Recollections A Day Later

It's been a day since I made my post, my love letter to the Occupy movement, and already doubts have begun to creep in. I think they are doubts that a lot of us wrestle with. There is something visceral about the movement that captivates me, yet at the same time, I see a bunch of college educated kids with MacBooks and Canon cameras, and I think, what really do you have to complain about--and I see myself. And I ask myself, what do I really have to complain about.

But then I have to remember, it is like I said. I can't be in that place, getting just enough to get by and be satisfied. So what would satisfy me? What would really satisfy me? What would be enough? In which world would I be happy? I can't say and I can't explain it, except to say that I think we can expect something more. We can expect more from our politicians, to actually try to reflect the will of their constituents rather than the will of the businesses that put money in their pockets. We can expect more from the companies we work for, to actually try and sell a valuable product rather than trying to extract money from people's pockets.

At the same time, there is a part of me that thinks the Occupiers should be focusing their energies on something more tangible. What if they used their energies toward contributing to society rather than tearing it down and rebuilding it anew?

Then again, what is more valuable than someone finally pointing out that our system is broken? But is it? This is the logic game I constantly get stuck in. For some, certainly it is broken and they claim to be the 99% against the 1%, but at the same time, they often seem the 1% against the 99%. What I mean by this is that only 1% really appear to be ready to protest and fight for what they want, the other 99% are happy to stay in their homes, go to their jobs, watch their tvs, and fuck around on their smart phones. I fall into that 99%. I've never been part of a protest or part of anything having to do with Occupy Wall Street and I think that is there hope, that other people that aren't participating are identifying with their cause. I do to an extent, but I can't force myself to jump in completely. There is something destructive and chaotic about it that I can't reconcile.

Even when you look at the French Revolution, I can't say that it really turned out for the best. It did, for a select few. But thousands of people died at the expense of the guillotine and Napoleon ended up taking over after it happened, so what did it really accomplish?

I guess democracy slowly trudges forward. It doesn't move as fast as any of us would like.

Occupy Calling

There it was, calling to me from the magazine rack: "Regime Change In America" was the headline. It was Adbusters, the Canadian magazine responsible for organizing the Occupy Movement in Zuccotti Park in New York almost nine months ago. As I went to pick it up, it felt like the beginning of a journey. Even touching it was titillating. In a way, I was ashamed of myself. Here I was in Barnes and Noble, drinking a sumatra blend grande coffee from Starbucks, waiting to go to Chipotle at the the Third Street Promenade, being a perfect little consumer in this land of freedom, and I was standing there, afraid to pick up a magazine.

I'm not sure where the fear came from, but almost without noticing it, this fear almost caused me to bypass the magazine all together and in fact, I looked at another magazine first, reading a short mundane article in Time about the private relationships of presidents. I learned nothing. As I put it back I looked down at Adbusters again and from the corner of the cover saw "May 18, Global #laughriot". I picked it up and gave it a quick flip and this was one of the first things I saw:

It spoke to me and jumped out because it didn't really seem to fit in with the rest of the magazine. To be clear, it's a picture of Rob Corddry as the clown on the show Children's Hospital. A few of my friends work on the show and I haven't seen too much of it, but I'm familiar enough with it. Right across the front of his face it says, "Postmodern Shit!" on his forehead, "How utterly cynical can we get" and at the top, "Trix".

Now this shocked me because it echoed a similar sentiment I've felt before and tried to forget, the fact that I am distracting myself from seeing something greater by constantly consuming and creating mindless entertainment. Postmodern entertainment, that may be "smarter" or "denser" than a primetime network sitcom like "Two and A Half Men" is still just as mindless, because at it's core, it is empty, it doesn't speak to anything, there is no point to it's existence beyond entertainment. That you feel smarter or fulfilled from having watched it is the trick it's played on you.

We live in a country with vast "wealth" and yet we aren't rich. We sit in front of screens almost all day, mostly to distract ourselves in an attempt to forget that we are powerless over our lives. We live in a country that values freedom over everything, yet increasingly we get the sense that we are not free or not as free as we thought.

Bradley Manning, the Army soldier that leaked classified government documents to Wikileaks has been in prison, without trial since July 2010, Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks has been on house arrest in England, detained without trial since December 2010.

Now maybe you say, "That's just two people, it's not that big of a deal," but I think it is the detention of these people, as well as the "terrorists" at Guantanamo Bay and the arrest of the people at Occupy encampments that led me to be afraid of picking up this magazine and even considering to explore the idea that something is wrong with this country.

