That's right, its Another Darn Historical Day in America. It seems that the news media has just discovered that the government (read here: Democratically controlled government that can't fix the economy even though they've had 18 whole months because its run by a Muslim Facist who can't even produce a quality fake birth certificate) can spy on Americans by tracking their movements on their GPS devices. The media can't say whether the government would actually do such a thing, but I mean come on... these guys want to control EVERYTHING!
Every time I think America is beginning to learn to think for itself, I see something like this in the media. Its not that this information is untrue. It is true. Every last word of it. The only thing left out of the story is that GPS has been around for more than 25 years now and the capability to track objects with GPS has been around just as long. But knowing that information would require two things - an attention span longer than about ten minutes and some knowledge of the world greater than that offered by the news media. Either America is no longer interested in the rest of the world or just doesn't care. Either way, look around and see the results.
I am not terribly enamored with the Obama administration right now - but I'd like to be able to judge the guy on his own merits. Instead I feel like an adult caught in the middle of a fight between two five year old kids. "You started the Depression." "NO, YOU DID!" "NO WAY! YOU STARTED IT WITH YOUR POOH POOH BREATH!" "NO, YOU STARTED IT WITH YOUR COOTIES!" And this is the professional media that seems to be slinging this hash around like it was news - hell of a lot more entertaining than actually digging up real news stories I guess.
Neither political party is perfect, neither is entirely to blame - yet everyone involved with running this country should be ashamed of themselves. This is the Greatest Country on Earth - and we look like idiots right now. If Obama gets bounced in two years, it'll mostly be for that reason. Instead of reacting to the stupid baiting actions of his immature political rivals, he should be showing their actions for what they are and ignoring their insipidness. Its okay to want to have inclusion in your government, just make sure that the guys you're including aren't complete morons. Anyone responsible for the mess we're in now need not apply.
But ultimately, the fate of this country isn't up to Obama, Pelosi, Boehner, Palin or the Mad Hatter - the fate of the United States is ours. We're the ones who have to demand more of our leaders. We're the ones who have to tell them to stop all the fear-mongering, name calling, and stupidity, and go get us jobs. I'm not against the rise of a new political party, but I don't want a Tea Party that is even more broken politically than the two Parties that it hopes to replace. What we need is a new leadership that will get the job done even if it has to make some hard choices and compromises for the good of the American people.
So, people, you can sit in your homes because you're afraid the government is tracking you with GPS, or you can start telling your leaders that enough is enough. We want real reform. The kind you can see. The kind you can taste. The kind that puts people back to work. (If it don't affect your bottom line, does it really matter?) Not more speeches about how great they are and how evil the other party is. Reform. Change you can sink your teeth into.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Jobs
The biggest thing about poverty is that people tend to focus on the fact that someone who is poor doesn't have enough money, as opposed to the fact of why that person doesn't have enough money - education, lack of a good job, health, etc... As a result, many of our efforts to stem the tide of poverty are focused on getting poor people more money and not on helping poor people overcome the things that caused them to be poor in the first place.
If you look at the current policies in place here and abroad, you will see that we are generally focusing on the wrong things. Our health care bill, while addressing the issue of health as a means for creating poor people, left out the fact that health care costs are much higher than they should be. You can't solve a problem of making poor people healthy if you make people rich off the health of the poor. Its not a sustainable policy. Health has to not only be available to all people, it has to be affordable to all people as well. Same thing with all these bailout initiatives being thrown around. They end up saving large companies from going bankrupt, but do nothing to create jobs, help educate people, save health care benefits, etc... We'd rather throw money at unemployment benefits than use money to create lasting employment of people.
I think where this issue can really be seen is in the new proposal by the 50 top billionaires to give away half of their money to charity. I think that's an admirable goal and I won't even mention how they got that money to begin with. However, the idea, while great, is wrong and won't actually do anything to help poverty in this world. It would be far better, for instance, to use that money to create jobs doing things that were previously considered impossibly too expensive.
