are all very into their little cliques, and they don't talk to me either. So .. put on the costume, drive over there, stumble in on the roller skates, stand around without anyone to talk to for a few hours? Sounds awesome!

I have to get the Fabulair website done by Monday morning. I have it all designed, it's just getting it done.

Two nights ago, I realized that there is something else in my psyche that is unrevealed, it's running the show .. and, what to do about it?

I've been rolling this around, and all I've come up with so far is:

* This precedes my childhood memory of being left in the front yard - moving van gone, etc.
* It's the foundation for my two word sentence about myself "Not wanted"
* My whole world has been created around that core belief, job, relationships, friendships, career track, credit, family - it's extremely powerful
* My activity is to withdraw - to pull myself out of the sandbox when I get confronted with "not wanted" and TO NOT TRY AT ALL
* Just knowing that I'm acting out of it isn't helpful
* I have a dichotomy of having created this huge circle of people who are crazy about me (anti-not-wanted) with things that are not-wanted and threaten my safety (money, romantic relationships, work)
* Just knowing that hasn't helped

I meditated a LONG time about this today. I have no specific memory of "what happened" - just weird things, lots of crib and bassinet imagery. My older half-brother and some cousins. Flies (what's THAT about?) A bassinet that had a bomb bay door (under me.) Nothing else.

I'm going to make dinner and see what else I can cook up.

Susan checks in - she's my coach.

I want to scream out… DON”T DO IT!!! I get the whole thing about needing to get something rolling, but on the other hand, I also feel that it drains energy and all that is good from your very soul. Then what will you have left over to get your deal going??? Now, if it were just show up, do some work, get paid, then, that could actually support your future. Because, as near as I can tell, nothing else will be your future anyway!

Love ya!

Me

So, I had my meeting today. It went quite well; they offered me a job. It's straight commission - which I've been on since 1937.
Also, contract, no benefits. Ditto. Smokers. The whole office.

On the other hand, they have a TON of work. Right away, they have about 150 files for me to go through, trying to find those that can be salvaged. Then, I have to sell the clients on fee-paid services, and then a loan. They do a ton of advertising. And, they have a home builder account that they want to turn over to me.

IF it all works out; IF the files pan out the way that they suggest, IF .. I could do fairly well. Still, no future, no equity, no promotion, no ..

No start-up fee to get the contract rolling. I kill it, I get 40%.

I did NOT want to go back to lending. I definately did not want to go back to a straight commission, no future environment.

However, all of my other "feelers" seem to be heading in the same ultimate direction. Spec work, no present fees for work produced, no guarantees of EVER making any money. If money does come together, it's in late 2005.

Um .. hello? I have to eat? Keep a roof over the dogs' heads?

What I want to do is make MY deal work. If I'm going to be eating what I kill, I'd rather have a larger percentage of it and control.

However. I have obligations and I have to generate money to get my deal rolling.

So, dear reader, I am stuck like glue. Yeah, they'll pay me at this mortgage company. While they ride me like the nickel pony ride on advice on all their legal screw ups and misperceptions about how the world REALLY works. I can see that coming as sure as Christmas.

Or, I can go on trying to do spec business development work with NO business flow, and everyone wanting my work product if they can pay me IF/WHEN the money comes in.

And I've made no decision. I just can't. I'm tired, but not resigned.

I really like this condo that's going up a few blocks from here. Basically the same kind of floorplan I have now, but about 50% bigger. They're nutty about the price, though. 

This married man should have a warning tattoo on his forehead. If you see him, stay away. 

I'm watching this .. wild .. movie. "The Rules of Attraction." College life flick. The amazingly handsome campus drug dealer has it bad for this beautiful young woman who wants to commit herself to him, but they've never had so much as a decent conversation. Someone is leaving him love notes in his mailbox, and he's convinced it's her. Her room mate is trying to convince her that he's a sleaze, and then the room mate does him at a party - and she walks in on them. However, the letter writer is NOT the woman we think - it's this totally other woman who's in the background of the whole story, and she commits suicide when he (not even knowing that she's alive) "rejects" her at the party and runs off with the room mate. Very .. Clockwork Orange. So, now, the primary female has utterly rejected the drug dealer, who's about to hang himself with a phone cord. That's when the dogs had to go out, and I came in to start writing this tome.

Oh, and the gay guy who's in love with the drug dealer - we're waiting to find out what he's going to do.

Have I mentioned that I hate married men? I do.

Here's a note from my sweet friend Y about the married guy she's involved with.

In a message dated 10/25/2004 10:33:56 AM Central Standard Time, [me] writes:


"Men can suck."

Y writes back ..

no pun intended huh????/ :o)

My dickhead said and sent email that we were going to spend the whole weekend together for my birthday, saturday galveston & opry, sunday galleria and Victoria Secrets...... Next thing you know he's got a cart race with son in AM, I'm cool with that, then he decided that he had to take his brother somewhere and would be available around noon... cool, i call at noon and he didn't go do any of it and was at the house just watching tv. then he had the odasity to ask, "so are we going to hook up later today"...... what the fuck......I had to hang up so that I wouldn't start balling or screaming... stupid fucker

Didn't talk to him at all the whole day, stayed here by myself. Sunday didn't call him or he call me until around 5: and then again at 9:. He never answered but I knew that he got the message. Got an email from him around 9:30 stating that we would go back to the original plan and not see one another for a while because we weren't on the same emotional level...... what the fuck ever. I didn't even get a bd card and we're supposed to be PARTNERS....... ick

This is MY idea of a superman, and a superman costume! 

Chet from Tulsa - actually from Turkey, presently in Tulsa. 

I'm still tired. I've slept and slept today, but I just can't stay up late anymore and funtion the next day. When I combine staying up late with drinking .. double whammy.

I'm watching this movie "Issues 101" - it's a gay themed film, made very recently, shot with a video camera instead of a movie camera. So far, it has a stupidity factor of 9.5. I don't know if I'll make it to the end.

I think Chet is going to come down next weekend from Tulsa to visit. He's a sweetie. I'll post his picture.

Last night ..

Watched the movie "Relax, it's Just Sex." Great movie, totally disturbing for me. I completely identified with the lead character, and his experiences in dating. By the time the movie was 2/3 over, I was in a FOUL mood. I mean FOUL. So, I started taking the mood apart - what's behind it? Where did it come from?

