tisiwoota

Check it out at Limericks Ransacked My Room

Things tell less and less:
The news impersonal
And from afar; no book
Worth wrenching off the shelf.
Liquor brings dizziness
And food discomfort; all
Music sounds thin and tired,
And what picture could earn a look?
The self drowses in the self
Beyond hope of a visitor.
Desire and those desired
Fade, and no matter:
Memories in decay
Annihilate the day.
There once was an answer:
Up at the stroke of seven,
A turn round the garden
(Breathing deep and slow),
Then work, never mind what,
How small, provided that
It serves another’s good
But once is long ago
And, tell me, how could
Such an answer be less than wrong,
Be right all along?
Vain echoes, desist.

Having at one time posted with some regularity, I feel bound to relay the news that National Geographic has unveiled the results of its tests of Darwin’s ancestry.

Behold, the migration path of his ancestors:

[The DNA was courtesy of Darwin’s paternal great-great-grandson.]

My boyfriend’s take on the subject:

Okay, so if the Supreme Court has ruled that “Corporations are People, too,” then I’m okay with this so long as we give them ALL the rights/responsibilities of peoplehood. To wit:

1. All “people” pay Federal Income Tax at the highest marginal ordinary tax rate. The 500 wealthiest “People” in America must now pay 49.9% on their adjusted gross income. They are not allowed to eFile; Coca-Cola has to stand in line outside the Post Office at midnight like the rest of us procrastinating morons.

2. We can draft Halliburton, United Technologies, and Raytheon, deploy them to Iraq, and pay them the standard salary of US Army PFCs, plus combat differential.

3. Johnson & Johnson is in big trouble. Two Johnsons can only be incorporated in the following five states: Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut. Everywhere else, it has to function as a Limited Liability Partnership. We will assure it, in patronizing tones, that a partnership and a corporation are mostly the same thing.

4. Corporate malfeasance is now punishable by prison. None of this nonsense about fines or trust-busting. Prison. It’s a good thing we’re hitting the person known as Goldman Sachs for that extra 14.9% tax revenue, because we’re going to need to build a LOT more prisons. Putting an entire corporation into the same cell would constitute solitary confinement, as I understand the Supreme Court ruling. Gonna be tight in there, fellas! Err, make that fella.

Honestly, I don’t think corporate America is going to like this very much.

And on that note, at least one corporation has decided not to bother with the middleman and run for Congress itself

So. I’ve been reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by urban planning guru Jane Jacobs. An impressively resonant work considering it was first published in 1961. The lady does not pull punches– in the introduction she compares “the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning” to the pseudoscience of blood-letting, because “years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.”

One of her main points in the early chapters is the importance of having many eyes– specifically many citizen eyes– on the streets to watch over the community:

The first thing to understand is that the public peace– the sidewalk and street peace– of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is primarily kept by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves…
[T]here must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind…
[Further] the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers…
Safety on the streets by surveillance and mutual policing of one another sounds grim, but in real life it is not grim. The safety of the street works best, most casually, and with least frequent taint of hostility or suspicion precisely where people are using and most enjoying the city streets voluntarily and are least conscious, normally, that they are policing.

And of course I was reminded of Hanoi, where I found the streets remarkably safe for a foreign female traveling solo. With an incredibly vibrant sidewalk life. Naturally this vibrant safety is not uniform across the entire city; but overall there are many stretches where people of all ages socialize on or very near the sidewalk during most of the day and evening. There may be a variety of causal factors– such as the proliferation of small, family-run businesses in the same building as the proprietors’ apartments, and a hot climate without widespread AC that leads to a lot of outdoor seating at bars and sometimes restaurants.

In addition to all the fixed establishments, impromptu sidewalk food vendors are a significant part of the city ecosystem. They draw more feet, and therefore, eyes, to the area. High-quality eyes, since they are situated right in the middle of the action.

Several years ago I read that the government was going to crack down on street food vendors, for reasons of hygiene and safety. I remember feeling a bit sad; although as a vegetarian without much fluency in the language I rarely patronized such vendors, they seemed to be a charming and central part of the culture.

