Life Politics

Last one...

2007-03-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

I start to get wildly optimistic about the day during my morning shower. Everything I could, should, and will do today appears in front of me like a piece of cheerful sheet music, and I can never quite remember if I’ve already scrubbed my shoulders and my back to get out of the tub in under fifteen minutes. I’m just too damn excited to be efficient.

Then comes the toughest decision I’ll have all day: what to wear. I remember one day this semester, I was getting dressed to take a midterm for a history class where my knowledge of highly particular events would be tested to the fullest extent. I had read and read and read the story of Reconstruction the previous night in trepidated preparation. All of a sudden that morning, though, I realized that all that cramming gave me the right to strut in to that exam with a real arrogant swagger. That’s when I reached for my blinding red adidas and my shimmering escalade t-shirt.

After another quick look at the mirror (it really is tough to look away sometimes), one of my roommates will invariably ask if I’d like to partake in the inevitable inhalation of drugs. On days when I don’t actually have a midterm, I do love to start my day this way. It feels so subversive, so disrespectful to flaunt the WASP ideal of the sober, dutiful American work ethic by lending one’s self the ability to observe the images we project. The moral majority professes to rid the world of this pleasure, but they have no accurate detection system against people who can use illegal substances while performing all the legal activities of an exultant existence. We should live to spite them.

Now it’s time to get on that Enfield Bus that’ll take me into campus as it does everyday. It’s ok if I get to the corner just in time to see the bus fly by because another one comes in seven minutes, the kind of time I’d like to think I’ll be able to spare my whole life. But I don’t usually miss the bus. Twice this year, a driver has been so attentive as to take notice of my desperate condition on the other side of busy Enfield, and they hold up traffic to allow me to cross the street and board the trusty vehicle. Sometime, I’ll figure out a way to tell both Coach and Weird Guy, the two drivers who did this for me, just how much these gestures mean to me. For now, I’ll just settle for some smiles, salutations, and p’s and q’s.

So down Enfield we rumble. To the left, I see the white and pink springtime blossoms of Pease Park, the grand old friend who provides so much space for outdoor thought and reflection. No swatch of land means more to me than that narrow grassy knoll, and I bet I’ll feel even more connected to those old oak trees as life goes on.

As we approach the huge rectangular campus buildings with red tiled, half-hipped roofs, I plug my ever-changing personal soundtrack in to my ears. My bus now arriving at my crowded stop, I leap from the opened doors down to the concrete. The bright sneakers stick the landing, and I have again successfully completed my trip into the crisp breezes of a beehive of thousands just like me.

I weave in and out of the faces, stepping in time with the rhythms in my head. I’m looking so hard for an expression that seems to recognize me, and I just know it really will appear outside a dream soon. I’m trying with all my strength to not make the sudden movements which scare away such glances, but it’s so difficult to reveal one’s feelings without blurting them out clumsily.

Well, here I am rambling again. I’ve turned my weekly writings inward because I want to learn to write about other things than mere events, to make the transition to writing about everything and nothing at the same time. My new job will put this quest on hold for awhile, though, as I’ll have no more time to write at length in leisure until this summer. So this will be the last blog. This summer, I’m going to be storyboarding for a stab at a novel, so I’ll let you know how that turns out.

I really have enjoyed connecting with you all, and I know that we’ll be doing it again soon. Conversations like ours are the only hulks that can slow down the constant American construction of individualist and materialist progress, and I’m going to make sure we can do this again. Your readership will always be my humblest privilege and my perpetual motivation. Thanks for reading.

Consumer Democracy

2007-03-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

I hate the last chapters of political books. Coming after pages and pages of rightfully harsh assessments of the state of our fundamentally unequal society, the final sections of these books are always the writer’s chance to inform his or her readers on concrete steps they can take to remedy this dire situation.

The concluding chapters create more questions than they answer, though. The reader is always left wondering if this writer actually understands the capitalistic root of all the problems, and further if the writer’s insanely impractical ideas come from the same planet. Not even Chomsky satisfies me here. Although few identify the plutocratic structure of the American system better, Noam becomes very vague in interviews about just what the hell we should do about this shit. With a look of contempt, he mutters “There are several things we can do,” but he falls well short of revealing his master plan.

Now, I’m not launching into Republicans’ current defense of the war. In other words, I’m not claiming that we aren’t allowed to question the intact system just because we can’t come forward with a clear alternative. The logic behind understanding that this war is pointless and unwinnable does not change just because some damn Democrats don’t have the balls to call for immediate withdrawal.

But we really don’t have any idea what we can do to stem the tide of the military industrial complex. A lil lecture I attended last Wednesday displayed that fact in fact’s most clear and shiny display case. Entitled “How democratic are consumer societies?,” the talk attracted some student pseudo-intellectuals like myself, but mostly several real-intellectual professor types with highly trendy glasses. Dr. Victoria de Grazia, a Columbia historian, opined for a full two hours in the UT Art building on this topic.

Her speech was extremely hard to follow at times. Trying to tie in every latest world development, she leaped from the Industrial Revolution in Europe to the American fifties to the Chinese present without really allowing me to understand the broad generalizations she made about each period’s commitment to democracy.

For instance, her chief stumbling block had to do with the fuzzy concept of defining what she meant by democracy. I had anticipated this problem because I couldn’t help listening in as the professors in attendance struggled to make conversation, and one of their chief topics involved how tough it is to nail down democracy to a precise rational meaning. De Grazia never really accomplished this virtually impossible task.

She ended by speaking of consumer activism, protests against specific institutions like Wal-Mart or the Republican party, as our hope to slow down the worst abuses of consumerism. Nobody in the audience was really satisfied with this conclusion, though. By closing down Wal-Mart and Republicans, you know, we only empower Target and Democrats, and that change will do nothing to trim our fat.

We did so want to stand up during the question and answer time and figure out a real first step. We were in safe acadamia, a place where all ridiculously long-haired students and the radical faculty we admire roam freely, so we didn’t feel hampered by authority figures or anything like that. And we clearly all agreed that consumerism really is a curse that the world must get over if we are to live in a sustainable world. But we just couldn’t conjure up a plan to combat this American system.

It really is depressing to know that the society you live in is so far past sustainable that you yourself can do nothing.

Sports fandom

2007-03-08T15:17:00.000-08:00

When I was young and fully faithful to my strict standards of sports fanship, I suffered far worse personal anguish from my team’s losses than the losers for whom I was rooting. Sports ignited the worst tantrums of my childhood.

I was eight when a Michigan football loss caused me to vandalize my own house. I had no personal connection with that wonderful academic institution in Ann Arbor, and I had never even come close to visiting the place, but I really liked Michigan’s uniforms, especially the cool black socks worn by their cool black players. I liked them so much that, following a maize and blue defeat by Illinois, I scrawled “Michigan wins” on the blinds of my room in a kind of delusional self-denial of my team’s imperfections.

In sixth grade, a Houston Rockets loss changed my personal relationship with God. All through the 1997 playoffs, I had been praying to God to help the Barkeley, Drexler, and Olajuwon triumvirate deliver an NBA championship. I knew I was doing wrong trying to talk to God about sports all through the intense entreaties I made to Him in my head, but I figured I’d do it just this once. When goddamn John Stockton drained a three to knock the Rockets out of the Western Conference Finals, I wept the tears of a guilty child who knows what he has done. Luckily, nobody noticed this most meaningful personal punishment because I always reacted to sports like that.

In my own mind, I was only being a dedicated fan. I rooted for my favorite players as if they were my best friends, and I sincerely believed that the rules of Karma rewarded fan sincerity with victory. I really could be very sweet that way, but my devotion caused me to commit what seem like ludicrous wastes of time today.

Major League Baseball may have been my drug of choice during my adolescence. Day after day, I used to indulge in its statistics, literature, and ethereal beauty. To high school Toby, baseball games were the only authentic activity around. There on the field in front of me lived an actual meritocracy where the people who achieved the most consistent objective success were the coolest, whereas high school anointed as king and queen the smoothest talkers who talked of nothing. That’s why I’ll never regret donating my transition to young adulthood to the green grass of Kauffman Stadium. That stadium was the place in the world that made me most ecstatically enjoy life, so why would I have spent my time anywhere else?

Those times are long gone by now, though. I’ll never forget the day when Vince Young and the Longhorns sliced through my brownie-induced carelessness with a true epiphany. Sitting in the stands on a bright fall day while VY and the boys took it to Tech, I realized that I could not defend working in sports to myself any longer. I had the most contentious inner debate that day as VY zigzagged all over the field.

What good would I do as the play-by-play commentator of the Kansas City Royals, I wondered, and how interesting could it be to hang around sports journalists all day? People who work in sports, you know, are some of the most pathetic blobs in the world. They reside in a perpetually-all male environment which encourages childish behavior and profoundly limited thought subjects. In a press box, it is a lost more strange to have read and enjoyed a novel than it is to have brought a pair of binoculars to the game to scope out the best cleavage in the stands. One guy who supervised my summer internship at a sports radio station showed me all the hundreds of Adriana Lima he kept on his work desktop computer. He was in his late 30s and had not an un-airbrushed real-life female to speak of. My experiences at Campus TV had only further illuminated the shortcomings of sportscasters.

The pressbox is no place for someone who rejects the very foundations upon which our society’s hegemonies are formed. For sports are an integral part of the military-industrial complex.

After all, nothing more emphatically entrenches the status quo than a sporting event. By filling up humongous monuments to massive construction for mere games, we communicate that everything is fine. If we really cared about the massive inequality of the world, we would do something about it instead of sitting down and watching freaks bludgeon someone or something.

Just look at sport’s most recently obvious interactions with politics. All of a sudden New Orleans is completely recovered from Katrina because the Saints have won a few football games. Major League Baseball was an integral aspect of the outrageous Lee Greenwoods-style nationalism flowering after 9-11. And the 2003 NCAA Tournament truly broadcast the hypocrisy of our supposed dedication to liberation the people of Iraq. In almost every situation, the apple pie support sports provide our institutions increases evil. That’s why the times that we take our minds off the realities of our lives are actually the times when we are the most vulnerable to electing Bush and Kerry.

At the same time, though, I know sports can help me take my mind off this indefensible relationship. Since attempting to educate Americans about the unsustainability of our system is as pointless but not quite as funs as rooting for the Royals, I’ll just keep enjoying sports. But, God help me, I will know during the course of my fandom that there is so much more to this world than games.

Obama 2008

2007-03-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

All across the parts of America with enough sense to hate Bush, there’s a flame spreading by DVR’ed Daily Shows, forwarded e-mails, and happy-faced text messages. It’s a phenomenon known as Barack Obama, and it fills us with the same wishful yearning as we get every time we Americans get a chance to purportedly make a change.