I didn't get very far with it, but it's a much better way to react than the old way.

Anyway, I went to bed about midnight, and when I was waking up, I had this dream going on about being at the annual party that my college friend David throws (well, that happens in the dream. If he throws a huge annual party, I don't know about it) to which I had been many times. All of these people were so nice to me "oh, I'm so sorry I don't remember your name, but it's GREAT to see you .. " and it was really cool to be remembered well by all these people. The party was held in this enormous room in a hotel (I guess) that had a big patio - all these candles, hundreds of people.

I was sitting at this table with about five women of my age - and we were just making pleasantries. As different men would pass by, we'd remind each other who they were, who they were with, and so on.

As I was sitting there, this guy came up from behind me, wrapped his arms around me and said hello. He told me how glad he was that I had come all that way to the party. He stood up and walked off .. and that's when I noticed that the man, who had been a handsome, but rather unexceptional guy in the past, had transformed himself.

He was now very beefy and lean; huge shoulders and chest, his skin tanned golden brown. He was wearing golden brown leather trousers that matched his skin color, and a matching leather australian cowboy hat. He had a tatoo across his shoulders, and he was wearing a gold necklace backwards - so that it hung down between his shoulder blades. He walked over to get a drink across the room.

The women at my table were after me - "go get him, you idiot!"

Anyway, there was a LOT of drug use going on at this party. A LOT. I started having a poem come to me about methanphetamine use - and then, it (the poem) was published on the cover of a big gay magazine. I had most of the poem, and by the time I could jump out of bed, run to the computer and open a notepad screen, most of it was gone.

BLEH.

Well, last night before I went to bed, I electronically purged Joel from life .. nuked his email address from incoming messages, blocked his IM address. Three strikes and you're out, just like California.

This morning, I'm doing homework for class on Monday. Yup. I'm going to get it ALL done. I am. No, really. And I'm going to bake bread.

Had some GREAT news this morning, Intuit is going to ship me the tax software for every tax year from 1998 forward. AWESOME. That allows mt to prepare tax returns for people (since I no longer have the software) going back that far.

Okay, time to get cracking on making a dent in things.

So, it's all interesting. The Astros have lost, which I rather expected, but whatever. Joel stood me up .. episode #3. And insulted me in the process. So .. where's that sharpie?

I didn't get a THING accomplished again today .. or did I? I went to early vote - the line was HUGE. It took nearly two hours to accomplish that task. I put some things away. Talked to Rosita about the church and the Rev for at least an hour total. Talked to Susan for a half hour. Talked to Mitch .. told him that I had been hoping to pick up Scott's processing work.. that Scott wasn't calling me back and such. He says "well, I'll ask Kimberly (the owner of Roosevelt Mortgage)" So, I said " uh .. you've mentioned that several times over the last few months .. but no meetings ever take place, when you've brought me in to meet her in the office, she isn't even remotely interested in talking to me, so .. uh .. let's just get real, okay? I know you love me and want to help me and all, but .. it ain't happening."

He says "well, she's been busy, etc., etc." And I said, it's cool, Mitch. Don't worry about it, something will come together for me.

So, a few minutes after the Lastros blew it in Louis, he calls. Can I come out to her house for dinner and cocktails tomorrow night, and they'll a.) give me some work, b.) talk to me about doing credit repair on contract, and c.) commercial deals and other stuff.

Okay, sure. I'll talk to anyone, I guess.

Found a cool new condo complex going up about .. ten blocks from me called the Vistas. They have four floor plans that I like. I wrote and asked for information - as far as I know, they haven't begun preparing the site work yet, so it's at least 18 months off.

Anyway, that's today's report, I guess.

So .. that whole "Titanic" thing. Not so much. There's a discrete little link down at the bottom that says "more information." When one follows that link, it reveals that the whole story is a hoax to try to show you how easy it is to create internet hoaxes.

Bleh. But, bully for me for not buying it.

So, drama last night - then I was wired, and stayed up until FOUR .. got up at 8:00, as the dogs were crying. Now, I've cleaned the kitchen, taken out the trash, about to clean the bathroom, gotten the accounting caught up .. but, no substantive work has occured.

Just had an unexpected and blood-curdling IM from PJ - she's coming up today. For .. an unspecified period of time. No further information available. I'm waiting for the "other shoe" thing, where she tells me she wants to stay with me.

While I was all wired up and anxious last night, I was checking out this website about urban legends. snopes On that website, it asserts that a 1911 silent movie "The Poseidon Adventure" was being screened on board the Titanic AT THE TIME IT HIT THE ICEBERG.

Okay, now you may not know everything about me, and you may not know very much about me, but one thing I am is a walking compendium on the RMS Titanic. This site has a link to an internal page that purports to list the details about the 1911 silent "Poseidon Adventure" listing the exact same character names as was in the 1972 smash hit movie. The 1972 smash hit movie that was made from the 1969 best seller by Paul Gallico. Of which I have an original copy of the first paperback printing.

I think I'll write them a little missive ..

Voting early today with Guy, making bread this afternoon, will Joel follow through on his earnest promise last night that he REALLY wants to see me tonight? Who knows?

Called Scott again - no return calls for three days, which leads me to conclude that a.) he's already given the processing work to someone else, and b.) the universe is protecting me somehow.

Onward...

Another day, another day. Had my IRS audit this morning, my cell phone headset DIED a miserable death in a blaze of static, and PetSmart had doggy diapers, but not the absorbant pads that go in them.

Stopped at Kroger and bought them OUT of Diet-Rite soda (no caff, no carbs, no cals, no sugar, no ASPARTAME) came home, and used the dog stain remover/deodorizer that I bought at PetSmart on Jackie's favorite spots. Had lunch away for an hour, came back and WOW! It was true what it said on the label! The whole apartment smelled better.

So, when James called and invited me to dinner, I thought .. Hey! If just a few squirts on her two favorite spots made things that much better, what would a half-gallon do on the FOUR favorite spots?

BIG mistake. Now, it smells like a chemical plant.

Ruby has a bad oxygen sensor, and is going through gasoline like she's a Ford Expedition.

Mikey just had a boyfriend crisis .. and I have a question. The lad who blew me off both Friday night and last night emailed about 11:50 tonight with the excuse that he's been sick, and would love to see me tomorrow.

Hm. Whither goest I?

