I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT CHRISTMAS for over two months.

And almost none of it involved what presents I wanted.

Researching and writing some three dozen Xmas-themed freelance tidbits for Everything Holidays has taught me a thing or twelve about how I view the season. Some of these new-found notions:

• Jesus probably wasn’t born in December. It probably doesn’t matter. Historical accuracy is fine for research papers, but the realm of legend and faith is a whole different world which operates on whole different laws.
• The early Christians didn’t celebrate the baby Jesus. In the decades after Constantine made Catholicism the official church of Rome, the once-heretical sect planted roots throughout Europe by taking local winter-solstice rites and icons (trees, wreaths, Yule logs, etc.) and rewriting them. Instead of celebrating the return of longer days to a darkened world, post-Constantine Christians used the same time of year to celebrate the return of God’s hope to a world in spiritual darkness.

  Certain “one-true-church” outfits, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, think this represents the dilution of Christian purity with pagan influences. As someone who believes purity is something for show dogs, I happen to like this mix-‘n’-match iconography. Indeed, if Christians hadn’t learned early on to borrow from assorted cultural traditions, we’d have no Christian punk bands today. (You can choose for yourself what you think about that.)

• Christmas brings out the weirdness in people. That one I’d known for some time; but this research has proven it.

  The weirdness is to be found in the goofball presents and decorations; the truly odd spectacle that is the Christmas episode of a TV series (even Pokemon and He-Man have ’em!); the curiously unsexy spectacle of “erotic” holiday cards (Hint: If you’re nude, you really shouldn’t stand that close to Christmas-tree needles); and in the basic all-American contradictions surrounding the modern holiday season.

• Christmas is a time of mixed messages. And that’s OK. It’s a time associated with somber reflection and with photocopying your butt at office parties. A season of simple pleasures and of incessant exhortations to keep priming the pump of consumer spending. A period of quiet joy and the forced comisseration of at-odds relatives, ex-spouses, and other people one tries to avoid the rest of the year. A holiday many Jewish kids feel left out of, that’s about the world’s most famous Jewish kid.

  But the human race is an oddball, mongrel species.

  And any holiday promising hope and renewal to humans had better offer these things to humans as they, as we, are–nerds and geeks and dorks and hotheads and eggheads and dopes and neer-do-wells and fussbudgets and all the rest of us.

  In the immortal words of Rudolph’s pal Yukon Cornelius, even among misfits you’re misfits.

MONDAY: Movie memories on the streets.

ELSEWHERE:

• Unwrap a condom, learn about the census (found by the Obscure Store and Reading Room)…./UL>
  

ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY, I’d discussed Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 utopian tract.

In it, a “refined” young man of 1880s Boston awakens from a 113-year trance to find himself in the all-enlightened, worry-free Year 2000. The doctor who’d revived him (and the doc’s comely daughter) then spend the rest of the book telling him how wonderful everything has become.

The chief feature of Bellamy’s future is a singular, government-run “Industrial Army” that owns all the means of production and distribution, employs every citizen aged 21-45 (except child-bearing women), and pays everybody the same wage (less-desirable jobs offer shorter hours or other non-monetary perks).

Obviously, nothing like that ever happened. Soviet communisim was a police-state regime that used egalitarian ideals to justify its brutality. Euro-socialism featured government-owned industrial companies that operated just like privately-owned companies, only less efficiently and less profitably.

But could Bellamy’s fantasy have ever worked in anything close to its pure form? Undoubtedly not.

It would’ve required that everybody (or at least enough people to impose their will on the rest) submit to a single, purified ideology based on rationality and selflessness. Any uncensored history of any major religious movement shows how impossible that is, even within a single generation.

We are an ambitious and competitive species. The “rugged individualist” notion, long exploited by U.S. corporations and advertisers, has a real basis in human nature.

We are also a diverse species. Especially in the U.S. whose citizens are gathered from the whole rest of the world. Bellamy’s totalized mass society would require a social re-engineering project even greater, and more uprooting, than that of the steam-age society he’d lived in. The kindly-doctor character’s insistence that all these changes had coalesced peacefully, as an inevitable final stage of industrial consolidation, may be the least likely-seeming prediction in the whole tome.

As I wrote previously, most utopian fantasies require that everybody in a whole society conform to the writer’s prescribed sensibility. (Some even require that everybody belong to the writer’s own gender or race.)

In most cases, the prescribed sensibility is that of a writer, or at least of a planner–ordered, systematic, more knowledgeable about structures than about people.

The impossibility of such monocultural utopias hasn’t stopped writers and planners from thinking them up. But at least some folks are realizing any idealized future has to acknowledge that people are different from one another and always will be.

We’ll talk more about this idea of a post-mass, post-postmodern future in future weeks.

TOMORROW: Musings on Biggest-Shopping-Day Eve.

ELSEWHERE:

• Who sez death can’t be creative?…
• Twin Peaks still holds up after 10 years, to me and to my ol’ pal Jim Emerson….
• The changing American workplace means new types of repetitive-stress injuries…

HERE’S ANOTHER PIECE I wrote for Everything Holidays. It’s already generated some angry letters by millennium-in-2001 purists.

Some nitpickers insist the new millennium won’t start until the year 2001.

Their justification: There was no Year Zero (despite a ’50s science fiction film, Panic in the Year Zero).

So a decade, century, or millennium doesn’t really start with a “zero” year but a “one” year.

But these well-meaning attempts at precision ignore the fact that calendar-making has always been a less than precise art.

As University of Florida computer-network administrator Thomas Hintz writes, “The calendar is a man-made device. It is an artificial method for defining the passage of time.”

Most civilizations have tried to divide time according to the cycles of the sun and moon, to the best of their ability to do so. But the names of these divisions, and their start and end points, are a matter of human creativity.

The Western World runs on the Gregorian Calendar, established by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and based largely on the suggestions of Naples physician Aloysius Lilius and Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius.

Gregory wanted a more accurate calendar than the Julian system, which had been Europe’s standard since the days of ancient Rome. It was Lilius who came up with a more refined system of leap years, to make up for the fact that the solar year takes a little longer than 365 exact days. He also erased eleven days, to make up for past slippage.

