Dirty Nails, Dirty Wheels

A short segment on California’s upcoming foie gras ban.

From a chef: “It’s unfortunate for, for the consumer, to have it taken away.”

Is that what’s unfortunate?

From a restaurant patron, frustrated over perceived undue focus on foie gras: “I feel like people should be looking at other practices in how animals are treated. I mean, look at some of the larger farms where these animals don’t have room to move, or they’re not taken care of and they’re not healthy, and people are getting sick. You don’t hear about people getting sick from foie gras.”

People are “looking at” other animal rights abuses. You may not be, but people who haven’t crushed crucial sides of their own compassion are. Too, using the fact that other animals are “not taken care of and they’re not healthy” as reasons we should focus on other animal rights abuses instead of foie gras production is nonsensical: what part of force-feeding a duck or goose until their liver swells suggests “taken care of” or “healthy?” Further, the reason we fight is not so that omnivores will stop getting sick from eating cow shit mixed into the dead bodies they call food, but to defend and liberate the non-human animals that humankind enslaves, tortures, rapes and murders because some of us think their bodies and the things that come out of them taste good or look nice.

abookamind:

Largest farm animal rescue in California’s history. Click to watch the story of thousands of hens, from the brink of death to recovery and freedom. 

Please, donate or volunteer. And most importantly, go vegan.

(Source: toiletsnacks)

jwisser:

Lurking in a petri dish in a laboratory in the Netherlands is an unlikely contender for the future of food. The yellow-pink sliver the size of a corn plaster is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat, and a milestone on the path to the world’s first burger made from stem cells.

Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, plans to unveil a complete burger – produced at a cost of more than £200,000 – this October.

Hey, vegans: if meat could be produced entirely from a line (or fifty, or fifty thousand) of stem cells—such that no additional animals had to be harmed to produce it—would you eat it?

Yo buddy!

My answer:  no way.  It’s not okay to use animals for our convenience or entertainment (gustatory entertainment, in this case).  Their lives are their own to live, not ours to use, and even if no additional animals are being harmed through stem cell-sourced flesh, at least one was, and that’s unacceptable.  And the process being discussed in the article is not creating infinite flesh from a single sample, it’s getting more flesh from each animal used; the expectation and intent is still to kill many animals and eat them.

I see this technology as having only one possible application.  Very few people, but some—I’ve met two, maybe three in my life so far—actually cannot survive without eating animals.  Their bodies are apparently incapable of getting some of the nutrients they need through any sort of plant or fungi food or supplement, and without meat they will die.  I haven’t done my own research on this, so I don’t know the science behind it; but I took the people at their and their families’ word.  If the research in the article might mean that fewer animals have to die so that these people can survive, that would be an application I would find valid.

The goal of the work is said to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions by lowering the number of cows being raised to be eaten.  There’s a way to reduce agricultural methane emission that is easier and is morally sound:  all people who are physiologically capable of doing so rejecting the consumption of animals.

Beyond the one potential use, it’s like vegetarianism compared to veganism:  committing less murder, but still committing murder.  And as such, no morally rigorous vegan could eat it and still call themself vegan.

Palm oil is generally produced by cutting down rainforest and replacing it with oil palm plantations.  It’s a frequent ingredient in “vegan” foods, specifically baked goods—often on account of it’s in Earth Balance.  But what’s vegan about destroying rainforest?  Nothing.  On top of the outright killing of animals inherent in habitat destruction, there’s also the abominable environmental impact.  Palm oil—at the very least in its current popular form—is neither morally nor ecologically sustainable.

But I stopped eating it!  For a long-ass time I was like “Yeah, I know I need to cut out palm oil, but so many things I like have it in ‘em.”  But that’s some “I’d go vegetarian but I just love bacon/I’d go vegan but I can’t go without cheese” bullshit.  It’s not about how tasty you think something is, it’s about saving some fuckin’ lives.  Yesterday, I was sitting on the bus and I dunno, the tumbler finally fell into place or something.  I felt so happy in making the decision.  And then today, I went by a bakery I like, fearing that their salt-and-chocolate-chip cookies that I like pretty well would be the next cookie I crossed off my edibility list, but but no!  Though the bakery’s not all vegan (it’s gluten-free, actually, though I’m not), they don’t use palm oil at all, ‘cause of the environmentally fucked side of it.  So on that count, go Tula!  (That’s the name of the bakery.)

