Spare Some Change?

Gay marriage is good; anyone against it is a homophobe. I'm not sure how to talk about this subject, lest I get accused of being homophobic. I still don't know what that is, since in Latin it would means something like hating myself, but I get their drift: if you don't think gays should e allowed a marriage or an adoption, it means you hate them.

Accusing people of being homophobic simply because they wish to discuss one of the biggest possible changes in our cultural history is irresponsible. It is no different than the women that declare you're a pig if you want to discuss another massive change that's already happened: women not being at home raising children.

Change for change's sake, or change simply to appease the feelings of a minority should not be taken lightly. Because really, that's what this is all about. It is certainly not about rights. When people think of gay marriage, they aren't thinking about taxation laws, inheritance tax, welfare, life insurance, etc. They're thinking about the love felt between two of their gay friends. And they think it is unfair that those friends and others like them can't declare that love publicly, and have it sanctioned by the state.

People that get upset when someone wants to talk about such a big issue, and have a good debate about it, aren't worth my time. When feelings drive laws, you should be very nervous. Today's good feelings about gay marriage could be tomorrow's bad feelings about not having Jews own supermarkets, blacks teach school, whites swim in pools. Seem ludicrous? 30 years ago, so did the very idea of gay marriage.

Maybe the bogus climate change subject got me thinking about change in general. You often hear people say that "change is good," but this is usually said by someone when a friend tells them, "Becky dumped me," or "I just lost my job." When we say, "Change is good," it's because we don't want to say, "Damn, your life's going to be a mess for the next month. Call me then."

Change is just change, but our perception of it is on a pendulum. If the change is good for us as an individual, or matches our ideals, then it is good. If it doesn't, it's bad. The collateral damage of change (other people) usually doesn't enter into it until much later, and then only philosophically. When change occurs, the first person we naturally think of is ourselves because human beings are at root an animal, and all animals are selfish. Call it a survival instinct or whatever you want, but the most important person in our lives is us, with the exception of our children, who are an extension of us. Spouses, to judge by divorce proceedings and the myriad ways that parents fight for child custody, are a lot more expendable than children.

Even so, child custody cases can be seen as selfish acts: only I can raise this child properly, I can't live without the child, the child would be better off with me, he/she doesn't deserve the child as much as I do. All of these are subjective statements, provided the other parent isn't abusive or negligent. A man or a woman that cheats on their spouse is simply a bad spouse; it doesn't necessarily make them a bad caretaker of children.

Change is unsettling only if it means something bad for us. Rarely do we argue against change if it means we're going to be happier. When it is change of the happy sort, we're also the first to take credit for it. This amuses me. Our successes are claimed as victories, while our defeats are usually somebody else's fault.

Think back to school, when people received their marked essay papers . You'd ask a friend how they did and they'd say, "I aced it," or "The bastard flunked me." Notice the difference. Very rarely did you hear somebody say, "I wrote a total piece of crap and he recognized it." Nor did they say, "I've been kissing his ass all year. He knows I'm an A-student, so he passed me without looking at it."

School is where we first learned how to deal with change. Receiving good marks and pats on the back taught us that good change (graduating from one class to the next; receiving an award; winning popularity through a touchdown pass; getting put in the 'good books') was done through our own achievements. We never questioned this, and took it as only right. Bad change, of course, was something to be protested. A failing grade meant a trip to the teacher's desk to ask for a re-test, or a grade bump, or anything, as long as we didn't fail. When we didn't receive it, we called them a bitch. Their fault, not ours. "I'm a starter on the basketball team because I'm a good player." Versus: "The coach benched me, the jerk."

Yet good change may not have been our doing. Some years ago in Chicago, more than a few teachers were caught cheating on tests. Not their own tests, but their students' tests. They were rubbing out the wrong answers and putting in the right ones, to bump the test scores and make the teachers look like better teachers.

