Man On The Street

As I was waiting on a friend outside a Salvation Army storefront, I witnessed a rather stumpy and boisterous guy walking by who made a very non-helpful comment to a passed out homeless person laying on the sidewalk. He uttered the phrase "See what drinking does to ya?" as he continued marching away. I looked up the street at this ape/gorilla wearing an "Italy" t-shirt and wondered how he could judge someone like that when not much separates most people from being homeless themselves. I additionally noticed that he was smoking a cigarette and I told my friend out loud and within hearing distance that it would serve this guy well that in twenty years, a doctor would be telling him "See what smoking does to ya?".

District 4 Supervisor Clusterf*ck

Resign from the D4 Supervisor position, already…!

Although the pending cases against Ed Jew have not been proven in a court of law or by any governing body, it seems very obvious to most intelligent people that he has been in cover-up and evade mode ever since the stories broke concerning his residence at the time of his election and the $40K in cash that he accepted from the Chinese businessmen. Most despicably, he seems to be playing the race card by pleading his alibis and non-direct answering to primarily the Chinese media. There are plenty of public officials and politicians who are not to subject of an FBI investigation and just happen to be Asian.

As I’ve unfortunately observed through experience, persons like Ed Jew can’t fathom that people can see past his smoke and mirrors defense are typically megalomaniacs. It very much seems that he was born into money and feels entitled to the power that a public position such as that of a Supervisor affords him. Perhaps my grandmother said it best when she said that she remembered him as a petulant child growing up.

Why not just fess up and admit that mistakes were made on his part? The court of public opinion seems to be very forgiving to those who acknowledge their errors, based on how quickly Mayor Newsom’s alcoholism has been forgotten. Whatever decision is made by the city or feds, he has taken the route that will most likely forever leave a stain on his family name, at least in the world of San Francisco politics.

More Monster Cable Protests

An interesting thing happened to me during a Monster Cable protest last month in downtown Burlingame. After we had protested with chants and music in the streets & sidewalks, we had a caravan of 15-18 cars honking horns in protest as well. Some people gave their vocal support and others were ambivalent, but a couple particular gentleman expressed their displeasure because we were "disturbing their dog" or "making a couple of babies go crazy inside a restaurant". The latter stood in front of traffic to get his point across.

I realized that nothing I could say would make him understand our cause. In fact, anything to the contrary might make such a person make such protests illegal in the future. It was near the end of the caravan route, so I and others simply stopped honking and went to the next protest site in the hills of Burlingame. But, all the while, I was thinking "if you wanna make an omlet, ya gotta break some eggs". I mean, the whole point of protesting is to raise awareness, so if we had disturbed their Saturday morning brunches on for FIVE minutes, we pretty much did what we had set out to do. It really doesn't matter if he's angry with us or the head monster. Of course it would be better if he was inside a Best Buy and stopped buying a Monster Cable product because our protest led him to have a bad taste in his mouth because of our relentless protesting. I actually wish that I didn't need to be out there, but in a political climate of indifference, one must occasionally be that egg cracker....

F*cked Up Dream

I find it odd that a dream that takes place during the time a person is asleep is the same word as a dream that people have which relates to lifelong goals/aspirations/desires.

The type of dreams that I have are usually never associated with ambitions or hopes (oftentimes quite the opposite!). Rather, I should refer to my dreams as something like "unconscious adventures" or "slumber escapades". Maybe they're just really low level nightmares. I don't know.

What I do know is that my subconscious frequently merges time in the sense that I'll be in situations where I'm either my younger or current self (but always with my complete memories intact) and in real time or the past with people I know now as well as in the past.

The latest "snooze journey" that I had involved the family dog, big brother and two deceased guys.

I was on a ficticious elementary school playground on a chilly, windy evening (apparently, school took place at night in my reality) and the bell rang for everyone to come in from recess. Suddenly, the crowds of children ran back out to the perimeter of the blacktop and the rush of kids going out towards the grassy area very much resembled an ocean's wave for some reason. Within this wave of schoolkids, I found the current family dog, Maddie G, alone with her red leash dragging on the ground and slightly bloodied. I recovered her when the crowd started to disperse and my brother emerged from the group walking quickly towards me. Evidently, he was taking Maddie for a walk when he encountered two guys with a pit bull. The pit bull was starting to attack our frail little beagle when Andy intervened and somehow the smaller of the two guys got knocked down inadvertently. This started a ruckus where a bunch of pushing and shoving occured, but not an actual fist fight. As is his nature, Andy had just walked away and did not want to fight.

Next, as we walked along together, the two guys and a fat, Tony Soprano-looking cop came from behind us with their fingers pointing. The two guys happened to be the bullies that I knew from elementary school, the slightly built Roberto Torres and muscular & intimidating Eric Rice (the latter from whom I received numerous random punches to the stomach which always resulted in getting the wind knocked out of me. They both later died at age 15 or 16 after their alcohol induced motorcycle ride ended up with them launching themselves headfirst and helmetless into a tailgate of a pickup truck).

