Sunday, November 1, 2009

Check out my rant on the Rumpus on my former life with politicians

You can go here to read it there ... Here's an excerpt.

If We Try, We Can All Push California Into The Ocean

I have a terrible admission to make. I used to work for a bunch of politicians.

And not only that. Part of me enjoyed it.

I didn’t enjoy the way my various state, federal and local bosses would fly off the handle at me for typos in letters and memos. I also didn’t care for the constant state of fear I lived in, worried that a mistake on my part would ruin my career or finish off an endangered species forever (both almost happened, the former more than once.)

But I did enjoy the power — specifically power over other people, especially those I disagreed with strongly. There’s some terrible part of me that really got off on screwing over my enemies. Admittedly, my enemies at the time were mostly Bush administration lackies, and a lot of them deserved it for screwing over various groups (mostly homeless vets, the poor and disabled people), but often the people I screwed over didn’t do much more wrong than say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time.

There’s a laugh — a laugh I’ve only ever heard from those who work in politics — that’s somewhere between a witch’s cackle and a little kid’s secretly giggling in the back of a classroom. The mouth is half open, the k-9’s are showing, the person laughing sits back in his chair, his smile a little bit crooked, and little bursts of air come out through the nose and mouth at the same time. It’s the laugh of knowing an enemy has been totally ruined, or sometimes it happens in the planning stages of ruining someone. For a while, I lived for that laugh, as did many of the people around me. It, sadly enough, is what that part of my life was about. And it is also, I fear, what politics — and California politics in particular — is about. ...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Words and phrases to be banned in the new state...

... when I become dictator for life.

"Due to the need to meet revenue expectations."
"Moving forward."
"Team player."
"Team-building."
Anything involving team.
"Assume makes an ass out of u and me."
"I don't have the bandwidth."
"Strategic planning."
"Utilize."
"That's just how it is."
"It's a good exercise."
"Action-item."
"Priority."
"The world isn't fair."
"Paperwork."
"Efficiency." (and any derivative of that word.)
"Marketing."
"Target audience."
"Customer service."
"Terror."
"Appletini." (or any derivative of martini that is not, in fact, the word martini, which is fine.)
"Webinar."
"It's just not realistic."
"Therapy."
"Frappucino."(or any ucino basatardization)
"Drama-free."
"Branding." (in the marketing sense. Original term ok.)
"No worries."
"impact"

Please feel free to add suggestions. My forces will be marching just as soon as I can learn to feed myself without working in a God damn @#$@#$%# office.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Interview with Walt Staton from No More Deaths

Xochitl has a great interview up with Walt Staton, who was given a littering ticket on the Mexican border for leaving water bottles for immigrants who were dying of thirst. He now faces massive fines and possible jail time.

An excerpt:

(During a trip to Europe), we met this ship captain who was arrested in 2004. There is this gigantic cargo ship, and they spent years around Vietnam rescuing people in the ocean, these boat people fleeing Vietnam. And he rescued thousands of people over twenty years, and then as that crisis had died down the ship would take UN contracts to deliver humanitarian supplies to all kinds of places. They were crossing the Mediterranean in route to Jordan to deliver supplies that were supposed to go to Iraq in 2004 and they found a boat, a sinking raft of refugees, when they were in the Mediterranean. So they of course took the people on board.

Then they went to take them to Italy––it was the closest port––and Italy refused to let them land. They said we don’t want these refugees. They had nowhere else to go, so the guy eventually declared an emergency and forced his way into an Italian port in Sicily. The boat captain was arrested for smuggling, for basically rescuing these refugees from a sinking raft. So just understand the migration is global, the crack down against migration is global, but the crack downagainst humanitarian movements, the crack down against people who care, is also global.

PS: The link: http://www.splintergeneration.com/2009/08/03/an-interview-with-walt-staton/

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Want to read about Blood Meridian? Read me write about it at Annotation Nation!

Check out my post over there. I talk about how Blood Meridian is really about violence. And how there's not really a central tension, except for morbid curiosity. Also, I liked it.

