today, secretary ann veneman did an about face and rescinded the "redefinitions" to the USDA organic rule (allowing pesticides, antibiotics, etc in organic food) that would have undermined the organic certification system in this country. it was a pretty cool thing to watch as senator leahy from vermont waded into the fray, and within a week, veneman was climbing out of the ring. i had a ball watching behind the scenes, too: truedemocracy.com and moveon.org were ready to jump in too. and of course, the mighty force that this blog could summon. [cue chirping crickets in the night]. i guess veneman is finally starting to recognize that the organic industry is "not someone with whom to fuck" (ron s perlman, alien 4)

 

i'll admit it: i'm way disappointed. i was spoiling to watch the mighty USDA get another bruising from hippie watermelon farmers.

 

 

i'm heading to wiscon tomorrow, so i started my regimen to prevent getting sick. it's not a sure-fire regimen, since there's no silver bullet for the toxic axis of exhaustion, caffeine, alcohol, and the close proximity of several hundred hampered immune systems. but here's my strategy:

 

1) echinacea. i start taking it 3X/day, a day or two beforehand. echinacea registers as an antigen to your immune system and, accordingly, boosts the number of platelets in your bloodstream, increasing your body's odds of wiping out a bugly before it gets you. i take it the entire time i'm at the con, too.

 

2) astragalus. 3X day at the con. you can get tinctures at any natural foods store that have both echinacea and astragalus. that's the way to go. astragalus is a good defensive measure, plus it helps you heal up once you get the bug in your system.  

 

3) vitamin c. the constant friend of those who burn the candle at both ends. 1000 mg/day.

 

if i start coming down with something, i double the above dosages at night or before a hot shower. the immune system is strongest when you're relaxed or, better, sleeping. this is why cold tabs are a bullshit strategy 99% of the time. they suppress your symptoms and keep you from doing what your body demands: sleeping and healing. cold tabs are what you use when you absolutely have to make the meeting to sell the movie rights to your book. not before.

 

i drink a ton of fresh juice and water at cons and try to avoid crap food, though that's far easier said than done. luckily madison has fine food available. himal chuli's on state street is not only a great choice for the good of your health, it's a fantastic menu (the dal is great if you're sick). eat japanese, indonesian, thai, or chinese and avoid mexican and italian. fruit and veggies, my friends, fruit veggies.

 

if you wanna play some heavy-duty defense, get some yin chao, too, if you can find it. they come in little green tubes littered with chinese characters and get a box for the con. this is your best, last resort. once you're convinced you're sick, start pounding the chao. i've yanked myself back from the brink several times this way.

 

and if you're sick, and gotta keep drinking, don't forget the hot barthy!

 

keep this regimen for four days after the con. when you get sick, it usually means you got exposed a few days before hand and it took your immune system that long to finally give in. this is why so many people get wiped out the minute they get home.

 

and remember, nothing replaces sleep. if you run yourself ragged, and stay up all night drinking like a hooligan, don't come crying to me - and don't say your mother and i didn't warn you! if billy henderson jumped off the empire state building, i suppose YOU'D have to jump off the empire state building. have fun, but not too much fun. and don't forget to call. your mother worries. what? they don't telephones in those science fiction hotels you go to??

 

 

i sold a couple stories in the last week (info has been updated under "forthcoming" if you want to check it out), so that puts a bounce in my step.

 

and isaiah's sense of humor seems to grow faster than he does. which puts an even bigger bounce in my step. it's just amazing to watch him develop a more stylized and abstract sense of schtick. he's been playing the "good morning" game for months: iko puts his head down (on a pillow, the bed, a cat), you wish him sweet dreams and lots of other night time salutations, he milks it with true comic patience, then his head finally bobs up and you have to shout "good morning!' to his great delight. but now he's not as much into the "good morning" - he's really into it when you do a "take." a double take. a spit take. or just a "ooo" take, like skipper getting a cocoanut on the skull. it's so damn funny how funny he thinks it is. i guess it's because a dad is the ultimate "straight man" to a baby's "funny man" (in ways that mom is not, actually, but more on that another time). archetypally, it's as if i'm the reservoir of seriousness, sobriety, sanity in isaiah's life. to see me responding with abject surprise when i get duped by his baby cleverness makes him absolutely lose his shit. it's not just that he thinks it's funny. in his reaction, there's a sense that he's really gotten the better of me - a gleam of mischief in his eye, like harpo rolling his gaze toward groucho or margaret dumas, watching their reaction after he's slipped the crook of his knee into one of their hands.