As an example, Africa needs roads. African people need jobs. Put that money into road building projects throughout Africa. Build their infrastructure at no expense to Africa. Hire Africans to do the labor. At the end of all that money, Africa's economy will be far more robust than it would have been had you just thrown money at charities and they'll have new infrastructure in place for many years to come.
The same could be done here. I know that there are many initiatives on the books by the Obama administration. Its time to start fast-tracking them. Americans need jobs. Take the first 52 projects that are off the shelf and fund them. One a week. Each project should hire at least 1000 Americans and pay them a decent wage. If that doesn't work, double it, or quadruple it. Let's rebuild our own infrastructure. Let's upgrade our energy distribution network. Let's rebuild some of those nature trails.
Let's put money in education that doesn't come with strings attached. School teachers working is a hell of a lot more important than school reform. How about school nurses? And new gymnasiums? If you're really serious about getting obese kids healthy, how about spending some money on gym teachers and gyms?
America needs to let go of the last twenty years of bi-partisan bickering and start taking its problems seriously. I say this as a Democrat with a Democratic Majority - we Americans are tired of all the infighting and backstabbing and name-calling. Its not important whether Obama was right or wrong about some Mosque in New York - he was wrong to have even mentioned the subject. Our problems are much greater than that. Put people to work and they'll have no time left for tea parties or Quran burnings or isolationist politics.
Oh, and we need to put people on Mars... but that's the subject of another post...
If you look at the current policies in place here and abroad, you will see that we are generally focusing on the wrong things. Our health care bill, while addressing the issue of health as a means for creating poor people, left out the fact that health care costs are much higher than they should be. You can't solve a problem of making poor people healthy if you make people rich off the health of the poor. Its not a sustainable policy. Health has to not only be available to all people, it has to be affordable to all people as well. Same thing with all these bailout initiatives being thrown around. They end up saving large companies from going bankrupt, but do nothing to create jobs, help educate people, save health care benefits, etc... We'd rather throw money at unemployment benefits than use money to create lasting employment of people.
I think where this issue can really be seen is in the new proposal by the 50 top billionaires to give away half of their money to charity. I think that's an admirable goal and I won't even mention how they got that money to begin with. However, the idea, while great, is wrong and won't actually do anything to help poverty in this world. It would be far better, for instance, to use that money to create jobs doing things that were previously considered impossibly too expensive.
As an example, Africa needs roads. African people need jobs. Put that money into road building projects throughout Africa. Build their infrastructure at no expense to Africa. Hire Africans to do the labor. At the end of all that money, Africa's economy will be far more robust than it would have been had you just thrown money at charities and they'll have new infrastructure in place for many years to come.
The same could be done here. I know that there are many initiatives on the books by the Obama administration. Its time to start fast-tracking them. Americans need jobs. Take the first 52 projects that are off the shelf and fund them. One a week. Each project should hire at least 1000 Americans and pay them a decent wage. If that doesn't work, double it, or quadruple it. Let's rebuild our own infrastructure. Let's upgrade our energy distribution network. Let's rebuild some of those nature trails.
Let's put money in education that doesn't come with strings attached. School teachers working is a hell of a lot more important than school reform. How about school nurses? And new gymnasiums? If you're really serious about getting obese kids healthy, how about spending some money on gym teachers and gyms?
America needs to let go of the last twenty years of bi-partisan bickering and start taking its problems seriously. I say this as a Democrat with a Democratic Majority - we Americans are tired of all the infighting and backstabbing and name-calling. Its not important whether Obama was right or wrong about some Mosque in New York - he was wrong to have even mentioned the subject. Our problems are much greater than that. Put people to work and they'll have no time left for tea parties or Quran burnings or isolationist politics.
Oh, and we need to put people on Mars... but that's the subject of another post...
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Somewhere along the road...
One of those things that can't be taught to writers but that has to be experienced is the moment when your story first comes to life.