These cheating teachers were caught and they were punished. But I wonder how many students today, if reading that, would feel bad if they were one of the assisted students. Would they return to school to re-write the test? If you were in a similar situation, would you?

The effects of change are all in our perceptions of it. Winning the lottery: good change for you, bad for the jealous neighbour. Losing an election: bad change for you, good for the people that voted for the other guy.

This next example of change gives you some food for thought. In recent years, there have been a few high profile cases of husbands killing pregnant wives, and mothers killing their own children. Now think of a traffic accident, where only one family member is left. Maybe the father. He loved them, and now his life is a living hell. That auto accident is a bad change.

But take the wife-killer. Let's say the day before he plans to do her in, his wife is killed by a drunk driver. Suddenly, in his mind, that auto accident is an excellent change. And we'd never know it.

That's what scares me not about change, but in people's reaction to it. If perception decides whether it's good or bad, we have to take people's word for how they feel about it. They could be lying. It's doubtful that a hateful mother whose children die in an accidental fire is going to turn around the next day and say, "Well, it's for the best, because I wanted to drown them, anyway."

Cultural change is the same as individual change. That is, when a change happens in our lives, we are very selfish about whether it is positive or negative to us as individuals. Cultural change has the same dynamic.

I had an argument with a friend some time back about gay marriage. No matter how many times I said I wasn't against it, the friend was still upset with me for saying that we shouldn't just run it into the legal books overnight. I said there needed to be a good, open debate about changing one of our fundamental institutions so drastically.

No matter. The friend has a personal stake in seeing gay marriage happen (she is not gay, but some of her good friends are), and that was that: from cultural to personal, a good change all the way around.

I don't see it that way. I'm as opinionated as anyone else, but it doesn't mean that I think my beliefs should hold true for all people, even if my beliefs happen to be a political hot topic at the time. The trouble with massive change is that once you change it, it's extremely hard to change it back if you think you've made an error.

Imagine talking to a child some years from now, after gay marriage has been passed nationwide. In a conversation with the child you say something like, "Back when Elvis was the king of rock," but instead you say, "Well, only men and women could get married in those days."

The implied logic for the child is that marriage is malleable. Divorce laws may have hurt the idea of marriage for everyone in my generation, but make no mistake that gay marriage will completely change (destroy?) its meaning for the next one. When something is malleable and ever-changing, it loses its sanctity. It becomes just another bit of politics.

Gay marriage troubles me because it will change the very meaning, the essence, of a cultural institution. Once that has been done, it is easy to tweak it just a little more, and a little more, and a little more.

When a bigamist shows up at the door from name-a-religion and says you're discriminating against him, will you let him marry three wives?

Let's discuss.

Chilling

I was reading this article by R. Timothy Patterson a few minutes ago and thought some enviro-boobs would enjoy it, too. Not because it backs up their claims that mankind is killing the planet (how do you, for instance, "murder" a rock?), but because it gives them more ammunition for their fear-mongering fundraisers.

In this piece, the professor is trying to say that climate change has happened throughout history, and will continue to happen long after we're gone. In fact, he says, things in the short term are probably going to get cooler, though through no fault of our own.

Poor guy. He's sane, but he doesn't get it: it no longer matters if the air gets cooler or warmer. All that matters is that it changes. Now that 'global warming' is called 'climate change,' the enviro-boobs and others of their mindless ilk can point at a thermometer or a thunderstorm any day of the week and say, "See?"

Personally, I can't decide which is better: global warming, so the babes are in bikinis throughout the year; or global cooling, so the babes want to spend more time cuddling in the Jacuzzi.

Anyway, interesting piece. Give it a read, and I'll see you on the beach. Or in the hottub.

Some from France

Stained glass - Honfleur.

Dodge the tourists.

In Bordeaux.

Angry horses.

Going places.

Friends in Honfleur.

Fountain - Bordeaux.

Dog in a basket.

Bordeaux.

