Books: Food Politics

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Food is indeed political. At least this is a message that I’m being hit with a lot recently. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on TV, a show that takes on America’s bad eating habits and tries to change them, also documents an incredible amount of resistance to this change. “We don’t wanna sit around and eat lettuce all day!” says the local radio show host in Huntington, West Virginia (a city which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is the unhealthiest city in America). It seems that people will eat their crap food, earnest and well-meaning English chef be damned.

So it goes. In the context of what is wrong with the food industry, corporate America, Government and human attitude, Marion Nestle’s Food politics is a must-read. Everyone must eat to survive, but there is a fundamental battle between the Eat Less and the Eat More camps. What we need, Nestle stresses, is an Eat Less mentality, but every day and on many fronts, we are encouraged to Eat More. While what is best for people is a rational diet (preferably full of non-processed food, as Jamie Oliver tirelessly advocates on the TV program) and exercise (Eat Less), the food industry, in collusion with marketers and Government do everything in their power to sell more product, and therefore encourage more consumption (Eat More).

If only it stopped there.
This book shows:

“How the food industry uses lobbying, lawsuits, financial contributions, public relations, advertising, partnerships and alliances, philanthropy, threats and biased information to convince Congress, federal agencies, nutrition and health professionals and the public that the science relating diet to health is so confusing that they need not worry about diets: when it comes to diets, anything goes.”
--p. 358.

As Food Politics shows, there is simply a broad range of issues with the food industry that affect every single one of us: dubious health claims for products, “food pyramids” that are skewed toward consuming meat than is good for us, and armies of lawyers and a shit-load of money for any corporation who needs to mow down opposition to their goals which are often in conflict with public health.

Your Libertarian self may sneer at these conclusions. We have free choice to eat what we want, you’d say. You’d be correct. But if Food Politics and Jamie Oliver shows nothing else, it is that options for eating healthy are much less plentiful than options for eating crap. It doesn’t matter if our poor diets and lack of exercise are literally killing us via heart disease and other avenues. No--to many, our diets are written off as “personal choice.” But the options for eating well are far overwhelmed by the options for eating poorly. If you don’t believe that, then you should count the number of fresh fruit stands on the interstate and then compare that to the number of fast food chains.

Food Politics is eye-opening, though not always fun to read--it takes less of a position than you might think, given the topic. Although its essential theme is about how the production and distribution of food is run by a scary consortium of people who do not have public interest at heart, it doesn’t have the “gotcha” moments that make reading, say Al Franken or Michael Moore so much fun. Food Politics is more textbook-like, presenting the information and letting the reader draw his own conclusions. It does not ask for our anger, but it certainly supplies a reason for it. This book belongs in the library of anyone who needs a reason to support locally grown food, or to have their eyes opened to the fact that when it comes to diet, food is very political indeed.

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Books: Freakonomics

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In Freakonomics, an economist asks questions you might not think to ask, and gets many surprising answers. It is billed as the “hidden side of everything,” and while it doesn’t exactly cover “everything” (a point they will make in the introduction to the sequel) it gets as much of it as it can. Economics, according to the authors, is all about incentives: what people are willing to do to get what they want, whether that means cheating, controlling the flow of information, or breaking the law to make a living.
Sometimes the sheer audacity of the questions is shocking (does giving a child a super-black sounding name give him/her a great disadvantage in life?) Sometimes, just the answers are shocking. (Q: why did the crime rate go down so much in the 1990’s, in spite of all the predictions to the contrary? A: in a word, abortion.) According to the authors, the legalization of abortion did more to affect the crime rate than any policing or law-making or gun owning ever could have. Sound crazy? Just read it!
These are the sort of questions probed and answered, or at least an interesting suggestion is offered. Every question challenges our assumptions (for example: children are 100 times more likely to die in a house with a swimming pool than in a house with a gun) and every question causes the reader to look at interesting correlations (how the KKK and realtors are both affected by the control of information, for one).

At first I thought this would just be a disjointed collection of anecdotes, but in spite of what the authors state in the intro about there being a lack of unifying theme, there does seem to be a contrarian and counter-intuitive theme building throughout the book. Once you get the hang of it, you start to understand how the conclusions will be reached.
This book is so much fun, I burned right through it. I would recommend it to anyone who is not down with the party line and is willing to embrace unconventional thinking.