Back to the story. The diminutive Mr. Torres was accusing my brother of starting the fight himself as well as with our dog attacking his dog. At this point, I had to interject even without knowing all the facts. As, my brother was being handcuffed, I told the police officer that there's NO way it could happened that way because both Andy and Maddie are completely passive to the point of being faults. The law enforcement officer then looked at me and said "Do you want to be arrested, too?" and I quickly shut up in my feeble, 70 pound body. As I looked over the cop's shoulder (which I don't know how was physically possible at my 5'-0" stature), I saw the menancing sneer of Mr. Rice as he knew that he'd gotten the better of the Wong brothers (even though he'd never met my brother in reality). End of dream sequence.

This most recent dream is brought to you all by the fact that:

A) I love my dog. She was savagedly attacked by a pit bull and german shepherd a few years back, I jumped on top of her to shield her from the assault before the other owner got control of her dogs.

B) I was reminicsing about life in Petaluma with my siblings earlier in the week. Mostly about sports, however.

C) I was reading about how the VT mass murderer was bullied in middle school.

VT Massacre

Right when I read the news and saw photos from the Virginia Tech shootings yesterday, I feared that the killer would be a person of Asian descent. A picture of an unidentified Asian student being detained face down by a law officer was a photo that caught my eye rather prominently. Even though it was probably someone completely uninvolved in the murders, this student was Asian in a community where Asians are probably not a large part of the demographic. In this country, it very much seems that as long as a person doesn't look Caucasian, they are going to be discriminated against in some way, shape or form for not being "American".

I can also see the media having its field day with the killer's ethnicity, putting Cho Seung-Hui right up there with Charles Ng, Andrew Cunanan, Al De Guzman and Chai Soua Vang as recent mentally disturbed mass murderers or near mass murderers of Asian descent in the US of A's recent past.

While it can be easy to pin the problem to either race or media or money (or a combination thereof), one cannot ignore how easy it is to acquire a firearm in this country. With the increase in post-Columbine gun violence in schools ranging from elementary school to college, we are seeing how obsolete "the right to bear arms" in our Bill of Rights is becoming.

Given the history of sociopaths and psychotics involved in gun violence, should not a simple psych test exist at the very least for individuals wishing to purchase a handgun? Is it just me, or does the 2 week waiting period seem like a joke? Does it seem like our current administration is instilling a culture of fear from foreign threats, but ignoring the tension between the two Americas at home?

Basketball Team & Shock Jock

By now, most have probably heard of the controversy involving a championship women's basketball team and a radio talk show host who decided to make some poor decisions to insult their race, sex and athletic ability.

The shock jock has since publicly apologized, been suspended for two weeks and is going to meet the women sometime this week. Purportedly, his job is up for review. Although not unprecedented, racist remarks don't always end up with the termination of the person who says the incredibly ignorant remarks. Last year, a well known comedienne/actress/TV talk show hostess made some ill-advised comments making fun of the way Asians speak. I didn't view such banter as racist (I just thought she was being stupid), but others took offense and launched a campaign for her to lose her job which she still holds today.

Unfortunately, such decisions come down to a matter of economics. This is not the first time the shock jock in question has come under fire, simply the latest and most severe in terms of insulting on a nationwide scale. The ramifications of his actions run deep and a message should be sent that it is not all right to spew such misogynistic garbage out of his mouth. The disturbing reality is that he is popular among his listeners because of what he says, which can only mean that there are millions of persons who think like him or at the very least agree with his underlying racist philosophy. Thus, there are millions of potential people who listen to mind-numbing advertisements. Yes, sponsors have pulled their ads from his show, and if he does indeed lose his job, it will be only a matter of time before someone else says something incredibly stupid which will end up on Youtube or CNN.

So, to nip this thing in the bud, I really believe that the focus should be on educating people about race relations so that we can all be slightly more sensitive to such issues. Perhaps keeping him on the air after he's been educated will be a good thing for all people in the long run, if at the expense of his current fan base.

Ego

While playing pool this past weekend with both women and men, I once again questioned the logic of having both a men's professional billiards association and a separate women's league. To me, the only slight advantage a man may have over a woman in this skill is in the force during the initial break. Yes, I realize that there are tournaments where that pit women against men in 9-ball and other skills, but I'm asking why there has to be any separation at all in the rankings of these pros.

My conclusion is that it all has to do with the dreaded male ego.

I've seen this phenomenon rear its ugly head in a variety of sports, but nowhere was it more obvious than when I competed (a relative term here) in the sport of triathlon. Triathletes generally start the swim based on gender and age groups, with the elite men starting first, followed by age groupings of men 5 years apart with each wave starting 5-10 minutes apart. The women's waves usually started after all the men were in the water. During the run (if not sooner), the elite women usually passed the age group men and it was almost comical to watch men look back and speed up to avoid getting caught or to try to keep pace with a hard-bodied woman at this point in the race. I even had a friend try this and we all said to him "Dude. Let it go. She's at least 40 minutes ahead of you anyway".