The first day of the Gregorian Calendar, October 15, 1582, directly followed October 4, 1582 under the Julian Calendar.

Some European countries (particularly Catholic countries) adopted the Gregorian Calendar right away; others took a while. Great Britain and its colonies didn’t adopt it until 1752.

That’s why George Washington was born on a February 11, but his birthday was celebrated with a holiday on February 22, until it was morphed into the always-on-a-Monday Presidents’ Day.

(Some other nations didn’t fully go Gregorian until the 1920s.)

If that’s not confusing enough, the Gregorian Calendar was built on top of an established year-numbering system that had been back-dated to start with what religious scholars at the time believed to have been the year Jesus Christ was born.

But even that’s become a matter of latter-day disputes. Some historians now believe Jesus could have been born anywhere from five years before to a year after the now-official Year 1.

The next year is called 2000 A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for “Year of Our Lord”) because, about a thousand years prior to the Gregorian Calendar’s adoption, a Catholic monk named Dionysius Exiguus was asked by the church to calculate future years’ dates for Easter (based on the Jewish passover, which in turn is based on a complicated formula involving full moon and the vernal equinox).

According to calendar scholar Claus Tondering, “At that time it was customary to count years since the reign of emperor Diocletian; but in his calculations Dionysius chose to number the years since the birth of Christ, rather than honour the persecutor Diocletian.”

Dionysius chose to base his research on what he figured was the birth year of Jesus Christ. Eventually, the church officially adopted his figures, in the year that was proclaimed to be 523 A.D. (Some non-Christians prefer the alternate designation “C.E.,” for “Common Era”.)

So, since year-numbering is so arbitrary, go ahead and celebrate the millennium on 1/1/2000. Then next year, you can join the nitpickers and celebrate the millennium all over again.

I haven’t responded personally to the picky complainers’ emails, but I’ll do so collectively here: Hey, it’s just numbers! And Jesus was probably born over 2,000 years ago by now anyway!

(More info is at Calendar Zone and at Frequently Asked Questions About Calendars.)

TOMORROW: Everything Is Go, Astroboy!

ELSEWHERE:

• From the land that brought you Orson Welles, Joe McCarthy, and those Green Bay Packer fans’ “cheesehead” hats: It’s Weird Wisconsin! (Found by Pop Culture Junk Mail….)
• Some of the vignettes on “My Miserable Life” are mildly young-adult angsty; but some are really tear-jerking….

AMERICANS LOVE stuff, particularly if it’s new and/or wacky and/or ingeniously-thought-up stuff.

Here’s some of the funnest stuff I’ve found lately.

• Joe’s Cool Website of Mid-Century Modern Design: Cool phones, concept cars, Howard Miller clocks, lounge chairs suitable for Austin Powers set decorations, assorted “houses of the future,” graphic design fads, and more, all from the jet-stream ’50s to the late-mod ’70s. Some stuff’s for sale, some for rent, some just to admire.
• Incredibly Strange Religious Records: You can laugh at this music if you wish, like the webmaster of this site apparently wants you to. I, however, prefer to sit a little further back and be inspired by these amateur and semipro songwriters’ absolute 100-percent sincerity and irony-free conviction. Part of the same “Post-Fundamentalist Press” site that also brings you the “Adult Christian Sex Tour” and “The XXX-Rated Bible.”
• Sex Gum: From Mexico (one of the less completely-devout of the Catholic countries), and “based on the wisdom of the American pre-Hispanic cultures,” chewing gums laced with herbal ingredients which will supposedly “increase and strengthen sexual power in men and sexual appetite in women.” The site sells three different types (Sex Gum, Love Gum, Extasy Gum), in wholesale quantities. (I’ll let you make your own “stick” or “chewing” puns.)
• Stupid Candy and Gifts: “Bad taste never tasted so good,” or so this site claims. It sells edible novelties such as Choka Ca-Ca, described as “chocolate fudge in a diaper (Yep, we’ve hit a new low).” Plus Lick’n Erasers (“eraser-shaped candy that fits over the end of your pencil”), computer-shaped pasta, Wheel of Fortune logo wristwatches, gummi pizza, gummi rats, a Jell-O mold in the shape of a human brain, and something called Lava Lick (“It’s like putting the Sixties in your mouth”).
• Vinyl Video: John Logie Baird, a Scotsman who spent decades on a doomed effort to invent “mechanical telecision,” once tried to preserve his signals on phonograph-like discs. Some enterprising Austrians claim to have finally perfected the process. They say their adepter, added to any LP turntable, will play 15 minutes of lo-res, b/w video with mono sound, on collectible picture discs. The site’s sample scenes involve haunting, near-abstract imagery (almost as beautiful as the images made by Fisher-Price’s beloved, discontinued PXL toy camcorder), set to Euro-electronica dance music.

IF YOU MISSED last week’s wonderful live reading/event, there’s another promo for The Big Book of MISC. this Thursday, Aug. 26, 7:30 p.m., at the venerable Elliott Bay Book Co. Be there or be isogonal.

IN OTHER NEWS: After 17 years as the virtual living room of the Belltown arts community, the beloved Two Bells Tavern, where some of our live Misc.-O-Rama events have been held, is in the process of being sold to ex-NYU prof Tina Morelli-Lee and hubby Jeffrey Lee. So far, the new mgmt. promises to keep everything the same (i.e., no hard alcohol and no Bud Light; and it’ll still serve some of the city’s best burgers but won’t serve French fries).

TOMORROW: The return of bad-white-boy rock; just as stoopid as ever.

ELSEWHERE: Zero Population Growth claims Seattle’s America’s most kid-friendly city. (As long as you’re not a kid who wants to see live music or put up street posters)… Surreal, haunting, quasi-Goth–who doesn’t love dream stories?…

BOOKING A WOMEN’S CONVENTION by the religious-right pressure group Focus on the Family the same weekend as ArtsEdge was the best Seattle Center scheduling serendipity in years. Even better than situating the big Cobain memorial in ’94 right outside, and just after, a Sonics playoff game.

