Give up the plastic bag!

I've fallen out of writing again (again!) but maybe have another good excuse. The project I was hired to manage, the job I moved for, is “on ice” which basically means it’s been killed. It’s technically on hold but who knows for how long and in January the woman I’m filling in for could come back or the head count could get cut, which means I don’t have a job anyway.

Once again, I find myself reevaluating my self, my work, my life. Life is definitely more difficult when everything goes topsy turvy every few months. Last year I planned to move to Santa Monica to be closer to a boyfriend who I then ended things with because he was breaking my heart. I had already quit acting so I decided to move to Santa Monica anyway to ease my dislike of LA and the questioning began. Then this year, I started another relationship, ended that relationship, quit my job, started a new job, got laid off, was unemployed for three months, got another job, then got hired away by this one, and then moved to San Francisco.

You might think I’m just indecisive but I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m searching for something and I’m just processing my experiences a lot faster than I did when I was younger. Where I would have stayed in a job or relationship for two or three years, I now only need a few months to know if it’s right or wrong. And I value my time so much more. Every weekend I feel like I cram as much fun time as I can into my two days.

This weekend I bought green zebra striped tomatoes, the last of the heirloom crop for the year, at the farmer's market. I went with a friend to Golden Gate Park and climbed to the top of the tower in the de Young art museum for the most amazing views of the park, the city, and the bay. We went to a craft fair and bought a postcard from a woman inside her self-made "postcard machine," and then headed to the Conservatory of Flowers to see lowland and highland tropical plants and orchids. I went to a charming holiday party and socialized with my co-workers. And the next day met another friend downtown to see the latest exhibits at SF MOMA and then to the Ferry Building for a beer and some chowder (I ate animals!).


But tomorrow morning I'll be back on the bus and back in my (for now) routine. I always sit if I can on the side of the bus that faces west. After we leave the city, with the morning sun glinting off the buildings with a honey glow, and past the airport where I once saw a plane fly silently towards me as if in slow motion from a huge cloud so that it looked like a shark swimming out from behind a coral reef, I love to watch the fog fingering its way through the mountain ridges above the reservoir where these little white birds are migrating. It makes me so happy to see animals, like a little deer leaping or a snowy egret landing near the road, a small herd of cows chomping grass or a horse shaking his mane, but what I see way too many of are plastic bags.

Of the debris along the road, almost all of it is those flimsy plastic bags that every store wants to put your items in when you buy something. They're caught in tree branches, wrapped around sign posts, twisted into long grasses, or shredded and flapping in the wind from a fence. There's literally one every 10 feet all the way down the highway. If they're here, it's not difficult to imagine them in the ocean, choking birds and suffocating fish and elsewhere in the wild mucking things up.

I stopped using plastic bags, for the most part, years ago. I take my Trader Joe’s totes to the farmer’s market, a canvas bag to the mail box when I retrieve my mail or will ball up a small plastic bag if I’m going on a walk but stopping by the store somewhere along the way. This was one of the first “reduce, reuse, recycle” actions I took so it seems so basic to me. I still get looks sometimes but what I think is even more ridiculous are the people who will let one tiny item get thrown in to a bag. It doesn’t even occur to them to say, “I don’t need a bag”?

Some cities are banning Styrofoam as a takeout package because of the havoc it wreaks in nature and plastic bags are next. A letter to the editor in Wired from a Dutch guy suggests charging five cents for each bag, but it's hard to imagine that working on Americans. If you need a New Year’s resolution that’s fun and easy, I suggest this one: give up the plastic bag!

"What does technology want?"

Another one of my favorite Pop!Tech lectures asks the question, “What does technology want?” Kevin Kelly doesn’t give technology a sentient voice, but he examines the behavior of what man creates and makes some startling conclusions. Technology “doesn’t want to be prohibited,” it wants to “increase its efficiency,” it wants to “replicate easily and without restraint,” it wants “to become more complex,” “wants diversity,” and “alters it’s environment to suit itself.” But, he says, it’s not that technology wants to take over the planet, we can live with technology in cities and still have nature coming up to the border of that city. He ends the lecture with a summation that technologies are like children, there are no inherently bad technologies, just bad applications. And it’s our responsibility as the creators of technology to discover the best application for it.

Then I read an article in Wired about the Internet in China and there’s a great illustration where a river is rushing towards The Great Wall and then right over it. I remember someone wrote me an email about China, asking my opinion about censorship and I said that I thought restricted information was better than no information. It seems to me that having the Internet available, filtered through the Chinese government, is better than no Internet at all. (You'll notice that there are no red dots in the giant land mass of China on my ClustrMap.) But this lecture beautifully illustrates how the Internet, as technology, has an agenda of its own and enables people, as this article says, to subvert the sensors and get access to restricted information. Technology wants to be replicated and doesn’t want to be prohibited.

I love this idea of technology, not as something with consciousness but as an organism with it’s own method of evolution and survival. We might give birth to it but it doesn’t mean we know why or how it exists.

A question about Israel

I spent some time with a friend of mine over Thanksgiving who is a quarter Native-American. He visits his Inupiaq relatives in Alaska every year. He towers over them at over six feet tall, a trait inherited from his Dutch grandfather, and at home in L.A. is often mistaken for Hispanic or if he lets his beard grow, Middle Eastern. Once, in a traffic skirmish, a guy yelled out his window for my friend to "go back to your own country," to which he retorted, "I'm Native fucking American, asshole!"

We were having drinks with a couple of girlfriends of mine and he told us that his family justifies celebrating the holiday of the white man who stole their lands and slaughtered its people by purchasing everything with the federal funds they receive each year as compensation for the aforementioned atrocities. Then my Eskimo friend disparaged the expenditure of federal funds to maintain a Jewish state thousands of miles away. I said jokingly that I didn’t understand the need for it since we already have New York and he added that an Israeli friend of his says the same thing about Beverly Hills. But I thought he had an interesting point when he asked why it should be different for the Jews. One woman at the table started rattling off the standard diatribe about Jews being kicked all over the globe as if anyone present honestly didn’t know. Yes, he countered, but what about Native Americans? Why not create a state for them? There are countless numbers of persecuted tribes in the world who don’t enjoy the same protection, many who have suffered genocide at the hands of those who displace them.

In a fantastic Pop!Tech lecture, Richard Dawkins questions the special significance allowed to religions. Why is it, he asks, that we consider it rude to challenge a person’s religion but acceptable to challenge just about everything else related to lifestyle? Who we have sex with, what kind of parents we make, what sports team we root for, our political views, our aesthetic taste, what food we eat, etc. What makes religion so special? He counters religion's attacks on science by showing that science is a study built on critique and sharing of information. Science is a discipline that has evolved by its members proving each other wrong and changing the public’s beliefs 180 degrees, over and over again. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s that religion cannot withstand critique so those organizations have protected themselves though a fabricated sense of reverence that tell us not to question.

I'm certainly no expert on the Israeli conflict but it made me think about the role of religion in how nation states are created.

"Guilt-free affluence"

I was listening to one of my Pop!Tech lectures on the bus the other morning and this guy Alex Steffen was saying what I've been saying. That environmental change will require a change in perception and a change in our model of economy. The world is merely one possible perspective but our current awareness will change the way we look at things, the earth and each other. "Things" will no longer be something to own, but something to use.

None of us, he says, wants to contribute to the denigration of the earth but we do all want "guilt-free affluence." The moment in time that we're in, while a "gigantic challenge," is also an immense opportunity to make this change. All of our challenges are political. The technology to solve all of our problems exists, but will we use it? Will we be able to change the system to adopt our new needs and desires? Watch the lecture, it's fantastic!

Poachers!

I got a call from an executive recruiter today. Last week I got a message from this guy rattling off his name and company with the line "just catching up with you," like I knew him. I looked him up online and found out it was a recruiter. Today I answered the phone by accident and he sounded very surprised to reach me. Immediately he launched into his "catching up" bit and said that I wasn't in the company directory and could I give him my direct line. "Well how did you get to me if I'm not listed?" I asked. He said he'd asked the operator to find me and this time asked me for my email. To which I replied, "I don't know who you are." Does this guy think I'm stupid?