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Books: A Working Stiff's Manifesto

A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember by Iain Levison


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the story of how Levison, armed with a nearly-useless degree in English, worked 42 jobs in 10 years, quit 30, was fired by 9, and can’t remember the other 3. Throughout this endless journey (one that hits very close to home for many) he works as a cook, a fish cutter, a crab fisherman, and a truck driver, to name just a few. In every case he finds the absurdity of the job, and in a larger sense, he spots the absurdity of what passes for “work” in this country. He comes to notice that applying for jobs he’s not capable of doing is not his worst problem. Much worse is the way in which most employers are very much out for themselves, stepping on whomever doesn’t fit in with their plan. In every case he moves toward the inevitable conclusion that working for a living is nothing more than a way to keep a lot of people busy while making a very few at the top very rich.
Other than a bit of a downer ending and some less than stellar behavior in the middle, and a few dated observations of the internet (understandable as many of these events happened before things like e-mail became somewhat universal) this book is a hoot. I enjoyed every page. It’s like Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed meets Charles Bukowski’s Factotum, only for me this book was much more relatable and funnier than either of those two.
I can see where Levison’s fiction comes from, with all his characters who are trying to break free from monotonous and unbearable existences, albeit in a hilarious way. It was hard to find much about this book I didn’t like. I would highly recommend anyone interested in Levison’s work to start with this one before getting into the fiction. It is all pretty great and I count myself a fan.

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Books: Bait and Switch

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
For fans of Barbara Ehrenreich, this book is essentially a continuation of what she did in Nickel and Dimed. This time, instead of investigating the lower rungs of the minimum wage worker, she explores the world of the middle-class white- collar unemployed. As it turns out, the educated middle-class is increasingly being pushed downward to “survival jobs,” as outlined in Nickel and Dimed. People were “baited” into the idea that if you went to college you’d get a good job: you’re “set.” The “switch” comes into play when you are downsized and you realize that it was all for naught.
Ehrenreich takes the same tactic she took in that earlier book--developing an alter-ego of sorts, and she attempts to get a job in Corporate America, where she soon finds the difficulty in getting a job when there are “gaps” in your resume, creating the catch-22 of how do you get a job when the fact that you don’t already have a job works against you? She employs all the weapons in the arsenal for the middle aged middle class job-seeker: seminars, job boards, career coaches, positive thinking, a “winning attitude,” and finds them all quite lacking in their ability to help her (or anyone else, for that matter) land a job.
Corporate America is a beast. It demands an adherence to the bottom line which often means laying off employees to increase that bottom line. This is not news. But the shocking part of this investigation is the apparent reliance it has on unscientific and irrational notions of “likability” and “positivity” in hiring decisions, often without regard for actual skills.
No question, this is a depressing topic. People who are driven to tears by their feelings of uselessness after a layoff are the casualties in an increasingly cold-blooded and cold-hearted economy. It is also short-sighted to adhere so strictly to the profit-based bottom line, effectively making it so that no one can afford to buy or use whatever service the company may be offering. Henry Ford knew that he had to pay his people a good wage or else they wouldn’t be able to buy his product. It’s a lesson that would seem to have been forgotten amongst the culture of layoffs.
This is a well-done book about a topic that deserves to be addressed, and like Ehrenreich’s other books, it is funny.
I had more to say about my general antipathy toward capitalism, but I’m going to leave it at that. Read Nickel and Dimed, and then read Bait and Switch as both can say more than I ever could about it.

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Since the Layoffs, by Iain Levison

Since the Layoffs by Iain Levison


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the second Levison book I’ve read (this is his first novel). Another thoroughly enjoyable book with some themes that I recognize as ones that will be recurring (in “How to Rob an Armored Car.”). These themes are: marginalized characters working crap jobs in dead end towns, just trying to get by, who get enlisted into doing some completely outrageous criminal scheme that winds up being completely sensible within the context of the story. This one is aptly titled. Every action taken by its main character, and all the people who inhabit this story, is propelled by a huge factory downsizing, leading many who were once having comfortable middle class existences to try to make ends meet however they can. In the case of the narrator, the profession he falls into in this economy is as a hired assassin.

It’s a hoot. A brief hoot at 177 pages, but a hoot nonetheless. If you take it to jury duty or something, maybe take along another of Levison’s books, in case it’s a long day and you are spending a lot of time sitting. That way, you won’t worry about running out of reading material.
For me, it’s on to the next book by my current favorite author. This book is funny in a laugh-out-loud sort of way, absurd without being annoyingly so. It’s kind of like Clerks 2 meets Goodfellas (although I have to admit, I’ve never actually seen Goodfellas), as ultimately our hero just wants to get out of the killing business to open a convenience store.
Without spoiling the ending--let’s just say that the tone remains gleeful and fun, making light of the serious business of unemployment. Great fun!