So it’s fewer cookies, more chocolate, and less hypocrisy for me.  (Until I finally start baking my own cookies again—I’ve got an ass-kickin’ recipe that works just fine using olive or whatever other oil you like instead of Earth Balance.  The baking will only impact my cookie consumption, not my hypocrisy, as far as I know.)

Next on the list:  eliminating bone-char sugar.  Some white cane sugar is bleached using burned animal bones, but because that’s part of the processing, rather than an ingredient, it doesn’t get listed on packaging.  You can know you’re safe if you’re eating turbinado sugar (which isn’t bleached in the first place) or if you’re eating beet sugar (as opposed to cane), but most products containing sugar just say “sugar.”  So I guess starting right now, anything with ambiguously labeled sugar is out too!  Cool—glad I wrote this.  (Also, brown sugar is no guarantee of safety, ‘cause that’s sugar that’s been bleached and then had molasses mixed in, rather than sugar that hasn’t been bleached.  And the ass of a mole is definitely not vegan.)

See ya later,

~Grey

Picked up Lucy Knisley’s French Milk off the free shelf where I live tonight and started reading.  Up through page 77 (where I am now) it’s cool and I mostly like it so far—the art is great, and Knisley does the “this is just the stuff I do in my life, but I tell it with enough honesty and detail that it’s compelling” genre of comics really well—but page 41 is primarily devoted to saying that the way foie gras is produced (forcing ducks or geese to eat so much that their livers swell before killing them) is bad, but it’s not so bad, because animals are treated worse in American CAFOs than on French farms.  She writes:

“Chicago banned the sale of foie gras last year.  It’s made by force-feeding a goose or duck so their livers become fatty and engorged.  (and delicious)  Yes, it’s cruel, but in terms of slaughterhouse rituals it’s comparatively better than some—the geese live free-range until their last couple of weeks, when they are fed to immobility.  I’d rather go like that than to be raised in a tiny box in some dark room, like most American poultry places… until my death,”  (All punctuation Knisley’s, though the capitalization decisions were mine, as the original is completely capitalized.)

If you heard a news story about someone being tortured for a few weeks before being murdered and eaten, would you say “Well, at least they were only tortured at the end, and not from birth—see, it’s not so bad,” or would you think it was totally fucked up?  Like Knisley, I would rather only endure tremendous suffering for a bit there just before dying than for my whole life, but that doesn’t make me willing to endorse the lesser evil.

It’s still evil.

Comics, like skating and music, is a community that I would like to see come to be known and admired for the right action of its members.  I think about tunes and boards more often, like “Hey, I want to be part of the process of changing the public perception of musicians and skaters such that one day people will hear that someone plays the drums and be like Good for them, using art to speak for justice, or that somebody just spent the afternoon hitting stair sets and say Way to go; keep up that destruction of car culture.”  Comics, though they’ve fallen out of my life a few times over the last six years or so, and as such I haven’t been thinking of them from that same angle, are totally comparable in some ways:  All three pursuits can have really amazing impact on the world, and all three are approached fairly passionately by many of their practitioners—skating is not a hobby, it’s a way of life; I do not aspire to make music on the weekends, I aspire to have the option to take weekends from music, but decline to; you don’t just “like to draw,” you’re are a comic artist.  And as all three can change the world around them, all three can be arenas for an individual’s contribution to humankind’s maddening slog toward justice.  When a given activity has both the deep, all-out gut-love of its participants and the potential to make the world better, I want it and those who are part of it to gain renown for their excellence, to be recognized as people blazing a trail to the future we actually want to see!

So a flimsy rationalization of torture and murder that hinges on cognitive dissonance coming from a really good comic artist makes me upset.

supportjordan:

REBLOG AND SHARE!

