Fixing A Famine

I heard something on the radio that I haven't heard of in a while, I had kind of thought that things like this had gone away, but it seems I was wrong. What I heard on the radio was about a famine in Africa.

A famine of Bibles.

Yes, it seems groups are trying to get people to donate $40 to send Bibles to poor people in Africa, not food, not medicine, not clothing... bibles.

I find it hard to believe that someone would actually choose to donate money for this as opposed to actually helping out. Let's forget for a second that I'm an atheist, these people couldn't possibly come to a full understanding about religion because their basic needs are not being met.

From the atheist side of me, how can these people think that what poor people - not just in Africa but everywhere - need is religion! I mean, it's one thing to package aid with a religious message, but it's completely something else entirely to only give a book when more is needed. Christian charity indeed...

The American Dream?

Hey folks, sorry about the lack of writing, the last month has been insanely busy with work and now school, though I am going to resolve to write at least three posts a week!

So, I made it through an entire summer working at Wal-Mart - and am still there, incidentally. What have I learned from this experience?

First off, it makes me want to rethink Jonathon Swift's Modest Proposal. OK, maybe not that extreme, but let's face it, this place is overrun with children. More over, people who don't control their children. I feel like an old person when I say this - and that I am joining in a cliché that dates back to the Ancient Greeks - but it just seems that people don't watch their children anymore. Now, this could have just been an idiosyncrasy of my parents, but if my brother and I screamed in a store, my parents would take us to the car until we were quiet. Now it seems as though people just aren't bothered that their child is making a huge fuss in a crowded place, making the experience horrible for everyone within ear shot. This is made doubly bad for people who work there. Alright, I'll concede that this first part was nothing more than bitching, but whatever. Now on to things substantial.

The biggest thing I realized is that there is nothing more alienating than working in a box store. I sort of got an inkling while I was at Target, but I think Target does a much better job at keeping employee morale up than Wal-Mart. The basic thing remains the same: my labor and what I produce are two completely seperate things, resulting in zero job satisfaction. In other words, what I do doesn't affect what I make. Even when I help a customer out, what do I get? I mean, I feel nice helping people, but more often than not, I barely get a thank you. Mostly, I get blamed for not having something that we used to have, and how stupid it is. You just feel helpless because the entire system is beureuacratic and you are nothing more than a pawn, whose purpose can be swapped out by almost anyone on the street. We are told to think of ourselves as "a family" and yet the feeling of your own replaceability hangs over your head, the feeling that knowing what you do is not dependent upon you but rather on a position.

Perhaps, though, I'm merely imposing my values on a job; perhaps for some people this is a fulfilling line of work and it makes them genuinely happy. In fact, I know I shouldn't say "perhaps" for many people it is. At the same time, I often feel when I talk to many of my coworkers that this is situation from which they see little means of escape. And that saddens me...

How terrible...

It seems that athletes may be forced to breathe in smog at the Beijing Olympics!

This entire article discusses the repercussions of Beijing's poor air quality will have on... tourists. Not once does it even deal with the fact that millions of people have to deal with it every day. What's more, in order to accommodate athletes and spectators, China is shutting down factories and businesses. While I'm all for cutting back on pollution, this is of course a band-aid fix and while the article doesn't say (of course), I'm going to assume some workers aren't going to get paid while the factories are shut down. China has messed with the lives of so many citizens just to host the Olympics. Aren't these games supposed to bring the world together? The upside is that more people have (hopefully) taken notice of the human rights violations that go on there because of the Olympics. Let's just hope it doesn't go to waste...

I don't have anything to say except...

NO SHIT!

Oh baby it's a wild web...

In the New York Times Magazine section there is an article about trolling in Internet subculture. At first I was afraid it would be some lame ass article showcasing what trolls were to people who maybe read the news online. Maybe. Which is what it appears to be on the first page, but after that, it goes into a very interesting discussion of ethics in the cybercultural age we are entering.

What these trolls are doing is trying to give themselves power, this is why they give out peoples' private information. This is intellectual capital, the ability to control information, to use it, and to manipulate it.

Obviously these people are trying to make themselves be intimidating on the Internet, because I doubt they are that intimidating face to face. Instead, they are able to become something to be feared because this power they have is entirely constructed through discourse and rhetoric and the control of information. The control they have been denied in the "real world" (if you can even call it that, I say that the cyber world is also the real world, and as this demonstrates has real consequences), but online they have power.

But, even by their own admission, their power only stems from the consent of those they abuse. These trolls have realized something that most people haven't, power dynamics function differently online then they do in the face-to-face, and you have to adapt to be able to survive. I've been the victim of trolls, and I got upset for a bit, but then got over it; so in the end, I won. If more people would realize that, then less people would get hurt. What they're doing is wrong and juvenile, but hey, that's the way of the world. The Internet's a scary place.

Fast Food for Fags

Interestingly enough, fast food giant McDonald's supports Gay Rights. Needless to say, I was stunned. So was the usual religious right, who are now calling for a boycott of McDonald's.

It's not that McDonald's will make you obese and give you heart problems; no, the reason you should hate McDonald's is that Double Cheeseburgers support Double Manlovin' (yeah, I know that was a really really bad pun).

Honestly, even after watching Super Size Me, I still eat at McDonald's occasionally. Sure the food is horrible, but it's cheap, and grease is tasty when you're drunk. My biggest beef with McDonald's is the working conditions (which really is just how working minimum wage is in this country) and the fact to make all that beef contributes to world hunger. Other than that, I don't really have much of a problem with it. I mean, we all knew it was bad for you before Super Size Me, and since the film they have made strides to provide better (but still not good for you) options, and they give you the nutrition facts up front. Sure, you really didn't need Morgan Spurlock to tell you that eating 3 Big Macs a day is bad for you, but since the film you have no excuse, it's up to people's personal decisions now.

So maybe I'll have a Double Cheeseburger once a month from there, just to show a little gay rights support. Well, I'll wait until 2:30 in the morning after a couple of beers....

Eating from home

I was reading the New York Times and I read this article on people in big cities such as San Francisco and New York who make it a point to only eat locally grown food. They even hire people to come in and grow and tend for their organic gardens.

While I think it's awesome to eat locally grown food, I wonder about the legitimacy when it is just another yuppy fad. I suppose it is a matter of ends and means, and perhaps it is not fair for me to say these people don't legitimately care about supporting local farmers and helping out the environment. However, when neologisms such as "locavores" (yes, I'm not kidding, and the N.Y. Times didn't even put it in quotes or bother to define it, it took me a while to figure it out) appear it makes it hard to believe people really care about the environment and are instead just trying to look cool. Mostly because these people are just paying someone else to do it for them: "Oh, I am too busy doing my job that just serves the corporate machine, but yeah, I'm an activist... well I pay someone to be an activist for me, but that's O.K., right?"

On one hand, I get the feeling these people are the same people who bought SUVs a few years ago; on the other, they do live in New York and San Francisco, so that doesn't seem that likely.

I suppose I should just quit my bitching and be happy people are doing something that's good, even if it's for the wrong reasons. I just wish people would care before it's the cool thing to do...

Edit: Apparently locavore is now a word in the dictionary, at least according to QueenMelian. God help us all...