Several times a week I get emails from recruiters but they're never offering me a job, they want me to send them names of people. This guy said he had some jobs available and was wondering if I'd give him some recommendations. "I don't have any," I said. It was kind of fun, I have to admit. He stammered a bit and said maybe he could send me an email and I'd think of some people. No, I said, "I don't feel like doing your job for you." Last time I sent a name over to a company, my friend got the job (but isn't happy there), the recruiter got their fee and what do I get? Nothing. It's not like they're offering me a referral fee, they just want to waste my time and make money off of me.

I continued to tell Mark, the recruiter, that I get emails every week from people wanting me to send them people and frankly, I don't have time. I added that most of the people I know work for themselves and aren't interested in a job, which got a little chuckle out of him. I continued, making a joke about I don't know why people think I've got all the connections. But then this was the weird part, he said "it must be because you're a famous actress." Uck, see, this is why I hate all these online profiles. Now I know that he found me on LinkedIn, probably just by doing a search of the big companies, and because he's read my profile, thinks he knows me. I'm going to put a note on my profile that says "Will make referrals for a $1,000 referral fee" and see how many call me then!

Drinking the Kool-Aid

I just watched "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room," which is just a remarkable story of a group of guys that we're all supposed to want to be like - charming, smart, ambitious and fun - who, in the pursuit of success, blew up a company like a balloon and when it popped took 20,000 employees and their futures with them. The consequent folding of Arthur Andersen, the financial company that destroyed accounting evidence of the Enron dealings, folded and took with it the jobs of 85,000 more people!

My dad says that he doesn't believe in conspiracies. That there are too many people involved and he just finds it implausible that people can be that organized. Technically, though, it only takes two to make a conspiracy which is the most plausible thing in the world and in this case there was Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But this is a perfect example of something that looks and feels like a much bigger conspiracy than it is. They may never have sat in a room and said we're going to do this thing. Instead, it demonstrates how power and money can corrupt so completely and so thoroughly that no one ever HAS to conspire. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe when huge amounts of money (or power) are at stake.

The biggest banks in the world, politicians, traders and financial analysts lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and take their check. If these guys at the top said something was true then it must be. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bigger the lies, the bigger the liars and the bigger the accomplices. This is how modern terrorism works. One or two people at the top know what's really going on and everyone else is just buying into the vision, seeing what they want to see. They believe what they're told and by the time they know otherwise, it's too late. So it's easy to claim ignorance, just like the banks did when they said they had no reason to believe what they were doing was wrong, because technically they didn't know. One guy in the movie says he knew things were amiss but he didn't ask because he was afraid of the answer.

It's really an excellent movie, worth watching because it makes you realize that every corruption is a version of this story. Think about the war in Iraq. Every lie begets another lie and the lies get bigger and with more at risk. There's no other way to play that game. Everyone who buys it has to keep buying into it, otherwise they have to face themselves and their mistakes. You can't just turn around and say you were wrong and go back, there's no going back. At Enron, they just kept hoping each new lie would pay off and fix all the previous ones.

The big theme of the movie is "ask why," which ironically, was Enron's advertising tagline. Too much of what happened is a result of no one asking why, which, again is reminiscent of too many tragedies in human history. It's easy in these instances to look back and wonder why people didn't ask what was happening, why people didn't demand the truth, why they believed the lies. Yet in the present, we're all drinking the Kool-Aid somewhere when we should be asking why.

Getting screwed in Hollywood (it's true!)

About a week ago I got an email from the writer of a short film I produced and directed. His first feature had been accepted into Sundance and he was so excited. I’d heard about this project since the inception, it was something he would have loved for me to direct but it would have been a difficult sell: a novice director managing a 5-10 million dollar movie written by a first-time writer. (When a writer’s first feature is produced, she/he is called a “first-time” writer because it’s their first time being produced - not writing as the term implies).

In hindsight, had I been more aggressive, I could have probably secured a meeting with the producers and they may even have liked me. I helped the writer with a couple drafts of the script and I had a certain passion and vision for it. Ultimately, though, the job of directing went to a husband-wife team that had the connections to cast the film with people you’ve heard of and in Hollywood, casting is everything. I got frequent updates from Ross. He had a feeling from the beginning that he was going to get screwed in some way. The dynamic duo fancied themselves writers and took turns ruining his script. They turned a totally interesting character, for example, a Mexican-American descended from migrant workers who secretly produces a great wine while working for another vintner, into a petty thief. The stories made me ill but all along, his feeling was give a little, get a lot. His first feature was being produced after all and he was thrilled!

A few days after the email about Sundance, I was on the phone with him and found out that the Writer’s Guild had just arbitrated against him and he’d lost writing credit on his own script! He was absolutely outraged. Years of work, completely erased. His friend who produced the project sided with the directors because he was afraid of retribution even though all along, his script was preferred by the producers but they apparently felt powerless against the people with the connections. His producers were independent money folks and not seasoned industry producers but my friend is an attorney and comes from an industry family! His father is the creator of several classic sitcoms and the writer of hundreds of TV shows.

How is it possible for a guy with that kind of background to get screwed? I think it’s because he was willing to be screwed a little. You give an inch and they’ll take a mile. He didn’t fight because he wanted his movie made, and his instincts were right. It’s not easy to get a movie made and not uncommon for writers to be taken advantage of, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the credit. Credits lead to bigger and better projects. Without a writing credit, it’s like it never happened. If you get another chance, you’ll still be a “first-time” writer. This is why you hear stories of people suing a studio, becoming a drug addict or going into hiding after an experience in Hollywood. Let's hope he sticks it out, live and learn my friend!

A different kind of animal lover

This friend of mine wanted to set me up with a guy she thought I might like. A cute Midwesterner with a great sense of a humor and a sweet “aw shucks” demeanor but, she stalled; there’s something else. She laughed nervously and a slew of dreadful attributes ran through my brain: he used to date men, he’s terrible in the sack, or he has a psycho ex-wife and two kids. “He’s a hunter,” she said, waiting for the vegetarian’s horrified reaction. “Oh!” I said, “I have no problem with hunters.”

I actually, weirdly, have a lot of respect for them. The main reason that I’m vegetarian is as a protest against factory farming and the cruelty and disgusting toxicity associated with the commercial raising of animals, the over fishing of the oceans and reckless destruction of nature in pursuit of profits. The second reason is because I love animals and think that anyone who eats meat should be able to raise it, kill it and prepare it. I couldn’t. With our level of technological development, we have the ability to eat better than any generation prior. I am vegetarian because I have a choice.

I surprise even myself sometimes with my seemingly contradictory beliefs. I’m part of what's referred to in Applebee’s America as the Tipping Tribe because I hold mixed beliefs. Take the quiz for yourself! But I had this conversation years ago with a guy who bow-hunted elk. He described to me how difficult it is to do, and the passion for hunting required to do it successfully impressed me. While these hunters might mount the head of their kill on their wall, they also eat nearly the entire animal. They’re connected at the purest level to the value of the animal’s life, experiencing where food comes from more than other meat eaters. They are aware of the seasons and our affect on nature and the populations of the animals they hunt. Compare that to the person eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger for lunch everyday because it’s cheap and easy, with no awareness of the low quality of meat they’re eating and of the kind of life that animal had before becoming their meal.

Of course there are people who shoot animals for fun or kill animals in cruel ways for sport, but I think of a hunter as someone closer to nature than most of the population, someone with the discipline to track an animal for days at a time and with a love of animals that while different from mine, is no less strong. In this month’s National Geographic, an article describes how the conservation of public land is in jeopardy partly because of the lack of the new generation's interest in and appreciation for hunting. You see, hunters contribute billions of dollars, to ensure the preservation of natural lands and help maintain a balance in species when other human factors cause them to go out of whack.

I knew that Theodore Roosevelt dedicated millions of acres of land in his presidency as National Parks but didn't know he was inspired by a hunting trip to Yellowstone. He believed it was critical to ensure the future of the magnificent animals he liked to hunt. Today, Yellowstone is still home to bison, grizzlies, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, bobcats and moose and hunters have always played a role in maintaining the balance of these populations. Now how could I have a problem with that? It goes back to the fact that I tend to look at things as a whole and the world is messy, it isn't black and white. It's like my views on PETA. Someone needs to have the laser focus they have in protecting animals because that's how things get done, but it's the sum of the parts that makes the world go round.