Alas, no catfights or shouting matches broke out between the blue-haired conservatives and the green-haired artsy-types–not even with the entrants in the tattoo contest, some of whom paid as little heed as was legally possible to the contest’s fine-print rule, “If your tattoo is in an area normally covered by clothing, please be prepared to wear clothing that reveals your tattoo but not the genital area. Ladies, that means nipples too–sorry, it’s the law!”).

The body art was among the highlights at the third ArtsEdge. Other notables: The parade of art cars, the Butoh Race (three women in angel-of-death-white makeup tried to run as slowly as possible without stopping), musical gigs by Rockin’ Teenage Combo and the Bosnian emigres of Kultur Shock, the neo-vaudeville of Circus Contraption and Cirque de Flambe, and Elaine Lee’s art installation in which short tales involving the artist’s “secrets” were stored inside beautifully-lit, small metal boxes.

A lot of it was fun and entertaining. Some of it was even art. Little of it, though, had any edge.

The problem: economics, natch. This year’s ArtsEdge, like the two prior installments, failed to attract many of the region’s best fringe art-theater-music people due to its policy of not paying them. (The event’s $100,000 budget goes entirely to Seattle Center staff and facilities services and to publicity.)

As long as the Seattle Center management’s allowed to think “edgy” art means art by young adults who’ll do anything for a public showcase, you’ll get an ArtsEdge that’s got little art and almost no edge. This year’s event proved it could be popular, even under less-than-ideal weather conditions. It could be more popular if more pro alterna-artists, with their already-built followings, were added.

Consider this another case of the “If-we-can-build-these-big-ass-sports-palaces-why-can’t-we-…” routine, which we’ll talk a little more about on Thursday and Friday.

Tomorrow: More reasons why Pokemon is such a hit with the kids and so incomprehensible to the grownups.

MISC. WORLD, the online column that still hasn’t seen the new Star Wars, has read the hereby-linked, viciously beautiful review of the movie by that much-acclaimed, recently-crashed, Time art critic Robt. Hughes (Time wouldn’t run it, so the NY Daily News picked it up).

UPDATE: The Big Book of MISC. is now in the heat of production. By the time you read this, the covers should be printed and the insides should be ready to roll. Online ordering’s now available at this link.

Actual copies of the book should be ready for the big pre-release party and annual Misc.-O-Rama, the evening of Tuesday, June 8 at the new Ditto Tavern, 2303 5th Avenue near Bell Street (across from the back of the Cadillac lot). There’ll be outrageous snack treats, videos, strange DJ music, games, surveys, a live demonstration, and lots lots more. Free admission; 21 and over. Be there. Aloha.

RIDDLE: What do you call the last pint of Hefeweizen that causes a yuppie to total her fancy-ass luxury car? (Answer next week.)

TIMES OF THE SIGNS: There actually is one and only one piece of signage at the Broadway and U District Taco Bell outlets that’s in Spanish–the bottom half of the front-door warning sticker boasting of the joint’s anti-robbery systems.

SAY WHAT?: US West TV spots are currently promoting Caller ID boxes as ways to avoid those annoying life interruptions from pesky telemarketing calls. Besides the commercials, can you guess one other method the company’s using to try and sell the service? That’s right.

ON THE EDGE: Hope some of you noticed the name of the apartment-redevelopment company charged (as shown on both KIRO’s and KING’s late news Wednesday) with violating even Seattle’s wimpy tenant-rights laws: “No Boundaries.” The logo on the company’s possibly-illegal notices of eviction and attempted rate-hike retaliations against protesting tenants, as seen on the newscasts, looks just like the letterhead of some sci-fi video-game company. There’s some lesson somewhere here about today’s money-and-power mentality, in which strong-arm business tactics are mistaken for acts of daring rebellion by self-worshipping hotshots who can’t stand the idea of having to do anything they don’t want to.

(“No Boundaries” also happens to be the title of a new benefit CD for Kosovo refugees, with two Pearl Jam tracks.)

ADULT RESPONSIBILITIES, AND OTHER EXPANSIONS: An LA Times story claims the latest thing in La-La land is affluent high-school girls asking for breast implants as graduation gifts, or paying themsleves for the procedure as soon as (or even a few months before) they reach legal adulthood. The article quoted a couple of doctors who noted some women are still well within the developmental process at age 17 or even 18, but an increasing number are just so darned vain and body-conscious as to want to immediately achieve the ol’ top-heavy look.

If I were still working in the realm of “alternative” weekly urban tabloids, I’d probably be expected to sneer at these women–or, even worse, condescendingly treat them as mindless victims of the fashion industry (the same fashion industry that’s recently been enamored of unbusty petite model looks, not that the industry’s critics ever notice).

The same urban-tribal folks who most loudly scoff at implants might themselves have tattoos, piercings, even (as a particularly exploitive KING-TV piece last Monday noted) brandings. Some of these critics might seem hypocrites on at least some level; but on another level, it’s perfectly OK to believe in the general concept of body-modification while having well-defined personal tastes about which modifications one prefers to have or to see on others.

I personally don’t viscerally care for the over-augmented look, but I can understand that certain women might wish it. A big bust projects you out and demands attention (along with the sneers from other women you can interpret as jealousy). But a large fake bust is also a shield, a kind of permanent garment keeping all others firmly away from your heart (and other vital organs).

LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Instant Planet isn’t just another new age tabloid. For one thing, it promises regular coverage of issues facing some of those indigenous peoples that the white new-agers love to take inspiration from. For another, it’s got some first-rate contributors, including master collage-illustrator James Koehnline and my former yoga trainer Kirby Jacobsen. Free at the usual dropoff spots, or $16/4 issues from P.O. Box 85777, Seattle 98145.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: The Seattle-based New Athens Corp. has jumped on the herbal-beverage bandwagon with two odd-tasting concoctions. “Kick Start” promises to help you get “a robust, active feeling” with Gotu Kola, Ginkgo Bilboa, Guarana, Kava Kava, and ginseng, There’s also “No Worries,” a drink that’s supposed to “produce a relaxing effect that soothes and quiets your mood.” Both taste like Coke’s old OK Soda with a touch of peach flavoring. But unlike other pops marketed as all-ages treats, these have a label disclaimer: “Not intended for children under 6 or pregnant or nursing mothers.” Elsewhere in foodland…

Q BALLS: While small indie supermarkets in other neighborhoods have fallen with little more than a shrug of inevitability from area residents, the citizens of Wedgwood have rallied ’round to valiantly (and, apparently, futilely) defend Matthew’s Red Apple Market, set to close in less than two weeks after its landlord struck a deal to let the Kroger-owned QFC circuit take over the site.

At first peep, a media observer used to the recent unwritten rule that everything in Seattle had to be “unique” (in exactly the same way, of course) might not see what all the fuss is supposed to be about.

Matthew’s doesn’t have the fun neon of the old Wallingford Food Giant or the odd mix of food and variety departments of the old Holman Road Art’s Family Center (both of which were QFC bought up directly, rather than arranging for their eviction like it’s doing with Matthew’s).

Matthew’s doesn’t make a big fuss about a lot of those higher-profit-margin items and departments QFC and Larry’s lavish attention on (salad bars, hot take-out items, wine, cell phones, live lobster, “health” foods, etc. etc.)

It’s just a plain-looking, small supermarket in a slightly-run-down building, with a fried-chicken deli counter and fresh flowers and a Lotto machine.

But that’s the whole point. In a town increasingly weighted down by the expectation of pretentious “uniqueness,” and in a national retail landscape increasingly overrun by big-chain consolidations, Matthew’s is loved by its customers precisely because it’s just a good ol’ fashioned neighborhood indie grocery.

(“Red Apple,” by the way, is merely a franchised name belonging to Associated Grocers, the wholesale consortium to which Matthew’s and 200 or so other Northwest stores belong, including, at least for the time being, QFC.)

Matthew’s might not stock 17 different kinds of cilantro, but it more than makes up for that in that unstockable, uncatalogable quality known as community spirit. It’s different precisely because it’s refused to conform to the current-day standards of “uniqueness.”

The Wedgwood area’s well-stocked with well-off folks, some of whom offered to outbid QFC for the lease on the Matthew’s block. When that initially failed, the store’s supporters then offered to help Matthew’s find a new site. But usable commercial blocks are scarce in that dense residential area.

(One of the few supermarket-sized tracts in the area not currently used for retail is the Samuel Stroum Jewish Community Center, co-funded by and named for a longtime QFC exec.)

So this particular battle against the Forces of Consolidation may be lost–unless someone could design a Matthew’s-like store on a smaller real-estate footprint, a la Ken’s Markets or Trader Joe’s.

(Current status: Matthew’s management sez it stands a good chance of winning at least a little more time in court. It’s asking friends and neighbors to keep signing the petitions and engaging in nonviolent protests, while asking customers to bear with spot shortages of stuff on some of the shelves (it held off on ordering new stock while waiting for the legal action to progress.)

WE’RE STILL LOOKING for your ideas on What This Town Needs. Suggest yours at our fantabulous Misc. Talk discussion boards. Until then, check out my page in the June Seattle magazine, work for peace, and consider the words of Marshall McLuhan: “I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.”

It’s a 4th-O-July Misc., the column old enough to remember back when many Americans were all worried sick that Japan and those other Pacific Rim powerhouses were gonna economically bury the U.S. under a tide of “principle-centered leadership,” “total quality management,” “work-team networking,” and hi-mileage compact cars. Could still happen one o’ these decades, I suppose.

JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Dick’s frozen concentrated chocolate shakes are now at QFC. Frozen, they’re like that Darigold Frosted Malt. When thawed, diluted with a couple tablespoons of milk, and whipped up in an open-air blender, they’re just like what you get at Seattle’s favorite drive-ins. Even when whipped in a lidded blender (or even just stirred vigorously), they’re mighty tasty.

@ LAST!: By the time you read this, US West was supposed to have finally started advertising (and maybe even installing) its “MegaBit” high-speed Internet-access service, using the ADSL technology written about here nearly three years ago. It’s been delayed by state regulators, who complained the phone company hasn’t done enough to welcome independent Internet Service Providers into its ADSL connectivity. So maybe MegaBit will start taking installation orders next week, maybe not. Scrappy li’l Summit Cable, meanwhile, sez it’ll start offering cable-modem service in its neighborhoods (chiefly downtown, Belltown, the Central District, and Beacon Hill) perhaps as early as September; big TCI still promises to do the same sometime within the next year or so. While the hi-bandwidth revolution (enabling decent-quality live video, audio, and telephony thru the Net to home users) has been and will continue to be slow-emerging, at least it’s now underway. Maybe by this time next year, the whole media landscape will have begun to change, further away from the big boys and towards more decentralized structures. Speaking of revolutions…

REVOLUTION ONE-OF-THESE-DAYS-MAYBE!: I’ve talked to four people in recent weeks, who’ve mentioned either their desire or fears of a new American revolution. I have a hard time imagining a violent overthrow of the US of A, especially in these times of relative prosperity for So what would such a revolution be? (I mean a real sociopolitical revolution, not some advertised “fitness revolution” or “style revolution.”)

• The revolution will be televised. It just won’t be made possible by a grant from Archer Daniels Midland.
• It probably wouldn’t be led by the English-department radicals. As Achieving Our Country author Richard Rorty notes, the tenured left’s too obsessed with poststructuralist theory to actively care about economic injustice; too focused on folks a few rungs beneath the top of America’s caste ladder (such as professional-class women and gays) to seriously bother with those closer to the bottom.
• It also wouldn’t be led by today’s Religious Right, though it wishes it could. The Pat Robertson gang’s “reconstructionist” dream, of a palace coup that’d smash constitutional democracy but leave corporate power intact, won’t sell to enough would-be troops in a time when the real threats to mass well-being come from the consolidation of wealth and power by the business elite Robertson’s gang really serves.