You Should Be a Martini for Halloween!

What should you be for Halloween?

Wow - well, today is day two of setting myself to be happy with myself at the end of the day, rather than trying to manifest more money or a job or a whatever the heck. Had a good business meeting this afternoon, got a LOT of stuff done work-wise, had a client in Austin who hasn't paid me for more than six weeks pay me and then ask me if I could come up to Austin for the next few weeks to work, and had an unexpected call from Citifinancial asking if I was interested in interviewing for their manager program - they're coming to Houston in a big way. That's tomorrow.

There was NO fabulair-ing today.

However, class tonight was outstanding. We worked on a number of things, all intended to uncover things about our past beliefs and decisions, and how they run us in the present. This week and last week have been very confronting, and one (me) rips from exhiliration to anger and worse. And back again. The cycles are very quick.

Anyway, tonight, we were working with a decision tree about our lives. One takes a line of one's age - and marks on it each important decision that one has made from the earliest memory of decisions to the present, and maps out how it could have gone differently, who the important people were, etc.

(I hadn't done that part of the homework .. shhh)

So, other people were sharing what they got out of the tree exercise, and I was looking at it .. and I had just been working with definitions (the homework from LAST week that was SO confronting) and I saw this wild thing about myself .. you remember the story about coming home from kindergarten on the day that we were moving, and the moving van was gone, etc. So, I made up that I wasn't wanted, and all the goodies that have gone along with that.

Interestingly enough, whether in response to that or just because, I started creating this world where I was all alone, and that was the best, safest place to be. When I was a little boy, my grandparents lived in this little northern Michigan town that had a tourist steam railroad that was about ten blocks from the family home. I used to walk over there and spend long hours walking around the rail cars, looking at the steam engines, watching the operations .. it was a perfect little reality.

So, I have a life that I have created in which I spend most of my time alone with the computer, with the home theater, with books, whatever. And, that life is in complete conflict with the life of trying to find a mate, trying to hang out with friends, gathering evidence for the story of "I'm not wanted."

The truth is, I *LOVE* being alone. I have no mate because I *LOVE* being alone. I live alone, because it suits me.

So, what's all this energy I put into trying to prove that I have to be alone because I'm not wanted? Silly. It's like .. all of a sudden, the whole idea of trying to "find someone" - why bother? Who cares? I'd rather be picking up my own socks, not someone else's!

Can I just drop all the energy that I've expended, could expend, all the emotion I've put around being stood up, betrayed, rejected .. since I didn't really want that anyway? What's going to manifest now?

I remember when I distinguished the whole thing about not attending the University of Michigan - twenty-eight years of bitterness just fell into nothingness. Is that what happens now?

More processing is required. More will be revealed.

Oh, and it seems as clear as the nose on my face that Joel is in the process of standing me up for tomorrow. And, I'm not upset.

At least, I'm pretty sure I'm not upset. I'll check in with you tomorrow as the day moves on - and we'll see if this pattern has truly fallen to dust, or if it's just hiding.

Interesting. Day #2 of merely holding out that I was going to be happy with myself when the day was done. It's such an empowering place to stand - it just doesn't have a lot of attachments like "I need a better job," or "I need more money."

It's pretty cool, and good things seem to be happening.

Okay, I started off this morning committed to ENDING the day feeling good about myself. So, I have accomplished several things:

I wrote Nate's personal statement to his law school application
I reviewed part of a business plan (potential new business)
I finished my contractor application to a grant writing agency
I started constituting myself as a consultant to contractors for the development of humans in space
I had a totally honest and productive conversation with my fellow church board members
I bought some SOS pads and SCRUBBED the wire racks for the oven - and the broiler pan
I spent most of the day away from the computer
I made dinner for myself and for Guy, and had a great conversation with him
I spent more time mentally thinking about Fabulair, and some of the content that goes into the website
I re-promised for another LSAT student whom I had offered to help with HER personal statement

So, I didn't get everything done on my list, but I certainly didn't wile away the day.

Have a very full day tomorrow, and a new business meeting at 5:30 before class tomorrow evening. It should be great!

Time to empty the mutts and get ready for sleep.

This is Joel - Joel, this is everybody.

Church today was SO cool, we had Ken, our NASA PhD engineer who designed the first digital computers for the Apollo program (!) speak to us about creating the design for human existence in space. He talked about the various challenges, about the need to get commercial enterprise involved, and so on, and how NASA is stuck in technology and doesn't know how to bridge the gap that gets commercial enterprise involved.

I, however, immediately had ideas of JUST how to do it..
which I will summarize in an email later today and send to him.

This afternoon, I have to re-write two personal statements for LSAT students, bake bread, pull together my receipts for my IRS audit on Wednesday, and .. something else. What else? I'll remember. Oh, I have to write a letter to our erstwhile minister about what direction we have decided to go .. in case she is unwilling to meet with us.

And, I have two netflix to watch. And .. is that it? I think so. However, it's naptime now. Toodles!

Joel - this is the new man that I like so much 

This morning's blood sugar = 88. AWESOME!

I'm having a hard time starting this morning. Joel said he wanted to come over for breakfast, but .. so far, he hasn't. So, I think I'm on my own there.

Today, I have to read some specs for grant funding that Judy gave me. One of them is essentially a re-write of something I've done before (two years ago) of course, the data copy is gone, so I get to re-type and format the 42 pages. BLEH.

I should also re-do my filing cabinet. I have all these old file folders that I set up for Camber (which was now three years ago) and I need to re-do those so that I can utilize them better. And, that is about my day, I think.

I have a bunch of movies and DVDs that have already sold from last week that I must get packaged up and shipped off. I also need to go through all of the floppy diskettes and the casette tapes and just start pitching stuff. It's silly hanging on to all of this stuff for all of this time. Bleh.

Okay, time for oatmeal, then some reading.

The annual party in 90 minutes. I'm about the readiest I've ever been at this point. Of course, having a bunch of people over on Wednesday night helped.

I have to vacuum, put the dogs up, and see about changing the lamp in the bar. And put on some decent clothes. I'm actually cooking dinner right now, so that I don't lose my mind later by having had nothing to eat.