Benefit Show, Raffle and Vegan Bake Sale to Support Jordan Halliday!

January 21, 2012 - 5 pm @ The Underground (3994 South 300 West #55, Murray, Utah)

WITH: Dr. Drug & the possible side effects, Relief Society, Banned, xacrox. Featuring one time only reunions by: Trebuchet and Bombs and beating hearts.

$5 suggested donation (If you don’t have $5 donate whatever you can afford).

SupportJordan.org

jwisser:

nightsinwonderland:

thepoltergeist:

endofthetour:

ohwowlovelywow:

• If you stopped eating animal products for the environment, you are a vegetarian.
• If you stopped eating animal products for your health, you are a vegetarian.
• If you stopped eating animal products ‘cause animals are cute, you are a vegetarian.
• If you perpetuate carnism as a norm by playing “nice vegan”, you are a vegetarian.
• If you think “militant” vegans are wrong, you are a vegetarian.
• If you think animal liberation activists are terrorists, you are a vegetarian.
• If you think what you eat is a personal choice, you are a vegetarian.

Strict vegetarianism is not the same thing as veganism. The modern boom of plant-based diets seems to have shifted the view of veganism as something “hippies” did to something rich white soccer moms do. That is not veganism. Veganism is an active boycott of all animal enterprise possible at any cost. There is no such thing as merely a vegan “diet”, there is only a vegan lifestyle. A vegan lifestyle costs no more than a morally bankrupt lifestyle. Do not buy into the lie. Do not buy into the media. Do not buy into what your friend’s friend told you about vegans. We exist to counter the destructive system by which animals are harmed and exploited for human gain, all other benefits are secondary.

Abolitionist veganism is the only veganism.

Let’s talk about the bolded line.

My family can barely afford a constant supply of any type of food and we’re denied food stamps because xenophobia is okay apparently.

Contrary to what you may think, yeah, veganism is a huge economic privilege.
I know. I tried. I’m not entirely keen on almond milk and do you know how much a half gallon of soy milk costs? It really adds up. I also became severely anemic (I don’t like red meat to begin with so that was always out) despite following dietary precautions and taking iron supplements.

Sorry for putting essentially my own survival ahead of other things. Apparently because I care about myself that means I can’t possibly also still care about animal welfare, right?

I’m not a vegan. I am simply a vegetarian (Since OP make us look so beneath them in this rant). However, I’m sure that who ever wrote this is an elitist asshole. “Abolitionist veganism is the only veganism”

Sorry not everyone is keen on shoving their beliefs down other throats. That’s like an extremely religious Christian telling another Christian “There is only one type of Christianity and that’s my way.”

If you do not consume meat, any animal products, any type of food with animal products in them, wear any animal skin, and support those who wear animal skins, that individual is a VEGAN. Just like vegetarians, I’m sure people are vegans for many different reasons.

I support veganism all the way, but I don’t support jackassery. Vegans like this irritate me, and it gives both Vegans and Vegetarians bad names, because a lot of outsiders don’t know the difference.

I actively try to be the least intrusive vegetarian you know. I consider it a compliment when people I’ve known for years say “oh, I forgot you were a vegetarian.” That’s because it means I’m not like the OP here. 

It is a privilege to live a lifestyle that lets me be vegetarian. I’m lucky that my family can afford vitamins and fresh foods. I’m lucky that they have been able to afford to do things like buy me tofu, even though my mother is allergic to soy foods. If we were at a tight enough money pinch, we’d be buying in bulk, and couldn’t afford to waste food, so tofu would be out of the question.

Being a vegetarian doesn’t mean you’re inferior to vegans. Not everyone is a vegetarian for political reasons, for starters, and even if we are, it’s not as though I’m not making a point. Sure, I’m drinking milk. But I am actively refusing to eat the direct product of animal torture and slaughter. I am still making a point. I still make a point every time someone asks me why I’m not eating a burger.