And something is wrong. America is a country without an identity and most of us seem perfectly content to stop searching for it, to keep smiles on our faces and hope and pray that the stock market keeps going up and that tomorrow we have food, water, and shelter. But there is something more to be gleaned from real freedom than just having our most basic needs satisfied. They have us right where they want us, in a place where we are placated just enough to keep quiet, where we keep playing their game and sending most of what is deservedly ours, up to the top.

In a few months, the Supreme Court is going to rule on The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and it sounds like because Congress is forcing you to buy a product, that falls outside of what the federal government is legally aloud to do. But honestly, if you are sensible, you know the existence of our government and society forces you to buy products all the time. Many of us live in cities where we have to have cars in order to go to work or school or get basic necessities. If you have a car, you also have to have insurance. If you are born to a family that doesn't own land, you have no ability to make your own food, so you have to buy that. You have to pay for a place to live. You have to pay for energy. Soon you will have to pay for water and you already do in a lot of cases. So is it really so awful to have a law where you have to buy insurance? Isn't it more abhorrent to create a situation where a large number of people have no access to decent health care? Isn't it more abhorrent to create a system where everyone is forced to buy things all the time in a round about way that isn't written into the law?

I didn't have time to buy the magazine before my lunch, but afterward I was drawn back in to Barnes and Noble. I brought it home like a concealed weapon. One more conversation I don't want to have with my Aunt and Uncle, who work for corporate law firms and investment banks, respectively.

I've been trying to find the thing that incites me, that inspires me, the story that I want to be a part of and help tell. In 2008 we were all filled with hope at the prospect of President Barack Obama. I remember being in Silverlake the night he beat McCain and it feeling like New Years and the Forth of July, only better. Huge murals were all over town, people were joyous in celebration that eight years of what felt like a dictatorship was over. I have no doubt that if John McCain was president, things would be worse. It is important to remember in retrospect, we traded in a President who incited terrorists and started wars and financial crisis for one that is prudent in his language and actions and ends wars, or at least decreases there severity.

But Obama is not the story of 2012. Though he is marginally superior to a Republican candidate and I will be voting for him, he does not inspire the same feelings we had that night in 2008. Part of it is his fault. No doubt, there are positions he could take, that we all know he secretly espouses, concerning gay rights, or immigration that would fire up his base and get people inspired again, but it is likely he wont do this, because sadly, but honestly, he has turned out to be a politician. Most of the blame however lies with Congress, who's inaction has made the most powerful man in the world a prisoner in The White House. Congress is such a joke that the most important thing they've done in the last two years is pass bills to keep the government running. That's not an accomplishment.

The story of 2012 is the second chapter of the Occupy movement, a movement that was in its infancy in 2011 and then forgotten. It is here and it is a sleeper, though not to those in power. Adbusters has called on all Occupiers to descend on Chicago starting May 1st and culminating on May 18th for a day that was originally intend to disrupt the G8 and Nato summits that were to be happening simultaneously in Chicago.

When the G8 summit was moved to Camp David, the concept of the day was changed, though still to be based in Chicago to "Global Laugh Riot" a day of laughing and pranking to clarify what a joke the whole spectacle of the summits are. The Nato summit will still be happening in Chicago and it will be the first major showdown with protesters since the authoritarian law, HR 347. Here is what Adbusters had to say about HR 437:

"A week before the G8 Backdown, the US House of Representatives voted in near unanimous consensus in favor of an authoritarian law, HR 437, that makes it a federal crime to disrupt "Government business or official functions" or to enter any building where a 'person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting.' In other words, to mic check Obama is now a federal crime punishable by a year in prison. And so too is a banner drop if it takes place in any building that a 'protected' person might be visiting in the future, even if the jammers don't know it. And so is the anti-globalization tactic of blocking road access to a meeting of world elites, there is a special clause about that too. Obama signed the bill to law on March 9th."

Here are the demands of the Occupiers for the G8 summit:

1. Bring the financial fraudsters who triggered the meltdown of 2008 to justice

2. Implement a 1% Robin Hood Tax on all financial transactions and currency trades

3. Come up with a binding agreement on climate change with the utmost of urgency

Here are the demands of the Occupiers for the Nato summit:

1. Come out with a clear and unambiguous statement renouncing torture and extrajudicial assassinations

2. Start slowing the $1-trillion a year arms race by all means possible

3. Begin a passionate push for a nuclear-free world beginning with a nuclear-free Middle East

Those demands are simple things that people can get behind and coalesce the movement in a way that wasn't possible nine months ago.

