DRM: The Sort-of Necessary Evil

As a citizen of the 21st century who lived in the 20th (which usually means most of us), we have come to see one of the greatest changes in technological life styles. Into a society made up of families that own multiple cars (mine owns four), a personal computer for each person and a larger social network tied down into a new found closeness with apps, competitive games and video chatting on demand. We no longer leave a voice mail asking someone to call back but instead text them to see what they're up to that they can't pick up the phone. Literally banging on the door and yelling talk to me now. We are more than happy to criticize behind the anonymity of the internet and not fear the consequences of speaking out.

It's all good and bad, but I speak to you all today as an Artist both in the performing and the visual sense. I think my emotions were most stirred earlier in the week when I came across an article describing the burgeoning change in a sexual society and they used an image. This particular image was obviously an image drawn by another human being and then posted proudly on their Flickr account. But looking at the image citation, it cited: Image Source: Flickr. You can't begin to imagine how many shades (more than fifty I guarantee you) of wrong this is. The fact is that this is individual art and yes while it is hosted on Flickr, is not something that Flickr made.

Simply saying image source: Flickr is not enough, you've bypassed the entire train of human creativity that led to the image being hosted on Flickr in the first place. In no way did the image hosting site have any hand in the creative process of coming up with art other than hosting it. This "citation", and I use citation very wrongly, forgets about the artist altogether and then on top of that, displays his work and not even hyperlink to page or the photograph itself. So that article, crowned by a lovely image to accompany the prophetic words it might have had to say is guilty of depriving someone of the recognition they fairly deserve.

I think what drew me to the article that someone else linked in the first place was the image that popped up on the Facebook feed. But then when I saw the copyrights not even properly managed, I refused to read the article. In no way was I ready to read something where the first thing was plagiarized. In my disappointment, I closed the article and thought about copyrights and then Digital Rights Management or DRM for short.

For those of us old enough to remember a time when there were other programs other than Spotify existed (the name of which I'm blanking on right now) you would download a copy free onto your computer and then the DRM was renewed each time you accessed the file. I remember whatever it was called, I used the software extensively when I was a sophomore at Berkeley and I was angry the day it closed down leaving me with all these useless music files protected by DRM. So I did the next best thing any somewhat tech-savvy person would do: torrent music.

Now, plenty of us are more than happy to pay the price on Apple's iTunes store and buy a copy of the music or even go down to your local music store and find a CD with all the songs you want. Now, herein lies my problem. If I'm looking to buy one song in particular, that's a benefit for iTunes or Amazon since they offer one by one pricing. But what if I want more than one song on the album, then I usually have to end up buying a CD with one or two songs I like and the rest I don't. If I go into a hard copy store, if I want one song, I have to buy the whole CD. No big deal, sometimes CDs are cheaper, but I end up with this stack of CDs I never use unless I have my car with it's already antiquated 6 CD changer.

The issue surrounding DRM over music is a hazy one, while we would love to support the artists who make music, we generally don't want to pay for it. Their rights being handled by a major label company means the artists get a small percentage of what goes all together into the CD sale. If I were a recording artist full time, I'd certainly want the process streamlined and then a higher percentage, but most certainly I'd also want a bejewelled toilet and a wider audience range, but that is unlikely.

Leaving music into art and photography, we enter a world rife with plagiarism and straight up stealing. I recall on Instagram a few months ago, I posted a photo I took of my Loar guitar and mandolin, Recording King Banjo and no-name fiddle with the hashtag: bluegrass. Lo and behold to my surprise some ballsy 14 year old girl in the middle of nowhere takes the exact same image and calls it her own. On Reddit, I might understand but on Instagram where everyone is taking unique photos every day, you have to go and steal one of mine. Naturally, I got all my friends to spam the account and turn her life into hell for stealing images.

I learned the copyright problem about a year ago when I produced an image similar to an Ork map for the sleepy little town of Alameda. Normally, you would never see a map for so small a town but being from there, I thought my fair little island city deserved one. I did one for my own uses and showed it off. Fast forward several months, I'm working quietly on a few drawings in my home studio when I get a call from my last boss asking if I had sold the rights to my image to the clothing store down the street. I replied that I hadn't and then drove into town to see what he was talking about. There it was, basically my exact same image being sold on the front of t-shirts and hoodies. I was furious, I was livid and I was helpless.

I consulted a copy of the California Civil Code on intellectual property. By exposing it to the world, I allowed it to be used. It was the one time I was hard up with nothing to gain but a slice of humble pie. Someone else took my design, modified it a little bit and then was reaping the profits. I sincerely hope he rots in hell for that.

So next time you write an article and you quote someone, use an image from a publicly contributed website (cough: Imgur, Flickr, Photobucket) make sure you get permission or at the very least say who you got the image from. Cite properly, cause "photo credit: Flickr" just doesn't cut it. Ever.

Rain Washes Those Who Wish To Get Wet

I recommend having this open in a tab in the background: http://www.rainymood.com/

I admit it, i'm a sucker for the rain sometimes, but there are those moments that you get to yourself that you just have to sit down and savor. Right now, I have four windows that look south. Four windows that get a view of a basketball court, the back end of a sorority, an apartment where people are noisy and the rear of a fraternity. So I get all kinds of noises, sex, screams, laughs, loud music. But all that disappears when the grey clouds roll overhead, and those little droplets of water come shooting down from above. Oh yes, the rain. It washes away the chalk marks on the ground, and wets the earth. That rain.

But when it rains, people don't want to sit outside, people don't want to bring their expensive sound systems outdoors so they can shoot some hoops while bothering other people. Everything stops in place, and people change. People carry their shodden umbrellas and shake them towards the sky, they explode in size, the ones held low by the short people are jabbed into tall people's eyes and tall people shake off the excess at the shorties in revenge. That rain.

All becomes quiet, the average pedestrian doesn't find time to walk about in this fashion. There's not the chance to wander around town looking to get lost. Here be the real folks who want to get wet. Here be the folks that stand in solace, letting the water beat down on them from heaven. Then out come the couples who like to get dressed up in cold weather gear, bring out their matching umbrellas and walk together blocking up the sidewalk and keeping any people who are socially inept from getting past. That rain.

Sometimes, it's not so bad, if you have the windows open and you have a large enough of an overhang, you can listen to the rain as it falls down past your window, and then curse your decisions for "air" as it also sends in every single spider, fly, mosquito and moth into your little domicile. That rain.

Maybe it sucks, maybe it doesn't, but I know it's there.

Hints of Growing Fall

I think this might be a supplement to past entry, Thais Deep 

Living in California, you almost forget that there is a Fall season in between the summer months of endless daylight and the winter months of endless night. Every small moment in between, you start to notice as the party invitations start to increase where you dress nicely and the ones where you bring a bathing suit stop coming. But we in the golden state forget sometimes, once the days begin to grow dark and the winds pick up, that this is one of the wonderful times of the year. Now, we arrange rides with friends up into the mountains to go pumpkin picking in October or start to collect apples to start brewing cider.

The kitchens change just as dramatically too you know, the Pimm's is put away, the silver julep glasses are wrapped up in old newspaper and stowed away in boxes to be pulled out in May and with the seasons, come the change of produce. The older folks start to store corn to dry out to make the cornucopias and the younger folks start to stock up on body-revitalizing whiskey. The season of the hamburger is no longer here and with all the time spent indoors, extra time and care goes into the cooking of meat, smoking of turkey and preparation of vegetables and fruits.

Personally, I think I love the change in weather the most. No longer do I sit in my office chair working sweltering under the heat sticking to it but with a blanket over my shoulders, fighting those occasional leaks of cold air from the outdoors. Watching the wind swept trees sets into my head the romantic notion of what this cold blustery weather is best for. Staying indoors with a clear, steaming mug of apple cider with a stick of cinnamon poking out from it.

Now is when the time comes when friends want to go out for more dinners, hanging around in the cafe rather than on the patio, hands nursing an Irish coffee. Warm, silky and delicious as it goes down. The taste of Baileys mingles down your throat and fall when you're older than 21 is a godsend. My recollections of fall as an undergrad were running down to the grocery store that was around the corner from where I lived, picking up a jug of Santa Cruz apple cider, a box of mulling spices and running back to my place with my ex. Throw the juice into a pot, warm it up a bit, throw in a few satchels of mulling spices and let it brew for about a half hour. That was the best stuff ever, downing it, sitting on the couch with a romantic movie on and watching the sky go from steel grey to lamp black.

