Driver's Guide to Los Angeles

Driving is the only thing that everyone in Los Angeles complains about. Maybe it's just that life is so great OUTSIDE of the car - this is taken from my "daily" walk/run after work, for example - that being trapped in a traffic with mean people seems like a particular kind of torture.


To put it into perspective, just about anything you might need to do - go to work, go to the doctor, meet a friend, attend a show or event, work out - will require 20-40 minutes each way in soul-crushing traffic.

Here are the types of drivers you could expect to encounter:

Look out for the driver with the 20-car lead. This person is probably doing something stupid (like talking on the phone, brushing their teeth AND memorizing a script) and knows it. Driving for them is so easy, they can do thirty other things at the same time. Very efficient! Leaving a wide berth protects them from smashing into the car ahead but doesn't do much for you if you're following behind. The best place to be is in front of them.

The driver with the nose of their car sniffing another car's butt is doing something stupid and they don't care. These are the most dangerous people on the road. They aren't concerned for their own life so they certainly aren't concerned for yours. They weave, they swerve, they drive 20 miles faster than everyone else, they'll cut you off, flip you the bird, and generally act like arrogant jerks. The best place to be is as far away as possible. Do NOT engage this person. Don't make eye contact. Don't flip them off. Just get out of their way.

The type that can't multi-task is also the most likely to be on the phone. I don't know why that is. They'll arrive somewhere and have no memory of having driven, that's how distracted they are. They slow down anytime there are choices to be made: when they're changing lanes, taking another phone call, or even just if someone else (anywhere in the world) is also slowing down. They seem to go slower and slower when everyone else is trying to gain momentum. The best place to be is beside them. They'll never cut you off.

Ever see those drivers that brake at literally nothing? They've got a huge space in front of them and yet they're braking...why? These people are afraid of the raw power a 2-3 ton piece of machinery offers and are looking for a reason to stop. They stop at all yellow lights and might even stop at a green if it looks like it's about to turn yellow. These people are likely afraid of their own shadow. They should NOT be operating a vehicle at all and yet these people are usually in the biggest car available. When they accidentally drive into you or your house, they're going to do some major damage. Keep your distance and don't make any sudden moves, you might scare them into an accident.

Some people never think about the past. What's done is done. They live in the present. One minute they're going right, the next, "hey, let's go LEFT!" Must be fun to be so spontaneous. They look into the future a lot, someday I'll be an astronaut! These drivers don't know that the world behind them exists. They'll drive in between two lanes while they decide which they prefer to be in. They don't use turn signals because as long as they know what they're doing, who else needs to know? They never look in the rear view mirror because isn't that just for checking your face? They can make sudden moves so pay attention or steer clear.

This is my favorite. The church mouse. Always needing validation at a stop sign. Is it my turn? Oh no, you go, it's fine, I'll wait. They'll let two turns go by, unsure and not wanting to step on any one's toes. They're so NICE! Once they do go, they might stop again in the intersection, just to make sure no one's coming. These are the same people who won't go until EVERYONE comes to a full and complete stop (just in case). For as cautious as this type is, they're also the ones that will completely roll on through a red light that they didn't see, or almost hit a pedestrian in a cross-walk. They must be daydreaming about some good deeds they can do when they get home. The head-in-the-clouds drivers, unfortunately, seem to be the hardest to stay away from. You'll follow them for a mile in city traffic, finally break away only to find them in front of you again in another ten minutes. ARGH!

Slow and steady wins the race. There are a lot of this type and frankly, they're fairly innocuous. Driving just slightly slower than the posted speed limit, stopping at all yellow lights, looking before changing lanes, and always lining up when they're supposed to. They're never the jerk that drives straight to the front of the line to merge as if they're The Queen. They're polite and are generally paying attention. They nod and wave when you let them in, they stop for pedestrians and miraculously never lose their temper. They're a little slow for my tastes but I'd pay a lot of money to get whatever they're on.

Lastly, there are the drivers like me, trying to "figure it out." There must be a way around the traffic! We waste gas speeding off the line at a green light, only to stop with everyone else at the next intersection's red. We're usually going 5-10 miles over the speed limit, nothing excessive, but we expect that everyone else is in a hurry too. We follow the rules and expect others to do the same. We don't drive the same speed next to another car and we won't loiter in your blind spot but can startle and anger some folks with our quick movements. The church mouse is especially unhappy when we startle them out of their daydreams, sorry to make you pay attention! You want these folks in front of you, they'll carve a path for everyone else.

I have a theory that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they drive. It's one of my dating tests. If I can sit in the car with a person while they're driving and feel neither anxious, impatient or frightened, then they're driving in a way that's comfortable to me and we're probably a match on many levels. If I feel one of those things, chances are I'll feel that way in the relationship as well. That theory has yet to prove wrong!

Giving away the farm

Realtors have long known the power of words. Their descriptions of properties can spin a decrepit shack into the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs with just a few words. Savvy buyers are able to translate in real-time when they hear these descriptors:
"warm" means dark wood-paneled walls, "cozy" means less than 900 square feet, "quaint" means it's the tacky house on the corner the neighbors complain about, and "mid-century" means built in the 1960's and might still have the original avocado-colored tile, shag carpeting and gold-veined mirrored tiles.

So jaded have customers become that they often think the worst when hearing these words. Even universally appealing descriptions like "sunny" or "verdant" can conjure negative images. A "sunny" house could be completely exposed because the previous owners chopped down the majestic oak tree that used to shade it. It's surrounded by dry weeds and yellowed grass and the sun beats down on it 24-hours a day. You'll have to keep the blinds closed in the afternoon to avoid slow-roasting. A "verdant" property could make you think you're living in the tropics. Miss a week in the backyard hacking back the plants with a machete, and the green will engulf your house.

So it was a surprise when my mother conjured an image from a realtor's description only to find the property much different. While looking for land on the Oregon coast on which to build their retirement home, my mom and her husband met a local realtor that they hit it off with. She mentioned a "farm" that they had to look at. At over $100k more than what they had been looking at, my mom was not interested. "You'll LOVE the farm!" the Realtor insisted. A week later, she had worn my mother down and she consented to look at it.