I'd rather be a smoker than a smogger

I finally watched “Who Killed The Electric Car?” and thought it was great. I actually couldn’t watch it through in one sitting. I became so depressed at how corrupt business is in terms of putting profits ahead of innovation. We have this perception that the technology we use is the latest and greatest but it’s not uncommon for us to be sold something out of date or known to be harmful even, because of the money that’s already been invested in it. Just yesterday I was talking to a group of programmers about Microsoft’s answer to Flash, Silverlight. This group thought it was crap and shared stories about Microsoft bribing programmers to use it and hiring agencies to develop projects with it so they can sell it and compete with Adobe. Sony’s pushed their Blu-Ray technology for years, forcing companies they work with to use it, despite a lack of interest because they can’t afford to abandon it. (Oh, ha! WKTEC is distributed by Sony!)

By the same token, the auto technology available to the consumer is light years behind what is possible, and what’s already been developed. The auto companies produced an electric car because a California zero-emissions law forced them to but they simultaneously sued the state and had the law repealed. After that, they collected the cars on lease – as they’d never let anyone actually buy them – and destroyed them. They were whisper quiet, went zero to sixty in three seconds, were completely clean inside and out and required very little maintenance but they threatened an infrastructure dependent on fueling and maintaining combustion engines.

It made me wonder how much different city living would be without all the noise of the cars on the road. I remember when I was unemployed, having to turn the TV up almost twice as loud in the daytime to hear it over the din of cars and buses outside. We build huge walls along the sides of freeways to block homeowners from the roar of traffic but they are only partially effective. Have you ever had a conference call with someone in a car? They have to mute their phone so as not drown out everyone else on the line!

And then there’s the obvious benefit of the lack of pollution spewing out the back of every single one of these things on the road - nineteen pounds of CO2 for ever gallon of gas! I find it ironic that it was so easy to get public support for the smoking ban, even in places like New York and London where I never thought it would happen. True, it took a long time for the public to be convinced of the dangers of cigarette smoke but once convinced, it wasn’t difficult to make the argument that we shouldn’t all be subjected to it. We’ve known for decades that smog is a worse culprit of respiratory disease than smoke and causes a long list of ailments to humans and the environment. You can see it, you can smell it and yet we keep driving cars as if they aren’t making our children’s lungs look like they belong to a veteran smoker.

The car companies say that people want big cars and don’t care enough about the environment to drive a smaller car. My dad never misses a chance to tell me that the hybrids don’t save enough gas to pay for the extra cost of the car. But I don’t believe that people don’t care, I think they just haven’t been given the choice. I flew into New York yesterday just before sunset. The sky was beautiful but laying on the city was a thick black blanket of smog so heavy you could only make out the silhouettes of buildings, but nothing on the ground. It was sickening, worse than any smog I’ve seen in Los Angeles. I just don’t believe that I’m the only one who sees it and the only one who thinks it’s disgusting. We’re ready for the change!

Hotel Michelle

I forgot to say in my post about the kitties what an inspiration Michelle was. It's easy to write off someone like her, who calls the kitties she helps her "kids," as a crazy cat lady. But she was one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Tirelessly dedicated to helping the cats of San Francisco, she calls her garage "Hotel Michelle."

There were a half dozen cats there when I visited, each in various stages of recovery from surgery or medical treatment. They all have their own cage with food and water and newspaper, and lovingly looked after by Michelle. She works full-time, owns a condo and spends all of her free time helping people like me (although in fairness, I was more dedicated in my quest than even the average person.)

Clover, the name the shelter gave momma cat, is up for adoption now and she is a cute little thing! The San Francisco SPCA is one of the best, a no-kill shelter with volunteers who keep the animals company and spend their weekends trying to get them adopted. If you need a kitty pay them a visit!

Inner city kitties (the saga ends)

Saturday, October 27
I'm sitting at my computer drinking coffee when I hear a little mewing outside my house. I run to the window hoping to see a cute kitty who had come to visit, but expecting to find a piece of rusted metal squeaking in the wind, tempting me with its sweet sound and the promise of a fluffy animal in my paws. To my surprise, I found a momma cat and three tiny kittens. Determined to rescue these animals from cold, hunger and the back alleys of San Francisco, I call the city to see how to scoop them up and bring them in. They tell me that I have to rent traps and it could take several days and then I have to bring them in, all in separate cages. I start thinking of the logistics of catching four cats, renting cages, driving them somewhere and returning the cages, when I'm only home on the weekends and have a big trip coming up. I buy food and feed momma cat.

Sunday, October 28
I do more research on strays and the various options available. The SPCA says they have volunteers that can help. I leave a message.

Wednesday, October 31
I have to go to New York, early in the a.m. and won't be back until Monday night. I've been leaving food out for momma cat but am worried about them while I'm gone.

Monday, November 5
I was so worried that these kitties would have grown up and jumped over the fence while I was gone and wondered how the heck I was going to have time to capture them. I couldn't do anything until the weekend. I call and leave another message with the SPCA.

Tuesday, November 6
I keep feeding mom and eventually am able to pat her head and pet her a little. She's totally adorable, a little black and white kitty with a tail that curls alongside her and gets all animated when I pet her. I feed her up on the deck by my house, training her to get closer to me in anticipation of eventually trapping her and getting her spayed. The kittens still run when they see me and hide in the basement.

Wednesday, November 7
I hear back from someone at the SPCA that I need to get traps, etc. I leave another message imploring them to send me a volunteer, "I can't do this alone!" I say. Momma cat comes back over, she even comes in my house. She seems to want to be adopted. She's still nursing the kittens but definitely weaning them as she walks away a lot while they're feeding.

Thursday, November 8
Finally a woman named Michelle called. She's a volunteer with the SPCA and lives only a few blocks from my house. She arranged to meet me at my house that Saturday morning. She said we should start early, at the time I've seen them out there, which is usually around 6:30am.

Friday, November 9
I've become used to this routine of coming home and looking out my window to see the kitty. She looks up at me through the window and the kittens play in a little patch of dirt, wrestling and fighting each other.

Saturday, November 10
I make a big pot of coffee and Michelle arrives at 6:30am with three humane traps, towels and food. The kittens are nowhere to be seen but don't usually come out until mom does. Within an hour or so, mama cat came around looking for food. I didn't see the kittens but figured we should get started. I coax her into the trap and bingo! This was going to be easy.

Now there were the kittens, hiding in the basement. We set the trap with food in the doorway of the basement and I made meowing sounds to draw them out. I had to try a variety of places and configurations for the trap. I lined it with a bit of rug that I had put out weeks before for the family to sleep on. The brave one that usually scouts ahead of the two others came out looking for mom but saw me and ran back into the basement and past the trap again where curiosity got the better of this cat and it went in. Snap! Another one caught.

Next up, the timid duo. We set up the last trap in the same place and I again coaxed the cats with meowing (and had no idea at the time that this is something I would spend several nights doing). They came right out, side-by-side, but instead of going in the trap, wandered around it, crawling on top of it at. It was like they smelled the food but couldn't figure out how to get it. They mewed and mewed for mom. At the moment they caught a glimpse of a human they dashed back into the basement. This went on for a couple more hours, trying the trap in various places and meowing to beckon. Eventually, we gave up and decided to try again tomorrow. I was feeling pretty good though, this cat trapping thing was going to be easy.

Sunday, November 11
The next morning, Michelle and I were up early again. I tried the trap in a bunch of places, eventually putting it between the basement door and the outside, barricaded so that it's the only place to go. I do my cat crying bit and after a few tries they come out, SNAP! something goes into the trap. We check and it's only one, the braver of the two. I'm pretty sure they were together and now I'm thinking the runt is all alone and knows that a trap is not something to go into. We try the same trick with her but closer to the area of the basement where she's hiding. She won't come out at all. Michelle goes home and brings mom back and we try to use mom to coax her out. No such luck. Mom just gets stressed out hearing her kitten cry. I crawl into this dark cramped place covered in cobwebs to find her. Turns out she's in the wall, under the building, no where that I can go. We leave food out for her and give up for the day.

Monday, November 12
The next morning, the food looks untouched and I'm worried that the kitten is never coming out and doesn't even know how to eat. Michelle checks with someone that adopts kittens, shows her the other two and determines that they're old enough to eat food.