I've lived in different places over the years at Berkeley and I think this last place may be the most difficult to work with in this weather. Leaky windows, just drafts everywhere. So I have to find myself ways to keep warm. Electrically, or kerosene or mentally. I think by that last one, I have to mean keeping my head warm working on either my manuscript or working on a typewriter, coming up with entries for my typecasting blog.

But I love that everyone starts to dress a little bit more properly. Yoga pants, khakis, jeans, pea coats, duffel coats, anoraks, and scarves. Silk, cashmere, wool, poly blends, it's all good! It's fall and what matters most is you all stay warm and hold that special someone extra tight.

Rideshare - The Double Standard

So as an Architecture major, I have a special interest city planning and policy. A few months back, I had to sit in on a few meetings held by the San Francisco. It had several issues to deal with. The big elephant in the room was the prohibition of over sized vehicular parking and the even bigger elephant: ride sharing.

The San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority takes a great interest in making sure that all of the day to day issues that plague the city in terms of traffic and transit problems are met and resolved. But sitting there before the committee, was the main issue of the over sized vehicular parking and then public comment. I was sort of surprised that the director of the cab union or whatever it is was there personally to speak against the growing emergence of ride share in the city. Calling them un-regulated cabs basically.

Now here was an interesting point that I had never considered in the first place. That with all of the ads for lyft and side car and all sorts of ride share companies that I kind of forgot who this was really affecting. Cab companies and possibly the safety of the common Bay Area dweller. In my mind, the ride share system sat alone as possibly the savior and beacon for a growing future. I realize now that it's not.

As much as the mentality of we are looking out for our fellow brethren speaks out in San Francisco, I can't help but think back to those ads on Spotify saying Lyft drivers make up to thirty five dollars an hour. Here is were the word ride share is dirtied, sullied and basically almost ignored. This one company, and the myriad of others has done nothing more than added extra cabs onto the street. These cabs however aren't available to the public by just raising your hand in the air as if you were hailing a normal cab, to get a ride on these pink-mustachioed vehicles need to have a smart phone before hand as well as having the app to go along with it. The Lyft app gets you cars from Lyft, sidecar from sidecar drivers, and so on.

The bandy way of getting a cab albeit quick and simple to use is unregulated. Drivers are suddenly put into the responsibilities of their own life, the lives of their passengers and the safety of their car. I'm not saying most people don't have the insurance to cover all that, but with the costs and the way this nation is moving, more and more people are borrowing cars than owning one. Possibly with the sobriquet of "Norman No-surance". So do you know if you are in an insured vehicle whenever you have one of these stop in front of your house to take you to the airport?

Another thing the San Francisco cab fleet is required to do under the watchful eyes of the MTA is keep up with safety regulations. Is the car safe to be put into active service? If not and it breaks down, we can tow it to one of our garages and get it running again. I'm almost certain (since i'm not an investigative journalist) that the burden of the wear and tear on vehicles falls onto the shoulders of the drivers themselves. Or, if the car is running, but stuck with a deferred maintenance.

One of the reasons that the US Army was far more mobile than the German army during the second world war was every American soldier's ability to repair a vehicle. Up until that point, most families owned at least one car and back then was a simple enough time that someone could easily fix one with the right amount of mechanical prowess. Since the advent of OCS in cars in the mid to late eighties, cars have become even more complicated, almost requiring a masters degree to solve. Now, they're at the point where everything is covered in plastic with the assurance of: if it goes wrong, just bring it in and someone else will take care of it for you. You wouldn't believe the number of cars I've driven in the last 10 months that have had a severe amount of deferred maintenance on them. Dents, poor tire balance, broken seats, non-functioning controls. What keeps a person who treats their car as a purse with wheels or a demolition derby entrant from driving people to and from their destinations?

Taxi medallions aren't cheap. My uncle owns one. It certainly isn't a small investment for that matter. The city and county regulates the number of medallions that exist at any time. Naturally, medallions can only be afforded by major companies or people who could afford one. So now the Lyft gets around all of this by not requiring the medallion at all and not putting its drivers up to the same stringent requirements that all taxi drivers must follow.

Though, I'm pretty sure, of all of the cabs i've been in, not many of them have upheld the highest standards of traffic law. The cab companies when they argued their case of "regulate the unregulated" or else we deregulate need to take a lesson from this experience. For them to survive in this new era, they need to come up with a similar user interface to survive. The cab companies, if they come together, they can come up with an app that unifies all companies, based on consumer location rather than competition among each other. For them to survive, they need to fight the ride share together.

For the Love of the Typewriter

Over the last few years, I've kept up this blog, and I'm pretty sure i'm ready to retire it. It's a good memory bank of all my past experiences over the last seven years. Though there is still a part of me that doesn't want to retire it entirely. I still like to write my stories and then put it out for you all to read. But I don't think it gets the kind of readership that I would even want.

I'm thinking about opening up a new blog that will be typecast.

What is typecast?

I collect typewriters, there's no doubt about that. I've own three typewriters right now and a stenograph machine, two of which are working with a fourth on the way from Pennsylvania. I've owned two other typewriters since and those have gone away. My first typewriter ironically was something I owned briefly, for about maybe a day or two before I threw it out. It was a 1950's IBM electric that didn't work. I remember one of my teachers had known I had a thing for typewriters and allowed me to take it out of the storage bank where they kept all sorts of unused science equipment. I grabbed it, plugged it in and found that it didn't work. Brave Ms. Leslie tried to help me to get the thing to work, but that was to no avail. I think I found it frustrating and tossed it out into a trash can.

I recall a lot of my high school years whenever I was at my grandmother's place, there was mention of a long lost typewriter hidden somewhere in her basement. Her basement was a treasure trove of things from the 1950's and 1960s that as a child, I loved to dig through. I never found the thing though. My worry was that it was going to be an electric typewriter that I for the longest time never considered it to be a typewriter at all. I think on the basis of being electric.

Just before I left for college, there was a time when I worked for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, there was a typewriter that was in the office I worked in, it was an IBM Selectric II that I found worked marvelously. But to me, it still felt a little sterile to work with so I don't think I bothered too much.

In college, I wanted something a little different from working on the laptop which I had. I had been writing in this blog since 2006 and I wanted to get something that would set me apart in my work. So my freshman year, I put aside a little bit of money and bought my first typewriter. I have the receipt somewhere pinned up on my wall back home. It was a 1966 Royal Royalite that worked as if it had a mind of its own and never when I wanted it to. I think if anything, I never quite got the hang of working with it. It had a carriage shift and my weak little pinkies could never operate it properly so I had capitals all over the place but where they were supposed to be.

I think for awhile, there was something with my last ex-girlfriend who found that I had a typewriter and she had a typewriter as well, so the two of us would sit together writing on our machines.

I took a two year hiatus working in all sorts of weird jobs and when I moved back to Berkeley I brought my typewriter with me. I felt of all things to bring, guitars, books, bagpipes, I had to bring with me my typewriter. I left Berkeley with one and I came back with one. But six years of work on it, had left it in pretty bad shape, so I finally made the drop to upgrade my machine. I bought the Royal Quiet Deluxe from 1953 and then somehow, someone called me up telling me to come pick up two typewriters that they weren't using. One L.C. Smith that is still sitting on my shelf frozen and rusty. And a 1939 Underwood Silent Champion. The Silent opened my eyes again to the world of typewriters. Now, I think I might be on a collecting binge. I'm constantly on the lookout for a Corona 3 and an Optima, but for now, I happy with the Royal Quiet and the Underwood Silent.  I might use the Hermes Rocket for National Novel Writing month coming up soon.

The Charm of Details

So for those of you who've read a few of my stories, a few of my entries or even met me in general, you'll notice one thing I always like to put into the front: the little details in life which always seem to somehow wind up lost in the cracks. As much as I love Hemingway and the simplicity of his writing, I always found that what caught my attention the most were people who were more than capable of writing in such a way that it painted a lyrical image in my head. Using just the right amount of details to bring out vivid imagery in your mind. That's the beauty of writing, is that it can pull and entrance you into a world separate from your dull unimaginative life.

For example, take the following sentences:

"Charlie crawled through the exit of the hole and onto the dirt. He was more than pleased to be out of there."