You see, Obama’s speech at the 2004 convention (the only one not about John Kerry’s courageous service in Vietnam) damn near moved us to tears with its you-empowerment, unifying message, and universally-charming good looks. When Obama dismissed the culture war, we dismissed the idea that America could have enough ignorance to vote in favor of this stupefying war. We went to sleep the night after his speech with the satisfied self-satisfaction that sustains us lefties in George W. Bush’s America.

It doesn’t matter that not one of us can name one piece of legislation Obama has chartered through the Senate, one famous stand he has taken, or even one time we saw him on tv doing anything other than campaigning. His 2004 speech makes us believe unequivocally in the integrity of this man. Needless to say, when I heard he was coming to Austin on February 23rd, I knew I’d be down on Auditorium Shores high on hope and other drugs with the rest of Austin’s right-thinking citizens.

It’s really something when a presidential candidate comes to your town, you know. If you’re not content to live in the middle of the nowheres that are Iowa and New Hampshire, you almost never get to see national political figures up close and personal. It’s really not fair. Farmer John and his God-fearing kin get to enjoy breakfast at Waffle House with John Edwards, and I haven’t been able to get near close enough to a presidential contender to expound my unrealistically-maddening views.

At least I got to see Obama speak last Friday. I wasn’t the only student there, mind you. There were about fifteen or seventeen thousand people packed by Town Lake that day, and I’d be willing to bet college students were the largest demographic there.

A good dozen or so of my friends made the trip, and my gaze just kept running over faces I recognized from campus. Just a few feet in front of me stood a guy who, in the Jester East lobby in the first month of my freshman year, informed a table of us that he was determined to be a journalist. Pacing around in a volunteer shirt was a rotund Gregory Gym basketball player who threw his weight around to stop the other team’s best player and gave me authoritative high-fives every time I scored the infuriating baskets I like to seek. Waiting patiently a couple of yards to the left of me, a T.A. who graded my scantrons in the class I took from dangerously radical Bob Jensen looked on with his arm hooked in his girlfriend’s. With all of us braving the constant sprinkle, I couldn’t help thinking we actually do give a shit.

I thought Obama’s speech lived up to the hype, too. With a measured, common-sense rhythm, he advocated universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq starting May 1, and the notion that we could connect ourselves to the founding fathers, the abolitionists, and the civil rights movement by pressing with as much elbow grease as possible for change. The highlight of his speech came when he rattled off a few of Cheney’s genius quotes and retorted, to the crowd’s delight, “You know you’re in trouble when Cheney says it’s a good thing.” The only lowlight involved his campaign’s choice of the Jock Jams NFL touchdown song that goes “Neeeeeerrrrraaaaaannnanananut (pause) HEY!!” as his entrance music. Aside from that selection, he killed.

He dealt with race a great deal. Though he stopped short of connecting the dots of racist correlation between people of color and the deplorable poverty, education, and health care he decried, he did not fail to observe the most authentic diversity I’ve ever seen in Austin. When Obama told us we could start a movement if we all work together, we grinned at each other in a way that agreed on principle, though not on practice.

But initiating realistic, progressive racial dialogue is not the duty of a candidate who has a shot to win today, and Obama definitely might win the Democratic candidacy. If he can motivate college students care about the 2008 election this far in advance, he just might take that White House. No matter what, though, he sure as hell makes us feel harmonious about ourselves. Today, that’s exactly what we want.

Israel

2007-02-22T18:24:00.000-08:00

In the scorch of last summer, my Dad and I had a most combative argument right in the middle of family dinner, no less. I had so disappointed him with my disapproval of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Gaza that he rose from the sacred table and dashed upstairs to fetch his New Republic and use it to inform on just how crazy these Hamas and Hezbollah fascists are in their ideology and tactics. Somehow unconvinced, I held to my rebellious defiant stance.

I was so worked up by the whole affair that I filled the weekly space I enjoyed in the summer’s Daily Texan to renounce Israeli aggression. Regrettably, though, my opinion piece was too clouded by my passion about the subject and some magic banana bread to present a thoughtful, cogent argument. But I still hold the same views now, and I’m determined to speak about the spiritual homeland of my faith anew.

That connection seems to blind so many people in their views of Israel. Many of us Americans imply wrongheadedly that the sacred spots of our religions will only be safe if they are overseen by a specific nation-state that must be named Israel. This perspective relates philosophically to the doctrine of the Crusaders who follied to tramp all the way to goddamn Asia with only perfume to bathe themselves. They believed, as many Americans do, that the holy land had to be the property of the correct nation to remain sacred and pure. I do so wish that I could go back in time and alter the time-space continium by asking the Crusading brutes if it wouldn’t just be easier to have a massive sight-seeing tour instead.

The Holocaust is another roadblock to clarity. The founding of Israel, you see, is taught in both religious schools and high schools directly after the personally-significant Nazi human slaughterings. We Jews are raised to know that this truly horrible Anti-Semitic world owes us a place to call our own in return for its harsh blows. I appreciate the gesture of the American sentiment that we made the world perfectly right by our service in the Second World War, but I think I’d rather just be permitted to live in peace in the location of my choosing.

As for Jews who want to respond to the exclusivity of Western Civilization by making our own private nation, I feel obliged to point out the real relationship of Jews to nation-states in history. No group of people is better primed and educated for socialism because nobody has been seen as wretched by white people as long as we have. Almost every place we’ve lived, we’ve faced ghettoization, pograms, and the idea that somewhere on our body we have a permanent deformity because we killed Jesus. For that reason, we can definitively grasp that the notion of the pure nation is the chief cause of the world’s problems. It doesn’t seem right that we would be then so dedicated to perpetuating this system by manufacturing a new country with the aid of nuclear weaponry.

Speaking of us Jews, it’s worthwhile to mention that we have many fanatics on our side as well. Fundamentalist Evangelicals are perhaps the most powerful voice supporting Israel in these United States. I first learned of this repugnant influence behind American support for Israel in the authoritative New Republic magazine, which revealed that these vermin want Jews to govern the holy land because it represents the first Biblically-prescribed step to the Apocalypse.

But then, we have crazies in our own religion. Check out the Frontline documentary on a fascist Israeli political organization whose logo is a violent black Star of David emblazoned with a fist. Some of these people were luckily apprehended by Israeli police just moments before they were going to bomb a Palestinian elementary school, and they’re the same morons who want to huddle into armored settlements in all the most controversial districts of disputed regions. They escalate the tensions any bit as much as the suicide bombers.

The mere idea that I should align myself with these two groups of hooligans is more infuriating than keys locked inside a car.

Don’t think I don’t understand the spiritual connection of religious people to their homeland, though, and don’t think I don’t feel the same suspension bridge deep inside me. That link is actually the same reason why I want this war to end with all the others.

Gore 2008

2007-02-15T15:36:00.000-08:00

Just around four a.m. last Saturday night, I had an extremely enlightening exchange with a couple of roommates. Although all of our brains were blinded by drugs of various sorts, none of us failed at building on each other’s sloppy 2000-pound blocks. First we made long soliloquies about how we hate everything about going to the dentist’s office, and agreed that we all just hate dentists. But then we had to admit that, in fact, dentists are very nice people and their services benefit millions.

Very shortly after this seemingly pointless dialogue, our talking paths led us to the 2008 election and to which presidential candidate we are lending our sizeable respective political capitols. That was a giant matzah ball indeed. Nothing less than the status of the purportedly free world rests on who will inherit the oval office, and it’s imperative that the next president should not be a complete moron.

I had yet to make up my mind before Saturday night. Usually, I try to make sure people know that the only individual I would actively support as President of these United States is the cunning linguist and prominent anarchist Noam Chomsky. If pressed for a personal favorite out of the odd assortment of horses’ asses that appear poised for a Democratic nomination, I habitually answered that I trusted Hillary to run a politically-shrewd campaign. I figured that she was therefore the deustch with the best chance of keeping a more slimy eel from occupying the white house. I know that this viewpoint is nothing less than brilliant because it was endorsed by one Dr. Robert Tostevin, a Trotskeyite history teacher for whom I’d do expository backflips.

But then my roommate brought up Albert Gore Jr, the man he and all of us should admire for winning the 2000 election and raising some degree of awareness about the warming of this green house. I had heard of Gore as a politically-supportable entity a lot from my own father, who also favors the Tennessean. I never did dismiss Gore outright myself, but I’ll admit to feeling a small amount of enmity towards the man who got my hopes up like I was a freshman boy on homecoming.

The question of the likelihood of Gore’s victory is the most significant dilemma about every Democratic candidate. If the Democrats do not take back the executive branch, the continuous stream of bullshit coming from our capitol will become wider than the Amazon. The Democrats can enact some frivolous pseudo changes, but they have to prevail to do it.

And Gore might be able to do just that. Americans hate Bush as much as they have hated any president in history, and they are just itching to install someone who appears to be the exact opposite of him. Who better to fill this void than the integrity-steeped former VP who graciously accepted what would have had most men in a burbling and gurgling Rage? America can completely wash its hands of Bush’s predictable mistakes by performing a do-over of 2000. We really do hate feeling guilty, and it will allow us to thrusts our chests once again into their forward state as the leaders of this world.

But Gore really is one of the few honest politicians I could name. He never did say he invented the Internet, even though we all know that he did. His Inconvenient Truth represents the first time I’ve ever really looked up to any slick-haired DC suit. And I bet he’s built up a veritable heap of sharp rhetoric over these last few years to shout from all the mountaintops.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I will steadfastly refuse to enlist myself in his minions and try to have really succinct, smart-ass, West-Wing style talks with political operatives. I have to insist on this because, during my drunken presidential discussion, my roommate and I were proclaiming that we would do everything we could for this man. Upon waking up drowsily the next morning, I realized that this pledge was only the half-honest ravings of two inebriated buffoons.

And also, this doesn’t mean I couldn’t support Hillary. I love how people hate her, and the thought of them being annoyed everyday by her speeches fills me with my most vicious pleasure. The same positive thoughts apply to exciting Obama. I’ve always been in favor of fewer white men on the inside of every institution, government being the most important of any.

But when it all comes down to it, I want this country to be led by a geek, the only type of people I trust. If there were no nerds, our teeth would be disgusting.

9-11 Truth

2007-02-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, a close friend imed me an unfamiliar link. He wrote under the link, “See if you think this is legit or just bullshit.” I clicked on the link and unwittingly found myself watching a documentary that questioned just who really perpetrated the vicious crimes of 9-11.

Using all sorts of evidence, Loose Change asks simple, mostly unanswered questions about the day that all politicians talk about but never really examine. The implications of such inquires never fail to haunt the film’s viewers. I, for example, watched the damn thing at two in the morning high up in the towers of Jester and wondered if the government was watching from a concealed spot below my prison-like window.