Rolling

I was online with a buddy of mine a couple of weeks ago, and I was telling him that everyone we knew back in high school has kids. I'd received one of those invitations from a reunion site, and on a whim I went on there and dug around.

From the jocks to the nerds to the snobs to the saints, practically all of the old faces are married and have kids. I also noticed an interesting phenomenon: you don't have to look at a woman's bio to see if she's married with children. If she's got short hair, she's married. If she's got long hair, she's not. Works about 9 out of ten times. For men, it's weight: a few extra pounds means he's recently tied the knot, and a spare tire indicates a fifth anniversary.

Anyway, I was telling my buddy this news, and I thought he would come back with some deep thoughts on life. Something like, Well, we all get older, or, Yeah, I've been thinking of settling down myself.

What I got instead was: Losers! Ha!

I busted a gut at that one. God knows what I'll do if he ever ties the knot. Me and my buddy are diametrically opposed when it comes to politics, eating habits, and how to pick up women (he's Mr. Nice Guy; I, to your probable surprise, am not), but we've more or less used each other as validation for not giving a damn about backyards and potato salad.

Seeing all of these long-gone faces with kids gave me an interesting thought. Back in high school, I'm pretty sure we all wanted to get laid, but it rarely happened. Now, everybody's getting laid and they can't wait to post photos of the evidence all over the internet. It only took sex ten years to go from being the aw-shucks-red-in-the-face-sweaty-palms act it was, to a humdrum event you can now discuss over dinner.

That really is what separates the married people from the single people (besides the empty pizza boxes, cheap scotch, and strangers' underwear found under the cushions). Married people can talk about screwing all the time, while single people are supposed to be discreet. Which is to say, don't tell your friend about the bimbo you shacked up with at the last office party; wait till his wife is out of the room so you can tell it in detail.

Now before the ladies write in telling me how uncouth I'm being, give me a break. I learned more about sex by eavesdropping on girls in the cafeteria than I ever did in a classroom. Tuesday morning at Starbucks might as well be an adult Sex Ed class. One look at the cover of Cosmo will tell you how much women think about sex, and according to the women I know (married and single), the ladies can really go into detail when in a locker room mood.

Sex and age. Depending on what you mean by that, it can be an interesting discussion, or an unsettling image. Let's go with the first one.

I feel sorry for the women that hear it from their parents and grannies all the time, that the clock is ticking and they need to have kids. Personally, I regard it as rude. Whose life is it, anyway? It ain't yours, ma, or aunt, or grandma. You told your daughters to go out into the world, be who they wanted to be, dream big dreams, and get a fulfilling career. And now you want her to get on her back and do the one thing that you told her not to do when she was growing up? Not only is it rude, it's hypocritical.

Leave your daughters alone. Telling someone to have free will, and then blackmailing them for it, isn't love and it isn't guidance. It certainly isn't cute over Christmas dinners. It's disrespectful. Further, it's pathetic, wanting to live your life through that of your offspring. I find it odd, and a little frightening, when women tell me that their parents and grandparents still do this sort of thing. Not one woman is telling me about a parent saying that they want them to find love. It's all about the kids. Well, if it was all about that, why didn't they let daughter stay out all night with Johnny when she was 17?

Oh, I forgot: because then maybe you, dear grandmother, might have had to help out with the child. It seems that overbearing parents don't talk about sex with 17-year-olds because at that age, sex is about pleasure. They do talk about it with 30-year-olds because by then it's merely procreation.

Since when? Last time I checked, a 30-year-old woman liked sex as much, if not more, than she did when she was younger. Is she now supposed to feel bad about the act itself because it isn't leading to mobiles and Pampers on special?

Still, for those that go down that road, motherhood seems to be quite enjoyable. Flipping through the bios of old friends and enemies, I saw a lot of, "I love being a mom." I bet that's true. The pictures show smiling faces, on mother and child both. And that's great. But you've got to admit, it's kind of creepy seeing a woman with a child and knowing that not too long ago, you threw her down a snowbank. Back then it was funny. Doing the same thing to the same person years later, nobody would laugh and you'd probably get arrested.