So what's dull about this? Everything. From the lack of visual details to the plain words. There is a lack of empathy, a lack of passion in the words. Let's look at just the first sentence, immediately, we know Charlie was in a hole, and he climbed out. That's about as much as we can even draw from this. The second sentence, finally indicates that he did not like being in there. It took two complex sentences to indicate that Charlie did not like being in there. What was he doing in there? How did he feel in there? Why did he want to get out? So let's apply the magic of visualization to this.

"His eyes were sealed shut with the previous night's sleep as he tried to force them open. When they finally did, what he saw was almost as good as keeping them shut in the first place. Around him, was pitch black darkness. He began to panic, not knowing where he was trapped. All around him, the wet smell of earth plunged into his nostrils. He began to claw at the ceiling of his dirt tomb and it gave way, little by little, creating a pyramid of dirt below. The damp soil clogged his fingernails as he dug furiously until finally the sun broke through. With all of his strength, he pulled more down until finally he made a hole large enough from him to pass through. He heaved his body out half way and using the grass around him pulled himself out. He plunged face first into the grass and took a deep breath. He filled his lungs with the sweet aroma of air, freed from his earthly prison, and began to cry. Where was he now?"

Amazing what we can do to "Charlie crawled through the hole" basically. So it's okay to use those one dollar words to express ideas, just make sure you're using enough of them to make a 10 dollar idea out of them.

The Slow Death of Penmanship

There was one occasion I had stopped by a friend's office to help her out with a couple things and take her out to lunch and she was grading papers from her college level students. Naturally, the curiosity of midterms and architecture intertwined somewhat for me that I was compelled to leaf through a couple copies of student work. They were all hand written, since the technology hasn't quite arrived to print three hundred midterms at the same time from laptops with internet connections. But back to that moment then and there in the office, as I began to read through some of the students work, I noticed a consistent thing all throughout every single paper. Poor handwriting. Granted, I could have ripped a couple of students for incorrect themes throughout their papers, but to me, the penmanship was the most striking thing.

Perhaps about two decades ago, this problem would have been encountered less, with the difficulties of printing and availability of computer type processing. Today, at a time where one can live tweet and blog an entire day's worth of movies and what not from a cell phone, or wirelessly send documents to print at a touch of a button, certain things fall to the wayside and one of those things certainly are handwriting. The way we function and operate nowadays relies so little on the physical taking of notes in class, when we can digitally capture everything that is said, or quickly type it down. Heaven help the teacher or GSI when they have to grade hand written tests.

Handwriting somehow becomes one of those things easily ignored surpassed by more modern technology. Its understandable for technology to move beyond previous technology, but if anything, handwriting still is a necessary technology, surpassed in legibility, and distribution by typing and photocopying, there still is that necessary instant communication between two people. Just as well, say for instance, there are two people from different parts of the country, and between the two of them, comping up with a joint venture. No laptop, just a quick ideas brainstorm. Simple as that. Between the two of them, two young savvy professionals who spent an entire lifetime doing all work via computers, neither has a strict grasp over neat handwriting. Can you expect to see this venture lasting a bit if the ideas aren't clearly laid out?

You might say, well, maybe if they get their ideas out today, they can type it out tomorrow. Well, you can only pull out from your memory only so much, perhaps they'd forgotten a key component to their joint venture. In the immediacy of the events, there is a certain necessity that handwriting performs that it can capture quickly that you might lose in just typing.

If you look at a set of hand written notes of someone who does have fairly decent handwriting and compare it to a typeset of notes, notice a difference. A quick, neat scrawled out side note in the corner, ideas, relations of complexities, things of the like. A set of typed notes, and lets be honest. Parrots what the screen says. Students tend to write what they can see on the board, take in little to no aural response and add notes of their own. Facebook, twitter, youtube, email, all distract us. So that's one nail right there.

Teachers these days, I don't think they're helping all too much either. Albeit, when I attended elementary school in the late 90's, cursive and penmanship was still a very important. I can still recall writing on that thick, plush fiber paper, with the blue dotted lines and it had the texture of paper towel. Trying to write on it with a hard HB #2 pencil, made a light line and a deep crevice into it. I mean, it wasn't easy learning how to write on this swamp emulating paper, but over time, when we did graduate to wide ruled paper, suddenly, there was a world of things we could write, and even more so with college ruled paper.

There was however a wrong turn even I mistakenly had taken in my life. It was around sixth grade after four years of writing in cursive script and growing to resent having to connect my words, the teacher allowed us to print. By all means, my printing improved and eventually my script dwindled into nothing. Throughout high school, you could see my handwriting was fairly simple, not hurried, but in a way, lacking. It was plain, it was simple, and it looked childish. Unrefined for the use in a real world context, it had that charm of bent ascenders and sloping with a curlique descenders that allowed the illusion of childhood to be complete. This carried me through my first year of college when I made a major change in my writing.

My first year, I purchased with much pomp and circumstance a Koh-I-Noor rapidograph pen. Refillable. That of all the things was a new concept to me that I enjoyed. I did own my grandfather's Parker 51, but I ignored it for the most part. Now, my letters became increasingly technical. Resembling the sharp rakish lines of sans-serif fonts I had on my computer. I ran with it. On one occasion, I even wrote an entire month's worth of letters to my girlfriend at the time in Sweden using the rapidograph. It probably was the first pen I owned that, the ink changed the paper. When it dried, your fingertips could trace over the letterforms and feel literally what you had just written. She loved it so much at the time, she went out and bought pens as well just to write in a journal she was keeping for me.

My ex was one of those people who were very influential in my life. She made me appreciate the necessity of good type, good typesetting, good design, good work and good handwriting. Her letters always returned to me with her girlish squiggly scrawl, but it was readable. Just as she influenced me, I influenced her with my choice of excellent writing tools. I always kept on hand at my desk my Lamy fountain pen, a rotoring fountain pen and my Waterman which I kept on my person. These little hints thrown back and forth, we slowly improved each other's handwriting. Part of me wishes I could see the letters I sent her back then, but since then, we had long separated from each other not talking for four years now.

Perhaps its me, with my obsession with all things type and good handwriting when my friend came up to me at a dinner once asking me to do ten wedding invitations that were to be sent off to family. I could not say no, since this friend helped me in so many ways. When I started, I set down with several pieces of Crane & Co. stock and attempted to write in cursive. I could not. Baffled and panic stricken, I thought to myself: this can't be right. I love handwriting and stuff like this. Why can't I do it?

I had forgotten the cursive forms completely. I had lost track over the past eight years of how to write strictly in script. My daily scratch had evolved like some form of Frankenstein. I no longer adhered only to print  or only to cursive. It was this god awful abomination, that utilized cursive f's a wide variety of cursive and print s's and a constantly changing lower case a. I realized, this would not do. As fast as I could write, as neatly as I could write (when I have to write neatly or engross I can) cursive script was what I needed most for this wedding invitation. So I sat down, read through Tamblyn's guide and Speedball's guides, and worked back up. It took awhile, but I realized the necessity of good handwriting.

Pedal forward to today. I had gone to visit the classroom of the teacher who allowed me to stop using cursive. It was not quite the classroom I had left. Hell, it wasn't even the same room as before. But she was still there, and still the same awesome teacher I remembered. But before I could even postulate the handwriting question to her, I noticed something incredibly shocking. There literally were no pads of paper or journals around at all. Every single one of these sixth graders were using a laptop or an iPad, to watch lectures, things like that. The only time I saw pencils and paper being pulled out were to answer math sheets, and quickly scribble down assignments. Defeated, I walked towards the door after dropping off my business card and watched as the next generation of students entered a new era of technology and would drive more nails into the coffin of handwriting.

From the Journal of a Hypochondriac

The sort of gentle steam rose slowly from the cup of coffee sitting square in the center of the table. One lip of the cup was stained with the golden brown liquid it contained from where a mouth was pressed against it. A dirty spoon, still warm sat resting a few inches away slowly soaking a paper napkin through. Beside all this, precariously placed on the edge was a folded up newspaper, commuter folded open to the crossword puzzle in the Datebook.

A young, beautiful face stared down at the puzzle, her eyes scanning over the clues and blank squares in hopes of finding a new point of attack. Her long golden strands of blond hair cascaded down and the tips touched onto the newspaper and with a flick of her wrist, they sailed into the air and back over her shoulder where they would begin the slow descent down to the table again. Her right hand tapped nervously as she looked over this, her eyes darting from the clues to the coffee and then back again. She knew what this would be like. She would finish about three quarters of the puzzle, give up, toss it into the trash and then the next morning when the answers would be posted in the paper, she would feel an overwhelming desire to find the bin she threw it into and retrieve it.