  (To be more precise, Robertson’s relationship with the “reconstructionist” faction of the religious right’s a bit more complicted than I have space (in the print version of the column) to explain. He’s supported many ideological points similar to theirs, but at least for now he’s still a registered Republican. And Robertson’s former right-hand man Ralph Reed’s publicly come out against the reconstructionist agenda; Reed believes the religious-right platform (an authoritarian culture, under the twin thumbs of Fundamentalists and corporations) can be realized without dismantling the nation’s political foundations.

• The militia cults might have a part in it, but only if they give up their romanticism of conquest and their ethno-religious exclusivity. They’d have to join efforts with all those facing diminished opportunities, whether from the ghettos, the barrios, the abandoned factory towns, or the depleted mining lands.
• To succeed, it wouldn’t be about the Good People vs. The Bad People (as defined by such inaccurate criteria as race, gender, language, sex-preference, religion, diet, etc.). It’d be about changing an unjust system, while recognizing such a system has innocent beneficiaries as well as innocent victims.
• It wouldn’t promise an instant Golden Age. Most folks are too cynicized from decades of misleading advertising to believe anything as abstract as a new governmental organization could bring eternal peace & prosperity. What it could claim would be to build a healthier, more just society. One where all our races and subcultures don’t just learn to get along but to work together. One where money and power counted a little less and wisdom and love a little more.

(Think you know how to accomplish any of this? Share your fervor at clark@speakeasy.org.)

Subject: Revolution

Sent: 7/4/98 1:59 AM

Received: 7/4/98 8:07 AM

From: Jason Foster, loosenut@scn.org

To: ‘clark@speakeasy.org’, clark@speakeasy.org

It’s about time. Didn’t Thomas Jefferson say that there should be a revolution every 50 years? Aren’t we long overdue?

The statement that the revolution will not be led by the Religious Right made me think of something I read in Hakim Bey’s Millennium. He suggests that the religious right will have to band together with the anarchists and everybody else that thinks our current system is bullshit. They should be able to see the effect that greed has had on our government as much as anyone else.

I don’t think the revolution will be something to accomplish. I think it will just happen as result of social conditions. The destruction of the environment, dumbed-down mainstream media, super-greedy corporations, fucked-up politicians, grassroots politics, and real access to real information raising awareness (like through the internet) will be all be catalysts. Hopefully it will be bloodless.

And as for the revolution being televised: Do you think they will know what it is they are televising?

Misc. is a great column. Thanks for keeping me entertained and informed. (And thanks for reinforcing a lot of my belief system 😉 In an age severely lacking in heroes, you are one of mine.

Peace,

Jason Foster

————-

Subject: Re: revolution bullets

Sent: 7/9/98 8:29 PM

Received: 7/10/98 7:52 AM

From: JJAXX@aol.com

To: clark@speakeasy.org

It has seemed that at one time or another most everyone either anticipates some coming revolution or hopes for one. At the most personal level this is just wanting to get revenge on ones “boss” or parent.

The singular item that stopped my casual disrgard for another jeremiad was the phrase “unjust system.” Now that is something to think about! What exactly IS an unjust system? And, gosh!, relative to what other system did you have in mind?

At this point in history, about every culture I know of favors the powerful and wealthy (redundant?). There is good reason for this. And to various extents the less so are battered by the inequity. This does not mean there is a pending revolution. Most people are well aware of their own vices and shortcomings, regardless of their anger. And the consequences of poor impulse control are seldom long term positive for anyone. What comes after any revolution, any overthrowing impulse? These concepts are weighty to most people who have good memories or education. History is not kind to successful revolutions.

The establishment of a constitutional united states that has endured 200+ years is startlingly freaky when one compiles all of the governmental, corporate, and traditional upheavals the planet has supported in the last couple millenia. As it is, far too many people in this country have a huge economic and health incentive to suppress any so called revolution. The portion of the population that sees itself as the recipient of unjust treatment, I suspect, if gathered together, would never be able to agree on their own manifesto.

The result of this is scattered, small clubs of “revolutionaries” whose main goal is to “overthrow” their unworthy oppressors. Unfortunately, the number of “oppressors” in the US in something like 1 to 2 orders of magnitude larger than any of these groups. Focusing only on the superelite misses the size of the benficiaries numbers. In a country as armed to the teeth as the US, if the superelite were really threatening peoples well being their tenure would be so risky that their identities would be eyes only secrets. And that is a situation that the system itself could not support.

Conclusion: for all intents and purposes, people in the west, and surprisingly, even third world countries, are living in a time that, viewed over a millennium, is a golden age. To posit a successful revolution one must have some vision of a future that betters all 5 billion plus the ecosystem. The only people with that kind of vision are already creating that future. They tend not to be tearing down the current institutions (which have the current reins of power, and tons of money), they are building new institutions, creating new pathways of power and vast arrays of wealth. Individuals that are incapable of participating in this generation…first must look to themselves. If I elect to not pick up a book on HTML and front a web page, it isn’t BIll Gates to blame. If I cannot read to learn HTML it isn’t my teachers to blame.

Revolution is already happening. Show me someone on top in the US who was there 10 years ago. The better future is more like a river than a rock. It requires more in the sense of ability to navigate it than to stand on it.

JJ

————-

Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 11:02:42 -0700

From: hbarron

MIME-Version: 1.0

To: clark@thestranger.com

Subject: vive le revolucion!

im writing in response to a misc of a week or two ago in which the ? was something like ‘how to save the world’

id like to mention an org im active with that i think if succesful will greatly increase the joy and peace in the world.

its the party of non-aggresion and non-intervention -the Libertarian Party!

libertarians know that all human interaction can go one of two ways -either peaceful and mutually beneficial(commerce, charity) or coerced and destructive(drug prohib., slavery). therefore the more we can increase voluntary, peaceful, tolerant living and decrease violent social interaction(of which our government is the worst example) the better off we all will be!!!

please drop me a line if you want or if i can answer any ? re/ Libertarianism for the Stranger!!!