A writer will think up a story and imagine it in its finished glory. He was do the research and create the characters. He might write a synopsis or take notes. And then he will start writing - long, laborious nights in front of a keyboard imagining everything in a story from setting to dialog to action to motivation. This is the hardest stretch for a writer because the story is all work at this point.
But at some point, there is a subtle shift. You see a moment that you hadn't seen before - a change in a line of dialog or a character doing something that you hadn't imagined them doing. You write the words and voila, suddenly the story is vastly improved and much clearer - like you've reached a summit and can see the entire world before your eyes. It doesn't mean you don't have to keep working, but the path is all downhill from that point.
The story comes alive. It's characters start to breathe, to suggest words and actions to you. As a writer, you had trouble before remembering what came next in the story - you constantly referred to your notes - then, like a light switch being thrown, you now know the whole story, all the characters, and how they will face each challenge you throw at them.
The next step in the process is my absolute favorite - its the point where you have to tell your characters to shut up so that you can finish the story. Your characters will continue pounding your brain for bigger scenes, greater dialog, and grander and more glorious finishes. It makes for fun speculation, like fans at a Comic Book convention arguing over who would win a fight between the Millennium Falcon and the USS Enterprise, but it doesn't necessarily make for a good story. At some point you have to remember that you are the writer and they are the characters and that you are in charge. Such is the problem when your independent creations take on lives of their own.
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about my story right now. The heroes have moved on from Saipan. If you'd like to know their next destination, you can keep track of it on my facebook page by checking to see where I currently reside.
(For the rest of you, here's a little homework... its July, 1937. You're in Saipan. Where would you go next, nearby to Japan, where some sort of historical turmoil is about to break out. HINT: The answer is worth an awful lot of tea.)
A writer will think up a story and imagine it in its finished glory. He was do the research and create the characters. He might write a synopsis or take notes. And then he will start writing - long, laborious nights in front of a keyboard imagining everything in a story from setting to dialog to action to motivation. This is the hardest stretch for a writer because the story is all work at this point.
But at some point, there is a subtle shift. You see a moment that you hadn't seen before - a change in a line of dialog or a character doing something that you hadn't imagined them doing. You write the words and voila, suddenly the story is vastly improved and much clearer - like you've reached a summit and can see the entire world before your eyes. It doesn't mean you don't have to keep working, but the path is all downhill from that point.
The story comes alive. It's characters start to breathe, to suggest words and actions to you. As a writer, you had trouble before remembering what came next in the story - you constantly referred to your notes - then, like a light switch being thrown, you now know the whole story, all the characters, and how they will face each challenge you throw at them.
The next step in the process is my absolute favorite - its the point where you have to tell your characters to shut up so that you can finish the story. Your characters will continue pounding your brain for bigger scenes, greater dialog, and grander and more glorious finishes. It makes for fun speculation, like fans at a Comic Book convention arguing over who would win a fight between the Millennium Falcon and the USS Enterprise, but it doesn't necessarily make for a good story. At some point you have to remember that you are the writer and they are the characters and that you are in charge. Such is the problem when your independent creations take on lives of their own.
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about my story right now. The heroes have moved on from Saipan. If you'd like to know their next destination, you can keep track of it on my facebook page by checking to see where I currently reside.
(For the rest of you, here's a little homework... its July, 1937. You're in Saipan. Where would you go next, nearby to Japan, where some sort of historical turmoil is about to break out. HINT: The answer is worth an awful lot of tea.)
Friday, August 06, 2010
How do you solve a problem like Judas?
I just finished all the monologues for a play I'm writing for Holy Week. In my take on The Last Supper I have each of the disciples arriving for the meal and, at some point, delivering a monologue to the audience showing their innermost thoughts about Jesus, their journey, and what they believe is about to happen. The first eleven disciples showed varying degrees of difficulty related to what research I could do on them and the various inner monologues that I was giving them. (My favorite is Nathanael/Bartholomew.) But today, after nearly two months working on this project, it was my turn to tackle the 12th disciple - Judas.