Wrote a poem last night - here it is:

The Last Man

He is every perfection
Lean, strong, chisled, reticent
Exuding love and kindness
His being distracts me
and I dream of next being with him

Yet, he is the last man
The last man withholding
The last man unavailable
The last man who won't commit

He is the last man for whom I will pine unrequited and unwanted

He is the last man with whom I will initiate, pursue, and persist

You are the perfect man, Travis
And you are the last one
I will always love you
And I will forget you now

It's a big old clearance sale! I winnowed down my VHS collection, and put 55 of them on Amazon today. Next, in the demented Divo sale - the CD collection that NEVER gets listened to! I'll probably have over 250 items on Amazon within the end of the day.

Have a list of things to get done an arm long, so I'd better get to it.

Started loading up the gift bags for my friends who are coming over tomorrow for my birthday. I got matching "Tweety" hats, cocktail napkins, hooters and gift bags, and it is my intention to fill them up with meaningless trifles to amuse my closest friends, and to make them feel welcome and loved. I had in mind that I would need a LOT of stuff to fill these things up; I had been accumulating little bits of stuff for weeks, but I was expecting a trip to the dollar store today.

When I ripped open the gift bags, I found out that they were VERY small! Wow. I have little things for each person (well, for two people that I really don't know all THAT well - guests - I have meaningless trinkets) and I think I can fill up the bags without anyone feeling slighted. And without having to shop for anything more.

The damned bank charged me $60 for "NSF" fees, and I wasn't overdrawn! Bastards.

Last night in class, we talked a little about that movie "What the (*&$% do I know?"
I really want to get to see that. One woman was talking about it, and she said that they had distinguished particles from waves. She said that everything is moving around us all the time as waves; that represents possibility. When we create something in our mind, we OBSERVE the wave, and it becomes a particle - or matter.

It just hit me how wrong it is of me to think about possible financial lack, because when I create that with my mind, it freezes the possibility "lack" right there in front of me, and that's what I get.

We'll see how much of an epiphany this really is.

I dreamt of Travis Friday night, last night and this late afternoon (during nap time.) I don't recall ever dreaming about someone THIS much.

I applied for a job at UH-Main tonight (what an UNFRIENDLY system. Bleh.) Didn't get any cleaning done. It's time for bed, and I still have to study for tomorrow night. I want to clean the apartment AND the car tomorrow.

Don't have any work tomorrow (or this week) except for Fabulair.

Well, it's Friday night. I finally got all of this client's records boxed up (he called, asked if I could stop by, I had two hours to get it done, ergo, it's done.) This weekend is ALL about cleaning the apartment. Sanitizing it. Cobwebs. Mirrors. Furniture all moved about. Everything out of shelves. Everything out of the drawers. That sort of cleaning.

Plus, I need to do the same kind of cleaning for the car. It's just not up to my standards.

Travis came over tonight, we had a very nice time for a few hours. He said something about something I had said at dinner MONTHS ago, which apparently had him thinking I wasn't interested in "that" way. At some point in the evening, SOMETHING happened in his brain, and he shut down like pouring cold water all over him.

I've invited him to the big Divo party, but I don't know if he's going to show up..

So, here I was, just checking email (you know I'm an email hooker, so I'm not fooling anyone, I just was sitting here) and an IM comes in from some guy that I've never heard of. He says this:

Thank you sooo much for your inspiring letter. I am a 64 year old gay male. I was married for 39 years, and raised four children. No one knew I was gay but myself, and I hid it for almost 40 years. My wife died of cancer in 1999, and immediately after her death, I told my children about my sexuality. I am a happy individual now, with a wonderful man. I am out and no longer hide who I am. I wish you only good in your life, and God will take care of the little people who do not or care not to understand. Thank you again.

This is the letter that he was talking about:


Letter from Mom

I'm sort of floored.

Okay, finally printing the church newsletters. I never got the schedule on what we're doing on three of the five Sundays in October, so I can't print anything but "TBA." Oh, well. After I print 33 of these puppies (in color, will I have enough ink?) I have to flip them over and try to manipulate stamps.com on the other side. Of course, this stupid thing is NOT printing in color. Bastard. I hate this fucking printer.

We'll see how this works.

Nicole has a little disruption going on in her work life, but it seems like it's going to work out just fine. Guy wants her resume BADLY, as he thinks he can place her in two shakes of a rabbit's tail.

Okay, enough with the printing issues. Back to creating some future.

A nice evening. Guy came over, we hung out, had dinner, watched a movie "The Butterfly Effect," which was .. twisted, but good. Now, I'm doing the laundry (finally) and about to take the mutts outside for one last pee.

My birthday dinner is almost filled up .. now, I have more invitees than I have places to sit. Only eight attendees (plus me) since I only have eight party hats, whistles and gift bags. Still have to hit the dollar stores for fun things to fill up the gift bags.

How do I now UNinvite the couple of people who haven't yet responded? And, do I invite Jarred? I want to .. pleh.

Perhaps I'll do that, and see if he responds.

Sunday morning. Skipped out on church, 'cause I wasn't awake enough. I have crap all over this bed in here that needs to be in a box before Guy comes over around 5:00.

Just stopped by Hollywood Video - they lured me in with a coupon promising a previously owned DVD for $9.99. Interestingly enough, they were offering three used DVDs for $25, which is LESS. Anyway. They had dozens of copies of .. crap. I haven't rented from them in three years? I think.

I have housework to do, too. And I just want to do some sleeping. I think.

At least on the surface of it.

I haven't paid rent yet this month. I asked UHCL if they would please put my check request at the head of the list so I could get paid this week. I have a client that I'm doing some accounting work for, from whom I expect to be paid on Saturday. I was actually expecting to get paid from him on Monday or Tuesday, and it seems that he took a trip out of town until Friday.

And, Scott in Austin owes me $525.00.

So.

Scott has decided that I have not helped him, and that I completed none of the projects that he asked for help with. Of course, that's simply not true. I completed everything for him. He's upset because he owes taxes to the IRS plus penalties for late filing. Of course, none of that had anything to do with me. He says he has no idea where he stands with anything .. etc. So, he's not going to pay me.

UHCL promised me that they had put my invoice in, but I just called accounting, and they have nothing in the system. Strangely, there is nothing in the system for the check that they just cut me a few weeks back, either. So, I don't know whether I am being lied to, as before, or whether ..

I can't get clarity on my current issue at hand (the tendency to put off doing work until it's just about due .. Mr. Procrastinate) I don't do anything that I don't HAVE to do, such as filing, marketing or whatever, unless something just snaps inside and I get it all done. Task lists and calendaring just don't matter a whit.