But there is more to it than just simple demands. The very second page of the magazine states it clearly, "We are living through a centralized crisis of meaning." Explain to me the difference between a capitalist and a communist and a terrorist. Our society has taken these words and rendered them meaningless just the way the word "awesome" has become meaningless, by attaching them places where they do not belong. "Truthiness" as Colbert would say, has become the norm, and when everyone is spinning the facts, there is no longer an objective reality, rather a subjective reality formed by the collectives individual perceptions.

It reads, "The first step toward reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination - an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment."

Finding a place for these people wouldn't be difficult in a society that truly valued imagination and creativity. Often it is claimed that America has those values, but the truth is many of our greatest minds, aside from a few strays are given an education in finance and payed by Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan.

Occupy can often sound like the work of liberal idealists, but there is something much more libertarian about the movement that often isn't recognized. Pundits sum it up like this: Tea Party is anti-government Occupy is anti-big business. But the truth is, Occupy is at once anti-government and anti-big business, it is anti those in control and they recognize that big business and big government are entity. Here's how they spell out the corruption when related to Mongolia and it works for the US as well, "Their society is now being set up on the model of a small elite group growing rich from selling resources while the masses live off handouts."

This is why the rich are so afraid of renewable energy sources. Without a resource to buy and sell, you lose the majority of your profit. Hydroelectric power has been readily available in the United States since 1882 and at the turn of 20th century provided us with 40% of our nations electricity. We continued down a different path not out of lack of ability, but out of lack of will from the powers that be.

In every facet of our society the powerful have reaped profits while destroying our community. From Adbusters:

"Housing has become a means not for building a community, but for extracting wealth from it. Thus, the financial resources that used to go toward making our buildings beautiful, now go to paying the interest charges and dividends of a few large corporations."

We are in a country and a people in debt, but in debt to whom? I would say many of us feel indebted to the Chinese laborers who work to make many of the products we so frivolously use, but do we feel indebted to our banks? Hell no. Should our government feel indebted to the banks? Hell no. Why are we in so much debt, when it is so detrimental to society and our future? Put succinctly, "Profits come from debt expansion, not debt reduction."

They want us to be in debt. They want us to keep paying that minimum balance and then be too poor to pay that traffic ticket and have to charge our debit card to the max again. They want our credit ratings to be low so we can get high interest car loans that have high monthly payments. They want government debt to balloon to the point where it is paying a dollar to a bank for every dollar it spends. It is a system that is broken and it is a system that is going to go.

The idea of Occupy is to break the system first, then go start rebuilding local communities. It is an interesting prospect, big goals that are hard to achieve, but extremely interesting none the less. I don't think I could find anything more fascinating than following this story and seeing where it takes me. It is so dense, so complicated, so polarizing, so scary, that I'm not sure I'll end up following it, but it is so magnetic that I don't know I'll be able to follow anything else.

I'll leave you what they left me with:

"A few people start breaking their old patterns, embracing what they live (and in the process discovering what they hate), daydreaming, questioning, rebelling. What happens naturally then according to the revolutionary past, is a groundswell of support for this new way of being, with more and more people empowered to perform new gestures 'unecumbered by history.'"

Something different...

So as you may have noticed, I've been increasingly absent from my blog recently. I guess a lot of things in my life are changing, mostly for the better and I haven't really found a need to write, but something happened today, or has been happening the last couple days. It sort of started recently when I watched the movie "Gonzo", I'd seen some of it before, it documents the career of Hunter S. Thompson and his brand of "Gonzo" journalism, which included incorporating himself into the narrative and often mixing fantasy and reality. One of the things I love about Hunter S. Thompson is that he seemed to have no inner critic. He said exactly what he thought and did exactly what he wanted to do at all times. Unfortunately, that probably lead to his early demise from greatness, due to a penchant for drugs and alcohol, but while he was at his peak his ability to capture truth was really amazing. Most of my favorite authors are at their core, non-fiction writers that are capturing a movement or a moment in history. Kerouac did it with the beat movement in On The Road and The Dharma Bums, Wolfe did it with the hippies in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Hunter S. Thompson did it with the McGovern v Nixon election in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 and Norman Mailer did it with the protest movement in The Armies of the Night. In a way, these were all hybrid author/journalists that sought to cover a story and in some cases embedded themselves into the narrative they created.

