From my dawg Sterling F**king Newberry -- Words To Live By.

Instead of _____ use ____:

1. "Intelligent Design" use "Ignorant Denial".
2. "Intellectual Property" use "Intellectual Capital"
3. "Digital Rights Management" use "Digital Rent Management"
4. "Tax Cuts", use "Revenue Reductions"
5. "Conservative" use "Reactionary"
6. "Borrow and Spend" use "Borrow and Squander"
7. "Mainstream Media" use "Top Down Media"
8. "Pro-Choice" use "Pro-privacy"
9. "Abortion rights" use "Privacy Rights"
10. "Wealthy" use "Privileged"
11. "Free Trade" use "Labor Arbitrage"
12. "Tax" use "Recapture"
13. "A Tax", use "a drag"
14. "Christian Right", use "Christianist Right"
15. "War in Iraq", unless you mean the entire cycle, "Occupation of Iraq"
16. "Social Security Crisis" use "Budget Crisis"
17. "Defense spending" use "military spending"
18. "Capitalism", use "Corporatism".
19. "Corporate", use "Pyramid"
20. "Social" use  "Public" or "National"
21. "Bush Administration" use "Bush Executive"
22. "Fiscal Liberal" use "Fiscal Libertine"
23. "Alternative Energy" use "Sustainable Energy"

That's a good compilation of language to use for anyone seeking to break out of the stale and cyclical political "debate" that's locked us up for the past four years. If you want to read some explanations of what Sterling says these things mean, read the whole diary.

When I was out in Black Rock City, the first I heard of Katrina was Tursday night hopping a tandem ride. The lady who gave me a lift had to get it off her chest, had heard bad stories about mobs and rapes and murders.

Turns out these there were greatly exaggerated:

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.
...
Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

I think it's important to recognize this, both because it speaks to the dignity and humanity of the people of New Orleans, and because it forces all of us to confront the question in our own minds, "did I really believe everything I heard? If so, why."

It also speaks to the ability of people to live in peace without authoritarianism. The philosophical anarchist in me would like to remind people that while the state can play a role in criminal and social justice, it is a very poor apparatus through which to supply law and order directly.

I'm just about ready to get down into it, just about ready to get back in the game. I've been rambling for the better part of the year and it's just about time to get a drop on the next thing.

Here's a question for you. Drupal powers The Onion. Why doesn't someone make a Newspaper distribution?

And here, to close it out, is most of an email I sent to Frank the other day, explaining my situation.

-----------------------------

From: xxxxxx@outlandishjosh.com
Subject: Fraaaank
Date: September 24, 2005 4:21:45 PM PDT
To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com

What's up? I've been busy. It's a strange place, my old hometown. I've sort of piggybacked off my sister's social network, friends of hers that I have come to know and like and the company they keep now... Last night I went out to a party at some punk kid house. Teenagers with mowhawks, people "off their medication" and the whole deal; it was allright. This girl invited me, a friend of friends who I'd met before and gotten high with on a couple of occasions. No sexual angle (at least not from my end), just good times and comradre.

There's a rock'n'roll mom there, three of her kids at the party, and this makes me feel less out of place even through she's probably pushing 50 and I'm at most a decade ahead of the youngest people there. Also, there was an astounding preponderance of tall girls. What do you say to a 20-year old who's 6'2"? Well, not much really... So it was the armchair anthropology thing but it was really something to see, and in Eugene no less. There's so much potential everywhere, you know?

I'm doing the best that I can to back myself into writing a book. Basically I think if I tell enough people that I'm doing this, I'll be peer-pressured into actually making it happen. That's now Nitewerk got done... What I think I can do is make about a third of a book and outline the rest and get some contributors who are smarter than me to fill in the blanks. Wrap it in an editorial throughline and get it done with some cool pictures and graphs and typography. Then I can use the text as script to go out and perform the ideas. It would also all go online to live and evolve.

Looking for places to start, I've been thinking about trying to do some really simple things with audio. It worked out ok on the road trip and I think it could be kind of bad ass. Put together some essay-type content that's written to be read aloud, a little music, kind of like the stuff I used to try and do at the beginning of every Axiom... mixtapes for the revolution. Work from that to chapters and riffs for the book.

Taking that idea a little further into the theatrical realm, I've been thinking of trying to write (or get others to write) radio plays we can distribute over the internet. It could be fun.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do; this perennial question of what does one want to be when one grows up. The Peter Pan rhetoric is a glib way to talk about it, but I generally find a lack of direction to be crippling. One thought that keeps resurfacing is that I aught to spend more time pursuing my own happiness.

I've never been particularly good at this, partly because I'm wired not to get off on openly selfish things. What that means though is that I'll often engage in seemingly altruistic pursuits for selfish reasons. My first girlfriend/lover Amanda used to call me out on that all the time. "If you do nice things because it makes you feel good. It's not any less selfish." Her point was that I should find more direct ways of making myself happy, that this might lead to greater overall... happiness. Philosophically it sounded a little tautological, but on a personal level it always rang true.

I'm plotting and scheming as per usual. When I get back you'll have to turn me on to a good yoga class. I need to break out the blocked-up chi.

peace
-josh

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Finally, you can now find me on MySpace, because I will follow the lead of Dan Droller.

This article from CNN on today's peace rallies is some of the better press organizers could hope for. I wonder if they have people who are working with media outlets or if this is another post-Katrina example of the Press reaching past the FoxNews talking points to get their own sense of the story. If t

On the flip side, people who were looking for a break from the past (to my mind unproductive) formula for how the actual protests themselves go down have been largeley disappointed. Too bad. Maybe the broadly popular anti-occupation sentiment will lead to a different coalition forming which more effectively seeks to address the issue of our occupation of Iraq

Politics isn't as interesting without elections on the line, but the latest twists in the narrative of how the People In Charge (DC Republicans) see things may be worth noting.

Personally, I still have some hope for the Press. If we could get over the kind of postmodern "sophistication" that has turned contemporary coverage of Public affairs into an endless series of inconclusive he said/she said accounts, that would be good for all of us. It would also be good if reporters weren't so comfortable with the knowledge that they are manipulated by those in power.

This is where the elitism of the press really shows it's ugly side. There's an assumption by journalists that the most important element of political coverage is in figuring out who is better at manipulating public opinion. The idea that it's more vital to cover the horserace than to conduct an inquiry into the effectiveness (or potential effectiveness) of a public servant is deeply undemocratic.