I have to have a breakthrough here. And I have to have it damned fast.

Okay, a nice sunny morning. I have confirmed (I think) that my UHCL check is being cut tomorrow .. of course, she was just nasty about that. The last time, I just took her word at it from an email, and it took them five more weeks. So, sorry, honey, that I irritated you, but you LIED to me last time, and then your boss lied to me and ..

So, deal.

Now, I have to get someone else to fly right. He's all cranky with me because he's having some issues with his own behavior, and he's trying to blame me, just because I've helped him with the paperwork.

No more accepting blame on the part of people who don't handle their own business.

I fell in a parking lot today, and although I didn't hurt myself, I got coated in mud. YUCK.

I found some uncashed checks in my client's paperwork .. and in checking them out, learned that WaMu no longer does merchant check verification. Weird.

Okay, I'm going to shower and then get back to creating file folders.

It just started raining, which explains my blistering headache. Well, that, and the self-induced stress load.

I hope to have some clarity tonight. I think I've sufficiently focused on this (really big) issue that confronts me. Confronts, boxes in, limits, defines ..

Got my Animated Animations Duck Dodgers thing back today. It seems that it, alone among all of the Warner Brothers art, is not sold out.

I need to sleep now. I was up, as you know, until very late, entertaining self-focused straight men who are flexible enough to get their attention where they can find it.

Well, here we are. It's Tuesday, and I'm clear what the personal issue is, I just don't have the clarity that I need yet.

And I need it, badly.

I have the LSAT student coming over today .. in an hour.

time shifts

Okay, now. He's due here now. I have a bed full of paperwork to data enter today, and .. not much else. Board meeting tonight. I don't know why.

Had the masseur Michael over last night. He was .. oh, two hours late in getting here. Then, he flopped around on the sofa for three hours, drinking wine, and talking about things. He did the usual grabbing on his crotch (for three hours? I'm surprised it's not chafed) and playing with his flat stomach, and talking about how his girlfriend isn't sexually satisfying.

UGH.

So, I think he's like Vlad from "Camp." Seeking validation, but nothing more that involves a commitment. Wants to soak up as much validation as possible. Oh, and as he was trotting out the door, he tells me (again) that he doesn't have much going on today, and I should call him .. 'cause he loves being here with me.

So, I haven't had enough sleep. I'm cranky. E ripped me a new one for entertaining a sexually confused creature last night from 2:30 to 3:00. And, I have gotten NO CLARITY on my issue at hand.

Bleh.

Got a lot of fabulairing done yesterday, now I just need to manifest the money to buy all the samples and initial inventory. And pay E to get the website deployed. And, and, and.

Issues again.

So, I'll spend the afternoon going through all of this paperwork, and trying to figure out how to enter closed transactions into QuickBooks without screwing up the balances. Fun, huh?

Sign the petition

If it angers you that the GOP let the assault weapon ban expire, do something about it.

Afternoon ..

Well, interesting. I've been putting off doing this accounting job for a few days, now the client is out of the office until Friday. Uh, hello? Perhaps if I'd kept my service promise, I'd be paid and wouldn't have to worry about .. well, everything.

And, my Austin client is ducking me. Of course, he owes me money..

I skipped class tonight. I have to run by Nicole's and pick up some paperwork, and then Michael the Masseur may stop by around 9:00. I have tomorrow to clear through work and then .. what? I don't know. I just don't know what I'm going to do.

It's like .. I need someone to come in tomorrow with a business plan that needs writing, and ready to pay the retainer.

I probably should have gone to class tonight. I'd have probably gotten something great out of it. I just didn't feel like it. Bleh.

I have to make the bed (laundered the sheets) and such.

Ahhhhh .. Angel: Season Four. I only have disc one, so I cannot do what I wish to, and watch the WHOLE THING tonight. I have to save two episodes for TOMORROW night. I am functioning on approximately three hours of sleep today, and I've been mostly on the go all day. So, the little man in my brain is shutting down the lights, and I don't quite know how profound I can be tonight.

Church tomorrow morning, and then I have to crank on the work all afternoon. A client's financial records to organize, put in file folders, enter into QuickBooks and then have them ready for him to pick up.

Had a little electronic discussion with a gay lad in Atlanta tonight. He started things off by telling me he thought that Hillary Clinton was a communist. Ugh. Of course, that required dissection. While he did not give much ground, he was required to admit that none of Mrs. Clinton's positions or advocations were inherently Communist.

THEN, he started in on Ralph Nader. Hello? Irrelevant? Can you SPELL "who cares?" Ralph Nader is a Communist.

No, he's not.

Yes, he is. He endorses the Green Party platform, which is Communist.

No, he doesn't. He sought their nomination as their candidate, as they were on the ballot in all 50 states. He was not selected.

Yes, he did.

No, he didn't.

So, you're saying that Ralph Nader changed his politics?

No, I am not.

Well, you just said that he was no longer supporting the Green party platform.

No, I said he was never an endorser of the 2004 Green party platform.

Whence, much cutting and pasting of elements of the 2004 Green party platform ensued.

Yes, I admit that the platform of the Green party is Communistic. However, Ralph Nader never adopted those positions. Here, please look at the Nader website (hyperlink supplied.)

Apparently, that was too challenging. Back we go to the Green party website.

So, I said "Nader was the Green Party candidate in 2000. He was not in 2004. Are you speaking about the platform of the Green Party in 2000, or are you attributing the platform of the Green party in 2004 to Nader's campaign in 2000? The Green party has taken a significant shift to the left since 2000."

Much time passed.

Then, "Okay, so you're right, the 2000 Green party platform did not endorse the positions that I was speaking of."

Then, he started back at it.

So, I said "Trying to discuss facts with someone who takes their information from Fox News is like trying to discuss religion with a Mormon. It's best to smile, nod and move on."

Oh, my. Talk about gas on the fire.

Tirade, tirade, tirade.

I just kept answering "smile and nod."

Then, I took him off my "buddy" list. I mean, come ON. A gay person taking his information from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh? Why not just be Jewish, and write press releases for Joseph Goebbels?