The notion of an inside conspiracy is so alluring to those of us who bristle at the way suits have used a tragedy to foster insecurity and more violent forms of violence. It would explain so much to us, you know.

It’s no wonder, then, that the 9-11 truth movement is gaining momentum. It was alive and well last Thursday night at the Texas Union for a lecture by Alex Jones, one of the leading proponents of the inside-job theory. The place was packed with more than a thousand people and scarcely enough chairs to seat us all.

And we were there for the long haul, too. The first thing that Jones announced when he grabbed the microphone authoritatively was that it was going to be a two-hour event with three different speakers. Nobody in the audience flinched; we just got comfortable and let the hours pass by like it was nothing.

The crowd’s endurance really did impress me. For the only time in my life, we could put ourselves somewhere near the audiences of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, where Honest Abe and the Little General squared off in debate for more than three hours at every stop.

Of course, the rhetoric of Alex Jones in no way resembles the syntax and diction of the great dead white men. For one, Jones could easily kick both their asses. Looking something like a retired offensive lineman, he sagged beyond both ends of the podium. Yet, his speaking voice, that of a pro wrestler thundering out in a balls-vibrating bass from a moistening microphone, seemed to give his appendages the adrenaline they needed to gesture in the most intensely-agile manner imaginable.

Jones whipped the audience up into uproarious and frenzied shouts when he finished a thought by declaring, “The New World Order is in jeopardy! And WE’RE BRINGING IT DOWN!!!”

Yes, this was not just a meeting about the 9-11 conspiracy. It was a thoroughly political exhortation to organize against the elites who, according to Jones’s patriotically paranoid perspective, have deceived the people of the best country in the world.

You see, it’s not just that 9-11 was a massive conspiracy with a cover-up to match. So was JFK’s murder, the fact that George W. Bush’s grandfather was “America’s top Nazi sympathizer”, and the American political connections of the Reverend Sun-Myung Moon. And, as if that’s not enough, the government has plans to install microchips in our heads and brainwash us through water fluoridation. Either Jones completely lacks the capacity for irony or he has never enjoyed the sight of General Jack T. Ripper fearing the same process in Dr. Strangelove.

In this sense, I found the event disappointing. Though I had never heard this Jones character speak, I expected a complete examination of the facts of 9-11 and a thoughtful record of what has been confirmed and what hasn’t. That lecture would probably serve the truth movement a lot better than a pompous fat man speaking like the leader of the next revolution.

I think the audience shared my dismay by the end of the event. Jones often paused during his speech in an apparent gesture that it was ok for us to applaud. The claps would start slowly in the back and then coalesce into a politely loud ovation, but you could tell everyone was a little confused. It’s not easy to get excited and jubilant about the idea that 9-11 was a government conspiracy.

In all honesty, though, I’m still captivated by Loose Change and other questions about “the day that changed everything.” And even if it takes going down some misguided trails, I really do dig the fact that our generation is groping toward political participation with real-life political meetings like this one.

A Real Protest

2007-02-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

Last Friday night, right when a lil shindig was becoming interesting and frenetic, I decided to make the announcement my roommate had suggested. I put “How do u want it?” on pause and started flicking the light on and off to grab everyone’s attention.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “There’s a protest to end this fucking war!”

Amidst a mixed crowd reception (our parties aren’t always as hip and alt as I visualize them in my head), I explained that the Austin edition of the national Iraq war protest day was going to feature a march and a rally at the state capitol. I really did figure that three in the afternoon was strategically late enough in the day to see college students up and active.

I’m not usually so presumptuous with my political thoughts as to throw sentiments like these ones out at raucous gatherings, but I feel strong antagonism to the notion of war itself, not to mention this one. My reasons are simple enough, you know. I just don’t think there’s anything worthwhile about shooting at each other, and the thought of people like me having to get shot at for Bush’s mistake punches me in the sternum.

I feel in my bones the putrid difference between my life and the lives of thousands of other young people. You and me get to suck all the nooks and crannies of the Earth’s resources like a WASP tearing into a high-class lobster, while people who very well could have been us attempt to navigate Death’s timeless rules using only unnatural GPS technology. Every day that American forces stay in Iraq, our brothers and sisters have been deemed acceptable losses.

I know my empathy for the armed forces sounds like the conciliatory “Support our Troops” and “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” talk of Democrats and uninteresting speakers, but I do wish to bridge a gap between the soldier and the people who would like to get him the hell out of Iraq. The abyss separating these two groups of people is as inexplicable as war.

Needless to say, then, I had reason to get myself to the march the next day. Arriving at just the right time, we joined the procession up to the capitol at 2nd and Congress.

There is nothing that doesn’t feel liberating about walking in step with hundreds of people for a cause. Don’t mock us for gaining faith in the goodness of human nature, because you would have felt the same way. Percussively chanting, “No justice! No peace! US out of the Middle East!” we smiled and waived to cheering onlookers and realized that there are others who’d like to explode the military-industrial complex. I’d like to think the sun was shining because History is on our side, too.

The true count of the amount of people at the march can never impress me as much as these first-person experiences, but Saturday’s protest did make the last one I attended look like a Kerry ’08 rally. I still remember how the whirr of the fluorescent lights of the UTC auditorium completely overpowered the forced energy of 12-person crowd at an anti-war event last year. Less than a year since that embarrassing display, there’s a real movement.

One vital aspect of all movements is a leader, however, and I’m afraid the local movement doesn’t really have one. Not one of the many speakers that graced the stage seemed at all comfortable in front of a real crowd. In fact, one of them appeared to have stuck a fork in an electrical outlet earlier in the day.

Believe me, I’m not appointing myself, or anyone else for that matter. The dedicated individuals who have organized the twenty-three organizations that sponsored Saturday’s events deserve the privilege of selecting a charismatic leader. But they do need to sit around in a circle and figure this out very soon.

And something tells me they just might. Saturday’s crisp brightness confirmed that springtime is coming soon.

Frats

2007-01-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

This past winter break, I was taken aback by an uncomfortable realization. A woman I had considered to be my little sister since before she was a woman, the only one on the block with the common plight of being the baby of the family, had joined up in a sorority.

I started a massive smear offensive against this woman’s decision. I made annoying jokes about sorority girls every opportunity I could until she finally talked openly about it. I told her that, sometime in the future, she was going to remember my message and wish she had listened to me. But just then, a much stronger voice than mine, a woman of infinitely more wisdom and experience than all of us combined whose authoritative voice booms in my head every day, intruded and cross-examined.

“And what is your message, anyways?” the voice said.

As happens so many times when a mind-bogglingly simple reply slaps me across the face, I thought for a second and realized that I actually didn’t know. Fraternities induced some of my best memories in college, and four of my roommates are members of the Greek community, as they say. My first kiss of college occurred at a Fraternity party when a real woman actually liked what she saw. So how in the hell did I have the audacity to talk?

Floored by this truth, I was unable to supply an adequate answer. I realized miserably that I could never package what I wanted to say in the right kind of conversation parcel, so I just dropped the subject. But I also knew, like I know every time I fail in the object of a conversation, that I would be able to express my ideas a lot better on paper.

The first thing I remembered when I sat down to figure out my actual message was my feelings upon crossing the thresholds of all the Greek memories I had. Whenever I navigate the world of fraternities and sororities, I start my trip with the fully encoded knowledge that the real world would be a lot better without them. I know that I wouldn’t live in our society if I had to believe fully in my life to have a good time while living it. You got a problem with that you gas guzzler-driving, sweatshop product-consuming motherfuckers?

Now that we’ve cleared all that up, I’d like to describe to my young friend my understanding of the Greek community at the University of Texas at Austin. That world is an almost-indescribable utopia, but I shall do my best.

Much as they like to deny it, frat parties are not the only parties happening in the campus area. UT-Austin features its own galaxy of weekend get-togethers that feature groups who may not have already fully met. Yes, there’s sometimes more suspense about where the party will take place, but I think you will have infinitely more fun at gatherings with intriguing, unique personalities instead of a single group of fattening brothers.

You are smart enough to know the type of people I’m talking about. If you haven’t performed a conversation between a frat bro and a sorority girl, then you haven’t perceived how idiotic these people can be. Just before I wrote this, my roommate and I simulated an exchange between well-outfitted Greeks that started when a group of us brothers rolled up to a corner in the back of a pickup truck and inquired loudly and slurringly, “Do you like UT football?” The enthusiastically affirmative answer from the girls encouraged us to tell the astonishing saga of our trip to the Rose Bowl last year, and the girls soon agreed that they were all coming out to our next party.

Just rehearse that conversation in your head and see if it doesn’t make you want to grab the nearest wooden stake and jam it through the rubber conventions of our society.

Now imagine a university without such people. Very few exist, you know, but I have a truly utopian view of such a place, a world where people would create fewer protective barriers between themselves and new experiences instead of more. Nobody would fall back on the security that comes from hunkering down with people that seem cool enough to hunker down with when you’re a scared freshman. Instead, everyone would share the joyous bind of needing to find new friends. It would be a world of possibility and surprise instead of monotony and isolation.

I guess what I’m trying to suggest is that, if we all stick with it, we will reach this world. After all, I think I was actually describing the real world. The water’s fine, you should jump in.

National World War I Museum

2007-01-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

This past semester, I had the privilege of taking a class on Great War literature at the University of Texas. My professor, a genial old newspaper man by the name of Steve Isenberg, had a worldly brilliance that was only surpassed by his dedication to the spirit of the class. He introduced our small 20-person group to Remarque’s blunt assessment, Blunden’s profound pity, Graves’s facetious daggers, and Manning’s pessimistic rebuff among other works. His daily readings of the poetry of Owen, Sassoon, and Gurney were particularly moving.

The class was enhanced by the rich file cabinets of the Harry Ransom Center, a campus museum which houses a variety of famous manuscripts and papers. Thousands of miles and many years removed from the conflict itself, we examined correspondence between Owen and Sassoon, manuscripts with writers’ notes in the margins, and authentic propaganda posters. It was truly bewildering to stand in the middle of Texas of all places and handle such treasures.

I was similarly stunned when Professor Isenberg showed us a New York Times review of the new National World War One Museum in my very own hometown. Once winter break rolled around, I knew that my visit to the museum was as inevitable as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

The poppies are truly illuminating. The nine thousand fiery blossoms that greet visitors to the museum set the proper mood for a museum about the Great War. With each flower representing a thousand combat deaths, the glass bridge display is a solemn reminder of the sheer scale of the nine million lives lost to this war.

From start to finish, the National World War One Museum is a terrific record of the Great War. The orientation movie explains the European powder keg that exploded in 1914, and visitors to the museum benefit greatly from the sense of chronology of the place. A constant stream of informative recordings makes it almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by the various stages and theatres of the conflict.