Every morning, Lily went through this struggle and many more throughout the day. Jumping to quick conclusions and realizing her mistakes and trying her best to fix them or appease everyone, but mostly herself. When she finally reached the three quarters mark, she stuffed the paper into her leather side bag and continue onto work, leaving the cafe a faint memory until the next morning when she would struggle again.

Living and working in the city had always been a dream for her and when she finally got the chance to do so, she couldn't help but jump for joy, take a bunch of her girlfriends out for drinks and then question her choice in the morning while nursing her hangover. Lily had come from a small town on the outskirts of Sacramento, with not much to do with big city living and not much to do with small city living either. It was the sort of town where everyone knew each other by heart and where your personal affairs was everybody's business. The older ladies in the town were certainly more of the productive busybodies, spreading rumors around that Lily had met some rich executive and was taking her away to live in San Francisco. This she would not have. Out of sheer anger, she approached one group of them sitting on a porch and yelled at them: "I'M NOT A WHORE!"

That embarrassing fiasco certainly meant she wouldn't be able to return to town without coming upon the watchful eyes of the Cowden street old ladies. Her mother and father usually decided it was best to visit her in the city rather than she come out home. But it allowed her a new sense of freedom. One that she didn't have to deal with people anymore, or annoying busybodies around her. Now, she was a person living in the city! Now she was part of the many that would be sitting around in cafes drinking expensive coffee with laptops being watched as they wrote screenplays or created works of art.

Lily's job was personal assistant to Mr. Will Yeager. Will Yeager was the sort of man who had dropped out of college, but started his own business and pulled himself up by the bootstraps and through hard work made things happen. All by the age of 32. He was now 34 and running a successful design group in the SOMA district. She would manage all the papers for publication and under her careful and tedious scrutiny, edit them twice even after the editors have sent the papers her to be published in. Secretly, she would sneak in her own edits without telling Mr. Yeager.

It happened that morning, maybe about a half hour after the coffee shop and the crossword puzzle. She had just gotten into the office and started to settle into her small little half cubicle outside Yeager's office. She nudged around the portrait of her and her father, stepped briskly into Yeager's room and grabbed the pile of papers in his out box for her review. It would be another half hour before Will would get here she thought as she nestled into her office hair with a pencil and a new article. It was supposed to be Will's opening statements for the office's annual design newsletter publication.

Now the Yeats Annual was a pretty big deal in the design world. Every year, Lily would watch as boxes of three hundred magazines each would be shipped off to New York, Portland, Chicago, London, Pairs, Rio de Janero, Tokyo and elsewhere. She secretly knew that for the last four years at least, every single one of those annuals had some of her own little edits here and there. As she settled into the page, suddenly she found herself looking at a photograph of Will Yeager staring back at her with a cool confidence. She blushed slightly at his gaze and then realizing she was blushing at a photograph quickly composed herself again. Maybe Lily had read about ten pages before she realized with a slight cough, Will was looking back at her slightly puzzled.

"What're you doing with that? I thought you'd have taken it down to printing by now." Lily nearly overturned her chair by his sudden appearance. "I mean, you'll get a chance to read it in a week when it comes back from the printers." He leaned forward to look at what she was doing. "Are you editing... Lily. Explain."

"Hi uh Will," she tumbled over a stack of papers creating a chaotic mess on the floor. "I was just overlooking the editors work." "Well, you know that's why we have editors in the first place." "Well um, I guess I didn't trust their work good enough. I mean, obviously, this is going out with your face... I mean signature on it. It didn't hurt before." "What do you mean before?" Realizing the jib was up, Lily fumbled with the top drawer of her desk and pulled out the last five years issues of the Yeats Annual. She opened them up to him showing her neat handwriting in red pen scratched here and there left and right. He read through her edits slowly, slowly pondering each time he reahed a major place where she had left edit marks. "Well Lil, I gotta say, I'm glad you've been going over the editors work. You know, i'm surprised they haven't made any sort of stink that what they changed wasn't theirs. I mean this section here," he gestured to an open page nearly covered in red. "I think your changes here are actually better than the editors."

"Will, please, I love working for you." "No no, this isn't what you think. What you did here is actually good and I'm thankful to have you do this. I'm going to have a talk with Stephen in editing and you might get his job soon." "I can't possibly do that. I mean, who'll make sure your lunch is made properly and..." he cut her off there. "Fine Lil, if you're happy here, you can stay here no problem. But I would think you'd make such an excellent addition to the editing team. I'm not going to fire Stephen, but maybe take you on part time during Annual season. But anyways, messages?" Lily thrust a stack of pink sheets of phone messages into his large rough hand. Will turned and walked into his office.

A cold bead of sweat rolled down her forehead. Editing? Those guys are a bunch of animals. Literally. She didn't like the thought of answering to anyone else but Will. Even then, she was basically her own boss working under him. All she had to do was every so often send in the reports he asked for, and return his comments to the departments. She pulled another drawer this time, this one filled with various medication bottles, one for anxiety, another for cramps, another for ADD, another for ADHD even though she didn't even have those conditions. She swallowed a handful of carefully chosen pills and relaxed back into her chair and opened Facebook.

"Looks like I'm going to be an editor for Yeager." she wrote into the status update.

That's not living...

I was sitting in the living room of my elderly grandmother's flat earlier today when I decided to run out and go grab a cup of something sugary at the Starbucks my friend Lauren works at. I'm still here as a matter of fact. I'm actually just starting to get settled into my table, working slowly on my drink made of about 80 percent sugar and with little to zero caloric value. But there was something that had happened moments before, moments that made me decide to get outside rather than just sit down with family around my iPad and start to write this. I somehow had motivated myself to go out spend 2 dollars on bus fare to get out here, and another three something to buy the damn drink, but here I am I suppose.

 So let's Tarentino this for a second. It was there in the living room, with the television on and set to the discovery channel. My mother and father both engrossed in some reality show about property value wars or something of a similar ridiculous nature. Anyways, just as I was about to lose interest, they go and show a commerical for the Toyota Venezia or something like that. I can tell you with a sound of assurance that it had a stupid pretencious sounding name like Engava or Romadallion. But they chose to show some attempt of a vaguely nerdy and dorky seeming girl. Like if you had an unliscenced copy of Kristen Schaal for your own commercial use. Big eyes, the slightly curly hair and glasses. "My parents just got into facebook, they have 19 friends, how is that living?" *cut to parents having fun mountain biking with other people* "I have 840 friends on facebook."

I know everyone has come to this realization, as well at some point. We as the most interconnected society, one of the most closely related and understood societies. We know more about ourselves, the human body, mind, space and just recently, scratching the surface of physics. Yet never before has there been such a degenerated society of people devoted to remaining so devoted to the introvertic comforts of home. We become so much of a society enticed by the comforts, and no longer the serendipitous nature of new discovery.

We much would rather find a restaurant recommendation on Yelp the first time than try a restaurant that you passed on the off chance that it might be good. We strive to find the information that we dont need to find with the least amount of human interaction possible. Perhaps someone ignorant might have said, "the restaurant serves heavily lamb and other gamey meats. If you don't like the sound of occasional plates being dropped and the entire staff mocking and ridiculing you." Curiosity strikes you, though rambuncous, and racous, the warm Greek staff let you smash a plate on the floor to the yells of OPA! You would have never known. Just from someone who happened to been in a bad mood on Yelp.

 Facebook, the bane of meeting people. Its great, having the chance to meet people, reconnect with old friends you might have never seen ever again. It's great for that. That and only that. It really is no true replacement for meeting people, seeing other people on a regular basis. I have met people who are odd, too lazy to go out when invited by friends, but angry at the same friends when he saw that the friends had posted amazing and fun looking photos of that specific outing.

 So live. Go out there and go see a friend, go watch a film, eat dinner with people, play and make music with others, and all that jazz.

Nature Hath Returneth

A happy object
once the pride and joy
of a family long gone

With all but
one, slowly finding its
way, to its triumphal return
into, a world ruled by gaia
earth.

Iron to steel,
steel to stamp
stamp to object
object to value
value to pride
pride to death
death to abandonment
abandonment to rust
rust to nature
nature unto itself.