Read my words! And if you like what they're doing over there at that site, spread the word about them! It's pretty cool, if I do say so myself. It's a great idea. If you feel so inclined to write an annotation, too, I know they're always looking for good ones.

Seth

Monday, June 1, 2009

Business and all such things

Dear world,

I am now guest blogging on Sundays at therumpus.net, where I will be going off in all my glory in much more detail than I ever did here. I am also in school, working full time, running splintergeneration.com, blah blah blah. We're all busy -- you don't want to hear me complain. The point is that those who wish to read my words should go to The Rumpus on Sundays. I will be updating here very intermittently ...

Love,
Seth

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Top 5 reasons to hate the world

Reasons I am in pain:

1) One pinata filled with Mad Dog 2020, 1 wiffle ball bat
2) Waking up at 8AM to go to work
3) The 2002 Stanford Band at my house
4) The sun.
5) What I'm looking at outside the window at work.

Much more of this and I will move to the suburbs.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Was my hometown really that bad?

OK, I'm sick of hearing about Columbine too. I'm sick of the pundits and Nancy Grace and the fact that Oprah got headlines for NOT talking about it. But it happened twenty minutes from my childhood home, so it matters to me, and all the pundits all seem to miss the point entirely. I am sick of listening to them. So I want to hear from people who were there and people who went to high schools elsewhere at the same time: Compared to the rest of the world, were the southern Denver suburbs really that bad? (If you want to comment or send me emails I'd love to hear from you)

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I've tried and failed to write about Columbine countless times since it happened, which is odd, because I have no problem writing about Iraq, or Katrina, or pirates -- things I have had very little to do with. It may have something to do with the fact that I used to film lacrosse games and play various forms of sportsball on the Columbine grounds. I sort of knew one of the victims from a kegger. It looks like Dylan and Eric's yearbook photos were taken at the same place mine were. I recognize the main door to the school. I know where the bathroom is in relation to the gunfire. I knew how it smelled outside -- like dry grass (everything around there smells like dry grass) -- and how it would feel to be there  -- my skin would have been permanently cracked from the altitude and dry air. 

Every time I try to write about Columbine, I fail. I fail because I only vaguely knew one victim, so I feel as if I have no right to say anything in the voice of someone who was affected. I fail because the day it happened -- as I watched it in my freshman dorm room a thousand miles away while my douchebag roommate made fun of the teacher bleeding to death on national television -- I went outside, cried, went to the bathroom to throw up, called all my friends from home, and had the same conversation, over and over and over: "It finally happened."  I have no idea why that second word, "finally," was in there. I fail because I don't know why I wasn't surprised.  

I fail because I can't write that I wasn't surprised.  I can't say that the south part of Denver in the late 90's was one of the most terrible places to go to high school ever. So terrible, in fact, that almost no one my age I talked to about it who fell at all into the realm of "not fitting in" could say they were surprised at all that a couple of misfits killed thirteen people there. I can't say that because, after all, we were all pretty wealthy. Many of us had parents who cared for us. We had sports practice and school books and everything provided for us that was supposed to be provided for us. I also can't say that because it would disrespect the place that was so badly damaged by two people who will go down in history as a couple of the greatest villains in modern history. It does not sound good to say, "Oh, of course it happenedthere. That place was a cesspool." It's just not done. 

Instead, I should say it was all Dylan and Eric's fault. If not that, it was Godlessness, or the suffocation that comes with born-again Christianity, or video games, or absentee parents, or runaway liberalness, or Marilyn Manson, or runaway conservatism, or just the death of American values in general. 

Those reasons are all a bunch of crap, and everyone knows it. But if they are a bunch of crap, I don't know WHY I knew. Why I was unsurprised. And I hope you all can help me. 