But more to the point, diet is a personal choice. I don’t rant about why I’m a vegetarian (even though I’m passionate enough about it to do it for 8 years now.) because I’m not trying to convert people. People have their reasons for what they do. I have known people who couldn’t balance a vegan diet, or couldn’t do it healthily. Everyone has different dietary needs, and assuming you know someone else’s well enough to act like this is just rude.

I don’t think all vegans are like this. I just hate the attitude expressed here.

Listen, OP. I understand where vegetarians and vegans are coming from. I do. And I think ultimately the human race will be better off if we move in that direction. But the second you call me morally bankrupt just because I eat meat, I write you off as someone who has nothing worthwhile to add to this discussion and just wants to feel morally superior rather than make any actual difference in the world.

tl;dr: Don’t be a dick. It doesn’t help your case.

It’s not just a personal choice/it is just a personal choice; it’s not just a personal choice/it is just a personal choice…

I disagree with the original author’s assertion that making a wrong decision—even the very, very wrong decision of killing and eating other beings—automatically equates to moral bankruptcy.  To me, that attitude writes off anyone who makes a mistake, and that means all of us.  But when people say that this is nothing but a matter of personal choice, I feel like my chest is cracking open and my heart is being thrown on the floor.  To say that electing to not use animals and animal products is not an issue of morals, but simple personal preference—or even that it is an issue of morals, but only a bit, and is not very important in the big picture—stuns me.  It leaves me grasping through air to understand how someone can look at another being, living their life, and decide to pay to have that being killed, and then eat their dead body.

Reducing consumption of animals, eliminating that consumption, and reducing consumption of products animals are kept and harmed for are all steps in the right direction, but until you eliminate outright your support (monetary and otherwise) for unnecessary violence against non-human animals, I think it is a fairly unambiguous factual statement that you are doing something wrong.  The original poster’s belief that in so doing, you are yourself inherently wrong is a step I cannot take (as I said, it essentially insists that no one is a good person, but I believe in fact just about everyone is), but animals feel.  They feel love, they feel joy, they feel pain, they feel fear, they feel anger.  Anyone can see this in an instant, and honest people do not deny it.  Ending an animal’s life extinguishes their ability to feel those good things every bit as much as ending a human’s life does, and raising an animal in violence and degradation is cause for the same emotional, physical and mental agony as it is for us.  Free range and cage free and grass fed and careful slaughter techniques are like making sure that someone get lots of time to go for walks and live in a safe home and hang out with their friends and eat good food before being efficiently murdered and eaten:  sure, it’s good that conditions during life are less bad than torture, but the end result is still unwarranted killing.  There is no need to choose the lesser of two evils when a not-evil option is available.

I hear people say “Sure, animal rights are important, but look at all of the problems that humans face—war, sexism, famine, racism, natural disasters, homophobia, corruption, the list is huge!  How can you justify putting energy toward saving non-human animals, when we humans have so far to go?” and I feel like the argument is largely a tool to avoid looking a change of habit in the face.  To say that there are too many problems in the world, so you should pick only some to fight, and never speak out against others, is ridiculous.  Being vegan does not keep me from being a feminist.  It does not prohibit me from questioning my racist assumptions.  It doesn’t take so much energy that I can’t analyze and speak out against government-corporate revolving door arrangements.  Why on earth would fighting for justice for other species mean I’m unable to fight for justice for my own?  And a commitment to non-human animal-rights can be among the least time- and energy-consuming changes you can make it your life.  Going to rallies against fur farms, lobbying public officials in support of more stringent protection for wild animals, et cetera, is awesome and wonderful, but you can also have an enormous impact simply by deciding to switch the things you eat, wear and use from forms that come from animals to forms that do not.  It’s a bit of an effort at the beginning, and from time to time you’ll learn of other products that unexpectedly use animals and have to pare them out too, but overall, it’s largely just a change of mindset and a substitution of consumables and clothes.  Your fight for everything else you care about continues apace.

