What is it good for?

There has been a war on drugs since Nancy Reagan asked kids to "just say no." in the 80s.  The drugs are winning.  The war on terrorism is difficult to win because it's also war on a concept more than an enemy.  No what people need to instigate, manage and finally win a war is a real enemy.

Like my friend who had a war against the cable company. He thought it was OK to take cable from a company too lazy to protect its flow.  When the cable company terminated the signal at the wires above his house, instead of right where he could tap in at the junction box, I asked him if the war was over.  His reply, "It's no longer war.  It's Jihad."

This was the 90s when Jihad simply meant living your life only to destroy your enemy.  We have come to learn that the enemy of the Jihadists is the Infidel (us) and that we started it with the Crusades.

The term Holy War is possibly the funniest thing in human history.  The idea that somehow the being charged with loving the world so much that He created it for us would stand for us killing people who don't believe in Him is ludicrous on so many levels...

War is not holy.  No, war is personal.  It began with tribes and it continues with tribes to this day.  Or have you never lived in a mixed-use condominium complex?  The idea about condos used to be to allow people who cannot afford to own a whole house or apartment building to own just one little bit.  It was a way for these people to live together and own part of the building and share ownership of the common area.  But now it's just a place for people to start and lose wars.

In my opinion, there is no winner in any war.

There are many reasons for Condos becoming war zones but my main pet peeve is people who used to believe in the condo model but who move out and rent to complete fucking morons.  People who are in the mindset of an apartment and not a shared experience, people who don't care as much as owners.

My complex had flipped.  Most of the units near me are owned by investors.  Some of them are good about the people they rent to and others are keeping oddball family members there.  Read my wife's blog on it.

The problem is that we have an enemy.  One who doesn't believe in the idea of community property, personal space, hygiene... But we're against war.

Part of me wants to go all Jihad but it takes too much time i.e. the rest of my life.  Like the Gerard Depardieu character in Green Card, part of me wants to tattoo the name of my upstairs neighbor on my forearm as a reminder that I need to kill that person and, once it's done, to have the tattoo artists draw a line through it...

The problem with that, besides how messy killing is, is that you have to live with it.  Right there on your arm and in your heart. All war, holy or otherwise, just never goes away.

How to get a person to believe or leave, then?  We've tried talking, note-leaving, appealing to the landlords and now we're appealing to the authorities and, possibly the legal system.  And just that's going to leave a mark. Imagine the mark a war will leave.

All I want is what's best for everyone involved.  For my wife and me to be able to sleep at night without hearing a whining, barking dog begging to be let out; for that dog to be owned by loving people who walk it and dote on it; for my upstairs neighbor to become a loving, intelligent member of society who is aware of the needs of other people.

I don't think war is going to solve this problem.

I guess I am ready for a miracle.

The Raffle!

The great Jennie Olson oversaw the auction and drawings surrounding InnerMission Productions' V-Day offerings this year (The Vagina Monologues and the MENding Monologues and the poet Derek Brown). The drawing and auction brought in a lot of money for the charities supported by the production but it came at a cost as you'll see in the video...

The MENding Monologues takes names

I have seen courage.  It comes in odd shapes.  Rarely, if ever, does it look like Clint Eastwood makes it look.  For he's a wiley pro who knows what we think we're looking for.
No, courage comes when ordinary people are exposed to awfulness and act like humans in the face of it.
It was the case last night (3-23-12) at InnerMission's production of the MENding Monologues.
The story of the movement is as courageous as the men who performed last night, to say the least.  As is usual in society a woman spoke up first.  Eve Ensler had basically seen enough violence done to women and decided to do something about it.

As luck would have it, Eve Ensler is a brilliant writer and her courageous step (what, if anything can one person do in the face of overwhelming awfulness?) lead to more steps and, well, a movement.
Then Derek Dujardin did something equally courageous (and maybe more so because men are raised to be stoic in the face of just about everything).  He called bullshit on men sitting idly by as the Vagina Monologues were performed, on men getting away with telling rape jokes and, really, men getting away with rape.  Really, the statistics are staggering.

Ask the men of InnerMission's The MENding Monologues.  They put those statistics up there for everyone to see.  Along with a bunch of excellently-wrought soul searching, a bunch of great words and, both my favorite and least favorite moment, the legal names of all 19 people who knew what Jerry Sandusky was up to at Penn State and did nothing.

Nineteen men associated with the scandal. Big men. Well respected men. Athletes.  Strong.
But not courageous.

No, my friends were courageous.  They stood up there.  Sp

Publish Post

oke from the heart and the gut and called bullshit and basically made everyone cry.  And it was very cool.

Hopefully the people in the audience will go home from last night's experience and think twice before letting someone get away with... a joke at the expense of women, the maltreatment of women, children and other men and maybe rape and violence will cease to exist.

Oh, and the Vagina Monologues is probably just as good.  I'm seeing that tonight.
Tet your tickets at: http://innermissionproductions.org/

#dousheybasket

The hashtag #dousheybasket can be used to refer to anything you pay too much for, especially if you pay too much for it in order to look better to the people who shop at the Little Italy Farmer's Market.
Besides, no matter how hard you try my wife and I are the doushey-est people there.
It all started on a normal Saturday afternoon at the La Jolla Farmer's Market -- oddly the second doushy-est farmer's market in the county.  Jennie wanted one of the robo-baskets that a nice European-looking woman was selling.  We asked the price.  $40.
After her pitch (it was made in Germany with strong materials and Eurpoean design touches and better engineering), we thought it was worth the price.  Especially because it would complete our doushey traveling-to-farmer's-markets-ensemble: a Smart Car.
This became apparent when we went to the Little Italy Farmer's Market in the Smarty (only we can call it Smarty; because you don't own one, you have to call it The Smart Car).  We tooled past all the Range Rovers, Fiats and Priuses; we popped into an impossibly small parking spot and -- the piece de resistance?
We opened the back window (you can do that with the touch of a button in a Smarty) and pulled out the $40 basket. We knew it was cool because people didn't look at us until after we'd passed. It was such a pleasure paying extra for things and putting them in out too-small, over-heavy and exorbitantly  expensive Doushey Basket.  How do we know we paid too much for it?
The only thing we do that hipsters don't do, apparently, is shop at Safeway, where we saw the very same basket for $9.
It's still worth it, though.