Instead of boring flat land with a broken-down barn and bales of hay, she found five acres of green rolling hills dotted with trees on a bluff overlooking the prettiest part of the Oregon coastline. In a small artist's community only ten miles from the hippest beach town in Oregon, the property values have continued to climb here to 18% per year despite the rest of the country's real estate slump.

Noticing an attractive and fairly new-looking house, my mother thought, "too bad there's a neighbor RIGHT HERE." "Oh no," the Realtor corrected, "that house comes with the property! It was built in 1915 and has been completely redone by the professional woodworker who's selling the property." A sweet little two-bedroom cottage with a full-sized attic and ocean views from every room.

Luckily for them, other people wrinkled their noses at the "farm" and had not looked at it. They were the first to put in an offer. Turns out it is classified as a farm because it is home to several miniature burros and some sheep. My mom said the burros are the size of a dog, fluffy and very friendly. I can't wait to meet them. Look how cute!

Pay the monkey back

A bevy of bands that I'm listening to now are imbued with the sixties: steeped in the varied sounds of The Rolling Stones from the late sixties mixed with a good measure of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Kinks from the mid-sixties and a dash of Herb Alpert and Nina Simone added for good measure.


The songs put out by The Bees, The Dandy Warhols, and The Raconteurs are unmistakably reminiscent and yet the product is wholly original. Amy Winehouse sounds like she's imported directly from the sixties as the new sound of Motown! These songs make me feel like I'm listening to memories from my childhood with the excitement of discovering something new. It's truly exhilarating.

One song, Chicken Payback by The Bees, is like a kids' tune from The Electric Company with utterly ridiculous and yet irresistibly singable lyrics set to a simple beat. Every comedian will tell you that words with hard consonants are naturally funny, as are the names of animals...and get a load of these lyrics! (Come to think of it, wonder if this is an animal rights song?)

Watch the video (lyrics below):


Chicken Payback by The Bees

(chicken)
pay the chicken back back
pay the chicken back
pay back the chicken back
do the chicken payback

(piggy)
pay the piggy back back
pay the piggy back
pay back the piggy back
do the piggy payback

(monkey)
pay the monkey back back
pay the monkey back
see the monkey
do the monkey
pay the monkey back
oh

(chicken)
pay the chicken back back
pay the chicken back
pay back the chicken back
back do the chicken payback

(camel)
pay the camel back
sittin' on the camel back
see the camel
do the camel
pay the camel back

(donkey)
pay the donkey back back
pay the donkey back
pay back the donkey
pay back
pay back the donkey

yeah
come on
all the animals together
break it down
let me hear ya

[repeat the above]

Do-it yourself is a bad idea

Ever have a boyfriend write you a poem in high school? Watch American Idol? Read an amateur script? I don't have to tell you that some people are more talented than others. There are people who can do things that literally no other person on earth can do. Where did we get the idea that the world would be a better place if instead of celebrating the talented, we elevated the common person to doing whatever they want?

President Bush has said, in defense of going to war in Iraq, that he doesn't believe that the general population is qualified to decide what government should do. Frankly, I have to agree with him on this point. I mean, despite our country being "the land of opportunity", the idea is not that anyone can be president.

A candidate should have to be extraordinarily intelligent, decisive, rational, educated, informed and compassionate because that person is making decisions on a daily basis that far eclipse the weight of any decision the average person will make in his/her lifetime.

Certainly radical transparency and information sharing are very, very good things. We are no longer living in a world that can afford proprietary rights on anything that can save or improve the lives of others. But I ask you, should we really be allowed to collectively create our world? Look what happened to the Romans!


Today, the idea of gladiators fighting to the death, and of an amphitheatre where this could take place watched by an enthusiastic audience, epitomises the depths to which the Roman Empire was capable of sinking. Yet, to the Romans themselves, the institution of the arena was one of the defining features of their civilisation.

Sound familiar? We're getting giddy over Web 2.0, writing our blogs and then Time magazine declares us all the "Person of the Year." Meanwhile every show on television (including the news) is about tragedy and humiliation, the top story clicked on in The Seattle Times was about horse sex and YouTube and MySpace, while legitimately doing what they were created to do, are also cesspools of the obscene and violent. I'm surprised this didn't make it online.

Don Imus, in his apology, acknowledged that as a society, we need to consider the direction we're going:
Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it. And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean that it has to be that way for the next five years or whatever because that has to change, and I understand that.

Marketing now is all about interactivity, personalization and relevancy. Some of it is just common sense: in a world where thousands of companies are marketing to me at once, I only want to hear about things I might actually want to buy. But a lot of it is just time-consuming crap that taps into our limitless egos. "Put your face on something and send it to all your friends - they'll love it!"

Are we really living in a more personalized world or are we just being duped into doing more ourselves? Self check-out at the grocery store, do-it yourself plumbing, "customer service" that requires you to be on hold for a half hour and then an hour troubleshooting some piece of electronic equipment are things we don't even blink at anymore. Now marketers want us to make their commercials, write their ads and even design their products!

Lynne Truss wrote a fantastically hilarious book that touches on it - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. This is one of those those books that you shake your head, laugh out loud and say "so true" to yourself while reading it. Here's an excerpt.

The bottom line is, we're facing extremely tough and complex issues in the 21st century that the average person will not be able to solve, even if they desire to do so.

Here's an example from The New York Times:

- A Northwest power company owns four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, a crucial source of so-called clean energy at a time when carbon emissions have become one of the world’s foremost environmental concerns. Without them, they'd have to rely more heavily on coal or natural gas. The Klamath dams only provide enough power to serve about 70,000 homes, a small fraction of PacifiCorp’s 1.6 million customers, which span six Western states.

- The American Indians, fishermen and environmentalists want the dams removed. They say for the last 90 years since the dams were built, endangered salmon have been blocked from migrating, Indian livelihoods have been threatened and the commercial fishing industry off the Oregon and California coasts has been devastated. In addition the water in the river is filthy.