Sounds of Happiness

Sam laid in bed, her chest rising and falling to the rhythm of her breathing. Rafe also was in bed next to her, but he was sitting up, sipping from a steaming cup of coffee with a copy of the sunday morning paper spread over the entire cover. He looked over to the clock on Sam's side of the bed. It said 10:45 in bleak red bars. He leaned back against the headboard and continued to sip coffee. As he shuffled through the papers, he read whatever article caught his eye. The utility company is to change out transformers in the north part of town, Local boy wins first at the county youth swimathon, Mayor caught walking wife's dog while wearing only fur coat and flip flops. How odd Rafe thought and looked back at the article title: Mayor's caucus on creation of new dog walk wears anti fur activists over his flip-flop. I suppose that makes a little more sense. When he tossed aside the metro section, he saw Sam roll over onto her chest and an idea popped into his head. Rolling the little audio cart into the bed room, the only sounds he made were his feet padding against the wood floor and the sound of the casters rolling. He plugged the cart into the socket and from the bottom shelf, grabbed a Charlie Byrd record onto the turntable and switched on the machine. Carefully dropping the arm onto the record, he waited for magic. Then it happened with a gradual crecendo as the tubes warmed up. "Blues for Felix" slowly arose from nowhere as it passed through the speakers slowly filling the room with the rich sounds of guitar and bass. Sam rolled around once more and this time buried her head into the pile of pillows on the end of the bed. With a muffled groan, she slowly came to. The sound she made could only be described similar to when an old man gets out of a chair. While Rafe looked pleased at the cart, he didn't realize that aims were being taken from the bed. As he stood with arms folded looking at the cart, a pillow knocked him in the head and he wheeled around. There sat Sam in the middle of the bed wearing only a tshirt and shorts with another pillow cocked in her arm, ready to be chucked. As he tried to approach her, another pillow sailed towards him and this one he deflected and tossed back at her. She smiled as she bounced with each pillow thrown. "Moin moin sleepy face." "Ugh, I want to sleep." "Sleep's so overrated silly face." "No it's not." She looked at him and tried to squidge her face into puppy dog eyes. "Yuck, don't do that. You know that turns me on so much." Rafe said jokingly. This time, she squidged her face even harder to exaggerate puppy dog eyes. Without warning, he pounced on her and kissed her all over. "Aaugh, stop. Okok, I'll wake up." "Haha, here, put pants on." He threw a pair of skinny jeans at her face. As they dressed, record kept going on the turn table. With each song, Mr. Byrd kept playing as the two milled around the room. Rafe tossed out the coffee in the kitchen sink. Sam collected the papers and put them in the kindling bin by the fireplace. When chores were finished and done, the record came to a close as they plopped onto the bed tired. The sound of the record needle on the finish track made a pleasing sound Rafe thought. The drone of the dust and the click as it rolled over the finishing guide, he listened to it keep going until the action finally decided to return the arm home. He rolled over to Sam and kissed her.

The Variation of Land in California

Our great state of California is an amazingly varied place, with a possibility of being one of the most ecologically diverse states in the union. From the Klamath mountains to the Mojave Desert and everything in between, there is nowhere else in the state so varied within a boundary of ten degrees latitudenally and ten degrees longitudinally.

A recent image has been floating around the internet recently, depicting the State of California prior to its statehood. A massive lake now gone once was the southern end of the San Joaquin River. There would have been no difficulty in taking a steamboat from Redding all the way down the Sacramento to San Francisco or even Bakersfield! Imagine, hot, dry acrid Bakersfield sandwiched in between the Carrizo Plain, Techapi Mountains, Piute mountains and the Reenhorn mountains. Currently, it's a fairly decent sized city, pockmarked with tracts and oil farms. Imagine around here, one of the largest lakes in the continental US proper. (considering Lake Superior is split between the US and Canada. Drained away to feed agriculture. As sad as the loss of such a huge lake, the use of its waters for agricultural purposes the transformation allowed the central valley of this state to be used for growing vegetables and other food stuffs that now support the state. The concern of soil salination and wildlife is a major concern in contrast. But the last thing the state needs again is another Salton Sea.

When Leland Stanford arrived for his innauguration as Governor of the state, he was paddled up in a boat to the state capitol. Imagine, a city like Sacramento with Interstate five passing through it, massive tract home plots, city streets and the like, being swampy marshlands. The interruption of Nature by man is always ever present with diverting the existence of natural formation for human benefit. Back to the example of Tulare lake, the reason it disappeared was the damming of the headwaters of the Kern, Kaweah, Tule and Kings rivers. By establishing a system of dams to control flooding and allow portioning for potable water, agriculture and industry, the government in effect killed a major ecological beauty for the use of its people.

We should laud great pioneers for their ingenuity, to work the land such that people are capable of living off the land, even if that land was dry and practically unusable before. Brigham Young's arrival at the Great Salt Lake sparked a systematic irrigation of the land allowing the Mormons safe haven from persecution in 1848. Today, the city of Salt Lake City is a major flourishing metropolitan area.

We also cannot forget those who have moved tirelessly to preserve the same beauty of the land that we know today. The work of John Muir and convincing then president Theodore Roosevelt allowed for the the formation of the foundations for what would become the national parks system and the department of the Interior. Muir wrote of the mountains and the redwoods of the state of California, the beauty of the Yosemite valley and even wrote of other natural wonders of the state. His tireless efforts would preserve the forests and natural wonders for years to come.

Along the fault running from the Santa Ana mountains, across the San Gabriel and up through the Salinas valley and into the San Francisco penninsula, here the shape of the earth is caused by multiple faults running into one another. At fault for our conception of how plates and mountains work are: it seems that all mountains are formed by plates colliding and both being pushed up. That seems to be the basic concept we all embrace at least. Here along the San Andreas fault are various types of fault lines. Subduction plates, collisional plates, slip faults, etc. From this, we find the true forms of why the state's landmasses and mountains shape the way they do as we recgonize them.

A Brief Introduction to Subduction:

So what do we know about subduction? Perhaps, a few of you reading this may know, others might have looked it up on Wikipedia. In a sense, the entire earth is a constantly, rebuilding construction site. The core of this planet where the pressure and such is extremely high causes an extreme and intense heat. We know from basic physics and science that warm things tend to rise and cool things sink. So we have Magma being superpressurized and then it moves upwards. As it rises towards the surface towards the Lithospehere, it cool and creates variations in that part of the earth. Places where the lithosphere is thinner, will get pulled down, creating basins. Places where there is more variation and thickness, it tends to create land mass elevations. But back to the issue of Magma. When it is rebuilding, it creates the forms we know.

So at plate collisions whichever plate is cooler, that one will be pulled downwards and the hotter and lighter plate will rise, and actually float over. Where the lower one subducts under the other plate. With subduction, there are variations of the plate where you have the many types of fault interactions. Slip faults, strike faults, subducting faults, slip strike, etc. An excellent example of slip strike fault exists in Hollister, CA. There is one landmark that is known to many locals, and especially by geologists: a wire rail fence that stretches along a section of fault line that since its building in 1930, the fence has been stretch and pushed around showing the seismic activity exhibited since.

Back to California:

So what is it about this state that makes it an amazingly varied landscape. Every possible form of climate in the world exists here. The highest point in the contential United States, as well as the lowest dry land in North America both exist here in California, within a hundred miles of each other! From the head of the Klamath, following along the Cascades into Oregon, Washington state and ending somewhere in British Columbia. This range is marked by multiple mountains: Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Adams, Hood, Jefferson, Craters, Three Sisters, Thielsen, Crater Lake formation and Mt. Shasta. This protective covering and the shape of the lands prevents low hanging clounds from passing over this ridge, causing a temperate rain forest. Many of these head waters form along these ridgelines, causing the lush forests to have no trouble growing here.

From extreme climates also derives extreme life forms, the state also boasts some of the largest trees, tallest trees and oldest singular, non-recursive tree. The title of largest and oldest goes to a colony of Quaking Aspen in Utah. So how does the state of California get so lucky? Its hard to say, but with proper climates, good fertile soil and the ideal conditions to allow these extrmes to grow.

In conclusion, we can look into the shape of things to come. If the way things continue, the shape of California will continue to change for all eternity.

Memory of a Place

What we closely associate with most emotions and with our sense of place is through location, and the experience we derive from that location. Where from these places, we develop an attachment through sensory deviations, from working with a certain aroma, a certain sound or even the feel of a chair sometimes. So, it is safe to say, you give place to what you can derive from what you experience.

