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In the News

I just don't understand why some things go viral on the net and others do not. Today two examples of stories I was sure would go as crazy as the MGM lion nibbling on its handler last week. 

First, I was on Facebook and noticed these items that were "Trending Now":
Jennifer Grey
Mortgage Rates
Gluten-Free Food
Candice Bergen
Emma Stone
Vanilla Ice
Seasonal Allergies
Liam Neeson
Escaped Cobras
Elizabeth Warren

Now I am guessing that very few of my readers are all that concerned about celebrity breakups, dieting tips or nasal irritation. But you just gotten wonder about snakes escaping, if only to ask escape from where - reptile rehab?

Well it seems a guy in southwest China was illegally breeding cobras when one hundred and sixty of them staged a break-out. This was in a small village and apparently the locals were a bit hissed off about this inconvenience. No one got bitten but there were several unfortunate encounters in bathrooms, apparently the cobras like cool, dark porcelain places. You may want to turn that light on before you take your seat. Handlers caught "all but four or five," which apparently is supposed to calm everyone.

Since this story did not go cyber-viral, here is my second choice for a huge internet story that also seems to have gained no traction whatsoever. Why I have no idea, like the cobras it struck a certain Freudian chord with me.

This story comes from an article that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which might explain the lack of wider coverage; it is a preview of the upcoming 2nd Global Symposium on Cosmetic Vaginal Surgery (September 23-25th in Las Vegas). The article is titled - Frankengina. Vaginal cosmetic surgery is "the fastest growing category of cosmetic procedures according to the statistics collected by the American Society for Plastic Surgeons." Apparently so much so that a 2nd Global Symposium is necessary.

I wish not to engage in any feminist rhetoric about the hows or whys of such procedures, nor do I intend to rally round the cosmetically enhanced vulva, which an astute reader pointed out is the correct description of the genitalia in question not vagina. I just want to know where is the internet coverage of this significant event? And will there be press coverage?

[Addendum: the accompanying photo was intended as a reference to the first story only; several readers suggested potential implications for the second item; I have, in turn, recommended a good therapist]
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Winter Window Weather

For those not familiar with San Francisco weather, I have been waiting for the fog since I moved in six months ago. While the imagery outside my windows remains spectacular, my very first night living with the view was in mid-March or right around the spring equinox. The sun was moving slowly north of the Golden Gate and the famous San Francisco fog was in its dry season. Now as another equinox approaches the fog is returning.

Last evening at sunset the silver bluffs had piled into the Bay like a thick blanket, the Marin headlands to the north had been overwhelmed, the waters of the bay were smothered in a twenty foot high layer with eruptions as high as 100 or more feet. A novice viewer would have supposed an island under those peaks but Alcatraz, Treassure and Angel were far off, these were just billows of happenstance. The City itself still stood out over the lower fog bank much like the picture above, but it floated alone in the gauzy mixture that I know is only a preview of many grey-white winter scenes to come. 

Today surprisingly broke in dull light but fog-less, the rain that was predicted to slide down from the north never arrived. It is as though a bubble has descended on the Bay and nowhere outside of this hazy scene exists, that somewhere just over the hills the world dissolves into a tommy-knocker nothingness. An interesting winter has been announced.
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You Say You Want a Revolution


The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.    
                                                                    -Thomas Jefferson


Nope not a Tea Party fan here. I have stopped calling them tea baggers because of Bill, oops I did it again - nevermind. I am not a fan but I completely relate to their feelings of being disenfrancised and so should everyone of my generation. Remember the resistance of the great silent majority to the "revolution" of the 60s, you remember the one born of drugs, sex, rock & roll and then fueled by the war in Vietnam. There was simply mindless opposition to what was being said. Change was an evil word.

Now I will admit that the opposition to the Tea Party rhetoric is more articulate today and the opposition holds both the White House and the Congress. The Johnson and Nixon administrations had all the power around Vietnam until we took it away from them.

How did that happen?

Recruitment, which is precisely what the Tea Party movement must continue to do. Winning a couple of seats in November from a few old, worn political soft targets won't do it. Any revolution that seeks to overturn the current order without burning it down must have a strong, vocal base. Wacko speeches and thinly veiled conspiracy theories won't reach enough of the disgusted voters who may be sympathetic to the emerging platform of the Tea Party.

Many on the left and in the middle thought that Obama was going to be like a little rebellion now and then, clearly they were wrong. Sorry friends but I did tell you. Yes I know "only two years" and "Bush left the financial mess" and "worldwide economic downturn" but the left wing talking heads on CNN are just as much talking point mimes as are the Fox News naysayers. We've been through one revolution, how was that for you? I mean compared to today . . . Yes, you can work within the system, if the system works.

I'm not sure if the Tea Party will ever be the storm in the atmosphere that Jefferson was referring to but I, like most of you, feel the days of slow gentle rains are not going to cut it anymore. What we need is another good cleansing tsunami.
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art: Barry Blitt-NYTimes
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Lyrical Nostalgia

But wait you say! You can't possibly be a Michael Jackson fan. Right you are astute readers. But on a long drive the other day I heard my favorite set of Beatles tunes and decided it had been too long. So today seven remastered Beatles CDs arrived and I shall be indulging in the Fab Four for some weeks or months and of course blogging about it. But why then Michael Jackson? Well he (and a division of Sony Music Inc.) own the Beatles library, well I guess it would be his estate but no matter, the MJ art is also social commentary, if you don't quite see it, try this larger version.