- Residents in Portland and Seattle are the most sympathetic to taking down the dams but they're the ones getting the cheap power hydroelectric provides.

- Farmers in the area rely on the river and its dams which support an elaborate irrigation system started by the federal government more than a century ago. It provides water for about 240,000 acres of cattle pastures, alfalfa fields and other farming and also flows through a wildlife preserve.

So what do you think? Leave the dams? Take them down? What kind of clean-fuel alternatives do you think we should be promoting in Oregon to take their place?

What we should be doing is recognizing, supporting, promoting and celebrating those talented and rare individuals who can actually solve our problems (and for that matter, write TV shows, make movies and run the country)!

Wisps of magic

Something that's been rattling around in my brain lately is magic. Here's an abridged definition from Dictionary.com:

mag·ic [maj-ik] – noun
1. producing illusions by sleight of hand or deceptive devices for entertainment.
2. supposed human control of supernatural agencies through the use of incantation.
3. any extraordinary or mystical influence, charm, power, etc.
4. mysteriously enchanting.

THIS is what I think magic is:
An idea, vision or experience that defies explanation by and/or alters our experience of our earth-bound reality.

A lot of people have experienced this recently through "The Secret" or "What The Bleep Do We Know?" Some people find magic in God. Music is magical to me, the way it can lift me right out of the physical hell of driving. A good movie can work magic, utterly transforming my reality temporarily or permanently. And some dreams are certainly magic. No one really understands dreams.

We find magic in coincidences. Maybe they're just our brain sorting through our world in a way that shows us what we want or need - what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as "messages from behind the locked door" - but how do you explain this?

I was making banana muffins the other day and momentarily forgot while watching a show. Right at the time I should have been taking them out of the oven, one of the characters said to another "want to get a banana muffin?" I mean, are you kidding?

Mostly, though, I find magic in the wind, ocean, moonlight, trees and clouds:
Two hundred seventy thousand feet above the ground, higher than 99.9 percent of the earth’s air, clouds still float around — thin, iridescent wisps of electric blue.


The New York Times reported:
NASA is launching a small satellite to take a closer look at these clouds at the edge of outer space and to try to understand why, in recent years, they are appearing more often over more parts of the world. They are also becoming brighter.

The clouds are called noctilucent or “night shining,” because from the ground they can be seen only at night as they float about 50 miles above the surface, illuminated by light from a Sun that has already set below the horizon. (That is essentially the same effect that makes moonlight.)

Even scientists who spend their days studying the atmosphere are amazed:
“They’re beautiful,” said James M. Russell III, co-director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University in Virginia and principal investigator of the NASA mission. “The pictures do a good job, but it’s not like seeing them.”

There's so much in this world that I don't understand: hip-hop/rap music, horror films, rollercoasters, hunting, football. I hear that people like these things because "they need an escape" but with so much magic in the world, why do people seek escape through violence?

A matter of opinion

Well, it was bound to happen. As soon as I found someone was reading this darn thing, I got stage fright! Couldn't think of anything to write and couldn't remember why I started the stupid thing. Everything floating around in my head seemed too serious, negative, ridiculous or just boring.

A college student in Malaysia commented last week on a couple of my posts. Apparently I had burst her bubble about work:
working can't be this bad...coz this is worrying me. Im in college now, for a 'proper education', but if it sucks, whats the point? (her comment and my response are here)

And I depressed her about being single:
why do we need to get married anyway? cant women just live on their own and not be perceived as 'old maids' and 'unattractive'? it sucks.

She said "it sucks" twice and I feel kind of bad about that! Her blog has some hilarious little gems in it. She's kind of pissed off about everything and doesn't seem to care what people think. A friend told me I write too much about things that need fixed in the world.

Last week I went to "An Unruly Evening with Harlan Ellison" at the Writer's Guild. They showed a fantastic documentary about Ellison - the award-winning sci-fi writer famous for scripting the TV shows The Outer Limits and Star Trek.

He's a lot more pissed off than I am. In between writing hundreds of stories, TV shows and novels, he's made a career of taking on the stupidity in the world. A friend told him that his problem was "he thinks all the battles are worth fighting."

He needs to relax, his wife said. "Really? Is that the problem?" Harlan retorts, "Oh great, I'll just relax then. You think I choose to be like this?"

He calls the U.S. "fiercely anti-intellectual," and contends that "You're not entitled to an opinion. You're entitled to an INFORMED opinion." And that, my friends, is exactly what makes me hesitate when I sit down to write an entry. Am I entitled to my opinion?

This little piggie

ConocoPhillips is teaming up with Tyson foods to make their byproduct, pig fat, into diesel fuel. I hope those little piggies are proud, doing their part to reduce our dependence on oil.


This little piggie went to slaughter, this little piggie went to China. This little piggie made gloves, this little piggie went to biofuel and this little piggie went wee wee wee (all the way to the bank)!

Tyson hasn't yet asked the "vegetarian or religious groups" what they think. Vegetarian and religious. Guess what those two groups have in common? They both protect the right to life. My guess is Tyson's probably not too worried about the right to life (especially now that they're in bed with Conoco.)

The little piggies might reduce our dependence on oil but read the fine print, folks, in a statement issed by PETA, they ain't doin' nothin' to reduce our emissions:

"A recent report published by the United Nations concludes that the meat industry is responsible for more global warming emissions than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world combined."

"Clearly, the answer to global warming isn't to fill gas guzzling cars with ground up remains of tortured animals, it is to go vegetarian, which is something every person can afford to do and should do for the sake of their own health, animals and the environment."

A lot of people think PETA is too radical and I don't disagree. They're wonderfully, consistently, in-your-face, radical. But someone has to do it. Life is compromise; PETA pushes on us without compromise and every time they do, we become a little more humane. The only radical thing they're really doing is saying we can do better.

Tomorrow is Earth Day. It's a perfect opportunity to look deep into our souls and answer the question, "how can we do better?"

