sidewalk rage

BOSTON, Mass. - A suburban woman caused a five-pedestrian pile up on Hanover Street yesterday when she stopped dead in her tracks to seach her handbag for breath mints before meeting her fiance for a romantic dinner at Lucca. No one was seriously injured, but several pedestrians, all of whom live in the North End, fled the scene angrily, and witnesses say one pedestrian verbally assaulted the woman who caused the accident.

This isn't the first reported case of sidewalk rage. Over the last few months, this New England city has seen an alarming rise in reported cases of the pedestrian equivalent to road rage. While experts say no conclusive research has been completed, there seems to be two common factors that cause road rage and sidewalk rage: cellular phone usage and stupidity.

"I don't know what's wrong with these people," said Norton Endre, 36, of Boston's North End. "It's [Hanover Street] a busy street - the main drag - and the sidewalks are narrow. Just move to the [expletive] curb if you're not gonna move down the street."

Sal M. Prince, 25, agreed.

"It's bad enough people drive like idiots on Hanover Street," she said. "I mean, between the double parking and the six-point turns in the intersections and the subsequent screaming matches from car windows, we've got enough idiots in the neighborhood. The last thing we need is is this idiocy moving out of the cars and onto the sidewalks. I mean, when I get off work, I just want to walk into my building without having to battle my way through a congregation of people ooh-ing and ah-ing at that stupid life-sized chef statue my landlord puts out in front of his restaurant."

Meanwhile, members of the local business association are concerned about the way neighborhood residents treat visitors here. They say the visitors - largely tourists - are key to the economic health of the area.

"We need to keep the tourists coming back," said Dan Corpratore, the association's vice president. "Sure, it might be a nuisance to always come home to heel-to-toe traffic and Joe Schmoe holding up the line to answer his cell phone, but it's the price we pay for living in a neighborhood as beautiful and historically rich as this. The tourists support our economy, and we need to treat them with respect."

That's why Corpratore said his organization is going to start a public awareness campaign urging people to be nicer to others around them.

But in this city known for its residents' icy relations with everyone around them, it remains to be seen whether the business association's campaign will garner any support.

"It's a nice idea," Prince said. "But we're not known for being nice. That guy stopping foot traffic because he can't walk and talk on his cell phone at the same time - if he's in the way when I get over there, he's getting shoulder checked and getting a mouthful. I got places to be - I don't have time for that kind of BS."

extras in the movie of life

Upon exiting the Government Center T station through the turnstiles, I hear it:

"Animal rights. Sign the petition."

The shout is monotonous. The speaker's face, expressionless. If she were a stand-up comedian, I would call it deadpan. But I think she's serious. I think she really wants people to sign the petition. With a complete lack of passion or enthusiasm, though. It's like she's been put up to it.

Rather, it's like my life is a movie with bad extras. Where do they find these people?

nature: only in mexico

The wind rushes through downtown Boston, and the air is cool enough to necessitate use of a scarf. It might not be snowing, but it feels like it might. Right near City Hall Plaza, in front of the Holocaust Memorial, a woman is walking, barefoot and bikini-clad. Some green palms provide her shade. A man in board shorts is nearby; he's got a volleyball net set up and is looking for someone to step up to the challenge.

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

And I just might join these beach bums if I weren't on my way to work. Oh, and if they weren't enclosed in fiberglass "promobus." Yes, these are real people. But while my ears reddened in the wind, they were on display in a heated U-Haul truck with transparent walls, sand lining the bottom and tropical plants scattered throughout. The lower rear of the truck had a slogan painted on it: "Nature: Only in Mexico."

OK, so that isn't entirely true. I don't remember what the slogan was exactly, but it was along those lines, and it was that absurd. Clearly the U.S. is going to destroy Mexico's ecosystems while it's working on obliterating its own. So even in the future, if there's only one place left to find nature in the world (aside from that fact meaning we're entirely screwed), it certainly wouldn't be Mexico. But it's a nice idea.

Though I can't say such nice words about the means of advertising. There's something just creepy about a life-sized snow globe with real humans inside (or sun cube, as the case may be). But apparently these are award-winning sun cubes, and they're traveling to a city near you. (You can also find the press release here.)