Say for instance, I worked in a cafe, the overpowering aroma of roasting coffee, the heat of steamed milk, the things all are associated with with those feelings.The way we recgonize our own home, the feel of our own bedding the warm feeling of home, and what not. It becomes in our nature to recgonize these things. If we encounter in a store, the same feeling of the sheets or the fluffiness of the pillows, then you see this as a comfort. But likewise, your sensory actions can work against in these terms. Where by finding only one aspect, we might not agree with all of them. I find everything in my room comforting, from the pictures hanging on the wall with one blank spot in a sea of picture frames, to a handmade fur throw, to the pile of drawings on my own desk. Say I went to IKEA and it just happened that one of these things was replicated with great accuracy there. Let's just say for instance: one picture frame missing on the display of picture frames. My mind recgonizes this as something similar, but at the same time, there is no fur throw in the picture frame section of IKEA. Nor are there a pile of my own drawings. Here is where I am only recieving a partial picture of a memory. Perhaps I might see this exact same thing if I should ever look at my wall and see the singular blank spot.

What we are to associate strongest are these feelings. That there in lies the greatest instance of power in our minds to make a sensory association with a certain particular event. When walking through Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, you are wowed by the sheer mass and volume of the entire building, and you will later use this as a form of association if you ever enter another church of similar volume or constrasting volume. There is no limit to this, we will always associate one thing with another just to compare. How would you describe the shape of this? Like a tea pot. How does this smell? Like coffee.

So in our work and in our time, we look for these small hints, that we can bring to the table, to make sense of the world. So next time someone asks you a comparative question, think about what sort of device you will use on your own to describe what are your biggest comparisions in life.

There's always the Memory

You sit on a rough wooden bench, the cast iron leaves press into your back and there are people mingling around the round, concrete picnic tables. The strands of light bulbs rock slowly back and forth with the slow gentle warm breezes. There is a low murmur of voices as people laugh and chat. A great lakes steamer slowly rolls by blaring its air horns as the gentle dirty wake follows it as it steams northwards. There's only a couple of people you know there, and even them you only know through work. So it feels weird to be here, with people you hardly know surrounded by more people you don't know at all. You don't know why you came, you figured on a whim, why not? You usually don't hang with these people, and you start to question why you bother coming out, these people, they don't interest you, they don't like what you like and the only relation you have with them is work. Probably a few comments about football and hockey is all.

As you're lost in thought, you notice someone sitting down next to you, breaking your thought and line of concentration. She seems to have the same amount of frustration and nervousness as you do. You want to make the conversation start, she's a cute girl with a black and white polka dot dress finished off with a satin bow around her waist, and short brown bobbed hair held back with a ribbon. You can sort of see the conversation, she'll laugh and giggle, you'll concur with what she says. Then some drinks will flow and the two of you are confounded with loose tongues as you just engage in some of the most indepth conversations on Dante's Divine Comedy.

Later that evening, the two of you'll go back to either yours or her place and engage in a nightcap, which becomes more than just that, it'll become a kiss, then an embrace, then a fuck. The next morning, neither of you have regrets, it goes on for months before you ask her the question she wanted to hear, "Will you marry me?" and she'll say yes. Before you know it, there's her in the white gown of her dreams walking down the aisle towards you in a smart morning suit in a huge church midst thousands of flowers and all of your friends. And you'll both say "I do." and there, it's done. With a poof and a shake of your head, you look around you. The flowers and church and gown are gone, just the warm summer night, the swaying lights on the walk, and you're sitting on an empty bench.

Perplexed, you look around for the mystery girl, and there she is, she just moved momentarily. You approach her, and the first thing you ask, "What do you think of Dante's Divine Comedy?" She looks at you through her big plastic framed glasses, and can say just one thing: "I like it."

Sleep With One Eye Open

Sleep with One Eye Open from Chris Thile & Michael Daves on Vimeo.

This Hip American Life

The morning is still, the air is quiet and hardly a thing stirs in the cozily furnished room. The two bay windows watching over the narrow street are uncovered, the old glass lets in a bold stream of light pool over a worn out and flattened shag rug. A small fireplace reveals the remnants of last evening's fire, the crumbling cinders perched so delicately, the breeze from a passerby would easily cause the entire structure to turn into a mound of dust. On the mantle, a variety of clocks tick, each one slightly off by mere seconds as if some one took pride and time in setting each and every single one of them. On either side of the fireplace, there are built in bookcases overflowing with old cloth bound novels, several first edition copies of famous books, some art books, and even a couple of fine press books hidden in the mess. Photographs, framed in simple wooden frames hang on the walls and sit on whatever available surfaces are around. Vintage portraits, drawings, prints and drawings get large huge frames as they are carefully placed in the wall space, to give the most aesthetically pleasing situation. Overstuffed couches, covered in pillows, sheepskins and throws sit sadly, sagging from years of overuse but there is something about the bright patterned fabrics that still show they have some life in them. A coffee table made of some stolen street sign is littered with typographical magazines, literary reviews and stumps of burnt out pillar candles.

Down the hall, the door to the kitchen is ajar slightly, mostly because it sticks in the other direction. A peep through the crack reveals a worn looking tile counter, but scrubbed clean. The dishes from last evening's dinner still sit, soaking in lukewarm soapy water. Further down the hall, another open door reveals what looks like an office but looks almost like a reading corner in some old university library. An old lion claw foot table sits in the middle of the circle of bookshelves, a single lamp in the center with several books strewn about. A copy of planetary physics, mechanical systems and a stack of dog eared Harry Potter books are what you can make out from the doorway. It would be a bit rude of barge into this little sanctuary of learning. All around you, evidence of life, scarves and hats hanging on hooks, several heavy coats and a pair of bicycles suspended from the ceiling. At the end of the hall, a door with a stolen restroom sign hints at the contents of that room and the bright sunlight streams in off to the side illuminating the stacked washer dryer.

The door to the bedroom is ajar, open only a crack. Peering in, a semi naked man is seen carefully on tip toe bearing a tray with two cups, a pot of tea and several various pastries. He sneaks to the far end of the room and places them on the coffee table in front of a couch and arm chair. He tries to pick up a cup and a slight shuffling sound from the bed causes him to panic and toss a cup in the air. Realizing the potential peril of the ceramic container, he fumbles and tries to catch it as it bounces out of his fingertips each time. Making a narrow save, he has a look of shock as he realized, he managed to actually successfully catch the cup before it broke or woke the other person in the room. The bright comforter reveals a shock of blonde hair, splayed out over the solid colored pillowcases. Replacing the cups on the tray, he pours out tea, and arranges the pastries carefully. Thinking to himself, for a plan of attack, he crawls on top of her, and begins to kiss her cheek.

Suddenly at once, the clocks on the mantle in the living room all go off at the same time, revealing a resonating barrage of bells and gongs that waft down the hall and into the bedroom. The face under the blanket stirs only slightly as it disappears underneath the comforter to avoid the kisses. Frustrated by his attempts, he walks over to the windows and draws up the curtains, bathing the entire room in light. The tea tray casts a reflection over the bed, with shadows outlining the cups plates and pot. The light only furthers the massing of blankets and pillows over the blonde head of hair. Finally, he resorts to a last measure of attack. Momentarily, the room is empty except for the sleeping person but the half naked man returns, with a record in hand. Placing it delicately on a turntable in a corner of the room, the speakers come to life with the crackle and pop of dust as the sounds of a slow jazz piece come to life. Climbing on top of the other person once more, he resumes the barrage of kisses and the face turns to him as their lips touch. A passionate exchange, he grabs her glasses and places them carefully on her face, bringing a smile as her world suddenly comes into focus.

She wraps a blanket around her shoulders for warmth as he leads her to the couch now warm from the morning sunlight. Gingerly, she begins to take a sip from the steaming cup of tea while he munched on a macaroon. They discuss plans for the day as the record then proceeds to the next song. This time, a lively uptempo solo prompts him to walk over to the machine and turn down the volume. They seem inseparable, brushing their teeth together, getting dressed together and assembling in the hall together. She asks him something and he nods in agreement. Locking the apartment door, they walk down together into the sunny street, the proprietor of the shop they live above begins to set up umbrellas for the lunch crowd soon to pack the shop front. At the corner, they part with a kiss as she walks towards the bus stop and him towards the grocery store.