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Davey G’s Next Appearance at Gallery 1448

Hi,
This is a bit of an odd gig for me, but it sounds like it will be a lot of fun. I will be performing a few songs at a reading called “Wash Your Mouth,” in conjunction with their Annual Erotica Art Exhibit, which is called “Heart-On: A Light-Hearted Look at Erotica.” Finally, my show is being recognized for what it really is: an erotic adventure in pre-set keyboarding.

Saturday, February 13 from 8:00 - 10:00 PM.
Check out the Flyer below for details, and hope to see you there!

Gallery 1448 is at 1448 E. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21201
This is a free event.

Books: The End is Now

The End Is Now by Rob Stennett


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was sold on this book from the comparison to Tom Perrotta, who is one of my favorite authors, and for the most part, this book lives up to that comparison. It takes the modern domestic situation and adds a theological spin: what if the rapture had a “test market,” say, in Goodland Kansas?

This story is about a boy, Will Henderson, who gets lost in a cornfield and then has a vision/dream/hallucination--it is never really clear which--that a face in the cornfield appears and tells him the three signs of the impending pre-rapture, which will take place in his town. When he relays his experience to the town, and the first of his prophecies comes true (that his school will be destroyed) the people begin to lose it. The town is already the home to a “Rapture Museum,” and all people really seem to need is a good push toward hysteria, dividing themselves into various camps of believers, doubters, and those who just want to be ready, just in case. The fact that it is Kansas and the school being destroyed by a tornado is not an unusual occurrence has no rational effect on the true believers. Caught in the middle of all this is Will’s family: Jeff, his father, who was obligated to marry his mother via shotgun wedding and now is doing his best to protect his family; Amy, his mother, for whom Will’s prophecies are no doubt the Word of God; and Emily, his sister, who wants nothing more than to become Homecoming Queen, and just wishes Will’s Prophecies would just go away.

The End is Now is thoroughly enjoyable. It takes fantastical leaps that are never quite explained, which would usually be a big detriment to me, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. It is a novel rooted in the ordinary, everyday domestic situation of a family held together by the reality of an early unplanned pregnancy, then strengthened by the bonds of responsibility and love, who are tested by supernatural circumstances. Seeing how Jeff struggles to save his family feels as real as anything, and Emily’s simple desire to be Homecoming Queen getting sidetracked by her brother, the Prophet, is believable within this context.
All in all, a great read that comes to close to being perfect, except for a minor disappointment of an ending: an epilogue that was somewhat confounding. Unofficially I’d give this 4 and a half but go ahead and call it a 5 star book.

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Books: Buffalo Lockjaw

Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the best book I’ve read all year. I kind of wish I’d read this in December so that this statement would carry more weight. Alas, it is only January, but I really think that this statement will hold up for the rest of the year. Yes, it’s that good.
There is such an obvious love for the hometown that comes out in the writing, coupled with the cold reality of facing a parent’s dementia. It is so well-done and observant (without being too cute or too clever) that it is a pleasure to read.
Buffalo Lockjaw’s main character and narrator is James Fitzroy, a near-30 year old who writes verses for a greeting card company in New York. His life, as it is, is probably not the success which all parent’s hope for, or sacrifice their own lives for. He is spending his Thanksgiving break visiting his parents in Buffalo.

His mother, Ellen, is 56 years old and is suffering from a crippling dementia: she does not even know who James is anymore. His father is Rodney, who is stern and strong while dealing with his wife’s mental disintegration, but James knows that it is killing him inside. This is a story that for many may hit close to home. James’ love of his hometown, the obvious love that the author has for it, struck a chord with me. I understand what it is like to love something even when it is completely fucked up and in many ways, hard to defend. The fact that James/Ames can find the beauty in Buffalo and its people is one of the most endearing qualities of this book. His parents are unavailable, and for James, seeing his mother, the woman he loves and respects who spent years helping people now in such a helpless position, fuels his desire to try to seek a way out for her.