I am not convinced by those who say veganism is inherently expensive.  Yes, processed vegan food containing multiple ingredients and prepared through demanding industrial processes is expensive, just like comparable non-vegan food, but there is nothing expensive about rice and beans, apples, soup or roasted vegetables.  Regarding the added cost of supplements, I know that some people take them out of absolute necessity, and that’s outside the range of my points, but many people do not need them.  In my experience so far, all of the same nutrients that can be gained from non-vegan food are in cheap plants too, if you eat the right ones, and if you can eat an omnivorous diet without supplements, careful choices will probably let you eat a vegan diet without supplements too.  Let me be clear in that I have not extensively researched these claims—these are purely my impressions based on my experience as a vegan currently living on about $800 a month, and they are not supported by any outside nutritional, economic or other facts.  Furthermore, as I said, some people must take supplements, and others—not many, but some—eat animals out of actual medical necessity.  They cannot get the nutrients their bodies need any other way.  I do not claim to be able to speak to the cost of meeting their nutritional needs.  But most people can be completely healthy on a very simple—and as such, inexpensive—vegan diet.

Passionately and vociferously fighting for veganism is not like a religious fundamentalist insisting others follow their dogma.  It is like someone who believes murder is wrong insisting others not commit murder.  It’s not only about how your actions impact you personally; it’s about how they impact others.  And in the case of animal exploitation, the impact is dire.

Fostering exclusionary, true-believer mentalities is not going to create the universally inclusive and compassionate society humankind is gradually, agonizingly slogging its way toward.  But neither is discounting the lives of non-human beings so drastically that we are willing to subject them to slavery, torture, rape and murder so that we might continue to enjoy a higher standard of convenience or comfort.  It is a choice.  But it is not just personal.

(Source: toiletsnacks)

I dearly wish they weren’t on a major, but they still manage to kick ass.  (They used to be on Fat Wreck Chords—now they’re on Geffen, which is owned by Universal, which is owned by Vivendi, which has ties to Rupert Murdoch’s motherfucking News Corporation.  Like, that Rupert Murdoch’s that News Corporation.  My people!  Come on!)  Who knows—maybe they’ll jump ship someday and swim to shore.  All the same, I think a lot of their music is fuckin’ great, and this is probably my favorite music video ever.

Rise Against, “Ready To Fall.”

Various bits

Written Tuesday, 9 August to Friday, 12 August:

So today I finally found a direct route between the trailer house and the north side of the little peninsula on which I live. Up ‘til now, my exploration of the north side has been limited to one trip, ‘cause getting there was a bit of a hassle, with a long busy road to walk down and (as far as I’ve seen so far) homogeneous urban sprawl to go through, but today, after skating to the east end of the peninsula and overshooting the ruins that were my goal, I found myself on the north side, having gone all the way around. I didn’t want to retrace my tracks the whole way back, and though I could see the route I took last time (with the busy road and the urban sprawl) from where I stopped to get some peanuts and a banana for a recharge, I wasn’t too hyped on the idea of going that far around Nakagusuku Bay only to follow a concrete-hot, car-loud road. So I decided to shoot for this goal I’ve been playing with for a while, and search for a route back up to the ridge where I live that goes direct from the shore on the north side. There isn’t one on my touristy guide map, so I looked up the hill for what seemed like the most promising spot (things that might be guardrails peeking through the trees, buildings high up the slope), and started walking (skating where it was flattish). I got higher and higher, each time I could still see road ahead after a turn giving me more hope, and cars kept coming down the hill toward me, and when I saw a little van with the logo of a restaurant on the south side of the ridge come my way, I felt pretty confident—and it worked! I came out just east of the two windmills that I can see from the trailer house, not ten minutes’ skate from my front door! This should facilitate further—more specifically, faster—exploration of the north side, for which I am glad. Also, the route up the hill was pretty cool—very steep, steep enough that they groove the road for traction, and mostly farms and forest. Quite mellow. Victory!

Other collected thoughts from the last couple days:

It seems like it might feel really good to be a gecko. You walk around with your silky wrinkly body swishing against everything around you, step-slithering your thin-skinned lithe belly up walls and around corners and over ledges like you’re being stroked wherever your nimble-toed self goes.