 

but this is fourteen billion times better than the marx brothers, or python, or cheech and chong or abbot and costello because it's coming from a freaking nine-month-old baby! you have a kid and you get to watch the very jungian dawn of borscht-belt comedy in humankind i tell you!

 

god, being a dad is cool.

 

 

this editorial from the st petersburg times was forwarded to me via jim riddle, the vice chair of the US organic standards board. i'm dropping his name shamelessly here because jim is one of the most knowledgeable people in the country when it comes to the USDA organic rule. he helped shepherd it into being, helped write it, and continues to be a sober and level-headed custodian of its execution. when a man like jim riddle starts forwarding alarmist opinion pieces warning of the demise of the USDA certified organic label, organic consumers and industry supporters should take note.

 

 

ok. so let me get this straight: democrats are really the republicans. hillary clinton is really george bush. and bush is really dennis kucinich. bueno. i got it now.

 

mainstream media finally wakes up to the story: bush's USDA is underhandedly attacking its own organic standards. a national write-in campaign is in the works. i'll tell you what i know as soon as i know it.

 

 

the war in iraq is getting downright bizarre, and not in a fun, dali-esque way. we're striking a more ominous, nixonian brand of surreality now, one that warps truth with malice. last year, the US military figured out how to mollify the press with openness, sticking reporters right in the humvees heading to baghdad. now military discriptions of a bombing and raid on a town near the iraqi-syrian border so distinctly contradict what the people in the town say happened - so much for openness. the parallels to vietnam keep growing, as US generals take a page from nixon, denying what can be easily verified (like nixon denying the bombing of cambodia, for example) to an american public that is desperate to keep itself in a state of denial about the true nature of this "war." it's like looking at horrors through a series of kaleidoscopes.

 

~

 

elsewhere on planet barth, lisa, isaiah, and i just got back from west bend last night. it was very cool to deliver my dad's scholarship at the little 2-year university (UWWC) where i started off as a freshman. the woman who earned the jack anderson memorial was a student actress who starred in many university productions and seemed to be a local fave. she went out of her way to meet me and my family after the commencement ceremony and she seemed very grateful for the scholarship.

 

i hadn't been back to UWWC in about 15 years, so it was a real blast of body memory to be on that campus again. my dad worked at UW-Washington County both when i was a young kid, then again after he quit reporting at the end of his career. so i have a long-standing connection to the school. after the commencement ceremony, i got to see some old professors and faculty who remembered dad and who delighted in meeting iko, who bears his grandfather's name (isaiah jack). 

 

the rest of the trip was rough. seeing my bro is always hard. he has parkinon's as i mentioned a couple days ago, and i feel helpless when i visit, since to really help out i'd have to live in west bend, see him far more regularly than i do. but i do what i can - he wrote a short story a while back and i offered to format it for him, write a cover letter, and send it out, which seemed to please him. i think it would be a great boost for him, to see that he can still accomplish things like this.

 

the trip home was a stress-bath - there's been a storm sitting over iowa, wisconsin, and minnesota for days, and we drove through rain most of the day yesterday. last night, isaiah was like a spinning top, he was so excited to be home. kitties! books! toys! outlets! toilet! wow! when he finally wound down, he hit the wall and crashed like a racecar.

 

i feel bad for the kid. we turn around and hit Hwy 94 again on thursday, when we make for wiscon.

 

 

 

(note to self: walk around in windbreaker with fingers spread singing "america the beautiful!")

