Category: Uncategorized

INTRODUCTION

Being the younger brother of a marijuana activist is tough work.  You wouldn’t think so, considering the nature (no pun intended) of the work, but it’s true.  Most people think of potheads as disillusioned youth listening to Pink Floyd on vinyl, lazily floating though life with no sense of direction or accomplishment.  All they do is wake up at 4pm, smoke weed until 4am, and repeat.  For my brother, this is far from the truth.  Russ smokes pot to relax, as he spends ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week working, whether it be his podcast, or his weekend radio show, or a random interview he has to get up at six am to do, or his software company that he created.  Not to mention all of the reading he has to do to stay on top of politics and culture.  The good news is that he gets to spend the day in pajamas to do most of his work.  The bad news is that he is stuck at a computer all day, and some of the night, doing that work.  And while some men might, at the end of the day, plop down in front of the TV with a frosty beer, Russ would much rather smoke a bowl.  The connotations of each activity are so incredibly different to most people.  Even I, who am liberal minded and pretty laid back, still have to shake that image of the lazy Dazed and Confused stoner, who giggles at everything they say and stares at you with bloodshot sleepy eyes.  Alcohol, meanwhile, has two images for me: alcoholics in wifebeaters and fun party time drink.  Seriously.  Both images are consequences of the media, and I have a hard time shaking these stereotypes from my head. (more…)

This past Friday my friend and t-shirt designer Missy came down from Tacoma to spend some Awesome Time in Portland.  Since Paul was at work, I deemed it necessary to hang out with her.  So I went downtown, found her, we ate pizza, drank a soda, maybe, and then headed off on an ADVENTURE! (more…)

In a capitalist society, people fear monopolies because it means that one company or corporation has complete control of something that people want, so they can charge however much they want for said thing. Like if I was the sole distributor of toothpicks, I could charge fifty bucks per toothpick if I wanted, and there would be nothing you could do about it!

But the truth is that monopolies are everywhere (clearchannel? cableone/comcast? microsoft? intermountain gas? for you idahoans), and they exist through loopholes, and it sucks. But on the Internet, everything changes. (more…)

I was having a philosophical journey, if you will, with my friend Megan last night over Facebook chat, about sociopaths and America and all sorts of things. I wish Facebook saved chats but it doesn’t, so I don’t remember how we even got into the conversation. I do know that we talked about Dexter for a bit. Season 3 opener was great! I’m excited.

Anyway, I made some point to connect independence and sociopathy/antisocial disorders. My position went something like this: Americans breed their children to be insular and to not trust people. This is done not by words but by actions, which, I argue, are more important than words, and even more fundamentally, dictate behavior much more than words do, especially to children. In other words, you may tell your child to “love thy neighbor,” but if you do not act that way, a child will not know how to love thy neighbor. I think this a pretty solid argument. Social interaction isn’t instinctual; if it were, children wouldn’t be born completely helpless. A horse walks within minutes of its birth, because walking is crucial for its survival. Human babies, however, are born only to be sponges for information.

For most of the evolution of man past its monkeyhood (yes, humans were once monkeys; I don’t care what god you follow, it’s fact), we have banded together for security and survival. Forming social groups was essential to our brain, language, and social development. In other words, we are who we are because of others.

In America, however, things are changing. We are becoming increasingly distrustful of our fellow man. We lock our doors, bar our windows, teach our children not to talk to anyone on the playground, never talk to our neighbors, watch as hundreds of men, women, and children are shows in brutal and agonizing ways on news and television and movies. Dateline stories about child predators, strange Muslim people flying planes into our buildings, our own money going down the toilet because of corrupt businessmen … more and more, people are blaming other people for the downfall of our country.

And let’s not forget divorce. What better way to force a child to consider the benefits of independence than by severing the most important connection they can have: the connection of a loving father and mother.

This has been going on for fifty years, maybe more. Each new generation is being taught that people are bad and not to be trusted. And so as children grow up, they learn to be “independent” as a survival tactic. Ten thousand years of evolution now thrown away to serve the Solitary Person. Parents, grandparents, hell, even children are bypassed these days. In America, there is only You, and everyone else is a mystery.