My friend and I don't have any kind of a pact against marriage and parenthood. I read once that George Clooney and his modern Rat Pack had something like that going on, where they swore to just hang out, party, and be men's men for the rest of their lives. That smacks of phoniness and protesting too much, and besides, being a man's man is a hell of a lot easier with George Clooney's bankroll. The financial costs of marriage might be high, but being single isn't exactly a road to early retirement, either. If you've been on a first date lately, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Fact is, me and my friend have been busy. I don't see him very often, but that's the whole point: we've been moving around a lot. The rolling stone gathers no moss deal is a very true expression. Anyone who sees that as a shallow point of view doesn't get it: you're not necessarily rolling to avoid things, you're rolling because you're busy doing something. A by-product of that is not being in one place long enough to meet someone special and think, "You know, I'd be all right with building a swing set and arguing about where to put it."

So yes, my friend is wrong, though I know he was just kidding around. The married with kids folk are not losers. They went their road and gathered some moss. If the evidence is correct, they're glad they did. As a live and let live kind of person (as long as I get an opinion on it, naturally), I am fine with that.

But for the women out there that aren't ready yet, and who are listening to a clock ticking in the form of some bigshot family member's pacemaker, my advice is this: keep rolling.

You've got company.

Happiness Murmur

Aristotle thought it was the goal of life. George Harrison believed it was a warm gun. The framers of the US Constitution thought it was something worth pursuing, and the large woman driving too slow in the fast lane with the bumper sticker thinks it is yelling, "Bingo!"

I'm referring to happiness. It's an elusive and very elastic word, and as the examples above show, anyone can use it any way that they want. When I first read Aristotle's deal on happiness, I more or less got the point. It was only after I'd read a bunch of other guys analyzing Aristotle's thesis that I became confused.

I Googled Aristotle this morning just to brush up, and I was confronted by a bunch of know-it-all's telling me that this is what Aristotle meant, not that, and "of course Aristotle didn't mean what we mean today," and on and on and on. Which I think is a load. When I read his discussion on happiness years ago, I thought it was a little windy, but I got the gist: people want to be happy. Happiness is not a state of being, it is an activity of the soul. There was some more stuff in there about not disgracing your ancestors, but by that point I had achieved true happiness: I'd found something else to do besides read more Aristotle.

Not that Aristotle's message isn't uplifting. Nietzsche's version of life's main pursuit (power), reads a lot more depressing than Aristotle's does. Problem is, Nietzsche's sounds more true, because happiness is such a subjective idea.

When I say, "happy," you could envision all kinds of things. Maybe it's the wife and kids. The new job. A nice car. A long vacation with a supermodel. Whatever, they are all symbols of a state of being (at the time you drive the car, sleep with the model, so forth) you could call "happiness." But the dictator has his choice words, too: torture, death, mayhem. Brutal power. And it makes him "happy."

The more I look at it, the more I think that life's pursuit is a combination of the two, with a little more of the pie belonging on power's side. It is possible to have power without happiness, but not the other way around. Though Orwell said that a boot in the face (forever) is the ultimate symbol of power, one could disagree with that. Power doesn't always have to be something evil or distasteful. Power is simply power. Power over one's life, or what we might call freedom.

It depends which person's life we're talking about, and what they perceive as happiness. Hitler's quest for happiness as an activity of the soul couldn't be further from Mother Teresa's, but at one time or another I bet they were both truly happy.

Bordeaux

I've found a new favorite city in Europe.

It surprised me. Travelling to a lot of places makes you somewhat jaded and hard to impress. You get blase about statues, waterfalls, street mimes, "authentic" this, and "genuine" that.