 

careful readers of this ridiculous document will recall that i've been waiting to hear how much arsenic might be in my yards topsoil. well, braun intertec says that we have an arsenic count of 2.6 parts per million in the front yard and 3.9 ppm in the back. according to terry from the MN Dept of Ag, that's low low low. 7 ppm is a good ceiling, 10 ppm is getting worrisome. 40-50 ppm is write the EPA, keep your kids indoors, and call the Investigators on your local fox news team. (the scary arsenic triangle that's about ten blocks from my house is coughing up readings in the 500 ppm range, says terry.)

 

so. it looks like i'll start planting tomatoes, beans, and squash when i get home next week, before heading off to wiscon. and i can compost some of our grass clippings! praise crom!

 

 

 

i'm heading out of town for a quick trip back to my home town. i have the great privelege of delivering the scholarship that my family has put up in my dad's name at the local 2-year campus there. i'll also get to spend some time with my bro, who is in the advanced stages of parkinson's. it's the coolest thing to see him with isaiah - they both like to gaze at each other and laugh like crazy.

 

in other news, my agents pulled my book's manuscript from tor. bummer, but we weren't getting a response - not even a rejection - and we'd waited longer than was rational, as it was. so it's onward and upward, i guess.

 

 

personally, i thought rummy was going to be let go yesterday. served his papers. shown the door. i'm glad he wasn't. the longer he remains on the bushy payroll, the more of a liability he becomes. plus, i'm not much more eager to see wolfowitz holding the boot to iraq's neck instead of rummy.

 

in other news, light by m scott harrison was delivered into my hot little hands today. also little gods by tim pratt, the little publishing god himself, and prometheus by uncle river.

 

 

from the UFW's site:

 

 

by "deadly nerve gas," i believe they mean that monitor 4, like strawberry-pesticide methyl bromide, contains discontinued nerve gas agents that have found new employment in our food system as pesticides (hooray!).

 

here's MSNBC's take on the same story.

 

 

i proofread the galleys for the next ratbastard chapbook which kristin and alan have been laying out. or maybe it's just kristin. it's hard to tell - the two of them sort of shimmer and merge if you stare at them long enough. anyway, i just had to throw some love out to our authors, each of whom make me burn with pride and jealousy and the urge to write like a banshee: m. rickert, john aegard, david moles, david lomax, elad haber, and amber van dyk. it seemed like a good collection to me when we first assembled the TOC for rabid transit #3. but reading the stories again after a couple of months removed, i think this collection is absolutely brilliant. these authors are going to get a lot of attention for their freakin cool-ass stories.

 

oh just you wait. just. you. wait!

 

 

 

 

karen meisner points me to this story from reuters regarding rummy, whose pentagon lawyers signed off on warcrime-worthy interrogation techniques. while there is no memo saying that soldiers should sodomize teenagers, we're getting a clearer picture of how the very tolerant climate for widespread abuse was created.

 

"Once you say to troops that it's OK to keep detainees hooded, bound in painful positions, sleep deprived and naked to soften them up for interrogation, how could you not expect that some might take it one small step further?"

 

sick of this issue yet, friends? well, tough it out, because you can't afford to pretend it's not happening. along with my letter to sen. dayton regarding organic standards, i included a note thanking him for hectoring rumsfeld at the armed services committee hearing last week. sure he was scoring easy political points, but he was also saying quite a bit of what i wanted to say to the uber-bastard.

 

make your voice heard by email. it's easy. your senators have to understand that you're paying close attention to how the war is being conducted.

 

 

for ye twin citizens...

Peace Coffee Reports from Colombia:
Fair Trade, Human Rights and US Foreign Policy
Featuring:  TJ Semanchin and Gerardo Cajamarca

Wednesday, May 19th
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Free Evening (Colombian Coffee Provided)
Patrick’s Cabaret 
3010 Minnehaha Ave S. (corner of Lake and Minnehaha)

Presentation Includes:

TJ Semanchin, Peace Coffee roaster and social justice activist, will show a slide presentation from a recent trip to Colombia with Witness for Peace.  He will highlight new connections made with Fondo Paez - an indigenous organization that promotes traditional agricultural knowledge and produces organic coffee.  In addition, TJ will share first hand experience the effects of US Foreign Policy on the conflict in Colombia. Lastly he will discuss his assessment on “Plan Colombia”.