Let Cam do your breast exam

This Breast Cancer Society of Canada commercial, from 2000, was created to encourage young women to self-examine. It's freakin' hilarious. I love it.



Some good reasons from The National Breast Cancer Foundation to do regular self-examinations:
* Every two minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.
* Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 40 and 55.
* Seventy percent of all breast cancers are found through breast self-exams.
* Eight out of ten breast lumps are not cancerous.

Do the math. Do the exam.

I want my Spatial Orientation Enhancement System

My ex-boyfriend used to say of my appalling bad sense of direction, "Whichever way you think it is, go the other way." Sadly, he was right. You can spin me in a circle in my own neighborhood and I'll be lost. If I don't go exactly the same route to a location, chances are, I'll get lost. I have no sense of direction.

As it turns out, I'm not the only one! Humans don't have an innate sense of direction. We visualize streets and such (and men are better at spatial navigation than women) but we aren't actually navigating by cardinal direction.

According to an article in this month's Wired, we can't develop new senses but scientists have discovered that we can train the senses we have to do new things!

"Here's the solution: Figure out how to change the sensory data you want — the electromagnetic fields, the ultrasound, the infrared — into something that the human brain is already wired to accept, like touch or sight. The brain, it turns out, is dramatically more flexible than anyone previously thought, as if we had unused sensory ports just waiting for the right plug-ins. Now it's time to build them."

The Spatial Orientation Enhancement System was built and tested to see if humans could navigate blind, as pilots need to do when they lose visual control. 11% of Air Force crashes are the result of spatial disorientation.

The non-pilot author of the article tried it in a simulator and reported amazing reults:

Flight became intuitive. When the plane tilted to the right, my right wrist started to vibrate — then the elbow, and then the shoulder as the bank sharpened. It was like my arm was getting deeper and deeper into something. To level off, I just moved the joystick until the buzzing stopped. I closed my eyes so I could ignore the screen.

As soon as they can figure out how to make the feelSpace belt look less like something strapped to a suicide bomber, I'm getting one.

Servitude sucks!

I started a new job a month ago. I can barely get myself out of bed every morning to go. I roll in around 9:45 despite my intention to get there by 9:00. I'm just wholly unmotivated. On the weekends I bound out of bed with less sleep and no alarm, anxious to start my day.

The thing is, I don't want to work. I LIKE WORK. That's not the problem. I just don't like working for someone else and I resent the idea that I HAVE to work. How did we (humans) get ourselves to a place where WORK is what we have to do to survive on this planet? How totally backwards! How inefficient!

The worst part is that not everyone is in the same boat. The elite work on their own terms and are getting millions of dollars to our $50,000 to do it. The uber-rich don't work at all. Take Paris Hilton for example. She gets to do whatever she wants. I'm working all day so Paris Hilton can slut around town?

Why do we need hotels anyway? Sure, it's nice to be able to go out of town and stay at a hotel but think about it: Who's staying at the Hilton? Business travelers! People who WORK for a living. Hilton's making billions off of our indentured servitude.

Some friends of mine just traveled around the entire country by bicycle, over 10,000 miles so far, and didn't stay at a hotel. They camped and stayed in homes - some friends and some strangers. That's living! No car, no gas, no job, and no stinkin' hotels!

You constantly hear about how people "need" jobs and a company "gives" us jobs. Wait, hold the phone...GIVES US JOBS? Gee, thanks. You see? We're brainwashed into thinking we need to work and are grateful for the opportunity. It's sick I tell you.

I'm ready to give up this way of life. Grow my own food, make my own clothes, why not? Sure, there are some things about modern life I like - books, movies, music, travel - and I suppose organized society makes those things possible but with the time spent slaving, I don't have much time to enjoy those things.

What is the origin of work, anyway? I guarantee you it wasn't some democratic idea that people thought sounded peachy. I'm pretty sure it happened like this: Certain families, probably royalty, by force, claimed that land belonged to them. Who ever happened to be living on that land was kicked off or told they could "work" to stay. They were working anyway, tending the land, and they didn't have much choice, right?

As it turns out though, their two hours (say) of tending the land became four, six and then eight as the demands of the lord was not subsistence but accumulation. Excess. GREED. Make more product, sell it to people who aren't fortunate enough to be given the option to work, make money and use it to live better than anyone else. The elite families of the world can still trace their heritage back to those rich, ruling families from thousands of years ago.

The modern equivalent of that original land acquisition goes likes this: A corporation buys (or leases from the government) a small island, razes the fields, builds a factory and erects low-quality apartments. The displaced subsistence population is offered jobs and an opportunity to rent an apartment. Lucky people. Just think how much better their life is! How many times have you bought clothes made in...where the heck is Mauritius?



Supposedly, a working society offers the opportunity to invent technologies like building a space shuttle and exploring the universe. Granted, that's pretty cool, but most of what we spend our time inventing doesn't improve our quality of our life, it improves the quality of our work.

The anthropologist Pierre Clastres in Society Against The State writes that contrary to what we've been told, subsistence societies are actually quite efficient - "the average length of time spent working each day by adults, including all activities, barely exceeds three hours" - offering lots of time for relaxation, playing and higher thinking. He writes:

The Indians devoted relatively little time to what is called work. And even so, they did not die of hunger. The chronicles of the period are unanimous in describing the fine appearance of the adults, the good health of the many children, the abundance and variety of things to eat. Consequently, the subsistence economy in effect among the Indian tribes did not by any means imply an anxious, full-time search for food. It follows that a subsistence economy is compatible with a substantial limitation of the time given to productive activities.

I should say that there are incredible philanthropists in this world who give back as much as they've been given but doesn't it seem an awfully roundabout way to get back to (what is for most people) subsistence? At the risk of sounding like a hippie or a Marxist, there has to be a better (more magical, more interesting, more evolved) way to live.

I guess I'm not ready to completely drop out of society. I like not getting eaten by wild animals, being ravaged by disease or worrying about being killing by a warring faction in the middle of night, but I still don't like getting up for work.