But Bordeaux impressed me. It's a beautiful place, where every building looks as old as Louis XIV. Most ancient cities have a bogus 'old town' which is surrounded by skyscrapers. Bordeaux is all old town. The streets are wide and the monuments aren't covered in graffiti. It's very busy and noisy one minute, and dead-quiet the moment you turn a corner.

Bordeaux has an atmosphere of urban adventure to it. You can wander the streets for hours, some of them only a few yards long. There was one street, Rue Ste. Catherine, that was maybe twenty feet long and seemed to serve no other purpose than to provide space for a sign that says Rue Ste. Catherine.

The shopping district would have North American ladies in stitches. I must have walked the main shopping avenue for fifteen minutes before stopping for a coffee. I still couldn't see the end of it, and I didn't much care to. Fifteen minutes of walking had taught me that Bordeaux has everything a man or woman could ask for, especially if you're a fan of shoes. If you're a Converse All-Star fanatic, then you're in luck: I haven't seen that many pairs of All-Stars in the windows since I was in fifth grade. I didn't even know they made them anymore.

Smokes are cheaper in Bordeaux even after taking the Euro into account, and the beer is reasonable. Unless you order Guinness. I don't know what the Irish did to piss off the people of Bordeaux, but a pint of Guinness will run you 8 Euros, while a pint of Stella is half that. I bought one anyway, just for the hell of it, because I was in an Irish bar. It turned out the lady behind the bar was from England. She'd come to France years ago, married a Frenchman, and spent the rest of her life living in various French-speaking countries. She said she liked Bordeaux, but then again, she pretty much liked them all.

That's a good attitude, and I can agree with that. I've liked most places for one reason or another. What I dig about Bordeaux is that it is beautiful, and it takes care of itself. Venice, no matter what the postcards say, is more or less a craphole. Graffiti all over the place, people chucking cigarette wrappers into canals which smell like a sewer. I heard once that Venice is sinking, and I couldn't help but be grateful. It needs a bath.

In Bordeaux I saw not less than three street sweepers in the space of five hours. They're a lot smaller than the ones they use in the big American cities, but they get the job done. They drive down the streets, walkways, pathways, and they gobble up garbage and sweep up filth in no time. Moments later, they're gone, and so is the day's trash. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. Just as people generally act the way they dress, I firmly believe that a city's people will reflect their environment, and vice versa. It's an endless cycle. Let a city go to hell, and the people will, too.

And that's what makes a place: the people. The first time I stayed in France some years ago, I was struck by how much I liked the French. Previous experience with French culture involved reading about Napoleon, learning about the Luftwaffe pounding French cities to rubble, and dealing with assholes from Quebec.

I stayed in St. Nazaire and Pornichet for a few months, and I loved the place. Loved the people. I often tell this story of what happened to me one day while in St. Nazaire:

I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up some drugs. I had the address, but I didn't know where the place was, and France is low-low on taxis. I wandered into a bar and show the bartender the address. He started pointing and jabbering, but he knew I couldn't understand him.

Just then a guy at the bar gets up and motions me to follow him. I thought he was going to take me into the street for more jabbering and pointing. Instead, he walks to his car and points to the passenger seat. I demure, saying no, you don't have to do that. He keeps pointing, shrugging his shoulders, not understanding why I won't get in. So I get in.

He looks at the address on the paper and drives me there. My French then was awful, and we don't say a word the whole time. We arrive at the pharmacy and I get out of the car, waving good-bye and saying "Merci," about five times. I go inside and it takes the lady about ten minutes to put the prescription together. I walk outside, and there the guy is, still sitting there. He waves.

I get in, saying "Merci," another five times. He just shrugs. We get back to the bar. I go inside and buy the guy a beer. He looks happy as hell. The bartender raises his eyebrows to ask if we found the place. I hold up my little baggy of drugs, and the bartender nods in satisfaction.

That's France.