The interactivity of the museum is another one of its strong points. I lost myself for about a half hour in one of the study stations when I sat down to make my very own propaganda poster using images from the museum’s collection. I would have e-mailed myself two or three of my placards, but typing my e-mail address was infinitely less fun than creating another poster.

The “Reflection” rooms in the same areas were my favorite part of the trip. These rooms, each one featuring a closing door and a comfortable couch, gives one the opportunity to listen to Great War prose and poetry. I can still vividly feel the words of “Dulce et Decorum Est” pounding over my brain like the adjoining room’s 60-pound artillery shells. The sensory images of the museum give new life to the words of the young poets who found themselves in the trenches of the Great War.

Without a doubt, though, the mud and trench displays of the museum were the most awe-inspiring parts of the exhibit. One peeks into small corridors and sees and hears what it was like to experience these hell-holes. These short glances soon trickle into the Horizon Theater, a massive battlefield scene in the middle of the exhibit. Every twenty minutes, a movie starts with a harrowing description of Great War service set off by distressing music, explosions, and the realization that this exhibition is a mere imitation.

Although I truly enjoyed my trip to the exhibit, I went away feeling conflicted. I’m afraid that a cloud is developing over this museum that, left unchecked, could ruin the whole place. It has to do with the version of the Great War that every one of us learns in school, a story of a meaningless conflict into which America intervened and promptly won. Though the museum is unfailingly historically accurate, it does little to discourage this chauvinistic view. I’m afraid that the National World War One museum will gradually let the narrative of America’s transition to Superpowerdom overrun the exhibit.

I have this fear mostly because the man who took my ticket at the front of the museum explained (without being asked) that there are no German flags on the Liberty Memorial site because “They’re the losers.” It was mind-boggling to think that anyone could be familiar with the Great War and still believe that wars have winners and losers.

Last One (For Now)

2006-12-07T13:46:00.000-08:00

There’s something about adult questions over college breaks that awakens my most vicious pent up scorn. The implications of questions about our plans for next week, year, and life are infuriating. Adults have this tedious capacity to make the present moment uninteresting and unimportant as compared to our preparation for future moments.

That could be why this ever-burgeoning amount of inquires about how many semesters of college I have left is so grating. How can college be, to use the word I always use with grownups, outstanding when I’m just supposed to be scheming my next move at all times?

But worrying is a two-lane expressway. The old ones wouldn’t piss us off so much if our significant choices were not weighing heavily. We despise thinking about careers, yet we often have a difficult time thinking about anything else.

Our preoccupation is so easy to read. It festers beneath all of our words, actions, and faces like a gurgling internal wound. It comes out in trips from all the various drugs, and trips to our academic advisors. It is the decision of who we will be.

It’s not tough to see why. The rearing process of our society is very much marked by the need to worry more. We have to learn that riding a bike around without a helmet can be as hazardous as drinking the chlorined water at the pool.

In school, we read moral fables. Do you remember one of those Aesop gems about the grasshopper and the ant? We are taught that the grasshopper deserves to starve in the winter because it wants to play and sing all summer. The ant survives the winter because it worries.

Yet, the lil values-transaction going on here leaves out what happens between the two-insects’ conversations. It doesn’t describe what the grasshopper does all summer, how much enjoyment he joyfully suckles from the Earth. And it certainly omits the monotonous existence of the ant. So, while one is going to live and the other die, the ant has chosen to worry so much about the future that the present is not worthwhile.

Similarly, all this confusion about our proper paths in life completely ignores the fact that we have so much working in our favor. Don’t you act like a coked-out maniac and tell me about the damn fluctuations of the job market! Not when college degrees give you the keys to the world, and history majors who had to wait tables in a way wish they still did. And especially not when the daily lessons of the independent life communicate new truths every day.

Now, I definitely don’t believe I’m the first person to realize this. I may have gotten it from Roadtrip Nation, the Graduate, conversations with the old ones, or psilosybin. No matter what, all it takes to enjoy the present is common sense.

I guess I’m trying to close this dwindling semester with what I think I’ve learned. I think I’m allowed this privilege in exchange for sneaking covertly into Halliburton recruitments and megachurches, attending time-consuming lectures, and doing my best to inhale the world.

I really just like to get conversations started. I was the type of kid who continually asked why until it could be established that there was no logical reason and the injustice of the world was fully established. So all this criminalizing of various people could simply be the result of my stubborn skull. Nonetheless, though, I just mean to slow the world down and share perspectives on issues that tear away the veneers of our day-to-day lives.

Continuing these columns next semester seems like a must at this point (next new one should be up Jan. 18), although nobody can predict what will happen. I do know that I have to practice if I want to be a writer. You can’t imagine how great writing a blog like this will look on my resume.

Halliburton

2006-11-30T14:12:00.000-08:00

There are people in this world, I’m sure, who take issue with the way Chomsky and me paint a picture of good and evil, a black and white world where we all have a choice to make. We’re considered naïve by the vast majority of our population because we purport to be able to navigate the gray areas of the world which make it so complex and interesting.

But you and me and every rational person can agree that Halliburton is horrible. Everyone knows that they make their money best by making the world worse. While other corporations might just feed into the system that starts wars, Halliburton leads the pack in as many slimy ways as possible. Just check wikipedia.

This is a company who built with much gusto the fantastic Guantanamo Bay prison facility. This is a company who served expired food rations to soldiers in Iraq, then overcharged the Army for the contract. This is a company who will not rest until we have guzzled up all the oil on Earth.

So, knowing this, you can imagine how shocked I was when I saw a lil placard on campus saying that Halliburton itself was going to be recruiting at UT. I thought for sure a company like this wouldn’t just waltz into one of the more liberal institutions of the country and find more stooges to stock its cubicles. I thought for sure there’d at least be a few alt-looking types who would protest outside and get a nice lil article in the Daily Texan followed by a few fiery letters to the editor. And I definitely hoped there are very few if any UT students who want to work for Halliburton.

I guess I got caught up in some stuff I read for class. In a civil rights history class the previous week, I read about a time Dow Chemical, the company who manufactured Napalm for the Vietnam War, tried to recruit at San Jose State University in 1967. A riot of 2,000 students broke out on campus, and the police had to use tear gas. The recruiter, who had encountered demonstrations pretty much everywhere, said the students at San Jose State were like wild animals, screaming “murderer” and “fascist.” Look at me with a straight face and tell me you wouldn’t have liked to be there.

Now, I really wasn’t expecting all that from us in this day and age, but I had to go to the meeting posing as a bright-eyed b-schooler to at least see the minor uproar caused by Halliburton coming to UT. Wearing slacks for the first time since my last day at work this summer, I took a deep breath and walked right into the hostile environment.

There were no protests at all, of course, and there are several students who would love to make the world a worse place. They seemed really friendly, too. These sweet-looking Indian girls gave me as much Dominos pizza as I could eat and a huge cup of Sierra Mist. They were part of a group of engineering students interested in business, and they had purposely invited reps from Halliburton to come and speak to them.

These two reps, who were named Evonne and Carlos, were pretty young themselves. Evonne, who had hair as black as her business suit, gave a terrific talk about her boring job as an auditor at Halliburton. She had gone to UT and had worked two years for Arthur Anderson, but, she said, “You know how that turned out.” Carlos’s snappy speech showed pictures of him in countries all over the world. He literally said, “This is me in Rome. This is me in Egypt. And this is me in Iraq.” He also recalled a time when he was in Algeria for the company, but he couldn’t leave the hotel beach resort because it was too dangerous.

Their power point presentation boasted of how employment at Halliburton could give you “understanding of vast cultures” because Halliburton has operations in more than 100 countries. A slide showing an employee speaking to a classroom full of innocent children prompted Evonne to remark, “If civic involvement is your interest, we’re great for you.”

I looked around the room at this point to see if there were any fellow cynics around who picked up on that crude joke. There was not even a shred of enthusiasm in the room, let alone the capacity to pick up on a play on words like that. They may want to work at Halliburton, but at least they’re not passionate about it.

I guess it’s because Halliburton is a pretty damn comfortable place to work. Evonne said she only works forty-five or fifty hour-weeks at the office, where she had 100-hour weeks at Arthur Anderson. Carlos told the perspective interns that last years’ interns traveled to Australia, Paris, and Brazil.

It was obvious that nobody in the room really cared about Iraq or really any effect their actions would have on the world. Apparently an $18 billion contract in Iraq is the same as an $18 billion contract anywhere. I guess Evonne and Carlos and anyone who wants to work for a company like this simply wants to look down at the work on his desk and live as cushy a life as possible. I guess that’s their decision. But how can you blame me or you for making the opposite one?

Thanksgiving

2006-11-22T19:39:00.000-08:00

Late last night, under the influence of a potent mixture of drugs, I got up off the sofa to go to sleep. I must have got up too quickly, though, because the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor being awaken by my roommates. I had fallen flat on my face, with my jaw taking most of the damage. My bottom lip was gashed completely open by my two front teeth, which suddenly felt as if they had been rigged with sharp thorns. I picked myself up as quickly as I could and did my best impression of sleep for the next seven hours or so.

When I did rise out of bed this morning, I couldn’t help but smile. I like to try to be like Laura Ingalls Wilder, who just had to crack a smile in pictures when it was fashionable to pose with a serious frown. She probably had no rational reason to grin, as everything I used to read by her chronicled an infuriatingly dull life in the nineteenth century frontier. Her books are all as annoying a chore as churning butter, but nobody could accuse her of not being happy.

In that same spirit, I refuse to let a damn toothache deter me from enjoying this Thanksgiving. It’s easily one of my favorite days of the year, for reasons other than the fact that it celebrates the genocide of the Native American. I really do like the tradition of going around the table and saying why you’re thankful. Instead of the video games we expect on Christmas, we here give each other verbal gifts that mean a lot more. I wanted to take the opportunity on Thanksgiving to tell you all what I’m thankful for in hopes that you’ll share the same with me.

I love the breeze. I like the way it whips my hair around, and it often moves me to walk or run with my arms stretched out like wings. Many people like to act as if someone wearing an iPod is cutting himself off from the world, but I think the damn thing actually brings me closer to the Earth. With my favorite music in my ears, I can notice little yellow butterflies, uniquely green leaves, and happy black labs with so much ease.

Speaking of music, I think those of us who really do enjoy it are constantly being inspired by what we listen to. Nothing gets me more in the mood to realize my ambitions than a Coldplay song. Nothing makes me more confident than a Roots rap giving me a thousand different wordpictures why I’m the shit. Nothing pricks me with the importance of details like Coltrane and Davis together on the same track. In the end, I too know that I have my books and my poetry to protect me.

I didn’t always feel this way about my books. I would sit in the library in high school, day after day, trying to figure out the curse that made me want to shut out my surroundings and pore over pages and pages of readings. I grew so tired of always being the one who raises his hand with the correct answer, but I couldn’t stop doing my homework for the life of me.