"Someone should be held accountable"

My obsession with The West Wing continues as I start season four. In the last episode of season three, CJ's love interest (the super hot Mark Harmon) was shot and killed in a robbery. It was so upsetting, I actually yelled at the TV "why can't they leave these people alone!" It seems like people are always getting killed on that show. Now I know why. People are always getting killed in real life.

The shooting yesterday, in Virgina, the deadliest in US history, has sparked outrage from the rest of the world about the ease and prevalence of obtaining a gun in the United States. And even though most of the handgun deaths occur on our soil, we're the largest manufacturer of weapons in the world, making this a global issue.

"Mexican authorities reported that 80 percent of guns in the country came from the U.S., 50 percent of handguns seized by Canada's gun crime task force were also smuggled across the U.S. border and 30 percent of guns recovered by Japanese authorities originated in the U.S., the IANSA found."

Gun deaths persist even in countries with zero tolerance policies towards guns in large part because they continue to be made and are bought so easily in the U.S. A London Times columnist asks why Americans continue to tolerate our lax gun laws and a culture that allows so many people to die by something so easily avoidable. I'm embarrassed to be seen as tolerating it and yet when I asked a friend what he thought, he said "it's tragic but unavoidable."

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," said Dana Perino, a spokesperson for President George W. Bush. "And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for."

How barbaric a society we live in where the government defends people's rights to kill each other! SOMEONE should be held accountable for these deaths? WHO? The guy who killed 33 people and then shot himself? Hundreds of laws are passed to protect us from ourselves without nearly the debate appointed to gun control.

You must wear a seatbelt in a car (11,000 lives saved per year), you must not drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you must wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, you must stop at a red light.

We have laws protecting us from food that could kill us (even if it's caused by OUR OWN bad eating habits) since heart failure is the number one cause of death in America, laws protecting us from second hand smoke and drugs that might harm us, and we have guard rails in every public place to protect us from falling to our death.

Unfortunately, many of these laws are only passed because companies don't want to get sued. Problem is, there's no one to sue when someone shoots and kills you. If there were, GUARANTEED that person/company would have found a way to protect us from getting shot.

CNN reports that "small arms manufacturing in the U.S. is a $2 billion-a-year industry." Still think those gun lobbyists are protecting our right to bear arms? In the aftermath of 9-11, President Bush said “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

365 days in Oregon

I clicked on an intriguing banner ad on NYTimes.com and found
this Travel Oregon site with a cool Ajax splash page. It gives you detailed information on all the activities (in a very attractive layout!) and lets you create a travel journal.

My brother lives in Oregon - I'm going to visit next month - and I'm totally excited to find some fun activities to do with the kids. Too bad the pirates arrive after I do, ARRRRR!

Product design: back on track

Just as cars were starting to look like cockroaches:



And apartment buildings:


Toyota has come up with some really fun and stylish vehicles - the Matrix, Yaris and FJ Cruiser.

The RAV4 has evolved from a cute car to a beautiful grown-up auto (with an awkward teen period):


Check out their promotional films, they're pretty cool.


The RAV4 tagline is: Too intelligent to be categorized. No wonder I love this car!

Testing, testing, 1-2-3

There's no substitute for actually testing your product or interface with actual users. You can theorize all day long about how the product should work and how intuitive you think it is, but the people designing something know how it should be used. They focus on their own agenda and needs and often can't take themselves out of the equation to think of the user. This is why these positions have evolved: User Experience Designer, Interaction Designer, Information Architect, etc.

My mom works for the Navy and does most of her work for the DOD. About a decade ago, she was in charge of a project to evaluate the safety across the nation of bases, airports and high-level government buildings that might be vulnerable to attack. What they found was pretty shocking. The safety of our nation relies not on the technology of the machines but on the PEOPLE operating those machines. (Actually, in the worst case, the machines weren't even being used. They had been sitting in the basement of a local FBI building, unopened, because no one knew how to use them).

Turns out, our biggest weakness is that people are being paid minimum wage to operate a half-million dollar machine that's so complicated, they don't know where to start. The machine isn't designed with the user in mind and the user isn't trained properly so the machine is useless.

Apple was one of the first companies to design a product first and build it second. Function follows form. Not the other way around. The iPod was designed that way.

I'm a hobbyist user tester. When I first starting going to a gym that required scanning one of those plastic key chain cards, I tested three different ways to get in the door before I found the fastest.

First I tried handing the attendants the key chain cards BARCODE FACING UP to get in the door quicker. After all, the barcode is ready they just have to scan. But what happened time and time again is that they would take it and fumble around with it to FIND the right one - totally defeating the purpose.

I theorized that it was because they didn't recognize the gym's barcode, most of the time they're multi-tasking, so I starting handing them JUST the gym's key chain card LOGO UP. They took it, flipped it over and scanned it. Pretty quick but still not good enough for me. I did it this way for a time, while pondering a better way.

Finally it dawned on me, maybe the reason the first way didn't work is because I was handing them the WHOLE STACK of my key chain cards. They were thinking with their hands, not with their eyes. They felt the stack and didn't know the one they needed was ON TOP. Why would they?

So I started handing them JUST the gym's key chain card BARCODE UP. And it worked! They take it, scan it, and I'm in seconds later. This is a simple interaction and I'm a fairly smart gal so you can only imagine how many user experience mistakes are made by smart people who think they know. You don't know until you test.

Changing the course of capitalism

I watched "The Insider" again the other night. A great, inspiring movie at the beginning of what has become a hot topic: holding companies to a higher moral responsibility. A responsibility to not cheat their employees out of their retirements, to disclose how it is that CEOs make 400-700 times the average employee and to make their products safer for consumption and the environment. It's not enough any more to simply stimulate the economy; more and more, people are demanding responsibility. Fortunately, many companies are waking up to the economic opportunities of this kind of responsibility.