That night I saw the kitten in the backyard. I sneak downstairs and close the basement door. At least now it couldn't go into the walls, and I figure it will be easier to catch in the backyard. I hear it crying in the bamboo so I go in there and search every inch. Nothing, but I still hear the crying. I call Michelle and she comes over to help. We both, with flashlights, crawl around in the bamboo. We shake the stalks, we dig up leaves, we overturn everything. I chop half of the bamboo down out of sheer insanity. Then, I saw a small opening under the cement slab of the deck. We look in the hole and the kitten is crammed in there holding perfectly still like we won't see it. Michelle puts her hand in there to grab it and moments later it's gone. I have no idea where that goes but a few minutes later I hear crying up on the deck! I sneak up there and see it, nestled in between the cactus plants my neighbor grows - he literally has a hundred. I reach slowly, not wanting to startle her but then boing! she springs over to the wall separating us from the Salvation Army center next door. She runs along the wall, through a chain link fence and she's gone!

Tuesday, November 13
On the bus that morning, I cried thinking about that poor little kitty, gone from the safety of her birthplace, without her family, and no one to feed her.

When I get home from work, my neighbors are all out on the back deck. The kitten is next door in the parking lot the Salvation Army uses for donated cars. My neighbor Joe went over before they closed and left a dish of food out for the kitten. It's locked in now and crying its little guts out. It sounds like some poor animal is being tortured. The kitty is close to the fence so I imagine that it wants to get back to my yard, to look for its mom, but just doesn't know how. I call Michelle and she comes over, we survey the situation and decide to tackle it in the morning. I know there are guys over there in the morning when I get ready so we make a plan to go over there at 6am and ask if we can come in to catch the kitty.

When I get back to my place, Joe has shown me that if he pushes on the chain link fence, there's a way I can drop down over the wall and squeeze into the parking lot. I take a flashlight and spend the next hour chasing the crying cat all over the place. It's like a bad video game, "catch the crying kitty!" as it sneaks from car to car and I chase it with the help of my two neighbors with flashlights. "She's under the Volvo!" "Over here under the grey car!" "Now she's over by the boat" I finally give up and leave food, water and a set up of milk crates designed to help her get over the fence and into our yard.

Wednesday, November 14
Michelle gets another volunteer to help with the cat and I go to work. She reports later in the day that the kitten has now descended into the area when the trucks load and unload donations. She's deep into a pile of stuff and can't be retrieved. We're both worried that she isn't going to make it. We've never seen her eat food and she's been scared for several days now, her meowing sounding more and more stressed. Michelle leaves several traps around just in case. That night, I get home late and out of habit, look out my window. I see something moving around and focus to see the KITTEN BACK IN MY YARD! She's not making any noise, just milling around the old familiar places. I can't believe it. I call Michelle to tell her that our cat is not as helpless as we think and will probably be fine whether we catch her or not. I sneak downstairs and hold perfectly still for about 20 minutes. At one point she comes out of the bamboo close to me but not close enough to grab. And then, just like the miracle she performed a few days ago, I hear her meowing up on the deck. I go up there but don't see her and then hear the meowing from downstairs. I'm baffled so I leave a trap up on the deck. After three late nights of this, I'm tired.

Thursday, November 15
Not surprisingly, she's not in the trap and I don't hear or see her anywhere. At this point I'm ready to write her off as an alley cat. I'll leave food out and maybe sometime in the next year I'll capture her and get her fixed. I move the trap downstairs and cover it with bamboo. Then I go to work. That night I came home and heard nothing and saw nothing. I was kind of relieved, done with it. I ate and was about to go to bed when I remembered I had left a trap out. You're not supposed to leave the traps unattended because you can capture another animal or they can hurt themselves being scared in there for several hours but in this case, we were desperate. (In fact, one of the traps at the Salvation Army caught a big grey tomcat, a beautiful animal with huge teeth.) I approach the trap with a flashlight and think I see something in it but figure it's just the food bowl but as I get closer I see the KITTEN IN THE TRAP!

4 DAYS, 8 HOURS and 35 MINUTES into the chase, the jig is up. As Michelle and I walked back to her place with the kitten we named him or her, Chase.

Saturday, November 17
I do work around the house and while at my computer look out the window at least a dozen times. I miss those little kitties. Even though I know it's for the best, I liked having animals around. I hope they all have better lives than they would have had here.

Sunday, November 18
I hear birds this morning and see some sitting on the railing of my deck. It strikes me as something new and I wonder if the lack of a cat's presence welcomed the birds and I start to think about ripping out that f'ing bamboo and planting trees and a real garden. Maybe I could have bees and butterflies and birds visiting me on a regular basis. That would be okay too.

Don't you think it's funny...?

That people use "it" to refer to babies but not to any other human. We don't call seniors or disabled people or teens or pregnant women, "it," and yet you hear parents refer to their own babies as "it." Overheard at the bus stop this morning, a guy was talking about how his daughter was reacting to the new baby. "She was really excited at first about having a little sister, and then she started kicking it." I thought it quite interesting in light of the abortion debate. We basically refer to humans all through pregnancy and up until (when?) about a year old as a THING. The fetus, the infant, the baby, "it."

I think it's because without the mother, this thing can't possibly live so in essence it isn't it's own creature yet. It is attached to and depends on the mother until the age when it starts walking, talking and eating solid food. At which point we refer to IT as daughter, son, niece, nephew, child, kid, him, her, she, he or their name but never it. It reminds me of my women's studies days in college where we spoke of lexicon a lot and how it's shaped by cultural attitudes and yet can also actually shape our views. This is the argument behind why waitress became waitperson, stewardess became flight attendant and mailman became mail carrier. While when those names were invented it may have been appropriate because those were gender specific job, they no longer reflected our culture and needed to be changed so as to avoid reinforcing outdated ideas.

So is it that we used to think of babies as objects, not people, and we are perpetuating an outmoded societal view in our language? Or is that that we still view babies as objects which is why the majority of Americans, while not in FAVOR of abortion, support a woman's right to choose? Because this thing doesn't have it's own life until it's no longer a baby and it's right to life doesn't start at conception?

Cavemen, pool sharks and green chemists

A work friend was in New York last week at PopTech, a conference of remarkable people working on innovative projects, which sounded super cool. I'm not sure why half of our department got to go and not the other half but there were a slew of interesting speakers and I just discovered - it's kind of like TED - that you can download their speeches online! (Oooh, I'm totally going to listen to these on the bus to work!)

Anyway, my colleague invited me for drinks to meet a bunch of cool people that she met there, all from San Francisco, at The 500 Club - a bar walking distance from my house that has a giant neon sign that makes it look like it's in Vegas. I think it's funny that "dive bar" has become an official classification but they had Guinness on tap so I have no complaints.


There was an old guy there with a really long white/grey beard and wearing an orange jumpsuit like he just got out of prison. He was clearing tables and playing pool with everyone - in a "you don't really have a choice" kind of way. One of the guys there said he's always there and he's a total shark. He'll let you just barely beat him on the first pool game and then ask you if you want to play again for a beer. All of a sudden he hands you a can of whoop-ass, knocking in all the balls in one or two turns. But all he gets is a beer! Not a very smart pool shark if you ask me.

I met a chemist who defected from Clorox to go to the green side and was now working with Method to make their products even more natural. I talked shop with a documentary filmmaker and met an engineer from a social networking site called High Five, which, he said, is very popular in Asia and is the most popular networking site in Kazakhstan, "the home of Borat!" When a group of us went to dinner at Luna Park after, he announced that was on the Paleo "eat like a caveman and lose weight" diet which he struggled to explain until he admitted that this was only his first day on the diet.

His roommate was a guy in business strategy (whatever the heck that is) and looked like he was about 14. He had an MBA and when I asked him why he went to business school he said he was burned out of the work he was doing and needed to regroup. I figure roughly half of MBA students are there because they can't think of anything better to do or are hoping it will somehow alleviate the malaise of working but I couldn't believe this kid had worked enough to be burned out of anything. He said the "burn out" was after working for four years at around 60 hours a week which sounds like what I was doing before I did something to shake things up - move to LA to pursue acting! I met the most interesting array of folks that night and it reminded me yet again, that San Francisco is way more stimulating than Los Angeles.

Learning through the songs of America

This is just plain cool! Another example of how individuals can change the way we do just things. In this case, Janet Reno (the former US Attorney General) is hoping to change the way that U.S. history is taught and increase interest in learning history by young people. She's just released a three-disc album, Song of America, (that's only $20 on Amazon!) of music from America's 400+ year history.