There's not much known about Judas prior to the Last Supper. He was one of the twelve disciples. John accused him of stealing from the group's purse (He was supposedly their treasurer). And Judas had that famous exchange with Jesus about the price of perfume that was used to anoint his feet - the one where Jesus said, "The poor will always be amongst us." That's really about it.
We do know, of course, that Judas took the 30 pieces of silver from the priests, betrayed Jesus with a kiss, and afterwards knew that he was cursed and hung himself from a tree. Ironically, it was here that I started in my quest to unlock what Judas might say in the moments leading up to his betrayal.
Had Judas merely been evil, Jesus' arrest and death would not have made Judas commit suicide. This was no Thelma and Louise style self-sacrifice - Judas wasn't surrounded by cops and decided to kill himself rather than face the music. On the contrary, Judas might have been regarded by some people in the establishment as a hero - the man who finally rid them of Jesus. No, Judas felt guilt - the kind of guilt so terrible that it makes you wish that you were dead. He realized, too late, that he had betrayed his friend and killed him.
So, back up. Judas knowingly took 30 pieces of silver. He knowingly kissed Jesus. And only after the fact did he have guilt about it? What was Judas thinking?
When I wrote my first novel I had to go to some pretty dark places. How does one write a rape scene, for instance, from the point of the view of the rapist? Its not an easy thing to do. I discovered that the only way into such a scene was to approach it from my own point of view and then skew it so far out of whack that I could imagine myself doing that horrible thing. In the case of the novel, I had to take an idea of lust and give it steroids to the point that the rage and the anger and the passion all combined to make this character rape another character. It was a very dark thing to write and it was a very hard thing to imagine. After writing that scene, I knew that I wanted nothing more to do with stories that dark again.
The reason I mention this is that I had to somewhat the same thing with Judas - but I think it was a little easier this time. I started with what I knew about Judas - that he was a thief, but that he was also a disciple - and I added what I knew about Judas after the Last Supper - that he was so remorseful that he killed himself - and I came up with a scenario that worked in my head.
Basically, I have Judas leaving a somewhat blameless life - human, not perfect - who succumbs to temptation. I simply extrapolated a situation where I succumbed to temptation into the story. Judas takes some coins from the purse for his own gain - not out of any perceived notion of greed, but simply to pay for a better meal and a nicer place to stay while on the road. Its still theft and its still greed, but its easily justifiable to Judas' way of thinking. Since he's in charge of the purse, he knows that he'll be able to pay it all back without anyone knowing about it. Except that maybe it worked too well. He was able to pay it back and nobody noticed or said anything. So he did it again. And again. And... then John started to suspect Judas. Judas became paranoid that they were on to him. He needed to pay back all that he had borrowed. He hears that the priests are offering 30 pieces of silver to anyone who helps them arrest Jesus. So far, Jesus has been able to make the High Priests look like fools every time he's dealt with them. A little arrest will be no big deal for Jesus. He'll make the priests look like idiots again and then they'll all continue on their way. In the meantime, Judas can put the 30 pieces of silver into the purse and nobody will be any the wiser. Of course, if his plan works, he swears that he will never borrow money again. Maybe he'll even suggest that someone else take the purse for a while.
Of course, we all know that the plan backfired. Jesus was arrested, flogged, put on trial and executed. Judas, seeing it all spin out of control, and knowing that he was the one responsible, would have known that he was cursed. So, he kills himself.
There is no evil mustache twirling villain here. Jesus was not so blind as to have the greatest villain in history as one of his disciples. The real tragedy of this evil is that its the sort of evil human beings perpetuate every day of existence - the lie told to ourselves, the delusions, the greed, the belief that they can get away with it without anyone knowing. As Jesus was the greatest of all human beings, unfortunately Judas was the worst case example of where sinning can lead us - the epitome of what happens when we sin and become separated from God forever.