MISC. would rather be most anywhere than San Diego’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon this Sunday, with bands at each mile-mark and a big oldies concert at the finish. An AP story hypes it: “Here’s your new inspiration for running a marathon: Pat Benetar and Huey Lewis are waiting for you at the end.” Now if they were at the start, that’d get me inspired to run as far away as I could.

ON THE RECORD: Some copies of the Airwalk Snowboard Generation CD box set bear a big sticker reading “Made In England.” Can you can think of a worse country to try to go snowboarding in?

INSURANCE RUNS: Those ESPN SportsCenter punsters have lotsa fun with corporate-arena names. Vancouver’s GM Place, they call “The Garage.” Washington, DC’s MCI Arena: “The Phone Booth.” Phoenix’s BankOne Ballpark: “The BOB.” But what could be made from “Safeco Field” (paid-for moniker to the new Mariner stadium)? “The Claims Office” doesn’t fall trippingly off the tongue. ‘Tho you could call the stadium’s scoreboard “The Actuarial Table.” Two games in a day could be a “Double Indemnity Header.” Home and visitors’ dugouts: “Assets” and “Liabilities.” TicketMaster surcharages: “Co-Payments.” Speaking of corporate largesse…

WINDOW PAINS: We’ll keep coming back to the Microsoft legal flap over the next months. But for now, consider the notion advanced by some MS supporters (including Fortune writer Stewart Alsop) that a software monopoly’s a good thing. The company’s address, “One Microsoft Way,” expresses the dream of Gates and his allies in associated industries to impose a structured, top-down order involving not just a single operating system and Internet browser but a single global culture controlled by a handful of corporations.

They claim it’s for a higher purpose of “standardization,” a unified technology for a unified planet. It’s an old rationalization of monopolists. AT&T used to use the slogan “One Policy, One System.” Rockefeller invoked similar images with the name “Standard Oil.”

Yet at this same time, the Net is abetting advocates of a different set of ideals–decentralized computing, cross-platform and open-architecture software, D.I.Y. entertainment and art. Not to mention thousands of religious sub-sects, sex fetishes, political factions, fan clubs, fashion trends, etc. The MS case won’t alone decide the fate of this diversity-vs.-control clash, but could become a turning point in it. Speaking of unity in cacophany…

SUB GOES THE CULTURE: Something called the Council on Civil Society (named for a phrase that’s served as an excuse for stifling cultural diversity around these parts) put out a treatise claiming “Americans must find a way to agree on public moral philosophy if democracy is going to survive.” Its report (Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths) claims, “If independent moral truth does not exist, all that is left is power.” An AP story about the group cited Madonna choosing single momhood as evidence of such social decay.

At best, it sounds like Dr. Laura’s radio rants demanding a return to impossibly rigid social and sexual conformities. At worst, it’s like the hypocritical pieties of “Family” demagogues who’ve been degenerating moral and religious discussion into a naked power game, selling churchgoers’ votes to politicians who really only care about Sacred Business. Yet any successful demagougery has an appeal to honest desires (for stability, assurance, identity, etc.) at its heart. It’s a complicated, complex populace. Cultures and subcultures will continue to branch off and blossom. Attempts to impose one official religion, diet, dress code, sex-orientation, etc. are dangerous follies at best.

So what would my idea of a standard of conduct be? Maybe something like this: There’s more to life than just “lifestyles.” There’s more to well-being than just money. There’s more to healthy communities than just commerce. There’s more to spirituality than just obedience (whether it’s evangelical obedience or neopagan obedience). We’ve gotta respect our land, ourselves, and one another–even those others who eat different food or wear different clothes than ourselves. Individuals can be good and/or bad, smart and/or dumb, but not whole races (or genders or generations). We’re all the same species, but in ever-bifurcating varieties. Live with it.

Online Extras

This Rage-To-Order thang’s, natch, bigger and, well, less unified than my typical oversimplified approach implies. A lot of different people are wishing for a world reorganized along a unified sociocultural premise; the problem is each of them wants his or her own premise to be the one everybody else has to follow.

Big business, thru its hired thinkers and think tanks (Heritage Foundation, Discovery Institute, Global Business Network, and co.) seek a globe sublimated under a single economic system; with national governments ceding soverignity over trade, labor, and environmental policy to the managements of multinational companies.

The culture component of global business would like nothing better than a whole world watching the same Hollywood movies, listening to the same US/UK corporate-rock bands, and purchasing the same branded consumer goods.

In an opposite corner of the ring (but playing by the same rules), you’ve got your Religious Rightists like Pat Robertson who demand that even if all Americans can’t be persuaded to convert to Christian fundamentalism, they oughta be forced to submit to fundamentalist dictates in re sex, family structures, gender roles, labor-management relations, art, music, etc. etc.

The fundamentalists’ sometime allies, the “canon” obsessives like Wm. Bennett, believe all Americans should be taught to speak the same language (even the same dialect), and all students should all be made to read the same short list of (mostly US/UK) literary classics, instilling a uniform set of “virtues.”

Biologist Edward O. Wilson, in his new book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, claims we could arrive at a unified system of knowledge, uniting the sciences and the arts and the humanities, if we only put the principal laws of biology at our philosophical center.

Wilson intends this conception of reassurance as an alternative to “chaos theory” and to the complexities of postmodern critical theory. But it could as easily be made against dictatorial pseudo-unities such as that proposed by the fundamentalists. Indeed, he spends quite a few pages acknowledging how the secular-humanist ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers (his heroes in the quest for unity) helped pave the ideological way for the false new orders of Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, et al. Similarly, biological metaphors were misused in the “social Darwinism” theories propagated by Ford and Rockefeller to justify their mistreatment of workers and crushing of competition.

Then there’s Terence McKenna’s biological excuse for bohemian elitism, proclaiming his followers to represent the next evolutional stage of the human species (as if acid-dropping and square-bashing could bring about beneficial genetic mutations.)