High school is a tough time for most people. I'm not sure what made Colorado in that time period different, if it was different at all. I can't place it. I do know that I was scared, all the time. I do know that I did a lot of things I was not proud of. Racist things. Homophobic things. Sexist things. I know we had coaches who didn't believe in women driving. I know that I saw a teacher tell a group of students "I don't really believe that" after the administration had forced the teacher to give a speech condemning an act of vandalism against an out gay student's car. I know that everywhere I go in San Francisco, I run into people who came here to get away from there. Refugees. I know people who grew up in other places that were not harassed for liking things that were not sports. Who were actually popular AND into writing or drama. Who knew out gay people. Who dressed in black and were accepted. Who proudly said the poor should be included in things. Who thought of the Mexicans as people, even friends. But I also know that a lot of places in the late-90's were terrible, and that Columbine -- and South Denver in general -- might not be unique at all. 

I don't have an answer for you. I can't place what that feeling is, why I and many of the friends I spoke to were unsurprised. What do you think? Did you grow up there? Were you surprised it happened at Columbine? Did you grow up somewhere else? What was your high school like? Leave ideas in the comment section or send me an email if you're so inclined. 


Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Can we get a few more Vermonts?

Today, the Vermont state legislature overrode the governor's veto to legalize same sex marriage in the state. This is a monumental moment. Never before has a democratically elected body in the United States confirmed the rights of LGBT people to marry who they choose.

In Massachusetts, Iowa, and Connecticut, the courts have determined that marriage is a fundamental right for all people. (California did as well, but that decision was overturned by ballot measure). Now, for the first time, the representatives of the people of a state have passed a law making marriage legal for everyone. And while this might seem like something minor, it is hard to understate how important a shift this is, even if it did occur in a state as small and liberal as Vermont.

If you look historically at rights movements for minority and oppressed populations in the United States, there are generally two phases. In almost all recent cases, courts get the ball rolling. Brown v Board, for example, helped kickstart the Civil Rights movement, but it led to nearly a decade of unprecedented racial tension and violence. Ten years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, a law that cost the Democrats the south but also fundamentally changed this country's attitudes towards race. Today, racism is still pervasive, but it is almost universally frowned upon. Racial violence persisted, but it has gradually faded (though it still unquestionably exists). This, I argue, is largely because the people Americans chose to elect them passed a law granting further rights to African Americans and other racial minorities. It by no means fixed the problem; it did, however, help to fundamentally change the culture.

The women's rights movement, unfortunately, is a not-as-happy counterpoint to the Civil Rights movement. Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, resulted in a huge backlash against the women's rights movement. The Equal Rights Amendment, an amendment to the constitution that would have guaranteed equal rights for women, failed largely because of anti-choice concerns that it would invalidate any restrictions on abortion.

This history is largely glossed over and hugely oversimplified due to the fact that no one will read more than a few paragraphs on a blog, but the point is this: court decisions do not necessarily mean that a minority group will gain any more stature in the long run. The civil rights movement was largely successful: legal segregation was ended, outright racial violence such as lynchings were minimized, and the culture was fundamentally changed, though a subtler and some would say more dangerous form of racism still exists. Women, on the other hand, continue to be beaten, raped, murdered, paid less, and kept out of positions of power. This can't all be blamed on any one thing, but the fact remains that the American people failed to ever stand up and have their legislature do much of anything to protect the rights of women. They did so for racial minorities, particularly African Americans. This is a huge difference.

Today, over 50% of violent hate crimes are committed against LGBT people. Court decisions that stand up for the right to marry are welcome, but I fear they will do nothing to change the views of the people. Without that change, real change on the marriage issue -- and real change on hate crimes legislation -- will never happen. We need more Vermonts, desperately. We need to pass ballot measures that support the right of all people to marry, not vice versa. We need municipalities and elected officials of all types to do the right thing here. And that, unfortunately, means the people need to do the work. Yes, that means you need to do the work.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

A nonfiction manifesto

An excerpt of an email from the great poet Andrew Aulino:

Yes I was once browsing in Skylight Books in Los Feliz (next neighborhood to the West of me) and found myself stuck at a reading of some CNF, read in the "poet voice," and felt, both because of the subject matter and its dull insightlessness (wish this were German "sowohl ihre Themen als auch ihre Einsichtlosigkeit wie ihre (deswegen) unverdiente Gefuehlsanspreuche) and the emotional demands it made on the reader, though it hadn't earned them. And while she had subtler manipulations I won't get into, she seemed to assume, indeed demand that we feel deeply moved for the simple fact that she was discussing some certain subject, that she had a role in it, that it must be interesting, despite the fact that, Jesus Christ, I felt about to turn into some tusked, cloven-hooved beast, whirling and driven by some bibliophobic hormonal response into destroying the store and every copy of the book she was selling; indeed I felt that this transformation was taking place, for my knees began to get weak and my vision went from double to fully blurred, but it was merely my going into a coma of boredom, and my girlfriend at the time had to drag me out of the store, looping her arms under my underarms,, and slapping my face in the cold (it was winter) night air, and it took some good strong coffee, a big bottle of mineral water and the reading of some H.D. to fully restore me to my former state of (relative) wellness...


My thoughts below the fold.

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For those of you who haven't spent a good part of your lives trying to figure out what "creative nonfiction" means, I'll give defining it a shot: creative nonfiction is an attempt to turn actual events into literary art. Implicit in this is an invisible contract with the reader stating that all efforts have been made to ensure that what is written is "real." Many will disagree with this. That's fine. I tried.

No form of art has been more heavily criticized since the Maplethorpe/Jesse Helms fiasco. People like James Frey, author of A Million Thousand Gazillion Tiny Little Pieces Inside Pieces of a Tiny Million Slices of Pieces or something like that, have been held up as exemplars of something terrible, something so insidious that they must be turned into characters who make Dick Cheney look like Rudy Huxtable. The man lied to Oprah, for Christ's sake. An American cannot commit a more heinous crime.

Out of all this came an unwritten rule that all CNF writers have been asked to follow: Your narrator, no matter what, must be reliable. An unreliable person, a real person like Humbert Humbert, has no place writing nonfiction. They can't be trusted, after all.

This makes sense if you're Truman Capote or Stephen Jay Gould, writing analytic, journalistic or historical creative non-fiction. But so much CNF is personal; it, unfortunately, deals in the totally and completely unreliable realm of memory. It's like buying pot off a dealer you don't know. You might end up with the best high of your life, but you also might end up naked in the back of a police car barking at the moon and propositioning the cop.

For the sake of argument, I would venture to say that anyone writing memoir or personal essays with a reliable narrator is being more dishonest than someone who writes with a reliable one. If you have something interesting to write about from your personal life, you are no doubt a complete and utter mess. I know maybe three CNF writers I would trust, and they all write analytic stuff. That doesn't mean I don't like the other three dozen I know. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear their stories. Memoir and personal essay writers who should be using unreliable narrators but pretend to be reliable end up causing pain just like poor Andrew suffered. Like Oprah suffered. Like every fan of the memoir form has suffered. It hurts the soul.

So to all of those CNF writers out there, give the unreliable narrator a try. Be honest about it. Let the reader know they shouldn't believe everything you say by being obviously unreliable because, let's face it, you are obviously unreliable. Pretending not to be is the lie! Editors, you should love this! It gives you the cover you need. Start accepting CNF books with unreliable narrators. Please, for the love of God. Something's gotta change or Andrew's burning down some bookstores.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

If I had to choose a time in history to be writing, it would be now. This is not a good thing.

I've been out of town for awhile. The city was getting to me. At the bus stop the other day, this Latina woman walked up to me, spit on some poor Mexican guy, and said, "Mexicans. Dirty filthy Mexicans. Disgusting." Then she said to me, "Sir, aren't they filthy?" or something like that, all in a very thick accent, and I said, "No thank you" and got on the bus. Before I could find a place in the bus to stand, the bus driver yelled at some Asian guy, telling him to go back to his own country, and then, once I was lucky enough to get a seat, this self-described "OG," who must have been in his sixties, was giving this 17 year old kid advice on how to make money dealing drugs and robbing people without going to jail. I don't think the advice was very good. I decided to run away for a few days to stay with my friend Corey up in Ukiah. It was amazing.