 

 

it's spring, so the USDA organic standards are once again under attack from within.

 

a bit of background first.

 

all final decisions and rulings for the USDA on organics come from the National Organic Program (NOP).  in the last few weeks, the NOP has issued three scope statements (statements that delineate the "scope" of the NOP's authority and further interpretations of the USDA organic rule) which undermine the very definition of the US organic label. with two of these scopes, prohibited pesticides and antibiotics can now be implemented in organic production. with the other, though the NOP has backed away from ruling on standards for fresh fish to be certified organic, fish can now be labeled organic and fed to organic livestock (regardless of how much mercury that fish might have sucked up in its lifetime).

 

these scope statements are a brazen attack. the NOP has obviously been leaned on by conventional food industries who want to cash in on the 20+% organic industry growth, without adhering to the integrity that built that sterling consumer confidence over the last 25 years. basically, the NOP has altered the USDA organic rule without a public comment period or even consideration from elected legislators. regarding these changes in direction, barbara robinson, a USDA official at a National Organic Standards Board meeting in april, told outraged industry advisors who sit on that board that, "the public has no right to comment on these directives."

 

today i contacted sen. leahy of VT and congressman fine of WI (both of whom led a charge on behalf of the organic industry last year when a similar attack came from congress), and my own senators, dayton and coleman, asking them to urge the NOP to open a public hearing on these changes so that the consumers responsible for the organic industry's $10 billion annual gross can comment on changes to the industry they obviously value.

you can do the same. or if you don't know your senator, contact this dude, the manager of the NOP:

 

Richard Mathews
Program Manager
USDA-AMS-TMP-NOP
Room 4008-South Building
1400 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20250-0020
Phone: 202-720-3252
Fax: 202-205-7808
nop.webmaster@usda.gov

(not sure about that email - i got it third hand and i'm skeptical that the webmaster gives a crap about antibiotics in organic burgers. but give it a shot!)

 

 

 

from tangent online re "alone in the house of mims"

 

"The story reflects hope and desire, traces the twists and bends of humor, chagrin, anger, despair, joy, and lust, only to illuminate sorrow and mirror-shattering awareness at the end. Shakespeare would be jealous at how neatly Mr. Anderson hits the human elements."

frankly, it's far more likely that shakespeare would be jealous of my abilities to grab a brewski and not be dead for 4 centuries. but i dig the sentiment!

 

 

the troika, by stepan chapman, and jerusalem poker, by edward whittmore, just arrived in the mail for me. and not a moment too soon. last night i finished the fall of the kings by sherman and kushner, so i'm tied-off and the vein has been thumped. ready for the next hit.

 

judging from the first paragraphs of both, i'm about to have a ho-lotta fun.

 

here's a huge pet peave: when people tell me they shop at their local co-op, and then within three exchanges, i realize they're talking about whole foods, or some other supermarket natural foods chain ("supernaturals," we call em).  this was inevitable on some level, as the supernaturals infect and breed throughout the country with ebola-esque virulence. 

 

it gets me, because as small, single-site grocery co-ops get leapfrogged by more nimble, venture-capital run operations, an adherence to alternative business models gets leapfrogged, too. these supernaturals play on the liberal shoppers' hope that green awnings, groovy workers with swell tats, and organic beans in the coffee bar mean that the staff must receive a livable wage, too.

 

nope.

 

grocery co-ops are feeling the pressure from two sides to adhere to mainstream, corporate economics: from shoppers coming in the front door who expect a wild oats/whole foods/trader vic's experience, and organic food coming in the back loading dock from producers who are rapidly getting bought out by corporate giants. between the two, it's a wonder that any co-ops maintain their integrity, let alone thrive.