A more promising recipe for unity’s in an obscure book I found at a garage sale, The Next Development in Man by UK physicist L.L. Whyte. Written in England during the WWII air raids, Whyte’s book (out of print and rather difficult to wade through) starts with the assumption, understandable at the time, that the European philosophical tradition had reached its dead end. We’d continue to suffer under dictators and wars and bigotry and inequality so long as people were dissociated–i.e., treated science as separate and apart from art, body from spirit, id from ego, man from woman, people from nature, rulers from workers, hipsters from squares, and so on. (Sounds like something I wrote previously, that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide all the people in the world into two kinds, and those who don’t.) Whyte’s answer to the oppressive aspects of Soviet communism: A re-definition of capitalist economics as not a war of good vs. evil but as a system of privileges, with innocent beneficiaries as well as innocent victims. His idea of unity: We’re all in this life together, and it’s in all of our overall best interests to make it a more just, more peaceful life, one more in tune with the needs of our bodies, minds, and souls. He sees this as an ongoing effort: There’s no past or future Golden Age in his worldview, only a continual “process.” Unity isn’t a static, uniform state of being, but a recognition of interconnectedness of all stuff in all its diverse, changing ways.

UPDATE #1: KING’s given the former Compton Report time slot, at least for now, to a blase travelogue show (by the station’s Evening Magazine unit) full of blase trips to blase romantic getaways. And as for the same station’s Sunday-night syndicated version of Almost Live: The same inconsistent humor, the same slick production values, just none of the here-and-now factor that gives the original AL its heart. And, of course, no Kent jokes.

UPDATE #2: Operation Nightwatch, the coordinated admissions service for local homeless shelters, just moved from across from El Gaucho and the Pampas Club to the Millionair Club building a block away. The cause–natch–redevelopment at its old building.

BETTER SHOP AROUND: The Stranger’s already written about big changes threatened and/or rumored for the funky li’l Fremont shopping district. Some funk-lovers worry that inflated rents and new developments like the adjacent Adobe abode could cause the district’s quaint knick-knack shops and cafes to get replaced by bland upscale emporia. So far the only official move is GlamORama, a Fremont anchor for almost 20 years, being put up for sale. If Fremont does get too ritzy for some current occupants, where could the new Groovytown be? It’d have to be a place within the city limits, convenient to buses, where lo-rent, hi-coolness retail stores and public-market-like booths could be amassed within less-than-glossy surroundings. Pike Place should be preserved for the merchants there now, but the moribund Newmark Center nearby might be remodelable into a sort of urbane anti-mall. Other possibilities: Georgetown, the cheap-furniture district on 1st Ave. S., Rainier Valley, or an abandoned supermarket or discount store somewhere. Roosevelt Square (the ex-Sears on NE 65th) could’ve served the bill, but it’s being largely taken over by an out-of-state “healthy foods” chain. Speaking of shopping…

MALLED DOWN: Northgate management, admitting the “Mall That Started It All” (the first modern U.S. suburban shopping center, built in 1950) has looked a bit dowdy of late, announced expansion plans. The central corridor and the exteriors would be spiffed up, but more important (and more problematic, zoning-approval-wise) are the new buildings to be added in the vast parking moats and across the street. Here’s why: There’s a nationwide decline of sales in mall stores, in favor of freestanding “big box” chains. To see the near-future of suburban shopping, look at the vast industrial-park expanses surrounding Southcenter. Where warehouses had replaced farmland, now Target and Circuit City and Borders and PetSmart have replaced the warehouses. Malls are trying to fight back with everything from frequent-shopper incentive programs to new mini-boutiques like “Piercing Pagoda.” But the one thing that keeps folks from avoiding Southcenter’s interior is the food court, which feeds big-box-store customers as well as mallrats. As department stores have served as traffic-drawing anchors for malls, now malls themselves are repositioning themselves as anchors for big-box clusters.

Malls, for all the limitations caused by their restrictive management, remain the closest things to “gathering places” in a lot of sprawling suburbs and exurbs. If they continue to decline, will these communities become even less communitarian, even more isolated? Or will a revived fascination with urban living (as seen in “restored” downtowns and the upscaling of places like Fremont) lead suburbanites to crave more real gathering places of their own? (Already, some Lynnwood residents are talking about wishing to build a “downtown” in that stretch of sprawl that never really had one.)

PUTTING THE `SIN’ INTO `INSINUATION’: Misc.’s truth-be-stranger desk notes how the Northwest’s biggest recent sex scandals now include one potential soap-stud moniker (Brock) and two potential porn-star names (Packwood and Moorehead). The former two were outspoken pro-feminist politicians who got accused of delivering unwanted gropes to several women. The latter’s an outspoken queer-hating preacher who’s been accused of molesting several men. It all just goes to show the seductive power of hypocrisy.

(These and similar matters may or may not be discusses at the fab 1998 Misc.-O-Rama, an evening of readings, music, games, and other pleasures; starting 8 p.m. Monday at Shorty’s, 2222 2nd Ave. No cover; 21+.)

FROM `THE PESTO OF CITIES’: You’re probably either anxiously awaiting tonight’s final episode of Seinfeld, or you’re bored to tears by all the press the show’s gotten and you’re glad it’ll all be done soon. Both camps might be interested in the Seinfeld create-a-plot guides on the Internet. Fill in the blanks and you’ve got your own wacky li’l Mad Libs-esque story, little more implausible than those the show’s actually used. I’ve used some of the categories on that list, and made up some of my own, to organize my own riff on the show’s familiar formulae:

Discussion/argument about a topic of profound unimportance: If Carly Simon wrote about somebody and wanted to get at him by saying “You probably think this song is about you,” but it really was about him, what’s the deal here?

Slightly unsightly sight gag: Sticking quarters onto your forehead.

Sexual euphemism: A soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend is derided behind his back for spending too much time “mountaineering” and not enough time “spelunking.”

Kiddie snack-food product, still remembered and/or consumed by the lead characters: Fizzies–the tablets that, when dropped in water, are supposed to create instant soda pop but actually create a vaguely cherry-flavored, non-medicinal version of Alka-Seltzer.