The first night, we went to this playground by his house and climbed up and slid down these slides that must have been somewhere between one and two stories tall. I cracked my knee pretty good, and I used muscles that have been neglected for a decade, but in all, I haven't had so much fun in a very long time. After the slides, we went to the swings, and I saw this humongous "spaceship" that was actually a climbing contraption for kids. At night, the thing looked magical, like it was out of some bad 60's movie. The insides were made of unpainted stainless steal, and it's red shell had chipped paint. It was made of bars for kids to climb on, bars that were the same width and distance from each other that you'd find in a jail cell. It was twice as tall as me. I yelled "spaceship!" and ran to it, but then I saw this fence around it, and Corey said, "No, we don't like that spaceship." And I looked at him, and he said, "A kid died there."

I'm frustrated, but I'm also happy. I'm happy to be writing. I wrote a lot this weekend. I wrote a lot of fiction, but in between the fiction, I wrote quite a few polemical rants, rants that don't really have any value and would never be publishable but that I want to share somewhere. So here is one of them, with all its levity and humor, for all twelve of you to read, below the ghetto fold made up of six dashes.

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I will start by reiterating what has been said by people smarter than me: Our species has one hell of a genetic mutation.Our large foreheads ... our large brains ... allow us to do amazing things. We can remember. We can manipulate our surroundings. We can learn how to solve unbelievably complex problems, at least compared to most other species on earth. And this mutation has made us incredibly successful. Our population has exploded. We went to the moon. We built entirely new surroundings that were more suitable to our needs as a species. But these things will most likely also kill us all because we never understand entirely what we're doing until after it's done, and it has a habit of making our lives unpleasant in the meantime (think cancer and global warming and war). What's worse: this adaptation allows us to be aware of the fact that we're killing ourselves, but we are way too inflexible to do anything about it, so we're all gonna die. The end.

No, not the end. What makes life interesting is watching all the irony in this. It gives me the same sort of sick pleasure I get out of watching Law and Order or CSI. It's totally predictable and there's nothing I can do to change the outcome, no matter how much I want to.

Jesus Christ. I sound like Easy Rawlins or Sam Spade. But it's hard not to. Here are the facts:

We (and I will not say our government because we are all responsible) tortured people, many of them innocent, with beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse and abject humiliation. STOP! Don't roll your eyes and say, "Here we go again. More depressing news." Put yourself in their situation. Imagine yourself tied to the rafters for days in a standing position, being kept awake, beaten and fondled, all while you knew that the same type of people who were beating you were bombing your family with depleted uranium, poisoning their drinking water, giving your children and grandchildren horrible disfigurements, and mocking everything you believed in.

Amid all that, we were (and are still) in the midst of a festival of greed, buying things to distract ourselves made from what amounts to slave labor. STOP! It just doesn't seem real, does it? You never see these people. You can go see for yourself, I hear. There are people working in sweatshops under the ground in Chinatown here in San Francisco. If you hang out long enough, you can see them with your own eyes. Every once in a while, an elevator will come up out of the sidewalk. For a split second, you can see the people below, sewing for more than 12 hours a day.

We continue to boil ourselves to death with carbon dioxide. STOP! If you live near an ocean, there's a high likelihood your home won't be there in fifty years. You know? That place you sleep at night, and keep your belongings, and make love. If you don't live near an ocean, guess who's coming to visit?

People keep telling me that writing is a dying profession. If I had to choose a single time in history to write, it would be now.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

News and narrative

I know I'm not the first person to ever make the point that newspapers tell stories with their headlines. Usually, people take a look at individual stories to make this point. Today, to save you time, I'm going to summarize the story that the whole front page (or main page) is telling, in summary form, so that you don't have to read them. I am doing this because I am bored.

BBC News: We are fucked. Fucked I tell you! Baghdad is still a catastrophe and the oceans are coming. Fast. The market's doing better, though, but that's kind of like saying the Polar bears had a good day. They're still gonna die.

Drudge: Stocks are a little better, on paper, but we are fucked. This is all Obama's fault. He is failing. His message sucks. Pelosi is evil. We are all going to die because Obama doesn't care about terrorists. The end of the free market means the end of freedom. Even chimps are attacking us. Be afraid.