There's not much known about Judas prior to the Last Supper. He was one of the twelve disciples. John accused him of stealing from the group's purse (He was supposedly their treasurer). And Judas had that famous exchange with Jesus about the price of perfume that was used to anoint his feet - the one where Jesus said, "The poor will always be amongst us." That's really about it.
We do know, of course, that Judas took the 30 pieces of silver from the priests, betrayed Jesus with a kiss, and afterwards knew that he was cursed and hung himself from a tree. Ironically, it was here that I started in my quest to unlock what Judas might say in the moments leading up to his betrayal.
Had Judas merely been evil, Jesus' arrest and death would not have made Judas commit suicide. This was no Thelma and Louise style self-sacrifice - Judas wasn't surrounded by cops and decided to kill himself rather than face the music. On the contrary, Judas might have been regarded by some people in the establishment as a hero - the man who finally rid them of Jesus. No, Judas felt guilt - the kind of guilt so terrible that it makes you wish that you were dead. He realized, too late, that he had betrayed his friend and killed him.
So, back up. Judas knowingly took 30 pieces of silver. He knowingly kissed Jesus. And only after the fact did he have guilt about it? What was Judas thinking?
When I wrote my first novel I had to go to some pretty dark places. How does one write a rape scene, for instance, from the point of the view of the rapist? Its not an easy thing to do. I discovered that the only way into such a scene was to approach it from my own point of view and then skew it so far out of whack that I could imagine myself doing that horrible thing. In the case of the novel, I had to take an idea of lust and give it steroids to the point that the rage and the anger and the passion all combined to make this character rape another character. It was a very dark thing to write and it was a very hard thing to imagine. After writing that scene, I knew that I wanted nothing more to do with stories that dark again.
The reason I mention this is that I had to somewhat the same thing with Judas - but I think it was a little easier this time. I started with what I knew about Judas - that he was a thief, but that he was also a disciple - and I added what I knew about Judas after the Last Supper - that he was so remorseful that he killed himself - and I came up with a scenario that worked in my head.
Basically, I have Judas leaving a somewhat blameless life - human, not perfect - who succumbs to temptation. I simply extrapolated a situation where I succumbed to temptation into the story. Judas takes some coins from the purse for his own gain - not out of any perceived notion of greed, but simply to pay for a better meal and a nicer place to stay while on the road. Its still theft and its still greed, but its easily justifiable to Judas' way of thinking. Since he's in charge of the purse, he knows that he'll be able to pay it all back without anyone knowing about it. Except that maybe it worked too well. He was able to pay it back and nobody noticed or said anything. So he did it again. And again. And... then John started to suspect Judas. Judas became paranoid that they were on to him. He needed to pay back all that he had borrowed. He hears that the priests are offering 30 pieces of silver to anyone who helps them arrest Jesus. So far, Jesus has been able to make the High Priests look like fools every time he's dealt with them. A little arrest will be no big deal for Jesus. He'll make the priests look like idiots again and then they'll all continue on their way. In the meantime, Judas can put the 30 pieces of silver into the purse and nobody will be any the wiser. Of course, if his plan works, he swears that he will never borrow money again. Maybe he'll even suggest that someone else take the purse for a while.
Of course, we all know that the plan backfired. Jesus was arrested, flogged, put on trial and executed. Judas, seeing it all spin out of control, and knowing that he was the one responsible, would have known that he was cursed. So, he kills himself.
There is no evil mustache twirling villain here. Jesus was not so blind as to have the greatest villain in history as one of his disciples. The real tragedy of this evil is that its the sort of evil human beings perpetuate every day of existence - the lie told to ourselves, the delusions, the greed, the belief that they can get away with it without anyone knowing. As Jesus was the greatest of all human beings, unfortunately Judas was the worst case example of where sinning can lead us - the epitome of what happens when we sin and become separated from God forever.
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