Also I promised I was going to wallow and float in nostalgia this month but I got a bit sidetracked with some favorite quotes and though the quotations are nostalgic for me, the prose I attached to them has not been conveying the lightness, wonder and remembrance of things past.

So I shall be interspersing the boys from Liverpool in order to pave the way down penny lane. I won't keep you speculating, my "favorite set" of Beatles tunes come from Abbey Road. I will be writing about why later but just as a taste -- John-to-Paul-to-George-to-Ringo they are: Here Comes the Sun, Because, You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End.

Here is a little taste for you -- musical link
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If You Meet the Buddha on the Road

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. -Andre Gide

The San Francisco Bay area has a lot of teachers. A wide variety of traditions spawn these transmitters of wisdom - buddhist, hindu, new age, tantric, christian, jewish, islamic, gaian, feminist, eco, gecko, whacko and other. With several invitations to local events this past week, I have once again encountered a cross-section of these teachers. Invariably I am struck by the same observation when I attend such a gathering, a reflection I first had over twenty years ago which seems to be as accurate today as it was then.

Nearly every lama, priest, rinpoche, tulku, mahatama, guru, maharishi, mawlawi, mullah, rebbe, goddess and just plain teacher I have encountered over lo these many years has devotees. I have no problem with the teachers, my issue is with the followers. OK, so maybe I have some issue with some of the teachers, but they can teach, push, hawk, sell or prostelytize any position, scripture, devotion, gospel or worldview they like. As someone once said: "It's nearly a free country."

No my gripe, complaint, distain is not with the guru but with the devotee. The slavish devotion, which in many eastern traditions is referred to as Bhakti -- that I have a problem with. I simply have a full body revulsion listening to any presentation where when the speaker enters the room, half of the audience falls on the floor in worship. What brilliance has this person offered up that prompts someone to extremes of adulation?

"He's a man, he's just a man and I've had so many men before in very many ways. He's just one more." lyrics from Jesus Christ Superstar.

The title of this post is incomplete, the full title of the book by Sheldon Kopp is: If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!

True teachers, in my view, tend to admonish their listeners away from disciple-hood; they advocate a free and questioning approach to their teachings, not a prostrate worship of someone who is just another seeker with some insight to share. But clearly there is some wide spread need to bow and scrape to a slightly more enlightening being than oneself, which is why I suppose I stop to pet every cat that crosses the path of my journey.


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9/12

No real need for a 9-11 post this year. The Florida fool didn't burn any books. The Manhattan community center debate has gone so virile that it has become passe to mention it. I object to many thoughts, debates, expletives and explanations around the World Trade Center blogoverse but mostly the politics. Both sides, hell all sides, just take too much liberty with the facts of that day. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

I did catch a documentary on the 9-11 Truthers last night. I did a little investigation on them earlier this year when the carpet cleaner gave me the seventy minute version of their thesis. The problem with all of these conspiracy theories is that they use a selective filter; facts, inferences and extrapolations that support their view of the world are truth, anything else disappears in a haze of "they did it" verbiage. Plus people who are determined to be right at the top of their lungs and in my face, have no chance of convincing me of anything and a greatly expanded potential of needing medical attention.

But like I said, no 9-11 blog yesterday, no need. Today, 9-12 is significant to many if only as someone's birthday or wedding anniversary but in the world of events the 12th has been fairly quiet. Sometimes it seems that we could use a lot more of these uneventful days when we can fill in the significance for ourselves.

September 12th - Adopt a Kitten Day. I'll bet no one would care that the litter box is two blocks from People's Park.
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Stuff

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness. -John Ruskin


For me it began in 1999, I was moving from San Francisco to Ann Arbor. I had lived in the Haight-Asbury section of the City for a decade and while I had not accumulated a lot of new stuff there, I was still living with the detritus of my profligate years in L.A. Besides I was moving to a fully furnished house in Michigan and there was simply no place for my stuff.

The living room went to a couple of friends who had just returned to the City. The kitchen I still visit in Sonoma, there was a lot of divestiture and donation. But still a load went by moving van to the midwest, far less than had made the L.A. to S.F. move a decade earlier but I still was burdened.

After six years in Michigan I uprooted again, this time for Las Vegas. Once again, I tried to untether myself from more of the stuff of life. I gave up my 15 yr. old platform california king and my wide wooden desk of 25 years. I managed to depart for the desert with only a car load of personal items and three boxes shipped ahead. I was feeling lighter.

Three years in Nevada and I was even less encumbered, the memorabilia box was ceremonially cremated, the family album was sorted and parsed. I do still have a half empty storage closet up in Sebastopol waiting for my next surge of dispossession. 

Since moving into the Berkeley apartment I have acquired the high mag. binoculars w/ tripod, which break down and fit under the back seat of the car; one rotating fan, which will be donated to a forever overheated friend and one blow-up bed. I really, really don't want stuff. I have also learned that actual baggage is much easier to put down than the psychological leavings of a life. Real permanent things truly do make me weary. The head stuff -- well that's what wisdom is all about.
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