Two boys and their mom came for a ride the other morning at the farm. Afterwards, I walked around the field with the boys as they caught bugs with a net and plastic case (inago is a kind of grasshopper, kometsuki-mushi is a click bug (kometsuki is the motion of flailing rice to separate the edible part from the rest, I think, and mushi means insect)). For being as interested in bugs as the older one was, he didn’t seem to have much care for them as beings: he handled them roughly, heavy-fingered, as if they were coins or pebbles. Squeezed them like bus fare into his little plastic box. I ripped up some grass and other little plants and put them in so the mushi would have something to eat.

I’m getting more time off! The farm’s profile on the WWOOF Japan website noted that volunteers here would work more than the standard WWOOF 30-hour week, but I never figured they meant the 55 to 60-some hour weeks that I’ve been doing. So I asked Hime-san if I could have more time to go exploring around the area—one of my big reasons for coming here—and she said yes! When there aren’t customers scheduled to ride, I get to leave, giving me half-days and whole days off! This Wednesday, the morning was the weekly lesson for a group of kids, but the afternoon was mine! I wandered down the hill, found a waterfall I’d seen from the car, went down near the shore, poked around this concert hall, saw some ruins (I think…?), found a free lock and key on the ground (rusty, but some WD-40 should fix it up), and ate a tasty apple. And what’s more, since it’s usually dark pretty soon after work’s been ending, I’ve mostly just been skatin’ for my commute each day, not truly making good on the “Dirty Wheels” part of this beast’s name except some times on my single day off per week. So now, with the new free-time paradigm, I shall go for to ramble.

Whoa, wait it’s August! Wow. Like, I knew it was the month after July, but seeing it written out, it just kinda jumped at me—it’s really here! And furthermore, I’m posting this on the first day of the second half of my stay—there’s officially more behind me than in front, and not just ‘cause riding’s toning my butt (it’s not, actually, at least not as far as I know). I feel good about the second half—now that I’ve got more time to explore with, I think it’s gonna be closer to what I came here hoping for.

A note to all omnivores who might at any point serve food to vegans and/or vegetarians: Sometimes we (veg*ns) hear things like “Oh, we’ll order one pizza for everybody, and you can just pick the sausage off,” or “Yeah, the whole thing was cooked with fish in it, but I took it out of yours—if I missed any, just eat around it.” I can’t speak for everyone, but for many of us, that is so not how it works. So wildly, utterly, completely not the way it works. I haven’t yet come up with a really good analogy, but the rough one I’ve got is this: imagine you’re buying a house, and the seller tells you “So, there was a grisly triple homicide here ten years ago, but don’t worry—it was in the basement, not any of the bedrooms, so it’s chill.” Think about it: we (a lot of us, anyway) see killing and eating animals as torture and murder and eating dead bodies. The fact that the bits of the corpse that used to be in my food have been picked out doesn’t keep the taste of them off of the rest of the dish, doesn’t keep the fluids that once pulsed through that being’s body from being all the fuck over my rice. That shit is still there, and that shit is not food. And if we, in situations where we don’t want to cause offense or a hassle (like traveling in other countries) queasily pick our way through what we’ve been served, and realize too late that we missed something in the bite we just took, we goddamn well don’t like it. And if we’re not so concerned about causing offense or a hassle, sometimes we just don’t get dinner—or we’re told “You can eat the salad!” Yeah, ‘cause people who have trouble finding adequate protein and fat in mainstream cooking every damn day really want another plate of iceberg and onions. None of those options is good. Many of y’all omnivores are well aware of this and hella considerate, but in case you weren’t: be aware. And tell your friends. “Pick it out” is a terrible approach. If you were chilling with some cannibals, and they told you “just pick it out,” you wouldn’t like it. It’s like that. And though actual body parts are the worst (for me anyway), “pick it out is nonsense” still very much applies to milk products, eggs and honey. Also, I’m thinkin’ the same is true for many people with food allergies. And in their case the consequences could be much worse: “Just pick the peanuts out!” “If I miss one, I will die.” And even a milder allergy can leave somebody’s stomach fucked up and them in miserable agony for the rest of the night. A related concept, for veg*ns and folks with allergies alike: “Oh, there’s only a little bit of [untenable ingredient] in it, it’s okay.” Not gonna fly, buddies—not gonna fly. Likewise, vegetables grilled on the same part of the grill as animals without cleaning it first. Please speak up if you notice any variant on these situations about to go down—we will be so very grateful.  And lastly, my upset tone is not meant to be accusatory or derisive, but rather to convey the frustration and pain that goes along with this issue.