This, I say, breeds sociopathy. Antisociality is becoming the norm in America as people disconnect from society and connect to their computers. But that is a whole other blog for another day.

This antisocial disorder that pervades our society is the problem of our country. People don’t really care about foreign affairs other than making sure that Muslims don’t kills us and that we get their oil for our cars. Neighborhood Watches crumble as people stop giving a shit about the elderly couple at the end of the block. We’re all cooped up in our homes with a general distrust for everyone. And with the current economical crisis, it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

I’m sorry, I seem to be rambling a bit, and that’s because I can’t remember exactly what I said last night, other than that Americans are sociopaths by the very nature of our independence, our severing ourselves from virtually everything. I think my next post will be about the ironic replacement of society via the internet, aka A bunch of sociopaths gathering together.

The title should be sung in the style of “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof.

So today was a bit of a productive day. I challenge my fear of the Portland mass-transit system and managed to make it quite easily around town.

My first task was to get myself all prettified, which meant wearing nice slacks and the only nice white dress shirt I own (if you’ve known me for more than six months, you have seen this shirt). I looked good. I looked damn good. I grabbed my man bag, stuffed with The Glass Menagerie (“Pleurosis! I thought you said blue roses!“), some resume/headshots, and a notepad in case creativity struck me (it didn’t), and headed off into the wild Portland yonder. (more…)

I would generally consider myself a moderate person, Aristotelian in that I believe too much excess or deficit is harmful to the body and psyche.  I spend a lot of my time trying to get the right amounts of everything, whether it be food, drink, or the right amount of reverb on a particular song.  Usually, then, when it comes to morality and ethics, I can be pretty moderate, with some exceptions. (more…)

Last night I had some weird dreams. I think it was because I was hopped up on candy and soda (I know, I’m such a party animal these days). The only one I remember clearly was about me chasing down my brother’s dog Bitamus (a giant Great Dane) through my old neighborhood, because some people wanted to kill him? Capture him? I don’t know. Anyway, at some point I found out that Bitamus was actually a hologram or something, and was inside a laptop. So I had to protect the laptop. And then I meet the bad guy, right in my old front yard. He’s got a gun and is about to shoot me. At this point my neighbor, Joan, mother of my two earliest friends, Mark and Doug, walks slowly down her driveway, smoking a cigarette. She doesn’t seem to notice that I’m in dire straits, which is somewhat frustrating. I don’t know how, but I manage to get behind the bad guy, but I’m on the ground, and he’s standing over me with his back to my face. So I, not shitting you, grab the guy’s ankles and kick him in the taint as hard as I can, multiple times, while shouting at Joan to for the love of god call the police, and the guy starts shooting at me from behind (why he didn’t just shoot my leg or something, I’ll never know). And that’s when I wake up. At 3am, full of fighting energy.

So sue me if I slept in today.

Ah, Saturday. One of two days of the week where work is thrown out the window, where the sunshine can be fully enjoyed, and where, at night, the whores come out. This Saturday was no different, as walking by various clubs can attest to; women in skirts so short they might as well be called shirts, men wearing cologne so powerful it is sure to be on the periodic table of elements soon. And crazy people babbling to themselves as though they were at a bar, when they are really on the corner of a busy intersection. This is a Saturday night in Portland, and it was part of our Saturday night, the final night of MFNW. (more…)

Well, last night was marred by something that was bound to happen eventually: I got rejected from the Doug Fir Lounge for having an expired license. So day three of MFNW was a little choppy, and it was mostly my fault, so let me explain in more detail… (more…)

Yesterday was, in some ways, more successful than Wednesday, as yesterday we got to see Del. And that’s the coolest thing ever. We lost Paul for most of the day because he was playing in a softball game, which meant it was just Missy and me. I had to be Primary Navigator, which is never, ever good. And since the Wonder Ballroom, our first location, was not downtown whatsoever, I was a little worried about how the hell we were going to get there. I have a terrible sense of direction, thanks to the almost non-existent bus system in Boise and the fact that downtown there is about four blocks total. Paul supplied us with directions and buses to take, though, and they were spot on, so thanks for that, Paul! (more…)