It took me so long to realize that my desperation to read comes not from a need to make grades or sound smart but a yearning to be shocked by new perspectives. Sitting in a chair and reading to me really is like exploring, and I’m glad of it no matter if I seem like a cheerful choir-boy for knowing the answers.

I’m also thankful for the moments that can make one feel so connected. The first time I laid naked and sweaty with another, I realized that life is too amazing to ever be sad about. Each of the times a friend and I experience something together confirms that we are not alone in the world. And emotions, whether they’re good or bad, are the only way we know we’re alive.

I can’t shake the feeling that I’d be even more alive if I had love, a fact I’ve known in my bones since I’ve been into girls. I know that the day will come soon because it’s inevitable, and I definitely think it could be tomorrow. Some people claim that women are too complex, but I really couldn’t be more thankful that the process doesn’t have objective criteria like a job interview or some shit. If finding someone were that simple, there’d be nothing fun about it.

A lot of people have very little of this type of fun in their lives because they are oppressed by the individualism of others. Someday we’ll all realize that we’re better off working together than in a dog-eat-dog society. I really believe the only thing we’ll have to lose is our chains.

And, lastly, I’m thankful that I split my lip so violently. It’s good to not feel rational, to be reminded of how unpredictable the world can be. I also think I deserved punishment for making my mother eat Thanksgiving dinner without me, so really it was probably karma. I hope everyone realizes how connected you and me and everyone else is this Thanksgiving.

The Homeless

2006-11-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

Excuse me, but I’m the type of person who attends art fairs and charity benefits. Not only am I sophisticated enough to pay vast sums of money for any of the extremely new, hyper-contemporary paintings on the market, I am also a caring, paternalistic model for all you people that only care about yourselves.

If you could hold a candle to me in these areas, then you maybe would have known about the fourteenth annual “Art From the Streets” show at the Austin Homeless shelter last Saturday. It sort of tied together all the society types who excel in being patrons of the arts and the homeless.

Yet, it also illustrated in loud acrylics our experiences with homeless people, or bums, or drag rats or really whichever words you want to use for the people who are foreigners to our land of dreams and opportunity or whatever word you want to use for this cushy chair I’m sitting in right now. No matter how much food or money or anything you’ve handed a homeless person, you know you’re not giving he or she access to our world. But you just might see them every day on your way by to plow through a massive burrito that could probably feed one of them for days.

But, then, you and I really don’t have to worry about that guilt. We really do ignore them usually, either thinking that the stoop outside Jack in the Box is the place they want to be or just not wanting to make the type of eye contact that can confirm how goddamn easy we have it.

But my roommate and I didn’t have to worry about pulling off our blinders when we went to this homeless art show on Saturday. The Austin shelter is actually one of the most stylish buildings I’ve ever seen, and it was covered with vibrant, original paintings, apparently the work of homeless people. I say apparently because a guy whose painting I bought told us about a piece he had done of all the stereo equipment in his house.

No matter who the artists really were, the place had a lots and lots of art. They had walls and chain link fences covered with works of all sizes. I was up close to a fence to get a good look at one piece, when I was able to look through the fence to the alley between the shelter and the building next door. There were a handful of bums loitering out there, the same kind as the ones we passed on the way into the art show. I had to restrain a reflex to just give the money that I was going to use on art to them because I knew they weren’t going to draw me any pictures.

And why the hell would they? Feeling intense middle class guilt, I found a drinking fountain in the shelter and took a huge swig of water to demonstrate our common humanity. I’ve worked with homeless people before. My senior year of high school, I fulfilled the graduation requirement of sixty community service hours by helping kids who lived at a downtown shelter with their homework. I grew to know a few of the kids, and I think I did help them complete a lot of assignments, but I could never escape the feeling that I really wasn’t doing shit.

It was all too easy to have this same sensation at the festival. I didn’t really feel right taking the food HEB provided for the event from the mouths of people who needed it, and it was hard to focus on the art.

The pieces were really quite striking, though. Homeless people are entitled to the sharpest of voices because we turn a blind eye so much. You can say, wear, or do anything you want when other people will walk by you without look. In the absence of the surveillance of society, you could create whatever the hell you want without worrying about offending anyone.

That’s probably why I’ll never be able to cross the bridge we feel between ourselves and homeless people. Deep down, I’ll always know that if I was sitting on a stoop somewhere without anywhere to go, I would resent all the people who walk by in such straight and static lines. And I’m damn sure that I wouldn’t care whether or not the walls of buildings forbidden to me had pretty pictures on them.

Fortunately, these artists had no disdain to share, just their art. So I got an amazing painting of an island in the middle of an ocean sloping down like the curve of the Earth. You really should come see it sometime.

Election Day

2006-11-09T23:31:00.000-08:00

Did anyone else watch the big game on Tuesday? It was like the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Olympics all tied into one, and my team had to finally just win one. They just had to. I didn’t care that the commercials stretched the game to four hours, or that I had to stare passively at the television screen like a zombie. I was going to see to it that the Democrats took over Congress.

And they did! Can you imagine how wonderful our lives are going to be now that the Dems have control of both houses of Congress? We’ll get out of Iraq and Afghanistan! We’re going to have universal healthcare! I bet they even make pot legal!

Please don’t think that Democrats are actually going to do anything that impressive in these two years of power just because you and me voted for them. Beyond carrying out the important task of investigating all the crap that has happened in the past six years, you and know they will do very little. Remember, these are the same Democrats who lined up with the rest of us in favor of this war, the same ones who are in bed with corporations and lobbyists, and the same ones who believe in apple pie and Christmas sweaters and God.

Take, for example, one of the Dems we’re supposed to be excited about winning on Tuesday. Jim Webb of Virginia served in the Reagan administration, wrote a long-winded essay about why women shouldn’t be allowed in the Navy, and wasn’t even a Democrat until this election. I bet you won’t even hear about this guy the entire time he’s in the Senate.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m definitely glad they won. I voted for those goobers too after all. If you helped one of them get elected by working on a campaign, I admire your dedication, I really do. I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to have faith in some deustchbag with a power tie and a politician’s hair-do.

I bet many people our age share these reservations about politicians. It’s hard not to when you have robots who look like they may have gone to college about ten years ago running all of our student governments. They do fantastic imitations of the people they’re going to be ten years from now.

Yet, can we expect the people running this country to act any differently than our student government tools? They have to get money from people who are even bigger shitheads than they are, appeal to a bunch of local yoohoos, and wear humongous grins for the cameras at all times. Right now, our system can’t possibly turn out anyone who is still a living, breathing person.

We should therefore agree that voting does not a democracy make. Until we have a media with beneficial coverage and free access, an educational system that gives everyone an equal opportunity to think clearly, and a health care system where money doesn’t influence your health, we’ll never be able to elect anyone who will really do anything.

Really, then, the voter apathy among college students is not caused by how stupid some of us are (although I’m sure anyone who’s taken a class with 500 people may disagree). It rather comes from a realization that we’ve collectively made about how useless our political system is right now. We realize that no politician could possibly change anything, so we don’t really care all that much about politics.

And, oh man, do we not care about politics. The Daily Texan ran a jubilant article on Election Day which declared enthusiastically that a whole third of us College Students were “definitely going to vote.” We even had a chance to approach the record-setting numbers of 1982, days of campus protest, chaos, and upheaval.

So what does that make those of us who cast our ballots this past Tuesday? It’s hard to tell, because we definitely don’t conform with the rest of our peers. We could be several different types of people. Voting makes me into a sociopath who would just as soon see all the people in line behind me wiped off the Earth without a trace; it also makes me into a geek who has enough spare time to watch the boring-ass news everyday; and it also makes me into a rebel with the determination necessary to pass through the gauntlet of meatheads to actually care about our world. I may even be a naïve schoolgirl who wholeheartedly believes in American democracy.

It’s going to be damn interesting to read history textbooks about this era in the future. Will we escape the suits, the money, and the trends of today, or are these days just the beginning of a fully virtual democracy a la any futuristic dystopia you want to quote? All in all, Tuesday probably won’t be remembered as the day that swung the balance in any particular direction.

Job Fair

2006-11-02T14:41:00.000-08:00

Between the various types of Greek personalities, pseudo-intellectuals, and hulking athletes that you see loafing to classes around campus, there exists a special breed of people marked best by their formal dress: campus job fairgoers. These people, who think of themselves as having a leg up on you in the search for post-college employment, extend to all disciplines of education. They are the ones who prick their ears up at even the slightest mention of an internship or a job, and they are the principal patrons of the all-too-routine spectacle that is the campus job fair.

I decided to attend the Communication College Fall Job Fair just to get a nice look-see at these specimens in action. Sitting outside the fair in the Union, I quickly realized how underdressed I was in shorts and a t-shirt. Crowds of my fellow students walked by in khaki pants, long black skirts, dress shirts, and blazers designed to communicate that each of them is perfectly willing to submit to the authority of the office dress code.

The women, who far outnumbered the men, were really the first thing to cross my mental and physical line of vision. They were so mature-looking and business-like with their long straight hair and black-accentuated curves that you immediately wanted to approach these young women, these individuals who seem determined to take patriarchy by the balls. Yet, on second look, they seem the type who obsessively check Blackberrys and won’t sit still unless at an important meeting where not listening could directly cost them. Competing for the attention span of someone with money on his or her mind can cost one more mental dollars than it is worth.

I judged the males by their coverings as well. These guys have the same urge to seize the world as their female counterparts, but you root against them like the plague. With short, spiked hair and uninteresting conversation, they think of themselves as the next percentage point in the amount of Fortune 500 executives to graduate from your school. They only came to UT because of its high-ranking programs anyway, and they pompously refuse to identify with anything but the highest percentile of their narrow-minded criteria. Luckily, they probably have similarly generalized attitudes in mind when they think of me, so I don’t have to plan on crossing paths with them much in life.

Right on the inside of the fair, I noticed a cousin of mine who has some position or another at the local CBS affiliate. A great man, he let me stand aside for a second and watch as my peers desperately tried to woo him.

We look so strange when we cater to those who we think can serve as the gonnection to our desired life. With nervous smiles, we have to walk the continual tightrope between talking about our own greatness and that of whatever money-grubbing corporation has set up a booth at the fair.

The companies represented at the fair were, collectively, some of the organizations most adept at making our world worse. Clear Channel, which has helped turn the radio from a tool of democracy to a mindless trash machine, had a table. So did Phillip Morris, which has helped tobacco smoking become so much a national institution that the government won’t let us have any other type of fun. Even the police, who can make your life terrible at the snap of their fingers, were recruiting from our population.

Yet, there were some people there who gave me hope. Teach For America and Peace Corps, which may or may not have their own shortcomings, at least seek to ease the suffering or the world. And their tables had just as many visitors as any others.