Her hope is that young people, for whom music is extremely important, will be inspired by the songs and be able to better understand the men and women who shaped the country that we live in and the integral role that music has always played. It took nine years for her to complete the project in collaboration with her niece's husband, a tour manager for a punk band, and so far it's getting rave reviews. Let's hope others take the torch and run with it!

The TV-ready creature

I'm finding amazing writing in the most unexpected places including two fantastic articles in Rolling Stone this month. One made me laugh out loud all the way through. Written by a guy my age, it's about why Mitt Romney, despite being the slickest package a president can come in, won't win because he's the energetic captain of a sinking ship. A recent article in The New Yorker about Bush & Co engineering a war against Iran the same way they did against Iraq in 2002, said that Bush and Cheney could "give a rat's ass" about the Republican party and the damage they're doing to it. Keep up the good work boys!

This article about Mitt is really worth reading. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:
Yesterday's liberalism is slowly but surely turning into a new generation's conservatism. So when some starched-up, smooth-talking, TV-ready creature like Mitt Romney, who made his fortune laying off factory workers, walks onto college campuses and starts bashing cohabitation and having children out of wedlock, he loses young people who are tired of watching our leaders fuck things up on a grand scale and then turn around and blame our problems on stoned teenagers.

YEAH! That's the kind of guy (the writer) I want to have a drink with. Creature is so my word, by the way, I've been using it for a decade. I've only recently started giving a shit about the presidential race but my opinion (in a nutshell) is that Barack Obama, precisely because he isn't an automaton but a real person, might be the ONLY candidate that can lead this country in the truly new way that the challenges ahead will require. The mere suggestion that we should work WITH Iran instead of bombing the hell out of them like Bush & Co. are hopped up to do, at this point looks like revolutionary thinking.

The power of one

Sitting on the bus this morning, I was listening to music, sipping my coffee, and watching other people. There were a handful of people on the bus who were doing a bunch of things at once - reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, checking their Blackberry's, talking on the phone, playing with their hair (girls play with their hair a lot I've noticed). There was a sense that they just couldn't take in enough information, but not information in the observation sense - take my co-worker who was surprised to see a dead deer on the road. In the six months that she's been taking the bus down the 280 she's never noticed a) other dead deer b) the signs that say watch for deer and c) the DEER that are eating grass on the side of the highway. She doesn't miss a day reading the paper but isn't even taking in the information around her.

So I start thinking about how bizarre it is that humans are so interested in what other humans are doing, and how I observe humans but not any more than I observe anything - plants, animals, weather, stars. There's not much in the news about what animals are doing unless it relates somehow to what humans are doing with animals. Same with plants and space and weather. It reminds me of the hilarious comment from a lecture on environmental sustainability that a natural disaster is only considered a disaster if it kills humans. A million cows killed by Mad Cow (a disease we potentially caused) isn't a tragedy but 10,000 people killed in a mudslide is.

I was feeling like someone from Heroes who has seen the future and knows that what everyone is madly doing at this moment is so inconsequential to the big picture and so soon to be obsolete. I haven't seen the future and I don't know what it is but I'm pretty sure that the industrial age is about to come to an end. The age in which we set up factories and machines to exploit natural resources and human labor to create goods. The age in which we work in these factories to make money to buy the stuff that's made in them. It's mostly coming to an end because we're going to run out of resources to exploit but also, I think, because the kind of change that we need to make in the coming years for our species and civilization to survive will need to happen quickly and be motivated by much more than profit.

The age that's going to replace it is the age of the individual - but not everyone will be an individual. In this age, individuals, not corporations, are in charge. Companies still exist but they work for us instead of the other way around. A people-powered world where we don't have to demand change and yet suffer the constraints of an old system, we'll just collective make the change. Individuals are much quicker to adapt than companies. Think about it. How long did it take people to buy into the iPhone? Something that was literally revolutionary six months ago is now commonplace. Did people have to be cajoled into using it? No. Now think about wi-fi and the fact that if it were up to PEOPLE, all cities would be wi-fi enabled. I'd be happy to pay a monthly fee to access public wi-fi, or pay it in taxes, or not at all. But we don't have it because the communication companies spent a billion dollars laying fiber optic cable so they keep us in the dark ages (while people in developing nations access wi-fi on tiny handheld computers run that on solar power!) because they need to make money off of their investment.

Individuals are more innovative than think tanks, better benefactors than governments, better employers than corporations, better organizers than unions, and better reporters than newspapers. One could make an argument that certain things need infrastructure, like communication, but in the wi-fi scenario, that just isn't the case. Transportation, maybe, but again if individuals were in control, we'd be putting our money into railroads instead of airplanes. Big business runs the world but they're losing their grip. More people are using sites like Craigslist, eBay and Amazon to buy and sell from each other instead of companies. Etsy lets individuals sell things they've made to other people, things that are more interesting and cheaper than a lot of "made in China" crap from Target. Celebrities and philanthropists like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are doing more to change the world than our president.

In the age of the individual, reputation is everything, and these people who aren't working for the common good can no longer hide in a corporation or the White House. Microfinance is taking banks out of the equation by letting people lend money to each other. And people are starting to see that health care as something employers need to provide just isn't viable. Too many people now don't have an employer. More and more people are working from home, creating their own jobs, their own businesses and deciding how and when they want to work. We're deconstructing the power structure that was royalty, religion, government and business and increasingly breaking the world down in smaller bits that connect in new, random and spontaneous ways. We're starting to look like the internet - a place where literally anything can happen. This change adds more checks and balances to every interaction and ultimately makes us all much more accountable to each other.

There were three articles in Rolling Stone this month about big recording acts not renewing their record contracts and either going straight to the people with their music (Radiohead), working directly with a promoter and cutting out the middle-man (Madonna) or just simply letting their contract expire (Nine Inch Nails). It's an exciting time, and this trend is something that gives me hope. If corporations are in charge of turning this planet around, it will never happen in time, but if the right individuals take charge, it just might.

It's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to

My latest DVD obsession is Heroes Season 1. It doesn't have the witty banter or relevant informative quality of The West Wing but it's a unique and special show. It's shot like a feature film - beautiful and dramatic - and the cast is amazing. I love these people! Their faces, their characters, and while the show already asks the overarching questions of why are we here and what is destiny, each person embodies a philosophical question about life. Is it ethical to know what someone else is thinking? Should we know the future? How is a person's life changed by immortality? The characters struggle with being unique, wanting to be normal, their destiny as a special person and their obligation to humanity.

What I love most about it though is the way it accurately presents good and evil as two sides of the same coin. The desire to be a hero has many different manifestations. Each turn of events sends our characters closer to good or evil and back again. It's never quite clear who we're supposed to be rooting for as the characters aren't sure themselves. It focuses around a fairly simple plot point but demonstrates the multitude of decisions we make every day that affect other people and ultimately test our character and commitment to our collective world. It's the perfect show for the upcoming century as we recalibrate for global warming and try to live for the better of society. I just watched the last episode of Season 1 and even though I can watch the current episodes on the NBC site, I think I'll wait for the next season on DVD to pick it up again. If only I could stop trying to put my hand through walls in the meantime...

No time in the present

Folks, I'm just not sure how to keep up the blog. I'm depressed about it, in part due to my feeling of responsibility to people who want to read the blog but mostly because I LOVE to blog and I'm really despondent about the fact that I don't have the time to do it. I can't figure exactly why I have no time; I feel like I have no time to exercise, read the newspaper, call friends and a multitude of other things that I used to take for granted. In a corporate environment, we put in10x more effort than what comes out in terms of product (what I can say that I actually did). So there's this feeling of always working hard, being totally consumed by a job, yet never getting my work done and at the end of the day, not having much to show for it.

On the way back from Portland on Monday morning, after spending two days with my nephews whom I love love love, I was on the plane having thoughts of wishing the plane would just crash into the ground. It started with the whole emergency exit thing which I realized is one hundred percent bullshit. Do you realize that the exit is ONLY for a water landing? And do you know the chances, when flying over the continental United States of a water landing? It's pretty much zero my friends. If you're going down, it's into a mountain or into the ground. There's no f'ing water to slide down the wing into. It's a fantasy, a false sense of hope and yet they make you listen to this shit as if it's really going to make a lick of difference.