It would seem that a fragile male ego becomes even more so when athletic ability (apparently, the bastion of all that is male) is infringed upon by the opposite sex.

Don't they realize that many a lesson can be learned by having your butt kicked by a kick ass woman?

Entitlement and pulling the "neighborly" card.

Next to my parents' home in San Francisco, is a house that seems to have a revolving door of renters which changes every two to three years. In the case of each of the last two sets of renters, a tenant has felt it necessary to express their unhappiness with the street parking arrangement.

Background information: the detached homes in this area of SF have either single or double garage doors. Each home with a single garage door setup has a public parking space in front of the home. Parking is relatively easy here. There is nearly always parking on either end of the street, which would amount to a 150 yard walk if you lived in the middle of the block. You'd be seriously stoked to consistently find parking that close to your abode in any other neighborhood in the city.

With that in mind, each of the caucasian, white-american-bred, people living next door has knocked on the door of my parents' and basically told them not to park in "their" spot. One of them even said "I don't want my wife to have to walk down the block", to which my mother retorted, "so, it's okay for me to have to walk down the block?". He had no answer as he clearly hadn't thought very far into his logic. My father explained that he needed to park his truck a) on the street since it is too long to fit in the garage and b) in close proximity to the house since he had tools stolen out of it in the past. Luckily, the family dog is very good at detecting disturbances near the house. An agreement was made that we would leave open the space on the other side of their driveway, if they left the space in front of their house open for the truck. That settlement worked, but they still knocked on our door if any random car parked in "their" space, even if the car did not belong to us or anyone we knew. I just chalked it up to "peculiar" people, who were otherwise friendly neighbors.

After they moved out, a household of three, 20-something aged, gwai lo males moved in immediatedly afterwards. And again, the knock on the door came, explaining that my parents were using their parking space. Except this time, they were very insistent that the space belonged to them (and their gas-guzzling SUVs) and that they didn't have the luxury of two garage spaces like my parents. A first come, first serve rule was established and they displayed their displeasure by continually parking perpendicular to their garage and blocking the sidewalk to everyone, as well as double parking and even blocking the garages of neighbors. I've just returned from a trip from the east coast to discover that these tenants have moved out. I'm not hopeful that the next people who move in there will be much different, but I suppose it's possible.

Even more laughable, is that in each of those two cases, the alpha-male of the household explained that he was just being "neighborly" by kindly asking my parents to move their cars elsewhere. And in each of the cases, it was pointed out that it sounded like they were just trying to tell us what to do. Maybe it's a change in the times, but I remember when "neighborly" meant bringing over food or inviting someone to a house party or BBQ.

There is a question that burns in my mind based on behavior I've witnessed both simply as a human being and as a landlord. Is there really a contingent of caucasian folks out there who are raised with a sense of entitlement and that the world belongs to them?

Caution! Random Blog Alert!

Moments ago, it just occurred to me that dogs probably don't understand laughter or humor....

Natural Blindness

I remember back in the day when I was nine years of age and I was fitted for my first pair of glasses. As the optician was placing them on my face, she was in amazement that I wasn't crying, as she had expected with her experience with probably hundreds of children before. I was much more looking forward to seeing things clearly, as I had probably never seen anything with 100% acuity in my life up to that point. Fast forward to a family trip to the Russian River about three years later, where I had been cooling off in the river when I ducked my head under the water and the current took my eyeglasses right off my face, never to be seen again. Relatively blind (although nothing in comparison to now), I recall feeling very helpless and useless for the rest of the day.

Today, with dozens of disposable contact lenses and extra pairs of eyeglasses available to me, I am never without the ability to see clearly for long periods of time. However, contacts can dry and/or give me terrible headaches and often times glasses just don't feel right on my head (usually due to friends' kids or dogs). So, it is during these moments where I actually enjoy going "blind" and relaxing.

Now, when I use the term blind, what I really mean is that everything gets really fuzzy and all I see are shapes and colors with anything that's more than 4 inches away from my eyes. But, I've learned to be independent of my external visual corrections and try to do simple things such as dog walking, riding the stationary bike, mowing the lawn or even driving during the daylight hours (shhhh! I know, I know..).

There are times when viewing the world this way is even preferable in that it helps me relax and focus on the other four senses. I don't meditate or do yoga, but there are periods of time after I do my routine stretching, where I just like to breathe, zone out, and take in the sights sans visual augmentation. To me, there's definitely a benefit to unwinding without closing my eyes.

I've often wondered about how all the new surgical vision correction surgeries would work for me, but have decided that such a drastic measure would only be done as a last resort. Sometimes not being able to see is a pain in the arse, but I really think part of me would miss being "blind"!