Their popularity reflects a growingly-evident concern among some of our generation to have a direct positive effect on their worlds. Just from being involved in my class discussions, I know that there are people among our ranks who are aware of the state of the world. And I think we all just might do something, whether it is small or large in importance, to improve humanity.

This past weekend was another reason for a positive outlook. I just couldn’t get over the spirit that overtakes us during Halloween. All of a sudden, it’s not weird for two people who don’t know each other to communicate. Wearing costumes that show something about ourselves, we leap many bridges that we would not normally. It’s as if we all have something in common.

This means that we don’t all have to take admirable or prestigious jobs to make a difference in the world. If we all can only remember walking around West Campus and greeting each other jovially, our mere presence will open up so many windows that need opening. If we all realize that we share this world with someone else, we can take over Clear Channel and actually play good music. We could become sensitive policemen, and executives who give back to society. We don’t have to follow anyone’s lead to start the revolution, we only have to do what’s right to us in the here and now. Once we do that, I guarantee that nobody will have to get all bent out of shape about some stupid campus job fair.

Megachurch

2006-10-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of driving through the seemingly-endless nothingness that is the Texas countryside, you’d easily remember that the only thing that really dots the state’s landscape is yet another massive invention of our modern age: the Megachurch. Actually, these monstrosities are all over this Blessed land. They might even reproduce faster than the vermin who worship there every day of the goddamned week.

It’s very easy to pretend that these communities are off in some other world than your own, but they’re really not. I bet if you really looked closely, you’d realize that that shiny, tacky suburban edifice you see over there is actually a humongous church. Take, for example, myself. A dedicated scholar of all classes pertaining to the disruption of hegemony, I like to think that at least my community is free of Megachurches.

Unfortunately for the Keep Austin Weird campaign, though, there happens to be a rather sizeable Hyde Park Baptist Church lurking mere seconds on campus. Located at 40th and Speedway in the middle of one of those supposedly-funky little Austin neighborhoods, the church sticks out. Here, in this supposed blue dot in a red state, more than a thousand homogenous red-staters come to pray every Sunday. A friend and I decided on a whim that we sorely needed to take mega bong rips and check out a Sunday service.

Though this place seems huge to a casual non-religious person, the Hyde Park Baptist Church is probably considered a small Megachurch. It only had one balcony after all, and although the church does have a K-12 school, the complex did not boast a McDonalds. Still, the chapel boasts two projection screens, a full band, and a choir filled with people who look like they enjoy living worthless existences.

Now, the standard conclusion of works written about bible-thumpers is a declaration that these sincere people are entitled to live without our scorn. These people are just doing what they think is right to make the world better, you know. Far be it for us non-crazies to make fun of people just for believing differently than us.

Well, after enduring an hour and a half of mind-numbing idiocy, I can honestly say that I came away from the service thinking Evangelicals are much more crazy than we give them credit for. The congregants of this church are nothing more than sheep led around by a slimy, dramatic demagogue named Pastor J. Kie Bowman.

There were really only three activities going on at this service: camera time, passive singing time, and unabashedly-evil sermon time. None of them really requires any thought, but they all warrant description.

It seems that there are many distinguished Christians in this community, and, every now and again, Pastor Kie felt the need to recognize them. They were often asked to the front of the church, where he implored them to look into the camera and smile. This segment of the program seemed like a crappy reality tv show.

The singing should not really be called singing. It looked like there could have been a hundred members of the choir, but the age requirement had to be something like sixty. We all read the words of the songs off the screens, but we really weren’t getting into at all. I had to restrain myself at times because I was starting to get into the melody and therefore looking strange. Everyone in the church was mouthing the words and swaying whitely to the music, but they seemed to look down on the palms to the lord crowd motionings that are normal for megachurches. The songs gave a real trance-like quality to the service this way.

The sermon was most definitely the highlight. It centered on some verses in John 3:15, and I tried to follow along until I realized that the damn book wasn’t in alphabetical order and I didn’t know how to find anything.

That was alright because all the action was taking place on stage, where Pastor Kie was telling us all about what it really means to be “born again.” He first referenced a new survey which reported that the baby boomer generation is now 53% born again, the highest proportion of any generation yet. And, judging from the rest of the speech, this is no small commitment.

As Pastor Kie put it, being born again means taking the Lord’s medicine without questioning the way it worked. He said forcefully at one time, “It is not our duty to understand the way the Lord works! It’s not our job to question why he does what he does!” Apparently, we’ve been given the power to think, but under no circumstances should we use it.

We did make it in and out ok, and everyone there was courteous enough not to question the fake address I put down on the guest sign-in form. But the whole experience made me wonder about how these people act between their Sundays at church. Just what changes are they making to our laws, customs, and habits? And what the hell can we do to stop them?

What's up with Afghanistan anyway?

2006-10-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

Luxury, previously the decided property of the elites, is expanding its reach. It is now a necessity, something we expect of our fellow man when we walk into his house. Where’s your television and how many hundreds of the same channel does it have? You have wireless don’t you, is it alright if I just go ahead and take out my paper thin laptop and check my email? And oh ya, do you have any superstore-bought gargantuan bags of chips? Sorry, but I just feel like I could eat a whole 50-piece Chicken McNugget if it were in front of me.

Just what the hell would we do if we didn’t have all this stuff? I honestly have no idea, because we take what we’ve been handed for granted on only a slightly smaller scale than a kid on MTV Super Sweet Sixteen. I like to think of myself as slightly hip with different intentions than your rank and file person, but I’ve eaten just as much deep fried ranch dressing as the next collegian. There’s really nothing any one of us could do to change the fact that we are the most pampered group of human beings who have ever lived anywhere in any time.

Yet, every now and again, even we can discern hypocrisy. Sitting near the back row of a lecture about how terrible everything is in Afghanistan, I noticed that there was a pleasant-looking brunette quietly playing a computer game. She controlled a fleet of warplanes that were trying to bomb cities into the ground. Judging from the notes I scribbled down about the speech, she was succeeding.

The trouble with tearing down infrastructure like a belligerent drunk who finds himself alone at the end of the night is that everyone has to wake up the next day. According to Jim Ingalls and Sonali Kohadkar, who have just returned from a trip to the country, the people of Afghanistan are in a real bind. They are stuck between foreign invasions, either from superpowers or fundamentalists. All they really want is to live comfortably with some say in their governance, but our short news attention span has moved on to the other quagmire we’ve created in the mid-east.

Kohadkar was impressive to behold. Dressed in a sari with her long hair draped down only her left shoulder, she rapidly alerted us of just the recent history of U.S. involvement in Afghan politics. You see, the Taliban only got control of the country because our government wanted to create a Soviet Vietnam. Back then, just as today, you could be a partner in the war on today’s terror against the homeland as long as you had a common enemy. Today, after our army has faced worsening violence for the past five years, I bet nobody in Afghanistan even has time to enjoy the massive amounts of opium being grown. There are addicts who need it, you know, and there’s not really an adequate couch anywhere in the country, let alone civil rights for women.

Not that we in America can get over what we’re fed about the world from sweaty-palmed fat cats, but isn’t it weird to trace our ideas on this desolate country? I myself can still remember, shortly after 9-11 came along and changed everything, how we had won a new victory for Good in the War to protect our civilization from the next global threat. The level of debate about this conflict reached roughly the same height as a post-game interview with a head football coach.

Shortly before our troops invaded Afghanistan, a friend of mine and I actually did talk about the merits of the conflict. I’ll leave both of our names out because nobody our age should have to answer for things they said when they were fifteen years old. The conversation went something like this:
Friend: You don’t have any problem with going into Afghanistan do you?
Me: Who me? No. How could I?
Friend: Well, you know it’s just I’ve heard a lot of liberals bitching about it.
Me: I’m always in favor of liberating the oppressed.
That was the end of it. We then turned around and did our best to sit through a boring chemistry class, the type an urban public schooler couldn’t sniff if he was two steps away.

Look, it’s really not our fault. We only did what our parents seemed to think was right. Some of us made them ever prouder by signing on to help vanquish this foe. We really thought we were tracking down the people who blew up the world trade center.

But now that we realize how ridiculously naïve it is to think America can waltz in and out of world conflict, we should maybe actually pay attention to what’s going on. The country is in violent chaos, and we don’t really care to hear about it anymore. I think it deserves just a brief thought before you start plowing through that double-meat, double rice, double-tortilla Chipotle.

We are behind for a reason

2006-10-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

If you read the latest adult gossip about college in the New York Times, or if you are actually among tomorrow’s leaders in one of these fine institutions, you may have noticed that the female to male ratio on campus is becoming remarkably acceptable. It’s a result that I never could have imagined when my middle school friends and I used to thumb through the Princeton Review guide looking for the schools with the best odds. But the growing presence of girls on campus is a fact noted around the academic world.

The predominant male knee-jerk reaction to this fact is a claim of bias. This is the best defense mechanism of every powerful group in our society that feels its authority questioned. The bias argument asserts the reason males are falling behind in school is nothing less than a system of structured inequality perpetuated by man-hating subversives who call themselves teachers.

By placing the emphasis on supposed extenuating circumstances, this meathead attitude misses the actual source of this gender gap-the meatheads themselves. Boys have lost ground because of we get shitty grades, not because our teachers give them shitty grades.

From every direction these days, boys are given strong messages about who they’re supposed to be. Television commercials, just as they do for every ethnic group or gender, tell us who we’re supposed to be. According to the advertisements we see, we’re supposed to eat and drink massive amounts, think about sex every 7.8 seconds, and be either a juiced up athlete or a morbidly obese couch dweller.

Sports are a critical factor here because they are of central importance to the American male. We have been playing and watching sports our whole lives, and we tend to get excited about them in case you haven’t seen a stadium full of NFL fans. There’s no question that these activities do not make the world any better off, in fact, sports probably make the world much worse. If you’re a huge sports fan, as I am, and you don’t accept the fact that sports are part of the military-industrial complex, you live in a much too simple world.

You wouldn’t be alone in that ever-widening world, though. Men like things that are uncomplicated. We like to know the right answer as quickly as possible, and we’d rather not talk about the grey areas that inhabit every corner of our existence. That’s why we can do endless calculus problems but can’t comprehend why the hell we have to read all these damn women authors. It’s no coincidence that one of our own describes us as babies in Lady Chatterly’s Lover.

These observations might really only apply to a few of us, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell. Girls may go to the bathroom in groups, but guys travel in packs. There’s not a man around who doesn’t live in constant fear of locker room ridicule and the like. The thought of being laughed at by a room full of men more manly than yourself controls our actions like a screaming shithead high school coach. And right now, there’s nothing more girly than reading books.