Anyway. I don't think that Kerry is going to win this, anyway. He's allowed the Bush campaign to define him, and he isn't creating a vision for undecided voters to look into as they make up their minds. He isn't motivating. The new, happy, all pablum Democratic party (Republican lite) just isn't anything different than what the Republicans offer. Regardless of what Hannity says.

And, I think that Geo. II will completely pander to the radical right .. to get elected. Once he's re-elected, he's going to go back to status quo ante and the right is going to be REALLY pissed. Not that it will count for anything, but they're going to be really tweaked when they find out that they were used and abused.

Ah, well.

I need to take these mutts outside, and get to bed. More foundational meditation is on tonight's schedule. God, I hope I get through all this crap soon.

Ugh. Michael woke me up when he came in last night, and then I couldn't go back to sleep to save my life.

I guess it was all for a purpose; I'm trying to uncover the deeply held belief structures that are relevant in my life right now, and last night I was meditating to work on money issues. I got a lot of revelation on it, and that's all well and good, but now what?

Yikes.

I've pretty much decided that I'm done with having Michael stay here when he's in town. I just don't find that it brings anything of value to me, and it's just more work.

Have I mentioned that the kitchen is REALLY clean? It's making me very happy.

I've already started knocking out work this morning, which is helpful. The financial pressure this month is very serious, and I'm working to get everything under control by Monday.

I just see on my Netflix account that Angel Season 4 is shipping today! YAY! That makes me SO happy. I watched "Red Dirt" last night - it started off slowly, and built up into this incredible, non-sexual love story. As the movie was winding down, the two characters that are in love just SPLIT - without even saying good bye. It was heart breaking! Then, the one guy comes BACK several weeks later - and they finally confess to one another that they're helplessly in love. And, the one guy gets in his truck and LEAVES! Yeek! The one left behind resolves himself to stay in his tiny Mississippi town and take care of his mother, who's insane! GREAT movie.

I have to jump into the shower pretty soon, I have the LSAT student over at 10:30, and then lunch with Jeffrey. I'm cruising through this quality control manual. This is good!

So, the kitchen is CLEAN. I finally moved some cabinet stuff around that has bugged me for, oh, years. Of course, in the process, I broke a Pyrex cake pan, and the Pyrex lid to a casserole dish. PLEH. But, I have enough Pyrex to open a bakery, so what's the difference? Everything is all clean and sparkly up above the cabinets, which is such a great feeling. I may be dreaming, but I think it smells better in here.

Of course, Mikey would point out that the dogs still need grooming, but ..

Michael showed up today; a day early. He looks GREAT! Wow. He's working in Galveston this weekend. He got here, flopped down on the bed in the guest room here (I was, of course, tethered to my computer.) I told him about his co-worker the Colt model having stayed here .. he asks if I've been cheating on him..

No, really.

So, we're talking about this and that. And, I mentioned that I had hung out with my friend Jeff the other night. And, he asks me again if I've been cheating on him..

No, REALLY.

Okay, so now, he flops down on the sofa, and I'm cleaning the kitchen some more. So, I asked if his wife was still moving to Conroe with their kids, and he says, yes, at the end of March. And I asked whether he was moving in with them there.

He says, no, he's going to try not to. So, I asked where he was going to move.

He said he didn't know .. he'd just move in here.

With me.

No, REALLY!

I told him that there was no room in here for all of his stuff.

He laughed.

I guess today should be called "What a difference a day makes." Spent some time meditating this morning, and accomplished a huge breakthrough in anxiety levels. It's just such a relief.

Got a bunch of projects cranked out today, and then, took a wild hair and started cleaning up the top of the kitchen cabinets. Took everything down, cleaned everything, the dishwasher is running on all the stuff that I couldn't get clean enough, and hopefully, the whole kitchen will SMELL better soon. Ugh. It's amazing how much DIRT gets all over everything in a short time in this place.

It's the dogs. Got to be. Uh-huh.

This evening, more projects, have to finish watching a movie I started several days ago .. tomorrow is packed with different appointments, which will make it difficult to accomplish anything specific.

Tonight should have been a Travis night. However ..

Found a tranny for a 1973 Imperial today online. YAY! It's pretty cheap, too.

Ugh .. this review of issues that I had fooled myself into thinking were "handled" is quite the mental and emotional load. Yikes.

Dinner with a client/friend tonight. He's been giving me guilt for months that I don't just "stop in" when I'm down teaching or at church. I cannot seem to get him to understand that I never "stop in" anywhere. I think it's rude.

A conversation between an anonymous friend and me today .. brought about by viewing this

-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 11:31 AM
To: L
Subject: RE: I think you should watch this video .. watch the WHOLE thing, and then think about it.

Your last two questions are those that are the most disturbing ..

From: L
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 9:56 AM
To: Douglas
Subject: RE: I think you should watch this video .. watch the WHOLE thing, and then think about it.

You know, I’m not an engineer but I agree with everything you’ve said. And I recall thinking at the time that there was ABSOLUTELY no damage OUTSIDE the Pentagon. And even with all the damage, it didn’t seem to be large enough for a plane that big to have made. It’s just mind-boggling that someone planned this whole event – but who?

And, yes, what DID happen to the 757? Remember, soon-to-be-ex Solicitor General Ted Olsen’s wife, Barbara – the right-wing ex-prosecutor – was on that plane and made a call to him – at least allegedly she did – saying they had been hijacked. Not to mention, Doug, that Dulles is so close to the Pentagon that unless it flew considerably AWAY from Washington it couldn’t have gained much height or speed. And yet it went off the radar 45 minutes earlier? How can that be? All the reports said the plane simply got in the air and immediately turned toward, presumably, the White House and the Capitol.

As much as I despise George W. Bush and all he stands for, I can’t fathom – intelligently or reasonably – that as vile as he and his minions are they could have come up with something as horrible as this. So then I ask WHO and WHY?



-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 9:48 AM
To: L
Subject: RE: I think you should watch this video .. watch the WHOLE thing, and then think about it.

I think that a 757 did NOT hit the Pentagon. I have always thought that it did not. Being a complete airliner junkie, I have thought since 9/11/01 that something was WRONG.

1. a 757 could not hit the building that low to the ground without first having had some of its low-hanging pieces (engines, for instance) drag into the ground. The dynamics of the "hit" don't make sense.