Huffington Post: The Republicans are self-destructing, which is a good thing because they're so evil they tried to kill our own soldiers. The wars are not going particularly well, and Obama's economic team is in some rough waters, but don't worry! Look at the funny pundits! They are so cute and silly and angry! Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart and Ann Coulter and Bill Maher! Haha! They don't like each other! It's like WWF, only they're out of shape, and with the exception of Jon Stewart, slightly stupider than any professional wrestler.

Politico: The Democrats are scary good at everything they do right now. They're like some Orwellian superpower, masterful at manipulating public belief. The Republicans are overwhelmed but tirelessly trying to fight the mystical Democratic power.

The New York Times: Hey! Except for all the death in other countries, it's actually a pretty good day! Obama wants good things done, he might actually get them done, the DOW is going UP today, and China has all kinds of bad news, which is good news for us! Drink up!

Talking Points Memo: Republicans are dumb. They don't know what they're doing. Look at them. Stupids. And if you thought Republican politicians were dumb, look at the Republican pundits. We used to be the best investigative reporting team around, during the Bush Administration, but now that Obama's in power, we're going to spend all our time kicking Republicans while they're down. Because God knows no Obama officials will ever do anything wrong, especially because Democrats have almost all the power (no Supreme Court and no 60 Senators), and we all know people with that much power would never need any investigation.

That is all.

Nerdily yours,
Seth

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Yes, I am starting a blog

I have an admission to make. I hate the internet.

Now I'm not trying to be a crotchety old malcontent who mutters on and on about how technology ruins culture. This is a blog. It is intended to be a place of undiluted self-importance. I don't hate the internet for what it does to society, or to other people, or to those kids today who text each other when they're sitting together on the bus. I hate the internet because of what it does to me.

I can't sit down and write. I can't have a conversation with someone without thinking about an email conversation I'm in the middle of. For Christ's sake, I can't even sit down and read a book anymore. To test this, yesterday, as I was reading one of the best books I've read in a long time (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, if you're curious), I counted the number of times I checked my email during a three hour reading session. The number: 14.

This is not because the book bored me. In fact, I was in love with the book. I couldn't put it down. But I also happened to be in the midst of some administrative, bureaucratic bullshit, the details of which I won't bore you with, and the internet forced me to think about what I wasn't enjoying obsessively while ignoring what I was enjoying right in front of me. It's the technological equivalent of being 13 and able to call that girl you like as many times as you want without scaring her away or pissing off her mom.

The problem, I think, is that the internet is changing my brain. A UCLA scientist named Gary Small says that brain activity shifts dramatically and quickly when non-Internet users start to use. I've been using it for a long time. And a guy named Nicholas Carr argued in an interview with The Sun that the internet may be turning us all into a distracted mass of humanity that lacks "depth of knowledge." (He also, for the record, says it is making us increasingly efficient at processing knowledge.) He may be overstating his case and overgeneralizing. I don't know. But for me, I can say unequivocally that he knows what the fuck he's talking about.

It is tempting to blame the internet for everything wrong with my life. And I really want to. I hate it. I want it out of my life. I wish I could give it a long, long noogie until it went away for awhile, like an annoying younger brother. I wish I could run into it in a dark alley and, as my girlfriend says, "stab it in the goiter." I wish I could steal its kidneys and sell them on the black market. I wish I could put it in one of those James Bond death machines where the internet is held above a shark tank while acid slowly eats away at the ropes that are keeping it balanced precariously above a snapping Great White.

But in the end, I have to admit to myself that the internet is a thing, not a living creature, and I have to treat it as such. Therefore, I must blame myself. The easiest solution would be to stop using the internet entirely. Unfortunately, I can't. A writer who does not use the internet is like a dictator who doesn't use violence. It just doesn't work.

So instead of obsessively checking my email, I'm going to obsessively write blog entries. I'm going to use all of this obsessiveness to my advantage, to practice doing what I love: writing. So that's what I'm going to do. Now hold me to it.