On the plus side, they're too big to shake. But they're just the right size for gawkers and frat boys with cameras.

new news

Misanthropicity isn't getting updated anymore because its creator now has better things to do, namely his brand new daily newspaper in Cambridge, Mass. For city dwellers here, we've now got a free Monday-Friday paper that beats the hell out of the Metro when it comes to, well, any original content. This isn't the place to get your national or international news; the articles are written by locals for locals, part hard news and part features, and there's an hour-by-hour events calendar with easy to find categorical tags such as "rock," "lecture," "comedy" and "art," among others. The design is clean, the editing is tight, and I just hope it takes off, because it's filling a gap and filling it well. Oh, yes, the important parts: it's called Cambridge Day, and you can pick it up only in Cambridge, mostly in retailers and restaurants (think local businesses such as convenience and grocery stores, 1369, Rosie's, etc). You can go to Cambridge Day online if you want to check out submission and advertising policies, but the content is restricted to print at this time. Oddly, none of the local media has yet caught on or done a write-up or mention in a media column. Get on the ball, people!

make the bosses pay

After attempting to read some of the actual proposed healthcare legislation (Health Care for All has all the necessary and updated reading) as well as news coverage, something strikes me as interesting: how employers play into all this healthcare discussion.

You see, businesses that provide employees with healthcare will get some perks, and businesses who don't provide healthcare will have to pay a tiny bit of money to the state. All this after a lot of lobbying and politicking, of course. But it appears we're only talking only about employers who provide healthcare to full-time employees. This is significant because people who work in retail often would glady take the company health insurance - but the bosses prohibit them from working over 39 hours and thus keep them in part-time status, denying them benefits they deserve. Of course, this means big corporations that provide heathcare to their few full-time employees and otherwise carefully plan ways to keep everyone else classified as part-time would be exempt from paying money to the state to cover all those uninsured workers ... those uninsured workers they created.

healthy appetite

Finally, a story that addresses what Massachusetts residents might actually get from any one of the mandatory healthcare plans being discussed at the statehouse ("Is a $200 policy for healthcare realistic?" Boston Globe, 11/2/05).

Anyone living in Boston knows that the federal poverty level is laughably out of touch with the actual city poverty level. And I'm skeptical the state's subsidies will be enough. People whose income falls between the 200 percent to 300 percent FPL range are barely scraping by in Boston. I know because that's where I fall. After payroll taxes, student loans, rent and utilities, I barely have a total of $200 left for the month - let alone $320 to cover the premium that would be provided under the House plan. Those subsidies would have to be amazing, because when it comes down to weighing the decision between eating (and maybe having enough left over to see one show or movie that month, if I'm lucky) or paying for a healthcare plan (and one I can't even use because the co-pay would put me over-budget and in debt), the choice is simple: I choose food. It certainly has nothing to do with feeling invincible, it's just practical.

same old shit

You'd think after weeks of not updating, I might have something verbose to say. But it's short and sweet: I hate cops. It isn't enough to be a powertripping asshole. You have to make up laws, detain people unnecessarily and waste taxpayer money to boot. Fuck the police.

above the law

In June, Roxbury resident Bert W. Bowen was shot three times from behind and killed. In July, mentally ill Luis Gonzalez was shot dead by intruders who broke down the door of an apartment he barricaded himself in. In October, Victoria Snelgrove was shot in the eye with a "less lethal" weapon and died.

Their killers will never be held accountable because the killers were "doing their job." The public doesn't even know the murderers' names; the media has not printed them. But we do know Bowen and Gonzalez's murderers are on the streets - a spokesman for the police confirmed that much about his co-workers.

The public and the press largely ignored the deaths of Gonzalez and Bowen because they were perceived as criminals - men of color who posed a threat to police, despite witness accounts to the contrary. But since Snelgrove - a young, white college student - was accidentally murdered, apologies have been made, and perhaps the coverup - er, internal investigation - of her death will be completed. The promised internal investigations of Bowen and Gonzalez's deaths have never been done.

What sort of unjust world do we live in that allows these fatal encounters - and many nonfatal ones - to go unnoticed?

If I accidentally killed someone, even if I felt terrible about it, I wouldn't get trauma leave from work. I would get handcuffed, taken to the police station, roughed up, interrogated, maybe bailed out, and charged with - at the very least - involuntary manslaughter. My name would be in the press along with the names of those who died.

But these killers are above the law because they are the enforcers of the law. And it's tragic that there's no one willing to hold them accountable.

bringing the war (closer to) home

Yesterday's Boston Metro (mysteriously not in the Metro PDF archives) induced a smile - not a rare feat for the 24 hours in 24 seconds rag. For those unfamiliar with the Metro corporation, it publishes daily papers in cities across the globe. It's popularity and high circulation are largely due to the fact that it is free, staff are hired to hand out copies to people boarding the T, and the format is a tiny tabloid that has tons of two-inch stories. It's a paper full of wire briefs, and you can read the thing cover to cover on a short train or bus ride.

Today, the lead headline said "20 killed in inside job," referring to the bombing at a army mess tent in Mosul, Iraq. It's not that I'm a sadist, but the only way the U.S. occupation is going to end is by force, and if people on the inside choose the side of the oppressed and occupied peoples, or if infiltrators do the job (or both), then it's going to bring about the end of this clusterfuck sooner. U.S. soldiers should have never invaded Iraq in the first place.