Most of my career as a marketer, I've believed that selling product inherently breeds bad behavior. In order to generate more profit, companies have to produce a product more cheaply. To increase market share their product has to be more addictive and/or necessary. And to sell a higher quantity, the product has to be consumed at a faster rate. I challenge you to think of a product that can be made more profitable or increase market share without damaging the environment, the consumer or some other poor creature.

(I tried to think of something that must be innocuous, like raising fluffy little sheep and shearing them for wool. This sounds really harmless but then I read this. Yikes!)

See, sometimes companies make something a customer wants, and then have to figure out a way to make it profitable. But many times, they're making something they've deemed profitable and then hire PR/advertisers to make people want it:

When the disposable razor came along, marketers only had to show women a picture of a naked armpit to sell razors to women wanting to be more fashionable. But they had a tougher time convincing them to shave (and bare) their legs. They tried for years without success until a very famous war-time poster came out featuring a very sexy Betty Grable with shaved naked legs and women were told it was their patriotic DUTY to wear shorter skirts and sheer nylons. And off the hair came! (We're still one of the only countries in the world where women regularly shave their hair off.)

Then there were disposable diapers, not a hit for the first five years. Then the PR people hired a pediatrician and cooked up a story about how damaging it is to potty-train children too early. It would make them "anal" to be separated by their poo at too early an age. Instantly, they extended the life of their product by at least a year as anxious moms allowed their children longer diaper time. (By the way, "disposable" diapers will take about 500 years to decompose.)

Sometimes, to make a product more profitable, they have to decrease it's shelf life.

Electronics and appliances have a shorter lifespan than they ever have despite our advances. It just isn't very profitable to make a device that lasts several years. And if you make them too cheap, it isn't profitable either. A CD player now costs let's say $60, which is cheaper than the $250 I paid in 1985, but it only lasts a year. Printers are now less than $100 but only last six months to a year! Cellphones? They're practically "disposable." (Like the diapers, the hunks of junk ends up in the dump when they stop working and probably never biodegrade.)

Sometimes, to make people want a product again, they have to lie.

Cigarettes and alcohol are addictive. Fast food clogs your arteries. How can you increase your market share without telling people otherwise? French fries aren't French fries if they aren't deep fried! Tell the consumer you're using a different kind of oil that isn't as bad. Tell them the alcohol has less calories and the cigarettes don't have additives so they're less harmful. They're all lies but how else can it be done? Since only 10% of smokers start after age 20, they have to get addicted young.

Sometimes, experts are used to show how the product should be consumed.

For the last fifteen years, we've been eating a higher protein diet. We've been told it's the way to be healthy and slim. It's not true. Eating vegetables is much better for you than meat but meat is a booming industry. When it's so cheap and yummy, how can we resist? (Inhumane treatment to animals, declining nutrition of the meat, increased sickness due to bad meat and pollution that was unheard of a few decades ago will eventually turn us off). Did you know that 80% of the ocean's contaminants come from ground pollution running into rivers? Now we can't even eat (what's left of) the fish!

So, our consumerism drives the economy but these products make us sick by ruining our health and the environment. We're running at an accelerated pace towards cheaper, more disposable goods but also stopping along the way the admire a new model of goods - ethically produced, better for the environment and maybe even more desirable.

Ultimately, the consumer has to DEMAND the products we want, produced the way we can be happy about, and the corporations will HAVE TO care as much about responsibility as profit.

While hybrid cars increase in popularity, so do Hummer sales. While we are more conscious of recycling, we also create more trash. While the oil industry is stepping up to be more green, they're also illegally dumping tons of toxic waste in the ocean. Are we going in two directions or one direction that's so complex, it has yet to reveal itself?

It just may be that we're finally seeing our modern way of life as barbaric: torturing and killing animals and each other, dumping crap into the ocean, burying our trash, paving over the earth, pushing products that kill people. We're capable of so much more and I think we're just now beginning to see our potential to rise above our filthy, greedy past to save ourselves.

Eyes, lips and hands

I finally finished Blink and nearly cried at the last story about the female French horn player being hired by the Met because they finally "saw her for who she really was." I think the idea of seeing people for who they really are is probably the most Utopian idea I've ever heard of. I'm sure that no one sees even themselves for who they really are, and we can never truly know another person, but even so, I am in love with the idea that we have a beauty within that can be freed from the perceptions of gender, race, nationality, financial status, height, weight, hair color, eye color, etc.

This is, perhaps, EXACTLY what's wrong with online personals. There's really no chance to see a person for who they really are. By the time you meet them, you've already made a million snap judgments based on how old they are, the way they look, where they live, what they do, how much money they make and how they filled out their essays. It's got to be the most inorganic way to decide whether we like a person. There are only three things I need to see to know if I'm attracted to someone: eyes, lips and hands. I swear. I can look at those three things and I do or don't want to make out with that person.

Now, compatibility is something more complicated of course, but I still don't believe it can be determined by filling out online essays and comparing notes. I think it's something much closer to the blind auditions that Malcolm Gladwell writes about because being attracted to someone IS like being blind. How many times have you said, "I never thought I would be attracted to... [fill in the blank]" and cease to see anything other than a person you love and really want to get along with?

If online personals can figure out a way to see show us only what we need to establish an attraction, they could actually work better than the old-fashioned way.

The bizarre world of blogging

I knew blogging was kind of a fad but I had NO IDEA how insanely popular it was until I started my own. Apparently, it's really important for blogs to link to other blogs but no one links to my blog. In fact, I think there are only about three people reading it (I ask them almost every day). And yet I still feel this enormous pressure to post at least five times a week. I get into these big essays and I'm not sure where I'm going with them and sometimes they take days to finish.

In between bouts of writing and editing, I look up other blogs just to see how they do it. One popular blog and I seem to fall down the rabbit hole of blogs. One blog leads to another and another and another. It's endless and my head is spinning. They're all referencing each other like they're in a big club. It seems like everyone and their grandmother has one! Who could possibly have time to read ALL THESE BLOGS? I can barely find the time to write, much less read, and all I keep thinking is: Are we going to get to a day when everyone is writing and no one's reading?