None of this means that the burgeoning group of females accepted to college is a reason for alarm. I would argue that the meathead’s absence from many of my classes is enhancing my experience in several ways. With more females around, discussions are more engaging, professors feel a lot more comfortable, and the class is a lot more enthusiastic overall. Also, they’re very easy to find beautiful.

The world might be changing this way. The more women who graduate college, the more who will begin to inhabit positions of power in our society. Hillary Clinton might become President. And the meatheads will look back at high school Friday nights as the best time of their lives. In the meantime, we should do absolutely nothing to encourage their presence anywhere in our lives.

Cele

2006-10-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

Whenever our president doesn’t like something, even if it is an inanimate object or an abstract notion, we declare War. It is the job of the diligent American history student to learn and differentiate between these mostly-unresolved conflicts. LBJ had a War on Poverty that has obviously eliminated any improprieties in our society. Bush launched the War on Terror which seems to be going great. In between these two jihads, President Nixon brought War on those substances we love to hate in public but snort behind closed doors, drugs.

No president since has declared this war won, which is pretty remarkable in this era of spin. This one just keeps on Truckin’. It’s almost as if America doesn’t have the resources to scour every corner of the globe for every one of the evil plants.

None of this should be a surprise for anyone who knows how much people who like drugs will do to get those drugs. Yet, it’s tough for even the most dedicated student to know the true story of the war on drugs. It’s a story that many in Latin America know all too well, a tale of American-led coups, death squads, and even CIA complicity in the drug trade. As part of this war, America, while not even approaching the stated goal of stopping the sale and use of drugs, committed heinous crimes we still don’t know about.

This is where Cele Castillo comes in. A former DEA agent, he spoke free of charge last Tuesday to an audience full of people who wanted inside information on this escapade. The brochure read, “CIA. Drug Running. Torture. Negroponte. Death Squads. Reagan/Bush Sr.” and we were all licking our lips for the type of knowledge that brings a sardonic smirk to your face when you hear warped Bush voters talk. There was a policemen posted in the audience to make sure we didn’t all go nuts and declare war on him and his kind.

Cele lived up to his billing, though. A round Latino man who said he only wanted to “educate the students,” he talked for more than two hours as fast as he could. He had realized early on in his service that something strange was going on, so he decided to start snapping pictures and keeping a diary.

He told of present-day Bush staffer John Negroponte urging the organization of death squads and the teaching of torture to counterrevolutionary forces. He remembered the actions of Oliver North, who gets to host an exciting Fox News show while his multitude of crimes go unpunished. And he certainly did not forget the well-known fact that the CIA used the Contras to introduce crack cocaine to LA.

If you don’t believe any of this stuff, just check into it. All the official documents are online in various places. Don’t let me be the one to educate you about it.

Besides, the facts and history of the war on drugs were not even the most interesting aspect of the presentation. Castillo informed us early in his lecture that he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he seemed to be speaking to us from some type of trench. He spoke fast because, he said, “I’m living on borrowed time.” He has determined that the Feds will be coming for him any day now, and he’s awake in his McAllen, TX trailer home at 5 a.m every morning. He knows from experience that 5 a.m. is when they come knocking at your door.

The most peculiar moment of the evening came when Cele asked himself the rhetorical question of what we should do to stop this injustice. He implored us to “lock and load a 30-round magazine.” Curiously, without missing a beat, the audience exploded into applause.

Later, during the question and answer session, Cele admitted that he wasn’t advocating violent revolution. I don’t think the audience was either. The queries coming from the crowd confirmed that these people are just looking for release from the various issues weighing on their minds. Very, very few people asked Cele about the war on drugs. Instead, they asked him about September 11th, massive voter fraud, and concentration camps possibly being built in New Mexico.

The night was a little disheartening this way. The audience wanted to group the war on drugs together with all the other theories they had on their minds. It was as if Cele’s story wasn’t juicy enough for them to contemplate.

For his part, Cele communicated a message of inspiration. He recommended that we read more, saying in his Rio Grande valley accent, “Instead of spending money on a 12-pack or a big mac, buy a book.”

That’s great advice. What we really need to do, though, is force all these perpetrators of human rights to come forward. John Kerry chaired the committee that confirmed the link between the CIA and crack cocaine, yet he’s as silent about that issue as he was when he voted for the war. Until we know all the details that are buried, the truth will be classified as a mere conspiracy theory.

You Should Read This Tom Friedman

2006-09-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

The audience was very small. It consisted of introductory journalism students who were promised extra credit and a few middle-agers who really were concerned about the topic of the lecture: global inequality. The small auditorium could not have been half-full though, and the speaker looked a little too fidgety to diagnose the problems with our world.

The orator was an older Indian man with strongly parted grey hair and nervously roving eyes. He wore an orange dress shirt and a black vest, and he seemed uncomfortable with the idea that all of us were on hand to see him. He reminded our American high school sensibilities of the kid who has all the answers but is too afraid to opine over the whirr of the lights.

Everyone in the audience quickly erased these thoughts when P. Sainath finally got to the podium. The rural affairs editor of one of India’s largest English-language papers did not come all this way for nothing. Sainath gripped the front of the podium tightly and passionately decried the gross injustices of globalization.

These were not the fanatical ravings of a flat-world idealist, though. Sainath made his name as a journalist by studying the plight of rural India closer than any scholar who cheers the free market from comfortable chairs in buildings with running water. He trotted out more stats than you could write down to show just how unequal liberalization makes the world. Consider:

India is 8th in the world in number of billionaires, but 127th in human development.
India’s per capita income is lower than Nicaragua’s.
India’s rural families are eating, on average, 100 kg less food per year than they did 10 years ago.

But stats are never enough, and Sainath is a captivating speaker. When he tells the continuing story of Indian farmers who would rather commit suicide than live in debt, the room is completely without noise. Yet, Sainath also has the peculiarly Indian gift of digression and wry humor, and the people in the audience nod their heads and laugh often.

Sainath summed up the purpose of his lecture right away. Talking about the fact that stock markets everywhere boomed following the Tsunami, he said, “There’s often a direct link between the misery of the many and the profits of the few.” It was a startling but simple realization, one illuminated by the history of the world. And it flies in the face of everything we hear in America about globalization. Common sense usually does.

World economics is, without a doubt, the area of world politics Americans know the least about. We live in a corporate fantasy world where the free market makes free competition because that’s the vision of capitalism that has been hammered into our heads from birth. We’ve been taught that the world is the survival of the fittest, a fiercely independant world where the best wins. And if you want to bitch and moan about unfairness, it’s probably just because you lost.

That’s what made Sainath’s speech disconcerting in a way. It was so inspiring to see this man of the people punch out global institutions with common sense arrows, but the diseases of the world seem irreversible.

In fact, most college students seem dedicated to further perpetuating this system. I’m not pulling the ol’ liberal arts pothead bitches about those damn corporate clones in training over at the b-school. I’m talking about all of us: journalism students who are ready and willing to manufacture news, engineering students who are learning to do the next ludicrously massive project, and p.r. students who will keep the powerful in power. Could we make any changes even if we wanted to?

Sainath thinks we can. He ended his speech by telling the story of a party given by the Roman emperor Nero which was lit by burning criminals at the stake. Not one of us, he said, would want to be Nero’s guest. I think we still have the choice.

ACL Fest

2006-09-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the sixth annual Austin City Limits Music Festival, delivered by AT&T. Featuring Gnarls Barkley, Van Morrison, String Cheese Incident, The Flaming Lips, and Tom Petty among many others, ACL fest seems worth the $140 three-day pass every time. Actually, with food and water, the festival is worth the $160 you shell out every time. I mean, taking into account the price of the ticket, food and water, parking, and drugs, the $200 is always worth it.

Yes, it’s mostly just a massive money trap set to great music and dust flying everywhere. It really is a lot of fun, though. You’re always too wiped out to even think of going out during the nights, so it becomes a type of lost weekend, three days where the rest of the world is more distant than the friend who you misplaced somewhere near the food vendors.

But it’s really only a cheap imitation anyways. The music festival as it was created is gone forever. In the modern world, marketing companies put them together, and though you might still be free to use drugs within the friendly confines of the park, the likelihood of a massive hippie orgy is extremely small.

That’s not the only difference. These days, I think there are many more old people at the music festival than there ever should be. Let’s be honest: our parents’ generation is infuriating. In the course of their lifetimes, they’ve proven that the sixties were nothing more than bullshit, a fad that they all picked up. Almost every campus activist from that time now revels in hearing their favorite tunes in commercials for the various corporations they make more powerful everyday.

And while they’re singing along, they vote for Bush and start the same unwinnable wars that they claimed to hate when they were our age. The threat of terrorism has been sold to them as effectively as Viagra.

That’s why one should feel fortunate to be able to enjoy a music festival. So many people our age have been made to do the dirty work from our parents’ wish to make the whole goddamn world safe for democracy, or rather, safe for the gas guzzlers we have to drive at 100 mph. The soldiers and the youth of the countries they invade do not have the opportunity to take a lost weekend. They might never smoke a bowl in their entire lives!

In his address in last Monday’s 9-11 celebratory warning, Bush claimed that it is our generation who will be the foot soldiers in this perpetual War on Terror. Fortunately for us, we’re uber-consumers, not army officers. We’re really the generation that has consolidated the uncoolness of politics and intellectualism.

The kids who are growing up today are only making things worse. They claim to love Gnarls Barkley, yet their presence at the concert was as disconcerting as their lack of energy for any song they haven’t heard 10,000 times.

The main difference between music festivals today and the authentic ones, then, is the lack of purely political excitement surrounding them. There’s nothing rebellious about a place where high school parents permit their sons and daughters to go.

By far the best location of ACL fest is the world tent, otherwise known as the Washington Mutual stage. You can actually get close to the performers without getting there 5 hours beforehand, and you’ll find yourself being moved by the radically-different sounds of international cooperation. At the Oliver Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits concert, I joyously shared a fat joint with everyone around me, and I danced back and forth without a care in the world.

All of this begs the question: are we going to make anything any better? Are we going to start wars and demonize people and keep the hegemonic order? Well, I’d be surprised if we didn’t, but we’ve got plenty of time to actually feel good about ourselves. We might as well enjoy a sticky, grubby weekend.

Letter to a fellow baller

2006-09-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

I made an insensitive remark the other day. I didn’t do it on purpose, but after I said what I said it was obvious that I left room for misinterpretation.