The other night, there was a party at the farm—a bunch of Ma-kun’s friends all came and there was food and laughing and little kids. Since Kondo-san, one of the guests, is a musician, Ma-kun said I should bring my guitar, and maybe we’d each play a bit. Kondo-san forgot her instrument (she plays something called a kalimba (no idea of the proper spelling, sorry), which as I understand it is similar to an mbira, with the metal tines you play with your thumbs), but I was encouraged to go ahead and play anyway. I was nervous, but I did it! It’s the first time I’ve played guitar publicly outside of the awesome but extremely forgiving Indigo Bridge Open Mic. Granted, a culture renowned for its extreme politeness is probably not gonna make for the toughest crowd either, but still—it was the first time I’ve played in front of mostly strangers, and it went okay! I may’ve been wildly off-key, I’m not sure (I often am), but it felt alright, and overall, it went down fine. East Bay Night by Rancid and Wildwood Flower by the Carter Family. Other interesting stuff at the party: the super-drunk potter who was soooooo amped about the fact that my name is Castro, and kept insisting that I look like Che Guevara. He kept standing up and putting his hands on my shoulders or holding my chin and patting my cheek really hard. There was also his friend, also a potter, and a saxophonist too, with whom I chatted in half-English half-Japanese about jazz, sweet potatoes, Obon (a Japanese tradition honoring the dead that’s about to start), and the American military-industrial complex. Those topics make it sound like we were able to get a lot deeper into our subject matter than we actually were, though—his English was better than my Japanese, but not better enough that we could speak with much nuance (although his comment that Japanese music has very little improvisation because musicians lack feeling (I think that’s what he said) was very interesting—I wish we could’ve talked more about that). Too, Kondo-san’s daughter and her fiancee were there, and her fiancee is an American soldier. We talked about skating (he shortboards), he said he makes beats, and he was gonna freestyle for the guests after I played guitar, but he felt too put-on-the-spot to get into it. He’s a nice guy—we exchanged numbers, and might hang out some time before I go (maybe swap boards a little bit and ride…?).

 Speaking of skating, check out this video. It’s the beginning of Long Treks On Skate Decks: Morocco,the second long-distance longboard voyage by distance-skating heroes Adam, Paul and Aaron. The first trip, through Peru and Bolivia, resulted in a super-rad series of videos, also on youtube (highly recommended viewing, even if you don’t skate), and this new trip just started being posted.

I’ve been thinkin’ that what I’ve believed for a few years now, that our species is currently so nastily socialized that we probably aren’t ready for anarchy yet and should have a few generations of detoxifying socialism first, is wrong. I think we should just go for anarchy. I was thinking that to say people “aren’t ready” for it is perhaps no less insulting than capitalists with profit to gain from exploiting poor countries saying those countries’ populations “aren’t ready” for democracy, ‘cause both share the idea that some people aren’t ready or worthy to decide their own fates or guide their own lives, and that someone else should get to call the shots. And that’s not cool. Certainly we have a lot of bullshit to work through on the way to something healthy, but we can do a pretty good job of working through bullshit when we put our minds to it. There’s no reason every person on this earth can’t understand every other person’s inherent worth, and act with compassion and respect toward them—it may be a difficult point to get to, but it is possible. People with all the reason in the world to hate each other have made peace time and again throughout history, so we definitely have it in us. Why wait?

Love,

~Grey