I don't normally have suicidal thoughts and I'm not even sure that's what was happening. Maybe it's the fact that it's my birthday tomorrow and I often have very "final" thoughts around that time, like what is life all about anyway? Maybe it's because I really don't like transportation and have had to do so much in this job that I feel like I've dramatically increasing my chances of dying. I mean, by percentage flying isn't safer than driving but certainly a person who travels by plane once a week is at more risk than someone who travels once per year? I also, while looking down on the world, had thoughts about how ugly human life is from the air. (And frankly, it's pretty ugly inside the plane as well) The world without us is beautiful and awe-inspiring - mountains, lakes, clouds, the sky and stars, the ocean - but everything human made is pretty much disgustingly ugly from up above. Rooftops, roads, airports, shopping centers. None of this is designed to be looked at from above and it all looks like a blight on beauty and I start to think about what a disaster humans are...and hence start wishing that I weren't one of them, but I am.

So here I am, way past my bedtime (already!) on a Tuesday night with a pile of handwritten blog entries that haven't yet, and may never be posted on the blog because I don't have the time. And I don't know what to do about it. How do I post when I'm on the road when my "spare" time is spent flying? I'm hoping I'll get this whole time management figured out, but it's possible this is just my life for the moment.

I think I'm turning Chinese, I really think so

There are a couple of things I've been thinking about a lot lately - China and Christianity. They come up in conversation constantly and I really feel like these two monoliths will shape our global future more than anything besides global warming in the next fifty years. I've started several rambling essays on paper about one or the other, essays that never make it to the computer I think for the simple reason that I can't write on paper! Part of the generation that grew up on computers, typing is part of my thought pattern. It's kind of scary, really, but I can barely put two sentences together when I'm not typing. But I digress...

I won't pretend to know anything about China but the awareness of their significance in the world, and their potential threat to our future, is very real and something I hear expressed by people in causal conversation all the time. This is what blows me away: Nothing about what we used to hate/fear/oppose about China has changed. They still have gross human rights violations and they're still Communist. But they're very smart and they won our hearts through commerce. They catered to a greedy capitalist society, buying us for dirt cheap. In return, the Chinese got McDonald's, the Internet and cars. But it's a false world they've built, it looks like freedom but it's not. Their citizens are still monitored, imprisoned and killed for "anti-government activities." The Dalai Lama is one of their top terrorists, an enemy of the state who preaches peace and threatens the stability of the Chinese empire.

In 2007 though, instead of boycotting Chinese products like we did in the 80's, we'll be going there for the Olympics! We've allowed them to purchase our national debt, destroy their land, poison their rivers and still we encourage them to buy cars and live like us. Our president honors the Dalai Lama but doesn't take a photo with him after the Chinese threaten it will sour relations between the two countries. The argument is that China needs us as much as we need them but it doesn't stand up to logic. Twenty years ago we didn't need China at all so clearly the scale is not tipping in our favor. Rumor has it that Microsoft silenced a corporate blogger to satisfy the Chinese. As soon as the long arm of censorship can reach across the world to the US, we're doomed. The moment we start taking orders from the Chinese, the scale will have tipped...over.

And now, a series of creaks...

A friend of mine sent me a link to a site where you can listen, in MP3 format, to the spooky sounds of a Halloween album made by Disney in 1964. Apparently everyone, including me, had this album as a kid. I've heard that smell is the most powerful sense memory, able to take you back to a time and place so completely that you feel like you are transported - which explains the popularity of popcorn at the theater and hot dogs at the ball game - but sound is a close second. Hearing these sounds now takes me back to Halloween as a kid when my brother and I listened to this album in the dark.


But I can't help but wonder what it was for? Not yet in the age of digital editing or even DJ's mixing records, what were kids supposed to do with an album of sound effects? I mean, why not just make an hour of spooky sounds all mixed together, like a journey to a haunted house through the forest? Something with more of a narrative. Isn't it kind of bizarre to have just cat screeches and creaky doors, one after another in total isolation? What did Walt have in mind when he greenlit this project?

According to a review on Amazon, Disney put out a much scarier version in 1979 with a woman being stalked by a killer with a knife (that's nice, ugh), grave robbers and something about a dungeon. This version sounds like it at least had more story in each terrifying segment, but I still wonder what the marketing pitch was. People like to be scared in five to ten minute increments? This one was put out long after Disney died but he must have been involved in the original 1964 version. Was the scary album his idea? Maybe he envisioned as an early "behind the scenes" kind of thing.

Regardless, it's a well-loved album. The MP3 site is jammed (try after Halloween) and someone carefully re-rendered the cover art making it better than new (scroll all the way to the bottom!)

San Francisco is more humane!

I am proud to say that I am living in the most humane city in America. No wonder I love this place! The Humane Society of the United States ranked 25 cities by a dozen different criteria of how the population treats animals - number of vegetarian restaurants (good), doggies in the windows of pet stores (bad), fur for sale and on display (also bad), and state representatives who vote compassionately in the case of animals (very good), being some of the criteria - and found the most humane cities on the west coast. They're all my favorites too: 1) San Francisco, 2) Seattle and 3) Portland.

I am constantly in discussion with myself about my relationship to animals. Tonight I heard a dog get hit by a car, I didn't see it because I averted my eyes but it might be worse to hear something like that without a visual. Apparently he bounced off and went running off with his owner chasing after him. I was on a street corner and two people with dogs on leashes were holding them and their dogs were wrestling. Then they stopped and for some reason the owner of the larger dog let go of the leash. He was all riled up from the wrestling and hopping around on the sidewalk while the owner tried to get the leash.

I watched while waiting for the light to change, talking to a friend that was walking with me from the bus stop. It honestly didn't occur to me to try to get the leash but all of a sudden the dog started running toward the street, his owner trailing behind. I thought about lunging for the dog or the leash but I didn't move and before I knew it he was in the street, loping along like he was drunk, running right into oncoming traffic. People screamed and gasped, I turned around to avoid seeing it and BAM, I heard the whack. It was awful, really awful, and I found myself saying "a city is no place for an animal."

This weekend, I was putting around my apartment drinking coffee and I heard a little mewing sound. I love kitties and eagerly looked out the window hoping a kitty had come from somewhere to pay me a visit. What I found though was a mother cat and three fluffy kittens. They were hobbling around like they were just learning to walk. When I came down they scattered into a thicket of bamboo growing in the back. The mom jumped over the fence and watched me warily from the other side. She must have given birth to them here but they only just now came out. I immediately went out to get some cat food at the corner store and put it out. Momma cat ate it and then nursed her babies.

Then I started to wonder what my civic duty is to these animals. Clearly this cat needs to be neutered. And these babies need to be adopted or the city will have three more cats out there procreating in someone's back yard. After some calls, though, it's not as easy as just picking up the phone. This is where my love for animals is seriously tested. Am I willing to go to a store and rent a humane trap and maybe spend a week training the cat so that it will go into the trap? Then take it to the SPCA to be neutered and bring it back? In addition to capturing all the babies (they need to be delivered in separate humane cages) and delivering them to be adopted? I don't really have the time, but what choice do I have? I have to do my part to maintain the most humane city in America!

I'm back (sort of)

Another month is about to pass with an abysmal number of entries. I know I shouldn't feel this guilty, it's just a blog, but it feels like giving up and maybe I've just given up on too many things lately. I see my friends on TV, they're creating TV shows and acting in big feature films and I wonder if I've made the right decision.

I started exercising again which always seems to be the first commitment. A person who can commit to exercise, it seems, can commit to anything. Maybe it's because our everything in our culture is created to allow us the luxury of not exercising. We are encouraged to use our brains, not our bodies for work. We drive, instead of walking or biking, to that job. At jobs like mine, a big beautiful cafeteria full of good - and healthy and cheap! - food is at my doorstep so again, I can return more quickly to sit at my desk. Once I get home, I've already spent the last ten hours training my body to sit, it takes a mentally strong person to say "now, I'm going to move only for the sake of moving."

I finally got an Internet connection this week (like getting a membership to the gym) thought that would instantly restore my blogging activity. Blogging, it seems, is like exercise - once out of shape, it's harder to do. But there are other barriers. I found myself one day feeling a little overexposed after someone I met found my blog. I've always thought of this project as my secret identity. A place where I can talk about things without worrying about people getting bored and without being judged. Once my identity is discovered, I don't feel safe anymore. I can't write about trouble at work if I think my co-workers are reading. I can't write about sex if someone I might want to date is reading.