None of this feels phony. Every step of this journey toward middle age, and adulthood feels real, and that is what makes this such a satisfying read. I think any adult with living parents could identify with the perils of trying to relate to them on an mature level, especially the children of this generation (28-35). There is no World War 2 or Great Depression to define what this generation is, but Buffalo Lockjaw seems to suggest that it is more defined by a sort of slouching response to everything. Our occupations are meaningless (Greeting Card writing being a wonderful metaphor and foil for the more serious work of nursing that James’ mother had done), and no one is counting on us to save the world. And if anyone is, God help them.
Buffalo Lockjaw is a love story for a hometown and I loved reading it. I look forward to whatever Greg Ames writes next.

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Snow Pix from the Snowpocalypse of '09

Davey G at the Sidebar tonight!

Doors open at 9, show starts at 10.

Probable start time for Davey G---sometime after 10. (I'm planning an 18 song set!) Then...Markitect with an Improv Group.

My next appearance...December 16 at the Sidebar!

Hey everyone,
It has been awhile since I've taken the stage, but it will be worth it. Consider it an early Christmas present, or just something for one of the crappier nights of Hanukkah.

Davey G and the Keyboard
with
Fourth Grade Security Risk
And
Markitect.
Doors at 9 (show probably will not start til 10--get there first to see me first!)
The Sidebar
218 E. Lexington Street
Baltimore, MD
21202

http://www.sidebartavern.com/shows.html
Hope to see you there!
--Davey G.

Books: Pygmy, by Chuck Palahniuk

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
One of the good things about reading for pleasure (instead of, say, reading for school or because someone has a gun to your head and says “read it or die!”) is that when I don’t like something, I can put it down without finishing it.
Thus ends my experience with the second Chuck Palahniuk book to disappoint me(the last one being Snuff). I’m sure this book is brilliant on some level, but after 2 chapters of this 1st person perspective story told in some kind of broken Pidgin English, about a terrorist sleeper embedded with an American family in some terrorist plot, I’m just getting a headache. Plus I’m troubled with this thought: why did Palahniuk decide to tell the story this way--why would Pygmy be reporting back to his people in broken English and not his own language? I’m sure it’s all part of the satire of American culture and this is so unlike me to crap on something without even getting through it, but it is this stylistic decision that has turned me off from trying to get through the rest of it.
Chuck, Chuck…you’re killing me! Snuff was the first book of yours I ever put down and said “This book sucks.” (I just didn’t like the premise and tried to stick with it but found that I couldn’t--this is what unlikable characters and unlikable situations do for me.) But I didn’t feel the need to pan it. But now it’s two in a row, and I’m starting to worry that either I’m not cool enough to get it, or maybe you’re just not the writer I thought you were. While I’m sure this is clever and amusing and has the elements that made Fight Club and Choke and Survivor so damn good, I am not going to stick around to find out. I am so sorry, you have no idea.

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My first draft is done!!!

I finished my book!
It’s called The Self-Affirmator.
This is the beard I grew in the 28 days to coincide with the novel writing.
Can’t wait to shave it off today.






http://www.nanowrimo.org///eng/user/312315

NaNo Blog Post

My "Playoff Beard", Day 11


Whew…I’ve put 17,000 words into a new month-long novel writing project as part of the National Novel Writing Month and…well, it’s going pretty well. It’s the 11th day, I’ve got my playoff beard going (I’ll shave when I hit 50,000, or on December 1, whichever comes first.) I just wanted to give the update and talk about what it’s been like so far.
This year is turning out to be tougher than last year, at least to start. I’m finding myself forgetting and now re-learning some of the things I stumbled into last year, and maybe possibly now just getting into some sort of flow. The biggest lesson of last year was to put character first and plot will come--after all the founder of the National Novel Writing Month wrote the manual called “No Plot, No Problem.” It’s true. I have no plot, but my new main character suggests a wealth of possibilities.

(Again, a shameless free plug for my last year’s NaNoWriMo book, The Best of Thunder Johnson here!)
Anyway…
The title for the new book is The Self-Affirmator, I’ll try to put up a fun excerpt or two in time.
Cheers. Word.
Okay.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Almost Time for NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo 2009

It’s almost November again, which means it’s time for the next National Novel Writing Month! 30 Days, 50,000 words, no ideas, no planning. Last year’s effort resulted in (shameless free plug to buy my new book) The Best of Thunder Johnson, a nifty little paperback that I am fairly proud of. I don’t mean to overstate it, but without the NaNoWriMo support, this book would have never happened. Now it will be my second year…let’s hope it’s every bit as enjoyable and life-changing as the first time around.
So excited! Saturday night/Sunday morning, here we go!