About 9 months ago, when the Occupy movement started, I was fresh out of the hospital and was on Twitter in the very early moments of the occupation of Zuccotti Park. Every part of my being was telling me to go to New York, not necessarily to join the movement, but at least to cover it and figure out what it was, in the way these great authors from the past did. It was unfortunate timing. I had just tried to drive to El Salvador and had spent a week in the hospital. I didn't have the money or the mental fortitude to tackle such a task, also I was afraid of #1: Freaking out my family. #2: Risking the support of my aunt and uncle as my uncle works at an investment bank and is highly conservative.

Well, something happened today. It excites me to even say that, being that most days nothing happens, or nothing that I would really consider notable or important. But today I felt something. I was in Barnes and Noble, waiting to get lunch with Kevin, when I saw an Adbusters magazine. Adbusters organized the Occupy Movement. I will save some of the description of that moment for later, but I saw that May 19th the Occupy movement is starting back up in Chicago.

I went and ate with Kevin and while we were walking back toward my car, I realized I had a therapy session that afternoon, at 2:15pm, it was 1:45pm. I told him he should go back to work and I would hand in Barnes and Noble and then head over to it, being that it was right up the street on Wilshire. I read the magazine a bit more and decided to purchase it. Then I went to my therapy appointment.

It was a scary subject for me to broach with my therapist. I was feeling a great deal of excitement because I wanted to go to Chicago and cover the Occupy movement. I wasn't sure how she would react to me saying that, but I just said it and when I did, she told me that it didn't sound like I was manic at all. It made me feel so good to know that I could follow my intuition and the voice inside my head and not be crazy, that I could finally turn off the inner critic that constantly says, "You shouldn't do that." or "You can't do that." and tust myself again.

So, I am going change up this blog a little bit and I am going to start writing it from the perspective of someone covering the Occupy movement, or more specifically (or I guess more generally) what freedom in America means and if it is being compromised, what the imprisonment of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange mean in regards to freedom and the American dream and a whole lot of other things. I will probably bring my personal life into it here and there as well. Sure, they are kind of big topics with a lot of baggage, but I'm going to try to tackle them the best I can.

I'm not sure where this journey is going to bring me, but whether I wanted it to or not, it found me today...

Dentist, Therapist, Blog Post

Had the day off today so I went to the dentist and got a cavity filled and a filling replaced. Then I went to the therapist. I started off the day waking up at the house of the girl I have been dating. She finally let me spend the night there. I don't even know that I've written a post since we started dating? St. Patricks Day, I almost certainly have since then, but I'm not sure if I wrote about it or not.

Any how, it has been pretty good so far. She seems to really like me, or the me I have been presenting thus far and she really likes movies and comedy, so it is really easy to get along with her. She was weird about having someone stay at her place, which I guess is a good thing, meaning she doesn't have guys over all the time, but everything was relatively comfortable once I was there.

I am feeling pretty cooped up living at my aunt and uncle's recently. I want to be out in the world, doing my thang, exactly how I want to do it, but I can't because I am living here. I have been commuting to the other side of town every day and it is really a pain in the ass to get back and forth regularly. I'm moving out soon. I have to. We'll see what happens with the money situation.

Interning at American Work has been going well so far, although it seems like it is going to be a long haul if I want to turn it into something. I am thinking that maybe I need to get a part time job or something for supplemental income. It doesn't really work out with me doing improv all weekend, but I guess something is going to have to take a back seat if I want to get the hell out of here.

My uncle sat me down and had a conversation with me a couple weeks ago about finding something to do with my life, like a more specific skill that I could use to get a job. I nodded and agreed with him, and I did agree with nearly everything he said, that the profession I'm going into is fraught with risk, that a lot of people aren't materially successful. It doesn't help that his neighbor is a writer and tried to commit suicide via shotgun to the head.

I doubt I will ever do anything else. There is nothing else I want to do or see myself happy doing. I think I just have to work 10x harder than I have thus far and really start doing everything I know I should be doing: writing scripts, standup, sketches, trying to get acting jobs... I've been doing improv so I'm good there. I don't think there is anything else I can do. Maybe I will find something else along the way.

I hear people upstairs right now and I haven't said "hi" yet, so I should probably go up, and they are probably eating dinner soon, so I should be around for that too, if I can. So I guess that's it for now, not the best update as a lot has happened, but better than nothing. More soon.