The day goes by without seeing these two for awhile. The shop is packed for an hour or two with brightly flanneled and bearded people waiting for fresh made sandwiches and cuts of meat. The sounds of electric trolley buses running and the noise of San Francisco almost make the scene ordinary. The call of the vegetable seller at the corner shop, the honks of an impatient woman driver from San Bruno stuck behind a double parked taxi waiting for his fare and the talks about town of shows at the Warfield, Regency and Great American Music Hall. The ordinary scene is broken when the man arrives back home, arms laden with paper grocery bags filled to the brim with carefully picked vegetables and delicacies. Momentarily, he is gone, but returns to enter the butcher shop and picks out a decent sized side of meat. Soon after, she comes back as well, with an armful of small boxes and a potted plant on top. They go up the steps together and return to the little apartment.

Suddenly, the apartment is a blaze of motion. As the burners on the little viking stove come to life, pots and pans are rested, smeared with butter as garlic and onions are put on to simmer. The dressed up side of meat waits patiently on the counter, tied together with twine and seasoned to perfection. Meanwhile, the living room is cleaned up, the ashes swept up and discarded, books neatly arranged and magazines thrown into the magazine rack. The overstuffed chairs and couches are arranged around the fireplace and coffee table and new candles are brought out. In the dining room, the table is stretched out, the leaf brought in and several folding chairs now lean against the buffet on one side of the room. From the kitchen, the sounds of sizzling and the smells of herbs and spices begin to pollute the pantry and the dining room. The cardboard boxes reveal board games and these are placed on the coffee table in anticipation. While he cooks, she goes around setting the table, eight places in all. Satisfied, she enters the kitchen through the pantry in between the dining room and kitchen and wraps her arms around his torso. Smiling he turns around and kisses her tenderly. The moment is broken when again, all the clocks in the living room chime indicating that it was now five thirty.

The harsh buzz of the door buzzer is broken only by a crackly voice through an old fashioned call box. The door opens up to reveal the first couple to arrive, a tall bearded man with combed back hair and a chrome bag over his shoulder. His girlfriend, an equally tall redheaded girl sporting large glasses and a beanie leans in to give the blonde woman a hug. Again the buzzer rings again before the first couple can even get comfortable and the next group of people enter. This time, it's two guys, one with curly hair and a waxed mustache and the other clean shaven but sporting a bow tie and a vintage blazer. They both walk into the kitchen to talk to the man as the buzzer yet rings again. Two girls appear now, one short and slightly round but very pretty, the other about average but sporting the Bettie Page look. The both of them squeal as they see the blonde woman and come in for hugs. Soon, everyone is introducing themselves in the living room, smiling and exchanging words and glances.

Pretty soon, the dining room is filled with the smell of many varieties of food. Garlic butter onion noodles, the beef roast, a vegetable curry, pan fried onion cakes, fried rice, a tray of fish fillets, breaded and fried in oil and several loaves of fresh baked bread. As everyone sits down, all the guests suddenly produce a bottle wine they each had decided to bring. The couple pulls out a port as he explains to the host "for dessert." The two ladies had opted each to bring a bottle of white and red while the two gentlemen both opted for a bottle of red wine each. Soon, flat cylindrical Spanish wine glasses are brought out as all the bottles are opened and soon the entire group is talking, eating and between the group of two males and two females, a hint of flirting. As soon as the food is gone, the dessert is brought out, a gallon of homemade ice cream, a chocolate fondue pot and a variety platter of things to dip. The hostess jokingly remarks, "we should have bought a fountain instead." The bearded man pulls the cork from the bottle of port and begins to portion it out to the rest of the guests and before taking a sip, everyone toasts the host and hostess. Both of whom blush and kiss each other to congratulate them for a job well done.

As soon as the plates are put into the dishwasher, the group migrates to the living room where a fire is started in the fireplace and an iPod is hooked into the handmade goldwire speaker cabinet. A slow indie playlist comes on in the background as the board games are opened and a rabble of voices argue playfully over which games to play first. In honor of the group, they all choose Hipsteropoly and after several rounds, the game is set aside for team pictionary, the boys versus the girls. It wasn't exactly fair since the two guys who had come together were carving artists who worked at the print shop the host owned, but the ladies defended their ground quite well, even overtaking the guys team and eventually winning with the word Tumbler. Pretty soon, the furniture is scooted around and an impromptu dance party begins and more wine flows. Fearing his liquor cabinet might be raided, the host locks it up, but the hostess gives him that look, a sort of pouty, be nice and share look. Reluctantly, the bottle of absinthe and the brollieur are brought out and everyone in the party becomes distracted from dancing in the presence of ice water and sugar cubes.

The mass of clocks all begin to chime as everyone drunkenly turns towards the mantle, realizing the time and the necessity of sleeping in is mandatory, everyone begins to leave, the couple first indicating they have their bikes locked in the hallway. The other two groups, suddenly turning into two couples indicate they would share a cab. As soon as the last guest is gone, the furniture is rearranged back the way they were, the board games put away, the fire stoked out and the candles put out. The dishes are left to dry in the washer and the leftovers wrapped and stowed away in the fridge. She uses the bathroom first to shower while he arranges the bed, getting it ready for the night. They switch places as he uses the bathroom. Once everything is finished, they crawl under the covers and switch out the lamps and cuddle each other to sleep. They kiss one last time, "good night little boo." "Night night beau."

If-- by Rudyard Kipling (1895)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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Seeking the Ideal from this Modern World

The ideal nation has been an object of perfection for the past several centuries from Robert Owen's ideal village to the grand visions of Le Courbsier's modern day city (Le Courbsier). All of which deal with the aspects of modifying the shape of the city to modify the behavior of the people. Or the garden cities of the mid 19^th century that sought to centralize living spaces, to create a sense of place that encouraged healthy outdoor living, happiness in separation from work and the ideal environments, far away from the smokey city centers (Benevolo 46). But I intend to create a perfect society, one that picks up where these all failed in their execution (Jacobs). By taking elements of each, I intend to create a society, where equality and the reigning qualities of life rule primary.

The failure of the ideal cities of the past can stem back to their lack of intent to change, a result of only marginally challenging the structure of life and more ended up being a compliment to the then current practice of life. Their unwillingness to make a complete change to the social infrastructure of behavior, interaction and policy would result in their eventual failure (Hayden).

In this new modern society, which I shall call Perefessinia from here on out, will deal with the social structure, the cultural system, political systems and the economic systems. These four things easily can define the ideal structure of a city, the ideal shape of a city, the ideal society, the ideal body politic, and the ideal structure economic.

The Rules of the Game

Likewise with our current society, there are norms that we must accept and carry over. It is understood that our actions are a direct result of the lives of many people, activities that would cause harm to others are strictly prohibited except in recreation zones. Recreation zones shall be two hundred fifty miles square, fifty miles by fifty miles and placed at the center of every 500 mile by 500 mile grid that the country will be blocked into. Here, people are allowed free reign to do anything they want, shoot, blow things up and crash automobiles. Entry into recreation zones require a minimum age of 16, two previous psychiatric evaluations and application of a pass. People entering these zones of lawlessness are prohibited from a stay of more than 10 days and as such, electronic tracking tags will reveal where these people are hiding allowing for state police to force them out. Passes may only be purchased or in special cases grandfathered in with special permission from the state.

These zones shall allow people to enjoy themselves, unwind and relieve the stresses of modern life (Huxley). This place shall act as a sanity chamber, allowing the people to avoid the rigors of life momentarily.

Thought will be allowed free reign and shall not be inhibited in any way, psychologically or chemically. People choosing the preference of art as a career shall be state funded and allowed depiction of anything of their choosing. Should anyone be offended by the images portrayed by the artist, both the artist and the afflicted party shall meet with a state evaluator to discuss and help both parties understand the reason for the image's creation and reception. In so doing, the burden of meeting with state officials would cause people to consider making art of an offensive nature or criticizing any piece of artwork. Any images found offensive by the state cannot be confiscated without the artist first undergoing a public trial by a jury of his peers, critics, experts and the ordinary to justify why the image was created in the first place (Ball & Dagger 167).

Written text, publications for print, comics, fictional literature and any other works falling under this category shall not be inhibited in any way. Free enterprise press shall be encouraged and the use of government presses shall not be restricted except in cases where presses are restricted for government use only in the case of producing fiat currency, official document blanks and documents concerning income tax, immigration and legal status.