So today, I Googled myself to see just how exposed I am and discovered the root of the anxiety. A number of sites that I have information on, or buy from, have chosen to use my name, my location, my interests and my purchases for marketing. It seems that someone might want to buy a book from Amazon because I bought it, or join a Meetup because I'm in it, or put their resume on LinkedIn so they can link to me. It's funny because my name has been on the Internet for a long time associated with acting jobs but that never felt invasive I guess because I was playing a character. But having my personal habits show up online as a piece of advertising feels like too much. And why can they do that without asking?

The privacy settings for these sites are buried and took a while to find. On LinkedIn, I couldn't hide some of the information, I had to hide all of it. I ended up deleting my Meetup profile because they didn't offer privacy settings at all, but Amazon, surprisingly, was the most difficult. A Google search revealed friends names, items on my wishlist, and items recently purchased! What if I was buying something to help with an embarrassing condition? (I'm NOT but what if I was?!) Privacy restored, for the time being, I feel a little more able to blog. I have lots of notes, things I've wanted to write but haven't yet, and I find it very comforting that Malcolm Gladwell hasn't updated his blog since January (of course he's probably writing a book, darn!)

Innovation starts on the inside

Wired and National Geographic’s cover stories this month are about biofuel. For every unit of energy used to produce ethanol from corn, it yields 1.3 units. Ethanol made from sugar cane in Brazil and other South American countries, by contrast, yields 8 units. We can’t grow sugar cane in the Midwest, though, we grow corn. Corn and soy (used to make biodiesel - yielding 2.5 units) are now our two biggest crops.

The downside: It’s not cost efficient, it uses oil to produce and it gets fewer miles to the gallon than gasoline. The government has to subside it and we need to get clever about how to reduce the harmful emissions producing it creates. On the up side, it’s a step towards reducing our dependence on oil, it’s a boon for farmers and an even bigger boon for big companies that have invested in this technology.

But it only makes a dent in our energy production, like every other alternative source, and it’s a food product. We won’t be feeding it to cows or using it to make human food, it’s going to run our cars. People are starting to get worried that we’ll be using all our farmland to make fuel. What happens then? What happens when China and India do the same thing? China is already planning to pave over a lot of their farmland to accommodate their growing hunger for cars.

Is it possible to be so ignorant that we could literally starve ourselves by driving our food instead of eating it? Another article in National Geographic about emissions get nitty gritty about what we need to change and how fast it needs to change. The article ends with a note of hope but the rest of it is pretty grim. It says we need to change almost everything about our lifestyle, our economy, our government, and we'll have to do it practically overnight, to survive. When in the history of humankind have we ever witnessed that much change? Never, really, and that’s the real gist of the article. It’s possible but not likely.

I suggested to some friends that in the future I could see the west going to war with the east over resources, after we've made all these changes and they haven’t (I say we because I hope – ha ha ha – that the US will adopt the changes Europe has been making). Our water, air and food will be at stake and we might have to fight for it, not that it will make a difference. They thought it was a grim idea and didn’t like me for saying it so I’ll defer to the "optimistic" end of the National Geographic article:

In the end, global warming presents the greatest test we humans have yet faced. Are we ready to change, in dramatic and prolonged ways, in order to offer a workable future to subsequent generations and diverse forms of live? If we are, new technologies and new habits offer some promise. But only if we move quickly and decisively – and with a maturity we’ve rarely shown as a society or a species. It’s our coming-of-age moment, and there are no certainties or guarantees. Only a window of possibility, closing fast but still ajar enough to let in some hope.

Wired tends to be more optimistic, believing that technology will save us! (I love the description of Wired on Treehugger). Their article pins our hope on cellulose technology that (if we can develop it) will tap our energy from the tiny little plants that started this whole wonderful world. An enormous amount of money is being spent on developing those solutions - ones that don't require that we change our lifestyle. But I think in this case, it's not technology but our ability to innovate and change ourselves, that will save us.

A place in the world

Something happened today. I’m not sure what it was but today I felt like I finally engaged in the rest of my life. The last couple of weeks I’ve had this odd sensation of time passing but not really knowing what day it is, what month or even, sometimes, what year. I’ve been feeling dislodged from life, just not sure where I am, where I’m going and often, where I’ve been. Living in Seattle seems like a distant memory, the person I was is someone I wouldn’t recognize on the street. Los Angeles feels very far away, much farther than it actually is and I’ve never felt more distant from the people I love.

I miss being able to jump in the car and drive to my mom’s house. The same-old-same-old of her quiet suburban backyard, sitting with her drinking tea and talking about nothing, these things make my heart ache. I don’t call my friends as much, I think because I know I can’t make plans to meet them for dinner or drinks or lunch or shopping or yoga or a movie or a walk. I don’t want to be reminded of how far away they are. This is my third major move as an adult, my third time starting over with home, work, friends. I understand now why some people never do it. It’s one of those “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” type things, which is not to say that I’m not deeply aware that in the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing.

My co-worker’s dad has prostate cancer. He’s youngish and being treated so he’ll probably be alright but it’s been hard on her to see her dad weakened, to see a proud and able man diminished by age and disease. Another co-worker just lost his mom. My boss' uncle tried to kill himself with pills. Life is cruel and eventually we all meet that fate so I thank my lucky stars that my life is so interesting, dynamic and fruitful.

Today I went for a run. I don’t like to run especially but I find myself wanting to do it when I feel alive, when I have energy that needs to be spent, and when I want to clear my head. I now feel able to do that instead of lingering in a hazy fog hoping sleep will wipe it away. That’s how I’ve been for the last couple of weeks. Tired, foggy, and while happy for the most part, confused. Today I didn’t feel that way. Maybe it’s because we were putting our presentation at work together, the “here’s what we need to do our project” presentation to the big boss. If we get it, I still have a job, and maybe even more of the job I want. If we don’t get it (the millions of dollars), I’m not sure what happens. I stay here, find a job in the city, I don’t know.

I miss acting, ironically, I miss making movies, but I don’t miss Hollywood. This weekend I fly to the east coast to see one of my dearest girlfriends get married. She used to live here and it makes me sad that we missed each other, here, but nothing could make me happier than seeing her marry someone she loves. Maybe that’s part of what happened today. I realized that moving changes things – where I shop, what I do on the weekends, how I exercise, how I get to work – but the important things, it doesn’t change. My important people, my passions and interests, my sense of self and feeling of place in the world, these things I take with me. These things live inside me.

My ass in exchange for the Internet

I finally ordered the Internet! I signed up for a two-year deal with Verizon for broadband. I put a little card in my computer (I don’t have it yet) and I get a connection via satellite the same way phones do. When I called this weekend, I had to give them my social security number as part of the application process. I played my little argument against it, “do you know it’s illegal to require it?” I asked? "Wow, really? But seriously, if you want service, you have to give it." They literally won’t process you without it.

They have to run a credit check, see, and they say it’s to protect me – so thieves can’t add lines of service and run up my bill – but it’s really to protect them from thieves adding lines of service and running up my bill. So I offered to pay a deposit. It’s what I do with my utilities and other services that want to run a credit check. I paid PG&E $115 to get my gas and electricity turned on. When I move out, they give it back. It covers me in case I don’t pay a bill because, in the case of energy, they have to actually send someone out to shut it off.

No can do, the rep said. If my credit isn't any good, I'll have to pay a deposit but I can't pay one to BYPASS the credit check. How does phone service get to be so difficult to acquire? I’m going to pay for the equipment up front, immediately, with a credit card and it’s non-refundable. I’m going to pay in advance for every month of service AND if I don’t pay, they can turn off my service (at the push of a button) I mean, maybe there’s a chance that they can’t with this card thingy but lord, a credit check? It just seems excessively invasive (welcome to the new America!)

But wait, there’s MORE! They get a credit guy on the phone to now verify some details from my report that only I would know – to make sure it’s actually me calling – and this is after I’ve given every vital piece of data on myself to a 22-year old in Cleveland (what kind of credit does he have I wonder?) “Where were you issued your social security card?” they ask? And where did I live prior to my current address? What outstanding debt do I have? What state did I first pay taxes in? Finally I pass the screening test and I’m allowed to purchase the equipment and commit to two-years of service. Seriously, could they cover their own asses any more on my dime? I don’t think so.

