A dilemma, not.

For me, this is a true dilemma.

A couple of years ago, Blogger became Google; that's the most direct way to put it. Blogger was the digital front door for a small company called Pyra Labs, Google bought Pyra, and Pyra continued to operate Blogger as a small piece of the ever-expanding Goggle universe.

Not too long ago, Google handed over to the Chinese government information on Chinese web surfers who might be -- or might not be -- attempting to visit websites that the government doesn't want its people to see. That's my own summation of actions taken by Google which Google states is required of it to do business in China.

China recently arrested a journalist working for the New York Times. He was arrested because of an article he wrote that the Chinese government said...oh, it doesn't matter what the government said, really. They arrested a writer because he wrote something the government didn't like. They subsequently dropped the original charge, after much scrutiny and exposure by worldwide media, and came up with another charge -- fraud -- and gave him just under five years.

So, I have this conumdrum, to wit: I'm a writer; if I were a writer in China, I wouldn't be allowed -- by LAW -- to write what I'm writing now. If I used Google to try and access sites that the government deemed unacceptable, the government could -- by LAW -- get information about my attempts from Google, and Google would be compelled -- by LAW -- to give it to them and, apparently, it would do just that.

I have heard several times over the course of my adult life that some people worry and fuss over things that they have absolutely no control over, and, therefore, it's a waste of their time. I understand this approach, and it has merit. As an example, when teaching video production classes at a DeVry-type school many eons ago, I knew that when it came time for the students to choose a subject to build their first significant video piece around, someone, or several someones, would choose "the homeless". In response, I would use their idea as a class on how to focus ideas, by drawing out the multiple levels of complexity inherent on "the homeless" subject, to wit:
"...okay, the homeless. Well, what about the homeless? Is your idea about how many; men; women; the impact of homeless on city services; the impact on the general public; feeding; housing; homeless children; homeless families; homeless teens; there are an estimated 5,000 homeless teenagers on the streets, so, will you focus on how they got there; why they're homeless; how about what happens to the homeless...migration of homeless to here...from here...new services ...andonandonandon..."

And so, there is some merit to fretting about something of which you have no impact or control. Can't cure world hunger; can't singlehandedly stop arms proliferation; can't even help all the homeless become non-homeless.

BUT, I can make a video documentary on any one of those ideas listed above; I can make a documentary on one homeless person; I can feed one person; I can volunteer in a shelter. I can find a way to channel my altruistic intentions into local, grassroots action.

I'll come back around now, back to the Google-owns-Blogger thing. There's a new Beta Blogger option for us. Click on it and you find some interesting 'improvements' and enhancements to our blog sites, yahdaw yahdaw. But, go to the FAQ and look around, and you find out that you'll need to open a Goggle G-mail account if you want to use the Beta stuff and, more importantly, you don't have to do it right now, but you'll have to do that eventually whether you want to or not, and if you don't, your blog as you know it now will disappear.

I don't want a Google account of any kind. As I read through the info and discovered the changes coming in my Blogger future, I realized that I had known of the Blogger to Google morph, and I had placed it amdist the mental pile of news and tidbits that flood my head, much as the literal paper-based news and tidbits that fill my office. I was remiss in not keeping track of that tidbit, since I had followed the Google gift to the Government of China story, and had been pissed, but also, truly, truly disappointed in Google's response to the questions of why it had capitulated and given up the info: if you're going to do business in another country, then you have to follow that country's rules.

That's it?

Fuck you. Fuck you. Your skyrocketting share price of $350 or whatever it is today might suffer if you incoproated some kind of freedom of speech vertebrae into the spine of your global business plan? Your board of directors might revolt if you decided that you'll do fine in most of the world without having a Google presence in China? It's just so disappointing that you took this route, that you knew when the China incident drops off the media radar, when most people have forgotten what you did, and many didn't care to begin with, that you knew it wouldn't matter. But it does matter; it matters to me.

I'm not one to try and mount the platform and make everyone listen to ideas that are too lofty for practical, everyday use. I DO use Google as a search engine. And, I certainly understand how everyone who's anyone in the world of business not only DOES business WITH China, they actually build manufacturing plants IN China, and that without the ability to do business with and in China, the U.S. economy would be in a real tizzy -- for all the moms and dads out there, I understand why it's important to be able to go to a big box store and get your kids' sneakers for twenty-five bucks, instead of the forty-five bucks it would cost if they weren't manufactured in China. But, I have to draw a distinction here, because, goddamn it, Google, you're supposed to be different.

You're supposed to be innovative, and people-centric. The people who work for your company love the way you do things, the way you treat them, the opportunities you offer. Your technology works, and you've become a noun-to-verb, both a brand awareness coup and problem for you. If you were a Chinese company -- government or 'privately' owned -- and I wrote this exact post about you and about my views, I would most certainly be picked up and questioned, and probably arrested, and that's not an exageration.