People aren't taking in more information are they? We've been reading, listening and watching for hundreds of years. So what are we getting from all these blogs? As it turns out, what we're getting are perspectives. It's like a diamond reflecting the light in a thousand different ways at the same time. It's the same light, we just have hundreds of views to choose from. Some bloggers are creating content (news, entertainment, advice) but most are just commenting on content already out there. This decade is all about having an opinion.

All aboard!

The epoch of the individual

A psychologist that I met (one of two brief relationships from my foray into online dating) explained to me that the reason we, "Generation X", were so much more self-aware (or self-absorbed, depending on the person) than our parents is because we're living in "The Epoch of The Individual."

Words of analysis have become part of our culture's vernacular. People commonly diagnose themselves as a neat-freak, controlling, passive aggressive, insecure, commitment-phobic, etc. I thought it was genius and asked him to explain further.

The explanation was brief and I have not been able to find any documentation on this theory but this is how I understood it:

When humans first lived on this earth, we had very little understanding of our world. Natural disasters, disease and death were terrifying and unexplainable. They were attributed to "gods" that for whatever reason were angry at us. As a tribe, we did what we could to appease these gods through sacrifices and rituals. This was the epoch of the tribe. Whatever the tribe demanded of a person, was to be obeyed, there was no individual will. Everything was for the collective survival.

As we gained more control over our survival, by building houses and growing crops, we were liberated from the stranglehold of the tribe. When the Jews wrote the bible and proclaimed that man could speak directly to God, we entered a new level of awareness. We entered the epoch of family. We formed societies of artists and thinkers. We amassed wealth and protected our own. Our actions, worth and sense of self were now determined by our place in a family and that family's place within a society.

With the industrial revolution, masses of people now worked for someone else and bought food instead of growing it themselves. Young people moved to cities, alone, to work and live. We were no longer defined by our family. We questioned our purpose in life, went to universities to engage in higher thinking and embarked on an individual quest. Thus began the the epoch of the individual. (During the 1950's when rock and roll was introduced, the teenager was invented and further prolonged this period of self-exploration.)

We live longer than we used to, so perhaps a longer life delivers that luxury. We don't have the biological need to reproduce as soon as humanly possible. Countries with a higher death toll (from war, disease, or poverty) are not ushering in the epoch of the individual with the same voracity. By necessity, many are still deeply entrenched in their tribal and familial roles.

So what's next in this "evolution" of epochs? For one thing, we're dividing the group into smaller and smaller units. Is there anything smaller than the individual? After all, scientists keep finding smaller units of matter that increasingly defy our known reality.

I'd like to posit some wild guesses as to what epoch is next:
The epoch of the virtual self - Like "Second Life" only better. Really LIVE a virtual life. Question: Would there be an "actual" life?

The epoch of the "ideal" self - We could pinpoint the places in our life where we think we went wrong, and change them. I put ideal in quotes because who knows if life would be better or just different.

The epoch of the present self - Higher reflection would afford us the ability to come to terms with everything in our past and live only in the present.

The epoch of the soul - We become "liberated" from our animal instincts and the primitive parts of our brain and instead live entirely in an enlightened state. We may not even need food or sleep!

The epoch of the collective - With the spread of democracy, more and more people get involved in government and governing policy. In the future, we'll be defined by our contribution to the collective.

The epoch of the other - Those who have had the luxury of choosing who to love, how to live and what to do with life, will have the responsibility to help others achieve the same freedom.

The epoch of earth - The focus is completely off of humans as we become caretakers of the earth as a whole. We are only one organism living on the ball of life, it is our duty to maintain it.

The epoch of life - The sanctity of life becomes more important than anything. Eating an animal is considered as barbaric as eating a person. Wars and executions are a thing of our horrifying past.

Nancy Pelosi is a rockstar!

The New York Times reports that she visited Syria "with a high-level group of lawmakers including Henry Waxman [of California]" (who also rocks, by the way - I've been sending him letters for years and always get a response back about his efforts in that area). They met with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

It's exciting enough to have a female Speaker of the House, the third-ranking elected official in the United States after the president and the vice president, but now she's basically advocating a different approach to diplomacy in the Middle East. She's showing the world that we are a complex government and President Bush doesn't speak for all Americans.

A side-by-side comparison of their views from the article:
PELOSI “expressed concern about Syria’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas,” to Assad and “expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria.”

BUSH said the visit sent mixed signals to the Middle East and to President Assad’s government.

PELOSI and many other Democrats, as well as some Republicans, have spoken often in recent months about the value of increasing dialogue with Syria as a way to improve stability in the region.

BUSH told reporters that he saw little point in talking to Syria now. “Sending delegations hasn’t worked,” he said. “It’s just simply been counterproductive.”

A bureau chief for a leftist Damascus newspaper said "Pelosi’s approach represents a more practical policy; the administration’s policy over the last few years has been based on demands and ideology."

A shopkeeper in downtown Damascus summed it up perfectly: "She views the world through a different perspective than Bush. She’s more open-minded.”

See? Rockstar.

Who's delivering the message?

I was having breakfast with some ladies last weekend. A TV writer was telling me about teaching summer school algebra at an inner-city school in LA. She said there were two distinct groups of kids taking her class: freshman Korean kids who were hoping to get into a more advanced math class the next year and African-American seniors who were getting a last chance not to fail out of school. These kids, she made a deal with.

"I have no interest in failing you," she said, "it's in my best interest that you graduate high school." The only two requirements she told them, to passing the class are 1) Show up every day and 2) Don't prevent any one else from learning. They didn't do either of those things and almost all of them failed.

One kid, however, wanted to turn in his homework. He asked her if there was a way to do it without his friends seeing. See, it wouldn't be cool to turn in homework. They would accuse him of "trying to be white". In his culture, learning and doing well in school (and presumably getting a job and everything else that might follow) is equated with whiteness.

The Korean kids are raised in a Korean culture, here in LA, that has a very clear definition of success. Their definition of success does not threaten their culture, because it's defined by their culture and supported by their community in the United States.