Celebrity name-drop: Charlene Tilton.

Humorous situation in which this celebrity appears: Fighting with one of the lead characters over an object of pathetic obsession.

Object of pathetic obsession: A M@xRack movie-ad postcard with Gwyneth Paltrow’s name misspelled, and hence potentially collectible.

Urban-etiquette peeve: People who make too many consecutive transactions at an ATM while others are in line.

Proposed solution to this peeve: Start a petition drive outside bank branches, demanding banks to set a two-transactions-at-a-time limit at ATMs during peak hours, punishable by “eating” the violator’s ATM card.

Ethnic guest character: An Italian-American mother who works at the clothing-catalog company.

Ethnic-slur aspect of that character: Demands accordion music at her daughter’s wedding reception.

Reason to start dating someone: She appreciates really good Dr Pepper, and makes special buying trips to New Mexico where the local bottler makes an especially strong version. She even knows to never spell Dr Pepper with a period, and publicly corrects anyone who tries.

Reason to stop dating someone: Goes into a hissy-fit at any restaurant (or wedding reception) that even deigns to offer Mr. Pibb as a substitute for Dr Pepper, and in fact screams to the whole world that she would rather drink cherry-flavor Fizzies.

`Wacky’ money-making scheme: The last known cache of big-E Levi’s jeans not yet sold to Japan; a cache discovered at the rural New Mexico general store that also has the world’s best Dr Pepper.

Why this money-making scheme’s doomed: Nobody bothers to figure out that, with the Asian recession, the bottom’s fallen out of the Japanese big-E Levi’s mania.

How the characters learn this lesson too late: At the wedding reception, the clothing-catalog owner is overheard casually mentioning this during a discussion about a new unusual garment concept.

Uunusual garment concept: Garanimals for grownup men.

Potential benefit of this new garment concept: You’d never look like an ill-dressed, color-conceptless dork in public.

Potential liability: If you’re a single man and you don’t look like a color-conceptless dork, women will presume you’re either gay or married.

Potential benefit from that potential liability: Attracting a woman who’s specifically after married men, because she’s turned on by the transgressiveness.

Potential liability from that potential asset: You’re now living an elaborate lie in order to keep this woman from leaving you, which she undoubtedly will do if she finds out you’re not really married.

Non-sequitur catch phrase: “Do I even look like your caseworker?”

Now go make up your own answers to these categories, or categories like them; then stick them into a standard four-subplot Seinfeld story arc. The result will probably be funnier than whatever’s gonna be on tonight’s finale. Submit your entries to clark@speakeasy.org. The best entries will be posted online, for all to share in the being and nothingness.

REASON FOR THE SEASON: The oldtime Euro-pagans (and the Catholics who re-defined many of the old Euro-pagan holiday dates) had a reason for a holiday of romance this week. It’s the end of the 13 darkest weeks of the year. While not the time of fertility and blossomings, the waning of S.A.D. season is a reminder that more fruitful times are indeed ahead.

SIGN OF THE WEEK (marquee at the Oak Tree): “Fallen, Half Baked, As Good As It Gets.” Considering the quasi-pickled state of many Aurora nightlife patrons, this might be the most saleable set of letters they’ve ever put up there…. In other film-hype news, commercials for the quickly-disappeared Phantoms referred to its originator, hack writer Dean Koontz, as “The Master of Suspense.” At least when Brian De Palma stole that slogan from Hitchcock, he inserted a qualifier: “The Modern Master of Suspense.”

APPLYING YOURSELF: I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the folded cover of this year’s Bumbershoot performing arts application pamphlet looks amazingly like the Scientologists’ famous “Personality Test” flyer. So far, though, no reports of B-shoot’s selection committees hooking up any entrants to E-meters.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: So new mayor Paul Schell’s official priority #1 is the city’s housing crisis, a topic loudly ignored by the prior regime. My first thoughts: Certain pundits used to say it took a Democratic president to get us into war and a Republican to get us out. Maybe it takes a member of the developers’ clique, rather than a politician merely working on the clique’s behalf, to deal with speculative overdevelopment’s effects on the social fabric.

But after reading preliminary accounts of Schell’s plan, a more realistic assessment seeped in. Rice was a politician who sucked up to developers. Schell’s a developer reasserting his roots as a politician. And pro-business-Democrat politicians love construction schemes better than anything in the world. Schell’s answer to runaway development: More development, via “targeted incentives” to builders, relaxed density and parking codes in selected neighborhoods, etc.

Schell’s plan also echos the Rice-era Seattle Commons and urban-village schemes (which weren’t really promoted as answers to exploding home prices and rampant evictions) in a less publicized goal: To get more people living in town, by increasing one of the lowest homes-per-square-mile ratio of any big U.S. city. It won’t slow down suburban sprawl that much, but the political extablishment undoubtedly hopes it’ll slow the decline in Seattle’s portion of the county’s and the state’s population–and hence stem the city’s loss of influence within the county council and the state legislature.

DISHING IT OUT: I hear from more and more people these days who’re getting, or wish they could get, a satellite dish. There’s even one guy who works on a public access program who told me he wants to replace his cable TV connection with a dish, even though he’d no longer receive his own show at home. The cable companies, meanwhile, are still feeling the PR fallout from prior censorship drives and are shying away from promoting the access channel as an asset you can only get with cable.

The cable people promise to combat the dishes with digital transmission and dozens more channels–one of these years. If that doesn’t stem cable’s loss of market share in time, how will access producers make their works available to ex-cable households? Maybe via web sites with “streaming video” files, particularly if promised higher-speed modems and more powerful home computers make that more feasible. But that won’t be free to producers, unless somebody donates server space at an Internet service provider. I could imagine that happening for shows allied to established political or religious groups. But what of the more personal statements? Who’ll support the streaming of Goddess Kring or Tea Talk with Leroy Chin? An arts group or producers’ co-op could do it, but even those outfits would probably have somebody deciding who could or couldn’t use their services. The freewheeling, no-gatekeepers thang that is today’s access channel might be something we’d better enjoy while still in its prime.