For people who think the U.S. needs to kick some ass and take names and can't understand why people in places such as Fallujah are fighting back, let me try to put it into perspective: If France decided the U.S. (or whatever country you live in) was a threat to its security, and tomorrow French soldiers parachuted into your hometown, rolled in the tanks and started patrolling, setting up checkpoints and generally denying you access to necessary resources, how would you react? If groups of men who speak only another tongue came in with guns, searched you at every major intersection, interrogated you with the assumption you were a terrorist; if they stole your food and bombed your power and water supplies and hospitals (and your home, which was "within range" of the blast [read: an unadmitted target]), would you smile and let them do it? Or would you fight back for the ability to control your own destiny and keep control of your neighborhood? Perhaps you would flee for safety in a neighboring country or state, hoping one day to return to life as you knew it. But even then you probably would know that life as you knew it was being annihilated.

just deserts

Some corporate whores finally might get what's coming.

I'm not holding my breath, of course, but the case is being handled outside the United States, so it stands more a chance than the usual comical theatrics of "charging" U.S. corporations for their crimes.

The Associated Press reported today that U.S. mining company Newmont Mining Corp. admitted that it released tons of mercury in Indonesia. That's 17 tons of mercury into the air and 16 tons into the water over a period of five years.

Internal reports obtained by the New York Times indicated that the company didn't abide by public claims that it was adhering to U.S. environmental standards. But the company still denies that its toxic dumping had any effect on the health of the people.

Five corporate whores face trial next month in Indonesia for the pollution - an American, an Australian and three Indonesians. A guilty charge carries up to 15 years in jail.

Meanwhile, villagers filed a $543 million lawsuit against the company. I hope they get their money, but money really is no compensation for the destruction of their health and their land.

It's interesting, too, because recently there has been coverage of a study on herbal remedies imported from South Asia (full study published in JAMA). The study found toxic levels of lead and mercury in the medicines. I wonder what this Indonesian village does to survive in the international capitalist market. It really wouldn't be surprising at all if traditional medicines were becoming toxic because of the polluting U.S. corporations that moved in next door...

unaffordable housing

The U.S. dollar has lost a lot of buying power over the years; the value of wages has declined, and still we have nowhere to look but at a continuing downward spiral.

One piece of this ever-widening wealth gap is housing. "Affordable" housing is not really affordable if you're a family (or an individual, for that matter) supported by someone working full time at minimum wage. This is self-evident if you use the federal standard: Using more than 30 percent of your income toward rent and utilities is considered unaffordable. But of course this "standard" is meaningless in the context of other federal standards: the poverty line, food stamp eligibility, welfare eligibility, the minimum wage, et cetera, et cetera. These figures are all based on national averages, not on calculations of the cost of living in the particular place where a person is living.

Also, housing can be deemed "affordable" when it is affordable (by the 30 percent standard) for people who earn 80 percent of the median income in that particular area, which completely excludes the people who have the most need for genuinely affordable housing.

This may all seem pretty obvious to anyone who cares to think about it, but of course people in positions of power either don't think about it, don't do anything about it or know that they have to keep people in poverty to retain their power and wealth.

In today's Boston Globe, there was an article about a study on the cost of living across the United States. In Massachusetts, a wage slave needs to earn $21.24 an hour at a full-time job to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment and pay utilities there (based on the 30 percent standard, of course). The minimum wage in Massachusetts is $6.75.

at peace

Despite the fact that I cannot stand some people's inflated sense of of self-importance, in spite of the fact that it's cold as hell and daylight ends at 4pm, irregardless of the fact that I'm broke as ever, even if I'm spending the holidays in dreary New England, in spite of everything, I'm in particularly high spirits for no obvious reason.

This season of frigid air and quiet, dark mornings, hot chocolate and feeling restless and out of shape - this season usually makes me feel discontented. But right now, for some reason, everything feels right.

nyc library: just a type, point and click away

Some years down the road, anyone with an internet hookup will be able to go to the New York Public Library, the Harvard library - or maybe you'd rather peruse Stanford or Michigan University's offerings. Hell, you'll even be able to go to England's Oxford University library.

Last night Google announced that is embarking on a crazy journey, scanning the stacks at these libraries for its search engine. Google Print results already have been popping up in my online research. The project has amazing potential, if only those damn copyright laws weren't in the way. According to the Associated Press, the NYC library is letting Google scan "a small portion" of its books no longer covered by copyright; Oxford wants all its holdings published before 1901 in the system, while Harvard is limiting its participation to 40,000 books and waiting to see how well the process works. Otherwise, copyrighted results in Google Print return the cover, pubishing info, and the first few pages of the actual text.