Malcolm Gladwell, in Blink, talks about just how pervasive it is in our society to associate positive ideas with whites and negative idea with blacks. Even liberal, open-minded whites and enlightened, successful blacks are susceptible to the subtle associations between blacks and crime, drugs, and a lack of education.

In what I believe is a search for cultural identity, the kids failing out of school are rebelling against what they feel is an attempt by the dominant culture to absorb them. All they've done is develop a completely whacked definition of success that doesn't include getting an education or a job that requires an education and unless they have an entire community supporting them in some other type of endeavor, they aren't going to have a lot of options.

When this woman was telling me about her students, I thought to myself 'she got it all wrong'. She assumed if she set the bar so low, they couldn't possibly fail. But how can they rebel against the dominant culture when the dominant culture is constantly lowering the bar and expecting less and less of them? What would happen if a teacher demanded everything? Pushed them to succeed. Embarrassed them when they came unprepared and tracked them down if they didn't show. It's a lot of work, I know, and few want to do it but guess what? If you set the bar so high they can't possibly reach it, they can rebel without even trying and in the meantime, might actually turn in some homework.

A friend of mine who teaches in Jamaica, Queens, does just that. She's been attacked, her life threatened and kids in her classes have died - they live difficult lives that I can't even imagine. But she has students that have gone to Columbia and other universities because she tells them that they can and they should. She tells them they are wanted at those schools and the schools will pay them to come. She tells them every day because words have that kind of power.

My friend, like me, is white and although her message gets through, it's not easy because of who she is. Her school has several teachers who are graduates of that school and they, she said, are received very well by the students. They can say, "I'm you. I went to this school. I grew up this neighborhood. I'm not trying to change you, just give you options and a view into the bigger world."

I always say that everything is marketing and this is a perfect example. The three most important things to determine when selling anything are:
1) Who is your audience?
2) What is your message?
3) Who's delivering the message?
It's everything.

I love Villaraigosa!

The last time I was this excited about a politician was 1992, working for the College Democrats. I registered voters at my college to help get Clinton elected. We were so enamored of that man. But that was a long time ago.

Antonia Villaraigosa is the first Latino mayor for a city that is almost half Hispanic. But besides that, he is just an all around cool guy. Not only is he handsome, young, personable, well-spoken and a genuinely nice person (yes, I have met him), he is doing some incredible things for this city.

I swear only a year before we elected him, I said to myself "This city has so much potential, it's a shame that we spend our days sitting in traffic, choking on smog and looking at ugly strip malls." Then Villaraigosa came along. He's made a promise to make LA a greener and more beautiful city with the Million Trees LA campaign and The LA River Revitalization Program (this takes a little while to download, it's the actual plans): Making our river a real river (with water), building beautiful bridges, creating bike paths and parks, and incentivizing retail businesses to open on the riverfront.

In addition, he's building support for dismantling gangs, committing to improve our failing education system, fighting to get the money we need to relieve traffic and wants to make the city wireless.

It's no wonder he's a very popular guy these days and according to The New York Times, he may be a critical part of the 2008 presidential race. They're doing a four-part interview with him and you can watch the first part here.

The power of images

I've been reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I loved The Tipping Point, a great marketing book, and a friend said I should read Blink. In it, he talks about how powerful words and images are, even in small doses on a short term basis. Someone reading angry words will become angry, a person seeing images of a minority group committing crimes will become disposed to distrusting that minority group, etc.

I live in Los Angeles and while I've often known that the entertainment industry is by far the most sexist industry in the country - only 7% of working directors are women (for reference, approximately 16% of federally elected seats are held by women - not exactly a bragging point to begin with).

Even so, I'm constantly amazed by the movie posters that I'm subjected to on my way to work. I won't even get into the "Black Snake Moan" poster that is just beyond bizarre, or the "Captivity" poster that basically showed Elisha Cuthbert being MURDERED (it was taken off of buses after protest).

I'll just mention the three movies being advertised now on every billboard and bus stop on my eight mile commute. See if you can spot the theme:

"Perfect Stranger" - Halle Berry looks terrified at a menacing Bruce Willis.

"Disturbia" - The tagline is "Every killer lives next door to someone" while a terrified female is both menaced by the shadow of a man AND watched by another man through binoculars.

"Fracture" - Anthony Hopkins looks menacing and the headline is "I shot my wife."

I know. It's not something we normally think about but what do you think the unconscious reaction to this kind of messaging is?

Give the customer what they want

It's surprisingly easy to give the customer what they want. First, think like a customer. Second, figure out what you, the customer, want. Third, find a way to make it happen.

I'm continuously amazed at how often businesses can't or won't do this. They defend their bottom line, they don't want to disrupt their current profit model, it's too much work they say, it's not necessary, or, even worse, they don't even know they aren't doing it.

One of the mobile projects I'm working on, was pitched by my agency, basically as a technology concept. It looks like a marketing concept or even a revenue idea, but it isn't. It's simply "we have the capability to do blah blah blah for you" and because "blah blah blah" is mobile, the company thinks we're hip and it's a cool idea.

Here's the stupid part. Instead of providing a MARKETING STRATEGY to justify the technology idea, my agency is allowing the CUSTOMER to dictate how this new technology should be incorporated into their product. How much sense does this make? The agency came up with the idea but has no backbone when it comes to making recommendations on how it should be executed. And the company, of course, has not the vision nor the guts to take a risk. But companies can be convinced, if you have a compelling argument. All you have to do is try.

So I wrote up an argument for how I thought this mobile app should be implemented at the theme park. It was so obvious to me when I heard it that there only one way that makes sense to the customer. Am I endowed with some kind of special power that I should know this and no one else does? No. It's just that I think like a customer, like a person, and not like an executive. I went online to find support for my idea and in a message board posting of a theme park, users were discussing exactly what I proposed as something they wished was available. Of course, we're not doing it that way.

Even worse, one of the posters says "They're probably working on a system now." Sigh!