I've met some damned kind people in France. The hype about France being an anti-American (and they all think I'm American when I talk) stronghold is merely that: hype. It stems from the people in Paris whom the French don't even like, and from past nonsensical French politicians. The French people, to my mind, are some of the most generous and gregarious people you will ever meet.

I don't think that merely from that one episode. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have never felt shunned because I can't speak French or because they think I'm a Yankee. In Quebec City, you get treated like a jerkoff if you can't speak French. In France, they either try to use some English, or they use a lot of sign language. Either way, they don't make you feel like you're in Hull. I was out on the town in Quebec City one night with a French dude, and I asked him why people around the coat check were pointing and laughing at me. He said, "Because you're speaking English." Just like that. And in a nice gesture he said, "Losers."

Anyway, Bordeaux. I went to a couple of clubs there and struck up some pigeon-French conversations with the locals. Like all people, they want to know what you think of their city. And I was being quite honest when I told them that it was a great city and that they should be proud of it. My French has improved, but it doesn't really matter. The people in Bordeaux switch to bad English to compete with my bad French, and generally you can get the point across. And the point is the same the world over: people are people. Nevermind the politicians and the movie stars and the terrorists and the maniacs. The vast majority of people are just people. They want to be happy, and they want you to be happy, too.

It was nice to come back. Years ago, I had written down somewhere that I would have no problem living in France if it came down to it. Bordeaux reminded me why.

Some Spain and Portugal

Here's a few pics from Spain and Portugal. Click to enlarge. I'll try to type up a few articles in the coming days, but things have been busy.


Friends on the beach.

Triumph. Barcelona, Spain.

Busker Rehearsing.

Balance.

On the rocks - Spain.

Starting line.

Trampled Under Foot. Statue, Malaga.

Waiting. Lisbon, Portugal.

What's The Matter - La Coruna, Spain.

Crab. La Coruna, Spain.

Laura on the beach. Cadiz, Spain.

Laura - B&W.

Church. Spain.

Woman with dog. Cadiz, Spain.

The Med

A few shots from the last couple of weeks in the Mediterranean. Click to enlarge.

Big beers. I love the look on Tony's face (at right) in this photo.

Leaning.

Jodi and Laura, hanging out.

A few buddies in Sorrento.

Scooter walk.

St. Tropez.

Unplugged

From One News (New Zealand):

Mercury Energy sent a technician to Folole Muliaga's home to disconnect the power as the family was behind on their power bill.

Folole, 44, was suffering from a cardio-respiratory complaint and needed oxygen from a breathing support machine to survive.

Family spokesman Brendan Sheehan says the technician who arrived at the house to disconnect the power supply spoke to Folole and she told him she needed electricity to operate the machinery. Sheehan says the technician said he was just doing his job, turned the power off and left.

The woman died a few hours after the power was disconnected.

That has got to go down as one of the biggest "oops" moments in electrical technician history. For its part, Mercury Energy says that no one told the tech that the woman needed electricity to stay alive. The real story will probably never be known, as it is a he said/she said affair, and the she in this case is dead.

How much did the woman owe Mercury Energy? $170.

There's two ways we can look at a story like this. The first one that everyone seems to be taking is to say that big business and big government are a bunch of jerks that don't care about their customers/citizens. Killing a woman that owes you $170 dollars when you make millions a year in profit is not exactly looking out for anyone's best interests. Except your own.

But there's another way to look at this case. If you're on an oxygen machine that requires electricity to keep you alive, do you pay the bill on time, or not? And if some guy comes over and unplugs the juice, do you just sit there and die? What about picking up the phone and telling someone, anyone, that you need to borrow their power outlet or you are going to bite the dust in a few short hours?

People need to stand up for themselves. This case will have all kinds of trials and recriminations, all of them saying that the power company was evil and at fault. Who knows, maybe they were. But the woman would still be alive today if she had taken things into her own hands. First by paying the bill, second by getting help when things turned soured.

Don't sit. Stand up. Act.