Let me explain. I was playing basketball in Gregory Gym the other night, when a black guy on the other team stole the ball and broke for his team’s basket. I had an angle, and I was able to keep him from making his layup. But, he had about five inches of height on me, and he just kept tipping the ball way above my reach. When he finally tipped it in, I smiled and said, “Damn, I can’t get up there with you in the trees.” He laughed when I said that, but I soon realized that I had, in effect, called him a monkey. Of course, I would have only bumbled whitely if I had tried to clarify what I said, so I played the whole rest of the game not knowing whether or not he took offense. Since I might never talk to this guy again, I guess I’ll never know. If our paths do cross, though, I’m going to whip out this letter and point it in his direction. I feel the need to apologize and explain myself:

Dear friend,

Do you remember me? We played basketball the other day in Gregory, and I was the goofy looking kid who wore spectacles and a sick And1 headband. I also have a tendency to crash the boards, and at one point, you illustrated how much easier this game is for you by playing volleyball at another altitude.

I’m writing because I just wanted to apologize for what I said after you got that tip in. I meant to make a joke emphasizing the fact that you are five inches taller than me, but I’m afraid it came out wrong. I’m afraid that you thought I was playing up the jungle stereotype that so many white racists have used over the years, and I’m sorry.

On the other hand, you may not have been offended. You never said anything about it, and I didn’t pick up any hints that you were angry. I just have a rather terminal case of what is called white liberal guilt as a result of the continuing oppression of minorities in this country. Therefore, this whole letter is little more than a self-serving, conscience-clearing activity on my part, but I think a few things need to be said about America’s races.

Today, we white people act as if racism died in the South quite a few years ago, when in fact all statistics indicate that our society is getting less and less equal. We get defensive at the suggestion that there is any difference between the races, wishing and pretending that we are all the same instead of celebrating human diversity. White people have never been pulled over for no reason, have rarely been the only individual of their race in any situation, and have seldom understood just how much we’ve messed up the world. And yet, we think we can speak intelligently about the complexities of being black in this country because we’ve heard the latest Jay-Z song.

Anyways, I just felt the need to tell you all this because I think all whites need to accept just how much damage we’ve done and continue to do so before any real gains are made. It is white America that has always refused to cast down its bucket, and it is white America that will continue its apartheid until it does so. That’s why I owe you an apology.

HD Quality World

2006-09-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday, I had the privilege of eating mushrooms for the second time in my life. An old roommie and I ate the shrooms at my house before we set out down Johnson Creek trail, which led us to the walking/running path at Town Lake. For what could have been two hours or two days, we laughed our asses off as we enjoyed the dazzling psychological journey that is a trip. The following is a record I kept of the experience in a little red notebook. I’ve added extra words in some places to keep it coherent, but it is predominately what I wrote down at the time, screaming capital letters included.

About to eat 2.3 g. Just ate 2.3 g. Looked like two twisted Halloween trees. Going to be like an amusement park ride-everyone gets a ride, only the ride is different for all.

Going down the Johnson Creek trail. Sat down by the old wind mill, smoking a spliff and a J. Joint starting to get very hard to hold up. Laughing because we know it started. Sitting in the middle of trees between two battlefields of traffic. I don’t want to stand up, really.

Less words are more, don’t wanna talk. “You can just toss it,” I say about the roach. Seeing HD quality life, the world is coming through clearly. The thought of any movement is irrelevant. Ben says, “I’m a little light in the loafers.”

Small sick stomach feeling on edge of mind. Couldn’t comprehend vomiting.

The tunnel echoes. A huge spider sits in the middle of its web. It’s so huge that it looks like a toy. If we wanted to clear this tunnel of spiders, we could eliminate all of them. A lot of responsibility comes with the power to destroy.

Spray paint looks like it’s breathing on the sidewalk. Do not forget the extreme paint or anything about this experience.

Scream and wave arms at cars passing by at 100 mph, they don’t stop. It’s a good thing I’m not in trouble.

It feels good to hit myself. Don’t have time not valid. Run down the parkway to the trail. People like to hear what we have to say. Don’t hesitate to say something.

Laughing, we think the water cooler scene is funny, but we can’t say why. We made it to the lake. The geese are calling my name. There’s a huge vine-like branch. It’s so damn hard to keep a discussion going or finish a sentence. We need a guide.

Sitting at a picnic table near a pool. Closing your eyes is not anywhere near as good as having them open. How much we like cheese has us going crazy. I feel like lying down somewhere and thinking. You need an excuse for NOT laughing. Drugs are amazing.

We were thinking about the decision, the choice of who we are. Whenever I make a decision, I question whether it’s right. Go with it.

Walking back home. Ben is sweating buckets and constantly sucking camelback. That guy is thirsty! Artists spray painting tunnel wall. Don’t feel like letting us admire their work. Just want to go about their business. That’s all you can expect from anyone. You have to defend your choice, but you shouldn’t be defensive. Ran from the front of trail-finally home.

When you write instead of talk, you can get through one whole thought without cracking up. When you write on this type of notebook paper, you get worried about whether or not your writing crosses the center line. YOU DON”T HAVE TO worry whether you go across. YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.

The problem with writing is that it cuts you off from the world like a vegetarian. But everyone should be cut off from this world in his own way. It’s exactly like that amusement park ride-life is exactly like an amusement park. Every ride is your own ride and you don’t have to describe it. But when you can find the words, people seem to enjoy it. But they have to go about their business, and YOU HAVE TO SHUT UP sometimes.

Wanting to do things is what makes life so interesting. You have to want to do something, and it seems like you enjoy writing more than anything else. Though you’d get paid for it, you’d do it anyway. That’s going about your business. THAT’S your fucking business.

Gone to Texas

2006-08-31T19:33:00.000-07:00

It’s the night before school starts, and there are thousands of incoming freshmen milling around the main mall. They have half-confused, half-cool expressions on their faces and stacks of useless Texas paraphernalia in their hands. They’ve been caught attending UT’s annual crapshoot of an introduction to college, a gigantic pseudo-ceremony known as “Gone to Texas.”

Actually, the event would be more accurately referred to as a sampling of the money flowing from the inner workings of this campus. The University Co-op, the only behemoth with any staying power on the drag, shelled out $19,000 for “Gone
to Texas” according to the Daily Texan. Furthermore, the trusty old Office of Relationship Management and University Events went ahead and gave out 4000 crappy t-shirts at a cost approaching $10,000. These paltry sums pale in comparison to the record $8.2 million the University made last year in licensing royalties alone, so don’t think we’re going broke over here. This is Texas, after all.

Yet, the bright-eyed freshmen present for the festivities did not look at the event this way. They probably did think it was the opening foray of their college careers. I know I got fooled into thinking that two years ago while I sat through hours of tradition manufacturing and speech mongering.

The real significance of the event is much different from all that. It’s the first place you learn that, despite the enormity of UT’s student population, you don’t have to follow a crowd. Each student should realize at some point during this ridiculous display that they don’t have to be present. Everyone can just get up and leave whenever the hell they want to these days.

And you, the individual, are not the only anonymous member of this horde of students. All the annoying types from your high school are here, but you aren’t stuck with them anymore. The only people who don’t make any new friends, the
annoying hometown high school sweethearts, are content to wear sweatpants and watch Old School and just generally do nothing at all. Of course, they themselves will tire with that cycle soon anyways.

Really, then, “Gone to Texas” is more of an end than a beginning. It’s the end of that high-stress weekend where you have to go around with your parents to all the superstores to get all the crap that we think of as necessities these
days.

First of all, that time period should be confusing as hell for all of us middle to upper classers. On the one hand, your parents are always acting worried about how much this or that is, and they pretend to look for deals (look, there’s an area rug for only $29.99!). Yet, they insist on buying way more shit than you would even ask for. And that brings on the inevitable feelings of liberal guilt at the cash register with the poor Target employee. And, of course, you know in the back of your mind that the world gets slightly worse every time you shop at one of these annoying places. So you got all this bouncing around in your mind to go with the anxiety associated with a new start in a new place.

Your parents aren’t doing anything to help, either. They have to be led around like drunken hippos, and they think they’re actually in control. They start panicking after one wrong SUV turn or one unforeseen delay, and their sizeable
parental asses have a tendency to block narrow hallways and paths. But you better bite your tongue this weekend, dammit, cause their paying for this whole thing and you damn well better appreciate it. Also, it’s the last time they’re going to see their baby, and you know they’re going to be upset that they won’t be around to annoy you constantly anymore.

Finally, though, all of this comes to an end. Once college starts, all this bullshit of University marketing, incessant hometown issues, and mindless pseudo-events should end forever. And you know that you’ll never go back.

The Life Track

2006-08-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

What are you doing this summer? It’s the adult question we students come into contact with so often this time of year. After a semester of the independent life here at college, you will invariably find yourself trying to make conversation with grownups, the strangest of specimens. Their conversation style is exactly the same as it has always been-they demand answers. It’s just, instead of inquiring about your grade level, your sports teams or your extracurricular activities, the adults in your life would like your summer plans formally announced. Looks like you just realized why you’re having such a hell of a good time in college.

You shouldn’t despair, though. The white adult power structure handbook authorizes several different types of acceptable summer activities. You can take classes, travel, or work in any capacity at all without incurring any loss of status, just as long as you don’t give yourself enough time to read all the books on your list, listen to good music, or enjoy a cool drink. Of course, you still do all these things this summer, but you should never disclose that at the declaration of summer plans ceremony itself.

No, if you want to truly impress adults, you only need to say one word: internship. Grownups’ eyes light up like Sixth Street when you tell them you are voluntarily placing yourself at the bottom of some company’s ladder. You try to tell them this, emphasizing the fact that you just sit in front of a computer all day, sometimes performing menial tasks, but mostly surfing the Internet and chortling about how hot it is. You can’t reason with them, though. They chalk your job description up to your typical modesty, making a mental note to later annoy their own son or daughter with news of how accomplished you are.

They gush because you are becoming one of them. Previously, you had time to enjoy the present without constantly checking your watch, but now it’s time to start thinking about the future. College will be over soon, and you will want to be able to find a job so quickly after you graduate that you will be able to make your post-graduation job ceremony announcement right when you come back home for that summer. Your participation in an internship signals to the adult that you are right on The Track To A Successful Life. Once you have completed The Track, they know, you will be leading a worthwhile existence, just like them.

When you settle down with a family in a brand-new suburban home in the boring part of town, you will have made it. You’ll have a respectable career that gives you the ability to support a healthy, American household, and you’ll have reason to be damn proud of yourself. Though you will have to be constantly thinking about money to make sure your house is equipped with as many brand-new consumer products as possible, you won’t have to think about other, more complex issues. You won’t be worried anymore about the world’s poor health, its horrific inequalities, or its humanity. You’ll be simply watching out for yourself, like every other successful adult. Not only that, you just might start stocking your refrigerator with humongous vats of mayonnaise.

It’s ridiculous to discourage anyone from earning money this summer (although so many internships these days are unpaid), and I believe very much in the dignity of work. Your duty is not to save the world. The point is that nobody has a duty to do anything. Our only job is to do something we like with our lives. Otherwise, in a few years, we’ll all start acting like grownups.