I honestly started this post without having decided what to do about Story & Pictures', but that is no longer the case. At some point in the near future, I'll move Story & Pictures from Blogger and continue it under its own domain. I'll certainly let everyone know when this happens.

China's huge, Google's big. There is a legitimate notion in not using a population's government as a target for an action if that action deprives the population of something positive and really does nothing to effect that government. Thus, I am a multi-celled organism unseen by the dinosaurs I am trying to effect. So be it.

This is about me, and what's in my writer's soul. I've worked very hard to be able to make a paltry living as a writer, and I have garnered some level of recognition of my skills, and that at least gets me inside a community of people I admire and respect. My tiny action is all about me on a very small level, but it's about the other "me's" in this world who understand what this is really all about.

I'm mad and sad, but I'll get on with things, it just won't be here

Nothing but silence

I had a gig in the middle of nowhere over the weekend. It was an annual thing I do for a non-profit; I run a sound system (it's barely a system, really, quite tiny) for a string of poets and musicians who perform at an annual event. I'm not exagerating about the nowhere description; it's about five hours north of San Francisco, between Red Bluff and Shasta. You get off I5 at Red Bluff, scoot away from town, and head into a vast, volcanic landscape, surrounded by long, empty vistas, valleys of brown grass and mountains in the distance. Another thirty minutes and you finally arrive.

The gig went fine, long day, and I usually stay overnight, but I had the gear packed and ready to go by eight, and so I left as day entered dusk. That thirty-ish minute trip there and back to Red Bluff and I5 is a two lane road, and there might be, oh, two-dozen residences of varying sorts, from shacks to ranches, but it really is a Mars-like landscape, if Mars had scrub-bush, oak trees and seas of brown grass extending across its dreamscape. About half-way to Red Bluff, I did something that has become a tradition of sorts, in that I do it when the location and timing are right, and I never pass up the opportunity.

This so-called tradition started soemwhere deep in Michigan, deep into the night, when it's technically morning but still black, save for the brightness of stars shinning through a sky clear of smog, fog or ambient light.

I had worked a gig that night by myself, selling T-shirts at a Rockets show. The Rockets were a popular Michigan band, they had decent, semi-national hit tune, the name of which escapes me now, although if you ask me some other time I won't remember it then, either. It was one of those shows I worked when I was in-between working for the 'bigger bands'. Because even the successful bands of that day couldn't work eleven-and-a-half months of the year without hurting themselves, figuratively or litterally, in some way shape or form, so they would take time off and I would work tours for smaller, really good working bands, like Blue Oyster Cult and the Tubes. These were tours that occasionally hit a decent size venue, but generally landed at large clubs and small halls, ice arenas and festivals, anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 seats. I did a lot of these with Gonzo, one of those great friends from high school that you end up spending a lot of time with, and then drift apart years later...because you spent so much time working together. I have to wonder if he remembers the same reality-as-hillarity we experienced working a Blue Oyster Cult gig in Presque Isle, Maine. As an aside, just check out where that is on the map, and then picture a Spinal Tap-like adventure in Maine's version of Mayberry.

The Rockets gig, though, that was one I did myself. I don't remember much about the gig -- this is, what, twenty-eight years ago -- but I remember driving the truck through a remote part of Michigan, in the darkdarkdark, and just pulling over to the side of the road, shutting off the engine and stepping onto the road. There were the crickets, and whatever other night creatures make all that natural noise out there, but there weren't any other sounds. None.

None.

Not the faint whoosh of a jet plane high somewhere above, not the similar kind of whoosh made by an approaching car or truck, unseen but coming up the road. Nothin'.

Now, due to the laws of physic and thermodynamics ("...good god, where the hell is he going with this?..."), there was the click and and creak of the just shut off truck ("...oh, okay..."), but after a few minutes, even those sounds stopped, and there was nothing, no sounds, none.

It was spiritual, truly.

It's the kind of experience that exists only in a few places and, even many of those places, it doesn't always last very long. I was out there, just looking up at the sky, just looking around, for about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. No one drove by, no one even came close. I climbed up into the truck and headed on down (or up) the road.

I have never passed up an opportunity to do that same kind of thing again, which is why I did it the other night in the middle of nowhere in the far north of California. It was a little different this time, though, because I was doing it at dusk instead of the delightful dead of night. I have stopped on this stretch of road, at about the same spot, many times (remember, this is an annual gig, and I do get up there for other occasions), but always at night. The last night stop I made was under a full moon, and that was a stunning experience in and of itself, but this time, with the fading but still there light, I could see all the miles and miles of distance, look back and see where I'd been, look forward and see where I was eventually headed. Since it was earlier than usual, I did have to contend with a couple of cars zooming past, but I had a good chunk of ten minutes there where it was just me, the creatures, the rolling grasslands and solitary oaks, majestic, long armed, thin fingered islands silhouetted against a gray and pink sky.