Punishment of persons committing any crime deemed immoral and offensive to the state and its people will be allowed either exile or evaluation in trial by the state (Kelling). In the case of exile, work camps and reeducation centers in the hinterlands will hope to modify the behavior of offender. Should the person choose evaluation, he will be examined by a jury of public peers, and the case brought for and against the person. But the people of Perefessinia should be happy enough that the idea of committing a crime is unnecessary and only then in the most heinous of cases shall the public become the jury to determine and measure against their standard of life what action to take (Brem).

The government structure of life

The government or the state of Perefessinia is not in the business of controlling every single aspect of people's lives. It shall function primarily as the watchdog of the people, the legal channel that everyone should and shall pass through for most of the primary functions of their lives (Ball & Dagger 112). The nation is divided into districts, each of which are self governing, and further on in the metropolitan area, they are in turn self governing as well, but are restricted by the laws of the district and the districts under the Government Principia. All servants of the civil sector shall be publicly elected as officials and hired or appointed as appropriate in the various departments of the state. The state itself shall consist of the following departments to manage all aspects of life not controlled by the self or in the self interest of the state.

1. The Ministry – shall deal with the heads of each of the following departments. It will be under the control of the first minister who also shall appoint a second minister to serve as his deputy.

2. The Ministry of the State – shall deal with the ruling districts and the hinterlands. It shall also deal with foreign relations with various other nations

3. The Ministry of the Interior – shall deal with all lands property of the state, public buildings, natural preserves and Recreational Zones of Lawlessness.

4. The Ministry of Industry & Commerce – shall deal with all properties under state and private ownership engaged in the commerce, trades or production of durable goods, intellectual goods, and digital goods.

5. The Ministry of Education – shall deal with all state run schools, primary through higher education. Under this ministry, the bureau of censorship shall exist as a department for the evaluation of the censorship of artworks and intellectual creations.

6. The Ministry of Defense – shall deal with all things pertaining to national security both at home and abroad. There shall be four heads in this department: The Chief of Perefessinia, The First Sea Laird, The First Land Commander and the First Air Warden. Their defensive territories shall be as in this order: State run police, Sea, Land & Air.

7. The Ministry of Health – shall deal with all items and topics related to drugs, health regulations and shall be the governing body for any and/or all medical procedures.

8. The Ministry of Justice – shall deal with any corruption found within the system and by judicial appointment seek to root out this corruption.

9. The Ministry of Revenue – shall deal with the collection and imposition of taxes to generate revenue for the state. All locations under state control including Recreation Zones are taxable locations.

10. The Ministry of Transportation – shall deal with all aspects of travel by road, rail, air or water and shall be responsible for the regular upkeep of these systems with money gained through lawful means through the Ministry of Revenue.

11. The Ministry of Civic Planning – shall deal with all aspects of city life, rural life and suburban life. The placement of buildings, the preservation of artistic, and experimental buildings and structures and the construction of any new buildings sponsored by the state or owned by the state.

These departments shall control all aspects and the heads of each are publicly elected officials who have served in the “People's Body” or the Duma. The Duma will consist of one member for every district of 8000 people. Members of the Duma must serve six years before election to the Politiburo which is conducted by Duma members alone. Politiburo members serve as the head of the 10 ministries and may deputize any Duma member to act as a second if any problems occur in absentia (Ball & Dagger 22).

The social structure of life

Where our societies of the past and present have relied heavily on spiritualism to find release of thought, there shall be no religion to distract people from the regularity of life. Things that occur as a so-called miracle will be examined by the Ministry of Education's department and bureau of science to explain. Morality, the guide rod of life shall be deemed as acceptable and unacceptable behavior by the state. The state may only reach these conclusions through public consensus through a ballot initiative. From there, morality is placed in the charge of the Duma to examine it, moved to the Politiburo for further scrutiny, examined by the justice ministry and then signed into the book of morality. Any preset morality clauses may be revoked through the same due processes of the law.

The idea of beauty, truth shall be not controlled by the state, but allowing of the people to discover on their own. However, when the idea of beauty or truth begins to interfere with a persons normal functions or duties or even reason to cause distress to another person or persons, the parties involved shall be required to meet with a government evaluator to straighten out all issues.

Considering the function of marriage and interaction, these shall be made possible under the bureau of licensing. The state shall have no interference in the union of any two persons. Polygamy shall not be allowed by the state and stipulated in the book of morals. This interference on the rights of those who do believe in poly-amorous relationships is justified by the unequal rights. Persons disputing this claim may marry multiple persons in the zones, but these marriages will not be recognized outside of that particular zone and upon departure from the zone, the contract of union shall be dissolved thirty days after the marriage unless the contract is signed a second time before the thirty day expiration date. There is no case reported where this has successfully occurred.

The commerce of life

Material goods and commercial goods for production are regulated under the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. All workers shall receive an equal income and the tax rate shall be set at 60% nationwide. This high tax rate shall create a large revenue to allow people to still enjoy the niceties of life while still contribute to the vast majority of state run programs. Heads of private commerce shall be regulated at an 80% tax rate and heavily scrutinized under the government. The increase in tax should still allow for a comfortable life as well as to protect the workers rights in equality and payment. Competition amongst corporations shall be encouraged with state prizes to allow consumers the greatest freedom in choice of products (Ball & Dagger 62).

Corporations and companies (large, medium and small) shall start as an endeavor of the private citizen with monetary backing of the state. Once the capitalist is capable of buying the corporation or company from the state, he may do so and the taxation on the company drops from 90% to 70%.

The regulation of business and industry shall be conducted by the ministry of industry and commerce only to impede whether or not a business, corporation, company or industry have corrupted any members of government. Dual investigations from the Ministry of Justice will also concede whether or not any injustice was committed. Corruption shall not be tolerated lightly.

Conclusions

Compared to what we have discussed in Brem's classes and lectures, there are many social structures that could determine the shape of the world around us. Whether or not we choose to engage in all of these aspects, is determined by our behavior. Our world around us shapes our social understanding of society, how we want it to be, how it ought to be and how it should come to fruition. I realized in the creation of this nanny-esque state how quickly my personal vision suddenly became very authoritarian. The allowance of freedoms in select locations, the government interevening in every moment to eliminate any possibility of offensive behavior, art or literature and worst of all, exile for disputing views. Partially, this derived and sounded ideal in my head from reading Brave New World, Animal Farm and watching Equilibrium. These materials all conceptually deal with ideal societies, yet have their faults. In Animal Farm and Equilibrium, there was the oppressive nanny state, the drugging, lack of feeling, and someone profiteering. In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, there are places where religion is free to exist amonst the so called “barbarians” while in the clean, modern worlds, again there is the drugging, lack of free religions and texts of a disputive nature, that engaged its readers other than in the whimsical pleasures of life.

Personally, this paper has made me more aware of how much control there is in life, both on the personal scale and by the government as well. There is an extremely delicate balance that is constantly being tipped one direction or the other in our world. Too much government or too little government will cause the social structure of life to fall apart. Personally, I like the idea of zones of free will, not regulated by excessive government control. But I think we do have something like that, only it is called Nevada. California is a great example of a growing nanny state. I really do question our purpose here, is it entirely necessary to put into law what the definition of marriage is? Are we that stupid that we need to say that this is the definition, and the only definition? The slow process of law and the weird acceptance that if law is passed, it cannot go away made me personally add the clause in the book of morals that any of them can be changed through due process.

So what do I see appealing about the world around me? I see elements that both scare and fascinate me. Things that seem like they would work on multiple levels and some things that wouldn't work at all in an entire nation. I see the bits and pieces that if the right combination presented itself at long last would become a very good combination and should we choose not to utilize this, there is a good chance that a state may fail in this or that way. What do I long to see in this world now? Does my ideal country sound appealing? Not really. But if I had absolutely no choice as to my gender, social standing, rank and race, would I live there? I would not mind.

Works Cited

Ball, Terrence & Richard Dagger. Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal 8^th Ed. New York, NY: Longman, 2011. Print.

Benevolo, Leonardo. The Origins of Modern Town Planning. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1971. Print.

Brem, Robert [Professor of Political Theory at Cal State East Bay & College of Alameda]. Lecture. Alameda, CA. 26 Oct. 2011.

Brem, Robert. Speaking Reality into Existence: Political Philosophy and Democracy 9.3^rd Ed. Alameda, CA: Department of Politics, College of Alameda, 2010. Print.

Le Courbsier. Plan Voisign. Paris, France. Dover Press, 1991. Print.

Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2004. Print.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010. Print.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Modern Library, 1961. Print.

Kelling, George & Catherine Coles. Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime In our Communities. New York, NY: Free Press, 1998. Print