2. a 757 can't FLY 530 miles an hour that close to the ground. It would start coming apart in mid-air from structural damage

3. There were no "bones" of a dead 757 outside the Pentagon - the engines, for instance, would have been too dense to punch through the outside wall, OR the hole would have been much larger

4. The hole was too round, and extends too far into the building to have been made by a 757 - only something very dense, moving very fast, with a lot of explosive energy could have created that hole

5. They never found the "black boxes" from the 757 (the found them for the 767s that hit the WTC buildings)

Now, this leads to disturbing questions:

· What did happen to the AA 757 and the people on it?

· Why are we being told something other than the truth?

· Did the terrorists get their hands on something like a cruise missile?

Or the biggest question - was the whole thing a scam?

We have already talked about that the WTC buildings' collapse doesn't make common sense

· The WTC towers clearly did not have heat-related structural damage sufficient to cause a collapse of the central cores just minutes before the collapse, as evidenced by the firefighters' radio communications as they were going UP the stairwells in the central cores above the 30th floors right before the collapse

· WTC 7 (the hotel) was neither hit, on fire nor damaged other than superficially, and it spontaneously collapsed into its foundations

· The WTC towers' solid steel "ribs" that were driven deep into the granite by pile drivers were destroyed .. how was that possible?

· In 1991, the WTC survived an underground explosion of tons of TNT, calculated to damage the "ribs" and bring the buildings down. The structures survived with minimal damage. How can we assert that airplanes hitting above the 40th floor caused the buildings to totally collapse structurally?

· WTC 2 - the first building to collapse - burned less than an hour, and the airplane clearly hit the building at an angle to the corner - most of the destructive force AND the fuel blew out through the other side of the building. How, then, did the building collapse first with less damage and less time for the building to be damaged than WTC 1?

Given that the physical structure damage and the lack of airplane parts outside the Pentagon, we can only conclude that we're not being told the truth. Since we're not being told the truth about two different events in two different parts of the country, it seems only logical that we are being lied to in an organized and pre-arranged fashion.

It's a scam.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: L
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 8:45 AM
To: douglas
Subject: RE: I think you should watch this video .. watch the WHOLE thing, and then think about it.

Hmmm. That was very thought provoking. I need to watch it again because a telephone call interrupted me. What do you think about this?

-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 10:59 PM
To: drdivo
Subject: I think you should watch this video .. watch the WHOLE thing, and then think about it.



I've been saying this for nearly three years. If you want to tell me I'm nuts afterward, go for it. But only after you've watched the WHOLE thing and taken in the information. (Some of you won't need to be so open minded)

Another picture of Brian 

Here's a picture of Brian. 

Tuesday after lunch ..

I've been unsettled since last night. Got some of the things resolved for myself today, but seeing Brian last night was ... just hurtful and weird. It's clear he's either escorting or "kept," but, his distant friendliness was just such a rejection, I guess.

Lance came over this morning and tried to help me configure my POS HP printer to fax a document off the hard drive. He was also stymied. I just need to replace this printer sometime soon.

Board meeting tonight is cancelled, which is good.

Have to get to drafting this quality management document for a mortgage company. Then, help Lance with a deal of his. After that, I'm pretty much out of things to work on. It will be cool and weird at the same time. I'm hoping to do some book keeping for a client, but he hasn't said yes for sure yet.

This week's church subject is "There is no spoon." We'll be talking about that nothing is real to spirit than thought. So, I'm spending time thinking about that and trying to structure our "lesson" for Sunday.

Saw "Suspect Zero" last night with Nicole. It was very interesting, a little disturbing. It was nice to get out with her for a while. I'm going over to see her and Nancy tonight.

I have so much to process, and I just feel like mentally "checking out" rather than deal with it. I think I'll watch this movie, and then see if I'm ready to start synthesizing.

FINALLY got the printer/scanner/fax/thing working correctly with the computer. Ugh. What a nightmare that has been. I still can't fax directly off disc from a document, which SUCKS. I think Lance is going to see if he has any magic he can work on it tomorrow.

I've decided that tomorrow's church is going to be a facilitated discussion .. rather than a discourse. For several reasons. First, I don't know what the HECK I'm going to say, and second, .. see reason #1. So, I'm going to zip through some of my texts, highlight some sections that are relevant, and then go have at it.

I'm only expecting four or five people tomorrow anyway..

I have a friend coming over in about an hour, so I need to make some dinner. I should run the vacuum, also.

Tomorrow, after church, I need to focus on knocking out some stuff that I've been putting off because I haven't been able to print/compute for nearly two weeks!

Ah, a beautiful sunny day! I have my LSAT student here; I may have to beat him soon. After that, I'm headed out to Office Depot, and then to get my tire fixed, get gas, stop at the new CVS to rip coupon savings from them ..

Michael is coming tomorrow for the weekend. 

Almost time for bed. I have to be up early, buy some printer cartridges, crank out a BUNCH of work .. I really need to catch up [again.]

Don't they have great graphics support? 

So. I went to see "Hair" tonight at TUTS.

As one could expect from the most successful company producing Broadway musicals in the country, it was pretty. In fact, as we trouped into the theater, I thought and said "good set!" It was great.

The last time I saw a production of Hair, it was put on at my own Country Playhouse here in Houston. It was just over three years ago, and it was the first time it was produced on a large stage in Houston for many years.

TUTS' performance of Hair had everything going for it in terms of a musical performance - a complete, professional "orchestra," dazzling light display, a HUGE cast, everyone radio miked, beautiful costumes..

It is a show about the soul of a nation, performed in this instance without soul.

At a time when the country is again embroiled in pointless conflict, when politics polarizes the nation to the point of open hostility, when the government seemingly can't be trusted, when our very values as a nation are being questioned - what better time to field a soulful delivery of "Hair?"

We got the over-performed, "hey-look-at-me," no cohesiveness, staged without sense of soul, without sense of what makes an audience fall in love with the hippies, and breaks their hearts at the end of the show.
We got the show filled with young performers who have no heart, cannot connect with heartbreak, with rage, with fear for their lives, with futility, with creating a veneer of acceptance and love that sustains them in the face of a world they have rejected.

We get a Claude who is a magnificent technician in terms of his musical delivery, who cannot convey his angst, his bravado, his confusion, his hopelessness. We get a Burger who is just loud and obnoxious, rather than charming and filled with love while he taunts us, and teases our very belief structures. We get a cast of people who have no relationships with each other, save for their blocking.