Impossible to disengage

If nothing else, I have learned some truly invaluable lessons working in the corporate environment. I hadn’t realized the extent to which the agency environment is utterly free. Even though you work for a client and you could lose the work and lose your job, while you’re working you know it’s a job. You know it’s a job because you’re working for a company that's working for someone at another company. It’s twice removed from you. The people judging you, your bosses, etc, are judging you through the lens of another company. They give you a lot of leeway – the client is a pain in the ass, the schedule sucks, the budget blows, and we can’t do the kind of creative we want so god bless you for sticking around.

In addition, one project really doesn’t affect another that much. Two teams can work on huge projects side by side and don’t have to know what the other is doing. Sure, they have to share resources and sometimes that gets a little annoying but it’s not like a change on my project changes everyone else’s project in the entire company.

But that’s exactly what it’s like working in a corporation. My group launched a microsite. Another group was running print ads to coincide with the launch, another is planning a viral seeding campaign, another a huge buy with You Tube and a partnership with My Space. Then there’s the whole internal team with their own marketing schedule, restrictions and requirements for banner ads, interstitials, emails. One thing changes, like the schedule, the URL, or the creative, and everything has to change. And those things are all connected to other things.

The onsite marketing is scheduled in among a dozen or more groups with their own needs and demands and changing parameters. The media buy is fixed and can’t change. The print ads are already on the press, can’t change them now. And that’s all before I even get to what my boss is telling his boss and so on and so forth. Just hope and pray that by the time the CEO sees it, it’s up, it’s running and it’s exactly what she heard it was going to be. In an organization like this, every little thing affects a dozen groups and potentially thirty or more other people. There are people I don’t even know, haven’t even met, emailing me saying they didn’t know I was doing x, y, and z and can they know more because something in their group depends on this information. How is that possible?

The biggest result of this kind of environment is that it’s impossible to disengage. At the agency level, I’m running the project and the client is somewhere else. In another building, another city, sometimes another state or country! If I feel like taking a 15-20 minute break to write a blog entry, I can. I know I’ve got a few moments, I know exactly what’s going on and I know the client won't barge in on me. Not so in the corporate environment. There’s no hiding from someone who wants or needs something from you, there’s no unplugging for 15-20 minutes and frankly, I don’t completely know what’s going on at any given moment.

I feel sometimes like I’m keeping a power plant from having a meltdown. Keeping small problems from getting bigger, creating solutions to potential problems and all the while trying to keep an eye on the future, well at least tomorrow. One of my friends at an agency we work with put in an interesting way. He said in the agency world, the enemy is the project itself. Getting it done in time, on budget, and with the best creative. Everyone in the company and the client is moving and working towards a common goal. In the corporate world, the enemy is right next to you. Whether you want it or not, you're all working towards the goal of being your boss. So four people are jockeying to fit into one slot - and that's only after the one that's already there has left. It is definitely a much more complicated organism, one that I feel is much more intelligent than I am. I'll keep you posted.

Getting wired on cocktails

This weekend, I went for drinks one night and dinner another night with a co-worker and some of her friends. In an unprecedented series of moments, I got to reference my beloved Wired magazine with two people, actually involved in the issues, not just watching from the sidelines like me. The first was an attractive guy who had just returned from China. I had literally just told a friend of mine that it was unlikely that I would meet the kind of guy that would interest me, in a bar. He blew that theory out of the water in the first 15 seconds. “Why were you in China?” I ask, to make the kind of small talk that I know I’m supposed to make, not thinking it would lead to actual conversation. I don’t remember exactly what he said, something about going to scope out a project he might be working on, something to do with the environment. Oh, I say excitedly, “China is building a green city, on a wetlands” and I go on to describe in as much detail as I can recall, an article in Wired that I blogged about. Yeah, he says, that’s the company I’m hoping to work for, on that project specifically. So I get to hear about it, from someone who actually knows!

The next night, we met up again and this time my co-worker had brought another couple of friends, married to each other, both doctors. They were beautiful and nice and smart - the kind of people you fall in love with immediately. He’s a neurologist, she’s a dermatologist, but not the kind that gives fat injections and acid peels, unless you’re a burn victim or someone in an equally dire situation. She works in a hospital, helping people who really need it. I get to talking with the neurologist and I get to ask about all kinds of things I’m super excited about: Jared Diamond (who teaches at UCLA where my new friend went to medical school), Oliver Sacks (he worked with him at Columbia) and of course, Wired magazine! I mentioned an article I’d read about these electrodes that are surgically implanted in the brain to stimulate tiny nerves. They’re used to treat Parkinson’s and other diseases where drugs have been ineffective. I learned much more from the doctor, however, and it was more fascinating that you can imagine. He described himself as a mechanic, if the brain was the engine of a car, and said his job was to diagnose the problem and get the thing running again or running properly. He’s a technical person, not prone to the kind of work that involves a lot of guesswork or lack of precision. When I asked him how he chose neurology, he said it was the most intellectual of the medical sciences and he’s a thinker. A thinker working on brains, how apropos! So these little nodes attach to a nerve and are triggered, electronically, to stimulate on a regular pulse. They’re powered by a battery, which is connected by a wire. The wire runs down the inside of the neck, from the brain, to a place in the chest where this small battery that lasts about 12 years in implanted. In the chest!

I never imagined that reading Wired would make such interesting cocktail conversation. Either I’m moving in smarter circles or I’ve moved to San Francisco (or they're the same thing).

Letting go or playing God?

I chatted with a guy at the airport who was flying to put down his dog down (the dog was living with the guy’s ex-girlfriend). He was pretty bummed out about it and was having a bad day and a hard time at the airport to boot – about to miss his third flight that day. He said making the decision to end his dog’s life was really difficult and he was having trouble reconciling it even though the poor guy is old and suffering.

Walking quickly with him towards his gate, I tried to console him by telling him a theory that I heard – that pets live longer, despite failing health, because they’re loyal to us. They love us and know we need them so they stick around, out of loyalty. In nature, animals that are old, sick or dying, just lie down and die, or get eaten or run across the road and get hit by a car. The theory goes that they’re not attached to their bodies the way we are because life and death are natural.

He was not consoled so I continued to explain that it was actually his duty as the human guardian of his dog, to allow him to move on. I said he should just tell him, “it’s okay dude, I’ll be alright, you can go.” He chuckled at my use of the word dude, thanked me, and rushed to board his plane. After the conversation, though, I keep coming back to the same question. Why is it so easy for people to eat meat but so difficult to end the life of their pet?

While in LA, I mentioned at lunch that I was a vegetarian and someone questioned the fact that I still wear leather shoes. Even when I was veg the first time, for over five years, I wore leather shoes. I’ve been in need, for several years now, of a good pair of tall boots and now that I’m in the Bay Area, more than ever. As I shop, however, I find myself grappling with the idea that I can’t continue to be the animal lover that I want to be and still wear them on my feet. Can I? I don’t consider myself a fashionista but a well-made pair of Italian knee-high boots seem like something I can’t happily live without!

I just think it's ironic that we struggle so much with the morality of euthanasia, in animals and humans. Why does it seem like we have an easier time killing for food (or fashion) or for punishment (the death penalty) than we do with relieving a person or animal of pain?

The wonderful world of Wired

Do you ever get the feeling that despite ALL the time you already spend on the web that there's a million, even a gazillion, totally cool things happening that you aren't experiencing? I have come to realize that I'm a creature in conflict. I dream of living a simple life and resist technology in so many small ways (like insisting that I don't need the Internet on my phone when I find myself MANY times a day wishing that I did), and at the same time curse that I'm missing all this cool stuff on the Internet.

I spent the day browsing eBay, bidding on items and putting on up for sale, and was led into a rabbit-holes looking for veg shoes which led me to etsy. I ended up creating an account to buy some super cute t-shirts and then subsequently found another site where a woman makes clothes from old clothes, which are so interesting but most is sold out. My coworker wanted music and I started a radio station with CocoRosie on Pandora, which I visited once a year ago but didn't come back for some reason, and have since been listening to the COOLEST f'ing music that I've never heard of!

I've also been online researching video sites and found that Wired partnered with PBS to create a science show. Wired magazine has been some of the best reading since Chris Anderson took over as editor-in-chief and now this is just so fantastic. You can watch videos and see demonstrations of the weird and wild stuff Wired reports on. Science hasn't been this cool since the turn of (last) century. And they were smart enough to cast a cute host...hey, I know this guy! Our short films played at a screening together in Hollywood. Ah, Hollywood, I miss ye.