Of course, this isn't terribly different from the exisiting Gutenberg Project, which already has amassed a decent collection (of e-books (13,000) through a lot of work with people who have a more open-source, collaborative attitude, including the volunteers who proofread GP e-books, Distributed Proofreaders.

Uber-mainstream Google may have the funding and resources GP does not, and thus will probably get a lot more books online a lot faster. But that just means better access to information for folks across the world, and PG can focus its efforts on texts other than the collections at the libraries Google is working with. Hooray for accessible information!

marriage vows to be only means to healthcare

Domestic partner benefits were pioneered in Massachusetts; it's a natural progression that Massachusetts also is the home of the first state-sanctioned gay marriages (in this country, anyway).

But "state-santioned" is the operative phrase here - and the problem.

In today's Boston Globe was a story about the inevitable fallout of gay marriage: namely the loss of healthcare benefits for unmarried partners. Because both gay couples and straight couples in Massachusetts now can be married, companies are cutting the ability for employees to share health insurance with unmarried partners. They say this is a move to re-level the playing field.

It's a move in the wrong direction, but it was the inevitable side effect of gay marriage. Unfortunately in this society, marriages are sanctioned by the state (and often a church), and with the state's blessing come privileges.

At this point in history, it was a more reasonable goal to move toward equality by allowing gay couples to participate in existing establishments rather than to try to dismantle those establishments. But it ends up being a "one step forward and two steps back" situation. On the surface gay marriage appears incredibly progressive, even radical. But it means we give up some benefits gained by unmarried people. Regardless of whether those benefits were initiated for people who could not legally marry, they also served those people who consciously chose not to marry, including polyamorous people (who also can't legally marry); atheists and pagans who see marriage as a function of the church, historically sexist and patriarchal; and people who don't think the government has any business sanctioning their relationships.

People shouldn't have to be married to get heathcare benefits, hospitial and jail visitation rights, rights to court-protected privacy in conversation (wife/husband conversations are treated like doctor/patient and lawyer/client conversations - they are confidential and the court normally cannot make you discose such conversations), tax benefits, pension benefits (if the receiving member dies, pensions almost never would go to a homosexual partner of the deceased, let alone an unmarried heterosexual partner, and of course not any combination of partners) ... the list goes on.

The privileges are an obvious incentive to get married, and the government has an obvious interest in offering privileges to people to maintain the expected and "desireable" societal norm. So if you were wondering what that second step back was, this is it. So long as people feel they are being accomodated and that the government isn't preventing them from doing this thing that is normal in society, so long as their life is comfortable enough (and probably insular) that they don't have to see society's ills, they will remain complacent and the structures of power and domination will remain. We can't break the chains if people are under the illusion that there are no chains.

eracing spilled ink

Journalists always used to report race in crime stories. To put it more accurately, they always reported when the accused was black, but made no such specification for whites. The trouble was (and is) that people made associations in their mind - black:thief, black:murderer, black:rapist, black:drugs, et cetera. For the writers, race always was assumed to be that of the dominant culture, and if that wasn't true, they pointed it out because it was different to them. The problem being that when race wasn't specified in crime stories, many people just assumed it was another black criminal.

Media stereotypes hit us in the face years after origination. Polls have shown that people are more afraid of black folks. Meanwhile, crime statistics showed more white male criminals than black, and violent crimes were being committed by people the victims knew. But the fear factor was an indicator that the messengers were doing something wrong.

Nowadays, professionals and educators - including the Poynter Institute, a respected organization that sets a lot of standards - have reached consensus: Race generally shouldn't be mentioned in stories unless it it crucial to the story (race relations, redistricting, hate crimes et cetera). In crime stories, the race of the perpetrator should not be mentioned unless it is a keystone to the crime (hate crimes) or unless there is a description of the perpetrator so complete that anyone could identify the person walking down the street. Thus, a "black man in his 30s, about 5'8" and 200 pounds" describes too many people to be able to clearly identify him. But a "white man in his 30s, about 5'8" and 200 pounds with brown hair, a mustache, a large, diagonal scar across his left cheek and a tattoo of a black heart on his right upper arm" would be specific enough to recognize the guy on the street.

Still, Fox News and the Boston Herald repeatedly indentify race in crime stories with little to no other identifiers aside from gender. In most cases, it's black guys. In one Herald story I did see a suspect labeled as a white male, but that was just once.

Some might argue that with media ownership concentrated in the hands of so few, and those few having a vested interest in retaining power and structures that support their power, it is an intentional but subtle effort to divide the working class along race lines. Or some might argue it's as unintentional as it probably was for a lot of journalists 50 years ago - and that we simply have forgotten history. Neither collective amesia nor the corruption of power is a palatable option.