Fortunately, on my most recent visit it did not seem that much had changed. Street food vendors remained at least as frequent as bootleg CD shops (also, of course, supposedly the subject of greater enforcement).

But it makes me wonder whether anyone has ever gone about directly comparing the kind of tradeoff this situation poses: food safety versus street safety? What would it look like to run the numbers– incidents of food poisoning versus incidents of crime if X number of eyes are removed from the street?

And how many other seemingly single-issue policy questions conceal hidden connections to larger trends?

if the earth would sit still for a moment

I would not get off but rather find the little

place at its center where some silent being

prays over pulleys & greases gears

to make them turn true & in that place

plant a forest to surround that being & build him

a tiny shrine to live in at the bullseye of all things

where nothing moves but the whirlwind centrifuge

& the exhaustion of everyone who has

held something dear

Portland, 1968

You stand as rocks stand
to which the sea reaches
in transparent waves of longing;
they are marred, finally;
everything fixed is marred.
And the sea triumphs,
like all that is false,
all that is fluent and womanly.
From behind, a lens
opens for your body. Why
should you turn? It doesn’t matter
who the witness is,
for whom you are suffering,
for whom you are standing still.

This is way past topical, but just wanted to repost some “deep thoughts”
from another blog of mine:

1. The whole Obama chimp cartoon fiasco has me wondering:
In the alternate universe(s) where Hilary is now President, is there a
similar brouhaha where a cartoonist makes a stimulus jab by portraying
Hilary as the octo-mom? Perhaps where the babies are bailed-out
banks/industries? I mean, that seems like it’d be the inevitable
equivalent, right?

2. I was thinking about the horrible saying: “Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”
When did it originate? Doesn’t seem like it would go back as
far as one room schoolhouses or an all-women profession
(since women couldn’t “do” that many other jobs). So did it
originate as an emasculating jibe once men started entering
the profession?

Hmmm….

Singapore mostly lives up to its rep as a vast series of malls that happen
to have UN representation.

I mean, if you’ve been anywhere in Asia, it’s not exotic at all. Just little
things that remind you that you’re not in a mall in the US– the cashiers
take and hand back your credit card and receipts with both hands; most
bathrooms have at least one squat toilet among the stalls… give me a few
minutes and I’ll think of a third.

There are more misspellings and grammar mishaps on official signs. Oh yes,
and as I mentioned before, all the cats have their tails docked.

That’s part of why I haven’t written much about it– it doesn’t feel like nearly
as unique experience as going to Vietnam was. I mean, it’s not that exciting
to report that I went to a different mall that had a different Louis Vuitton store.

But recently, outside my apartment, I saw the most awesome little lizard ever
parasail onto a tree. Dude.

It looked like this:

[It flicked that yellow flag on its throat open and shut several times]

This is a blog entry I wrote (elsewhere) the day after the 2004 election.
It is, I think, worth revisiting today:

Even if “we” had won the election, our battles would not be over.
They would be easier yes, but not over. Either way, there is always
more to do. So let’s get back to doing it.

We have been reminded of the importance of working together,
and of not being complacent.
As many of us have read, those lessons are what sewed the basis of
the success of the current regime. It will work for us, too.

We have a start, and we can run with it, if we try.

Little did we know then how far we could get today.
So perhaps too, little do we know today, how much further
we shall get tomorrow.

I was greeted at the airport by students from the school’s “Welcoming Committee.” They were very friendly and helpful. They explained the bus and rail system, and gave advice on where I should live.

Then they offered me a piece of gum.

At first I declined. Gum is illegal in Singapore, right?

After they unwrapped their own and began chewing, they repeated the offer.

I reassured myself that this probably wasn’t a covert sting operation, and accepted. No sirens went off, no guard dogs attacked, and no one gave me so much as a sideways glance.

They informed me that consuming gum isn’t what’s illegal. Selling gum is illegal.

So where do they get their gum? They all go to Malaysia on the weekends, just a hop across the border, and bring it back with them.

“Most people who come here think Singapore has a reputation for strict laws. But really, there is one law in Singapore: just don’t get caught.”