There are 94 words in this document.



http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Thoughts after the Tour du Port, October 4, 2009

Yesterday was my first venture into an organized bike ride: the Tour du Port, 50 mile course, organized by OneLessCar.org.
From Their site:

Every day we advocate for providing safe and effective transportation alternatives for all citizens through education, lobbying, and facilitation between our communities, governments, and state and local representatives. We believe that Maryland can be an example of the economic and social good that comes from a society where everyone – regardless of age, physical condition or economic background - has the opportunity to bike, walk or use mass transit to get where they need to go.

Why did I do 50 miles, instead of, say the 40, 20, or 12 mile course? Well, after doing an 80 mile round trip to York and back this summer, I thought 50 seemed about right. I learned a few things after that ride that prepared me pretty well for this one. For one thing, I got the water consumption right: four liter-sized bottles. And, remembering how much my hands hurt after that ride, I wore gloves for this one. I brought enough energy bars, had the right clothes (not biker gear, just something warm but not heavy), and overall, I was better prepared than I had ever been before.

I took the Metro at 6: 30 a.m to get to the event, while it was still dark out. There were more people on there than I would have thought at that hour on a Sunday, and many were sleepy. For me, half the challenge of this ride was just getting up so early. When I got to the Canton Waterfront Park, I signed in, got a pink wristband, and was told to get a “cue sheet,” which was a list of all the directions (but sadly, no map). Quite a few of the riders were scratching their heads: is this going to be confusing? How will we know where to go?

Luckily, the ride was pretty well marked. While the roads themselves were not closed to traffic, there were green arrows on the pavement, pointing which way to go, and at most of the major turns there were volunteers pointing the way.

If it is at all possible to read the cue sheets I have posted here, you might be able to figure out the route. I can tell you that we started at the park, went down through the Inner Harbor, to Federal Hill, then to Locust Point (where the volunteer pointing system broke down for a minute and a group of us got lost), then back to the harbor and over to Patterson Park, then into the heart of Dundalk and beyond…

Honestly, after a certain point I didn’t really know or care where I was. All I knew is that I was riding down a highway in East Baltimore, and as I am a pretty slow rider--ahead of the hundreds behind me but not really fast enough to keep up with the faster people--it did feel like a very solitary venture for long stretches. At least, until I looked behind me and saw more bikers coming.

The ride continued into the county, into farther points and places I’d never visited. There was the rest stop at North Point State Park, which, as I checked the cue sheet, turned out to be the 32 mile marker. Only 18 to go…

It was then sometime after this stop, maybe on the second pass of Dundalk Community College that I began to hit that wall. Tiredness, wind, and the hills were starting to take their toll. I stopped to eat another Clif Bar, change up my water and watch some more bikers go by. It was really quite a turnout. It was amazing to think about how for this one day, bikes truly ruled the streets.

I finished the ride in just a little over 4 hours, which means I was going at a pace of about 12 or 13 miles an hour. Not too bad for me.

Biking is very important to me, perhaps even more so now that I do not have a car. I enjoy the activity, the exercise, the fact that it saves me from things like having to worry about parking tickets or buying gas, plus in most cases it beats riding the bus. I don’t bike to make a political statement in some kind of Critical Mass-y sort of way, nor do I take it seriously enough to have a technical conversation about it. It is simply something I do because I have always done it. That said, I whole-heartedly support what OneLessCar.org is trying to do. Maybe if they can get people to consider altering their behavior, we can have less-congested cities, and healthier people. And while I’m at it: kudos to Mayor Dixon and her support for this event. And kudos to the city for putting up more bike lanes and to the Baltimore Bicycling Club for all those new bike racks around town.

Self-Publishing: Democratizing and very Punk Rock

This post about self-publishing was written for a contest on Goodreads.

The rules: We want to hear your thoughts about self-publishing – a blog post about the merits of self-publishing and how it might change the face of publishing in the future. What will self-publishing look 25 years from now, 50 years from now? How has self-publishing made strides in recent years? That sort of thing. Basically, we want to know: What’s your opinion about self-publishing?


I seem to have made a career in self-publishing, so it seems only natural that I would be a staunch supporter of it. I’ve always had a very do-it-yourself mentality about my writing. Self-publishing is very democratizing. It is in the spirit of punk rock, getting up and doing what you do because it needs to be done. It does not need to be dependent upon a record label or in this case, a publishing company. For me, it’s always been about getting people to read my stuff, and doing it in a way that made sense for me.