You need to do just this sort of thing, any chance you get. If you're not by yourself, you need to get a vow of silence from the person you're with, for the time you'll be outside. This is not an easy thing for Americans to accept - silence is awkward for many of us, and it can be a chore to not speak. Give it a few minutes though, in that beautiful stillness, and most of them will get it.

It's wonderful. Don't pass up the opportunity.

Peace.

Went to Colorado, had a great time, and the world continues to go to heck in a handbasket.

Gots lots to do, lots to do, including ripping through perspectives on the world as negotiations continue with the Strive Agency (and I'm really giving the other side an extraordinary swath of leeway in using the word 'negotiations') over a movie project, I await word from two wonderful orginazations (not trying tooo hard there, am I?) as to their decisions to financially support, or not, one of my book projects and, in the "what am I, nuts?" department, I've got a solo performance show coming up on September 6th.

"Let's go to the world outside yourself first, Bob (sorry RW)!"

Recently, the median cost of a house in Marin County, California, surpassed $950,000; generally, that would be a two, maybe three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, small yard (maybe), fixer upper, complete with terrible traffic jams on the ONE AND ONLY highway through the county, and a population that's pretty neutral in skin color (I believe the current PC term is 'Anglo'), and a truly un-burstable real estate bubble, un-burstable until the next big earthquake (6.0 and higher) pops a few of those fixer uppers right off their foundations. I'm thinking that this particular missive belongs in the "what am I, nuts?" department also.

The 'not really our president because the majority of the people voted for the other guy but too late now so shut up he's the king and everything is happy in DopeyRummy land, both here and abroad' has just signed something that transfers from San Diego to the federal government 'ownership' of a huge Latin cross that sits on top of a war memorial in San Diego (that's how it's being described, distinguishing it from a cross ala Red Cross sort of plus sign orientation, as opposed to the crucifix kind of cross, the kind we're talking abou here, the kind Madonna is using in her act right now; that's the sort of thing that all really talented musiciains and singers use to draw attention to their talent, right?) (someone stop me before I use another set of parentheses). The cross has been at the center of ten years of litigation, the whole separation of church and state thing.

Hey, this ain't no pro- nor anti-religious post here, just an opportunity to say, "Is there ANYTHING that this pompous ruler does at any given moment that DOESN'T
FIGURATIVELY STOMP ALL OVER THE CONSTITUTION?"

Re an earlier post about Mustangs, teens being killed by and in Mustangs, and a commercial showing the bonding of a father and his teenage son as the kid spins donuts with their Mustang in some dark parking lot...After a local newpaper columnist contacted Ford last month about the inappropriateness of the... aw, piss on it, let's just call it stupid, commercial, and the Ford public info guy said, "You're sooo right, we'll remove that immediately", and they did...except...dang if it didn't appear again on TV just last week, and when contacted, PublicInfo guy said, "Ooooo, gosh, we forgot to tell our local dealerships not to use that..." Geez, I don't know if anything I could say here could be as insulting as PublicInfo Guy's response.

Having trouble getting over this, from Associated Press: Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq. People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

I'm loving that phrase, "independent of reality", it's just so damn universal in this day and age, no?

Stay with me, we're close to the end.

Speaking of close to the end, there's this, via Frida Berrigan, senior research associate at the World Policy Institue's Arms Trade Resource Center: in 2005, the U.S. exported $18.6 BILLION in weaponry; Russia comes in second with a measly $4 billion in yearly sales. In fact, U.S. arms exports accounted for more than half of total global arms deliveries in 2004 - $34.8 billion. While boasting about democracy, security and peace, we sell weapons to dictators, human rights abusers and countries at war or at the edge of war (sometimes with each other). In fact, 20 or our top 25 arms clients in the developing world in 2003 were undemocratic regimes or governments with records as major human rights abusers.

'Nuff said there.

It all gets overwhelming sometimes, but I like to spread this kind of news around, so that when something seems too strange to accept on a small level, or it's just too (insert your own word here), we can keep in mind that weirdness scales both up and down.

Before I go, a shout out to RW, of Vincenzo's: Out here in Northern California, we understand, support and love the engineered art that is the Mini. Feel the love, feel the love.

Down at the local level, I'm doing a show in September based on things I saw in Louisiana when I volunteered during the Katrina crisis; I'll keep you all informed of how it goes, and I'd love for you all to be here for it, but since that's not realistic, here's what I'm hoping the audience will feel when all is said and done: entertained, slightly frightened, slightly humored, slightly educated, highly empathetic, and accepting of our collective responsibility to take care of each other.

What am I, nuts?