The Country Playhouse production of Hair was staffed entirely by amateurs. Oh, yes, to be sure, everyone got paid. The actors received a stipend which did not cover the cost of fuel to drive to and from rehearsals. The director/choreographer and the musical director, working with budgets that wouldn't dress the cast of TUTS' production, got paid an embarassing sum for the creative and financial wizardry that they displayed. And the cast .. the cast, who received ten dollars for their performances, were ALIVE. They were the Vietnam era. They were the youth who knew that what was happening was wrong, and was reprehensible, and felt the only power that they had was to create a riotous, non-violent rebellion. They LOVED each other. They KNEW each other's back story. The BELIEVED in what they were doing together.

Claude started the show sitting, dead center of the stage. Just staring at the audience from behind mirrored sunglasses. For a half hour. With no prelude, he began to sing the opening words to the song in a clear, true voice. He began to rise, challenging the audience in the opening moments of the show with his message and his tone. At the moment that the chorus began, the cast EXPLODED into the theater. The harmonies were perfect, and unassisted electronically. Pitches were true, timbres rich and delicious, and the voices filled with the excitement of youth challenging existing structure with new ideas. The show moved fluidly from number to number, the story developed by the passion of each actor, and the clarity of their vocals.

TUTS cannot hope for that energy rippling through the nervous systems of their audiences. Their cast made no effort to connect with the audience. Even their in-audience interactions had the disconnect of rehearsed behavior.

EVERY number ripped into the consciousness of the audience (in the Country Playhouse version.) With just four instruments, the band created an authentic rock concert that perfectly supported the music. Number after number tore through the audience, taking them from laughter to outrage to reflection to revulsion to examination and back again. Even though they skipped the famous nude sequence, they took on buring of the flag, group love making, interracial relationships, drug use ..

TUTS did the nude scene. Yep. They sure did. In blue light. Well, they were probably nude. I think.

The show ends with Claude going into the Army, and then dying in Vietnam. TUTS whipped this concept over and over, making it the focus of Claude's hallucination sequence, and then making it the central piece of the closing number. Claude was shot, blown up, shot again, shot some more, got up, talked to the angels, shot a few more times, machine gunned, blown up again, and then shot. A few more times. The Valentine's Day massacre wasn't as violent. During the [should have been moving] closing number "Let the Sunshine In," Claude's uniformed body lies center stage, which the cast sings to the audience. TWO of the performers looked like they were trying to convey sadness. TWO. The rest were as exuberant as the cast of
Camp performing Grease.

At the moment of the show that TUTS should have been ripping the hearts of its audience out, I was wondering just where it was I had parked the car.

Okay, I didn't want to say this, but here it goes. If the cast of TUTS' "Hair" had put as much energy and authenticity into their performances as they had into their bows, maybe they would have had something.

Maybe.

Maybe if they had had the sense to hire Chris Ayres and Claudia Dyle, they would have had something.

Three and a half years ago, I came out at intermission on opening night of Hair at the Country Playhouse, and asked Claudia Dyle to marry me. I was nearly speechless, the show was so good. When Brandon Peters performed the hallucination sequence, I was captivated. When the cast each brought Brandon (Claude) a flower or a hug or a look as he entered the Army induction office in his uniform, I thought my heart would burst. Moments later, the cast members carried a casket out onto the stage, with an American flag draped over it. They BLED the song "Sunshine." My heart bled with them, and the tears streamed down my face.

THAT is what theater is about, folks. It's about MOVING people. It's about making them THINK and FEEL and INVOLVE themselves in the story you're telling from the stage. It's NOT about holding your arms just so, or having the best makeup, or the prettiest costumes, or the most dazzling set.

So, to the actors, producers and board members of TUTS - if you want to know what HAIR was supposed to be, talk to someone who saw it out at the run down, underfunded Country Playhouse. Everett Evans can wax euphorically about your show, but it doesn't mean SQUAT, because we in the theater know the truth. The actors in the Country Playhouse out-sang, out-danced, out-acted, out-emoted and out-did you, and they didn't get paid dirt. They all worked full-time jobs during the day to support themselves, and slogged through seven weeks of unpaid rehearsals. The musical director SHAMED you, TUTS, she worked with people who just WANTED to be in that show. She had less than an hour each night with them, and she made you look like you were a bunch of prima dons and donnas who can't control their own clutching grab at the spotlight to work with their fellow cast to produce the musical harmonies that make the songs from HAIR part of our culture forty years later. The director/choreographer/designer/producer had NO support, except for his unpaid stage manager and unpaid tech people, and he created an environment that brought out the nuances of HAIR, and so enhanced the story and energy that the audiences were brought to the brink of what their emotional systems could stand.

For $19 a seat, the audiences of the Country Playhouse got nearly 250 minutes of raw energy, emotion, grace, harmony, music, rebellion, humor, repugnance and thought.

For $77.25 a seat, TUTS owes its audience a life altering experience. Not a video.

To Chris, Claudia, Brandon, Scott, Johanna, Greg, Erin, Richard and everyone else that made HAIR at CPH something that still brings me chills .. thank you for being what real performers ARE, for your passion, commitment and energy.

FINALLY funded. Still waiting for funding myself so that I can do lots of important things like .. well, you know the drill.

Going tonight to see "Hair" at TUTS .. with William, Guy and Nicole, plus who knows who else.

I hope it's as good as Country Playhouse's version was a few years back.

I was up until 3:00 this morning searching for leather goods online for Fabulair. Now, I'm wiped out, and I have to make dinner for at least three tonight. PLEH!

I found a cute graphic that I just slapped into my blog. And, I spent four HOURS working on my drdivo.com website last night. Hopefully, I can get that deployed sometime here in the next few days.

Okay, it may be time for a nap. I'm exhausted.

this pretty much says it all 

Another pic of Luiz 

Luiz the Brazilian ..  

Monday morning that's actually Tuesday. I have my LSAT student coming in 25 minutes, and then I have work to crank out. I've already done a bit of house cleaning, and this afternoon, I have documents I have to prepare.

For some reason, I decided to post two pictures of Luiz, the Brazilian on my blog. There he is!

The Colt model replied to my email note, and he was NOT very happy. In fact, he was downright nasty. Of course, as Lance pointed out - he did never either apologize nor thank me for what I did do for him last week.

Okay, tutoring time.