A little background: I have been writing for about 20 years now, and the brunt of my work has been in a 20-40 page photocopied and stapled book I call the Davezine. It has never been a big money-maker for me. There is a lot of expense involved and at times I have wished for the help of unpaid interns for the collating and stapling. But it is a labor of love. It has taken many years to finally come to a happy medium in re-producing these publications, and not letting my personal space become overwhelmed with too many copies of something when I don’t need them. Now I simply make them per order, keeping a small number on hand. Recently (here’s my free plug) I wrote and self-published my first book, building off of a model that I have been using for years: do it yourself, get it out there yourself. http://davecookson.tripod.com/thunderjohnson.html

Self-publishing, in either a zine or a book form provides an immediate avenue for readers, as well as being a fulfilling way to connect with readers. I may not have the largest audience, but I have a very loyal one. If it is all about building True Fans, people who will read whatever you write and go great lengths to follow you, that is empowering in a way that I feel cannot be achieved otherwise. People who have been reading my stuff for years are people that I know, people I have met, and people who feel an inclusiveness that they would not get out of a more polished and mass-produced work.

Self-publishing is limiting in that you can produce only so many items to so many readers, but it can also be a very viral thing--I’ve picked up many readers by having someone finding my ‘zine in a restaurant, coffee shop, or waiting room. Those people who find me then get to feel that inclusiveness, and then spread it to others. And that is what is gratifying about doing it yourself: it happens purely because someone out there picked it up and thought it was good. There was no heavily financed marketing campaign backing it.

Obviously, self-publishing has gotten easier over the years--the first zines I made were written by hand, later by manual typewriter and only within the last few years have I upgraded to a better computer and printer. I imagine that for people like me, the future is already here, with new programs and applications that I am still unfamiliar with.

We’d all like to be able to have someone sell our work and have nothing to do but write and count our millions. But writing is not so kind to everyone. At least when I make my own work and put it out there myself there is a chance someone will notice it. It has happened before with others who have made zines like mine (Pete Jordan of Dishwasher or Zoe Trope of Please Don’t Kill the Freshman come to mind ). I aim to produce work that is true to what I want to write, and have people (even a small number of people) actually read it. To that end, I self-publish.



www.backwordbooks.com

http://www.backwordbooks.com/2009/09/16/the-backword-books-contest-win-7-books-by-backword-authors/

My New Novel is Available Now!!!

Here!
http://davecookson.tripod.com/thunderjohnson.html


And at Atomic Books
http://atomicbooks.com/products/-/5933.html
And, if you live in Pittsfield...
At Rebel Sound Records!
http://www.myspace.com/rebelsoundrecordsthestore

The end of the road for Kyle.

I bought Kyle, my 1992 Honda Civic back in February of 2004. This was after my return from the land of Portland in a car that had traversed the nation twice, gone on many countless road trips to my homeland of Massachusetts, delivered many pizzas and rocked out to many tunes. The few months I spent mourning the death of this car were largely spent working two jobs to save up for the car we came to know as Kyle, a name I chose largely because I thought it was funny: “C’mon Kyle, you can do it!” Plus, while other more challenged men feel the need to assign female names to their vehicles, I also was okay with assigning a male name to mine.
Kyle was a two door white Civic, smaller than my first car but still the same old reliable brand. The previous owner loved it, telling me how much he liked the ease with which he could park, and how it never gave him any problems. I was ready to take it the minute I saw it. When the engine turned over on my very first try, I was sold.
First car, first love, they say it never comes again. But I grew to love Kyle, in spite of his many flaws (many of which were my fault.) Only a few months in, I was smashed into by a drunk driver at a blinking red light. The driver’s side was bent in, just behind the door. A foot one way, it would have been totaled. A foot the other, I would have been killed. I was so angry at the time at this irresponsible person who had ran the light, and even attempted to blame me for the accident, that I forgot to realize how lucky I was, and how lucky Kyle was to be able to drive away from the scene.
Later on, we broke down on the side of the road on the way to the racetrack. This would be the first of many breakdowns, and tows, the most dramatic being at a rest stop on the Taconic State Parkway, which forced me to blow over 1000 dollars on repairs, train tickets, a hotel, and left me without a car for three weeks. But he still kept going, as I kept making the repairs happen. I can’t complain too much--the little lady who drove me to the train station so that I could go back and pick up my car is the one who became my wife.
Later still, there was the time I was rear-ended on my way to (of all the fucking irony) Jiffy Lube. That was in fact my fault. This caused my hatch to be permanently closed on the bottom, but broke the latch on the top, effectively making my car a sitting duck for thieves to break in and steal my stuff. Someone stole my radio not long after this, by simply crawling in the back.
And then there was the many months where my door wouldn’t close, and I had to tie it shut with a rope. Ah, memories. It was during this period where I received my first notice for the Maryland Vehicle Emissions Test, which would soon become the bane of my existence….
I wrote a lot about this in the blog, about how my car failed the emissions test and then I had to keep coming back every month and try again. I did 16 of these $14 dollar tests and afterward I would fail and I would be given an order to re-test. At first I was really worried about what would happen if I kept failing. Then I just got annoyed. I vented my thoughts about the futility of the VEIP program, and how it doesn’t really keep polluting cars off the road, it just makes it a pain in the ass for people like me.
Then I went two weeks ago, where they told me that they could not test me because of a crack in my muffler. They gave me a two week extension for a test that was due over two years ago.
Lately, Kyle has been running poorly--stalling at stoplights, having trouble making it up the hills. So I’d hoped that maybe this muffler situation, if cleared up, would help the car’s performance. After all, the mechanic did say that Honda’s performance could be tied to the exhaust system; others in my circle indicated that my problem might just be as simple as this.
Alas, the call from my mechanic came back. Oxygen sensor, major tune up, spark plugs, muffler, right lower control arm…basically a plethora of problems, to the tune of $2000. For a car that cost me $1150 back in 2004. Whew.
I’d given up on Kyle many times over and watched him come back from the dead. But this was it. For one thing, even the cheapest of these repairs is more than I am willing to spend. For another, there is no guarantee that something else won’t break on an 18 year old car, even if it is a Honda Civic. And then there is the fact that I have been talking about going car-less for a while now--after all, most of my transportation needs now are very easily met with my bicycle. And it really all boils down to money. There was a time in my life when I would have barely thought twice about running up something like this on a credit card and just worrying about it later. But that time has past. With adulthood and corresponding responsibilities, so go my romantic notions of holding on to something beyond all reason. The adult in me says, Dave, it’s just a car. Move on. So I am. He’s getting picked up and brought to a better place. I hope that his engine and spare parts will bring happiness to a vehicle that still has a fighting chance.
I will miss having a car. I will miss having Kyle. I had a lot of good memories in that car--first dates with Michele, trips to the track (both painful and triumphant), strangers complimenting my car and offering to buy it, more trips to the homeland, the Davey G shows. On a day-to-day basis I don’t really need a car, but it has always been a security blanket, a way to supplement my biking, a way to stay dry on my way to work on rainy days. But as I drive it today, using up my last tank of gas, stalling out at every light, I tell myself: I won’t miss this. I won’t miss the emissions test or the inexplicable breakdowns.
But when you love something, it is still very hard to let it go.



NOTE: this post is still a work in progress--I’ll add more text and links and pictures later, I just really wanted to get this up now. Thanks for reading.

Books: The Great Derangement

The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire by Matt Taibbi


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The basic premise of The Great Derangement is that as Americans, we have no real leadership. We are so used to being lied to and screwed over that in essence, we are forced to create our own reality to deal with it. Matt Taibbi hilariously explores this world of derangement.
After he explains just how mind-numbingly pointless most sessions of Congress are--one bill “debated” is over whether or not to name a post office after Ava Gardner--he gets into how the Government is really run. The real business of politics, we are depressingly and shockingly reminded, is to reward donors, and is mostly run behind closed doors, far away from the floor of the House or Senate. Taibbi explores the world of the Religious Right and the 9-11 Truth Movement, and shows just how similar they really are in terms of their unwillingness to deal with reality.
I was moved by his depiction of the U.S soldiers in Iraq--Taibbi seems like he grew to genuinely care about these people in a way that transcended his feelings about the war.
There were parts of this book where I laughed out loud--his discomfort with being a zombie-like Christian in his secret infiltration of a Fundamentalist Church: looking forward to church, with the fellowship and off-key singing and speaking in tongues, all the while feeling remorse at his role in deceiving them for the sake of writing a book.
This guy can really write. Thoroughly enjoyable.




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