 

the grocery co-op scene in the twin cities is lush, with 12 stores by my head count, and almost all of them have expanded recently – so we're doing well in the face of these economic pressures. even north country co-op, the uber-hippie store in town, has added square footage this year. when these small stores manage to entice mainstreamers to shop there, i feel it's a victory for the micro-economy, since those dollars stay and get turned over and over in the neighborhood. when supernaturals entice conscientious shoppers into their stores, allowing them to think they're shopping at a groovy establishment, those dollars fly out of the local economy and into stock-holders pockets all over the globe. whole foods has made a practice of targeting co-ops that have worked a market for years, only to have that supernatural come in and steal the brand identity - whole foods gets called a "co-op" all over the country, for this reason.

 

it's pretty much a losing battle for co-ops, since every day another corporate supermarket goes groovy, attempting to convince shoppers that they have the line on fairly-traded, organically certified, sustainably grown, high fiber, low carb, guilt free, pure, pure, pure-ass product.

 

from twin cities alternative weekly, the pulse, last fall: "North Country Co-op worker Christopher DeAngelis’s vision of the future of co-ops is rife with danger and possibility and the dramatic need to change and grow: “Organics is not going to exist the way it does now…the whole industry is going to be gone. What comes after consolidation [of small organic producers] is outsourcing. Quality will go to hell. Combine that with genetically altered food….[organic production and the co-op movement] will be subverted in this economy, unless we change this economy."

 

"To DeAngelis, the best hope for this change lies in fair trade alliances, community organizing, and co-op networks that consciously try to challenge global economic norms. Fair trade production emphasizes worker rights and fair pricing as well as environmental soundness. A fair trade buyer might make alliances with specific growers, often but not always in the developing world, and agree to purchase their output at a non-exploitative price rather than at the market rates pushed lower and lower by global capital."

 

but all of this requires shoppers who actually think about where they spend their money.

 

 

thanks to kristin for providing the link to the washington post's transcript of the grilling rummy got yesterday. it was great to actually read it, since the exchange between mccain, rumsfeld, and general smith got pretty hot and, at times, hard to hear everything that was said. it's also great to read this stuff in bland text, where the surreal exchanges start to sound like table talk at the mad hatter's tea party.

 

but meditate on this, politicos: if former POW mccain ever needed political cover and a credible reason to bolt the republican party and run with kerry, the abu ghraib situation is it.

 

and then, of course, there's this pithy analysis from rush limbaugh and a ditto head, regarding the war crimes at abu ghraib:

 

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

 

(ok, so, he may have a point about the bush boys and their skull and bones thing.)

 

cool interview with pedro almodovar at the guardian. this observation of pedro's is such a definitely spanish conundrum, it made me laugh out loud:

 

"I didn't turn against God. The thing is, God didn't grant me the gift of faith."

 

while i applaud the efforts of "van helsing" to take vampires away from anne rice and muscle them back into villainy where i like em to be, it's hard for me to generate the thinnest volt of enthusiasm to pay for this flick.

 

am i alone in my irritation and boredom with the look of hollywood's recent faux-baroque/gothic period? it should be right up my alley, but the leagueofextraordinarygentlemensleepyhollowunderworldblade look is getting old old old. no, it's not "old" – it's thin and lame. ever since the floodgates on computer animation were opened in the mid 90's, crap-action films have gone murky-gothic out of technical necessity (to hide the seams that projected light expose on digital animation), not for expressing a truly gothic sense of darkness. there's no sustained stare into a character's or situation's evil, madness, or desperation that the old paramount horror flicks often attempted. today's CG-laced horror movies often make homages to those paramount studios gothic movies (as i understand "van helsing" does – anyone know if they evoke "Captain Kronos"??), but it's a mistake to remind people of great films unless yours exceeds the original's grasp. and that can't be done without good – or at the least – totally over the top acting. just try to imagine boris karloff's inspired performance as the monster without 70 years of parody on top of it. child-like. mute. raging one moment and then whimpering the next. it was a leap into character through both acting technique and technical transformation that marked its time (along with lon chaney sr's  "the monster" a silent film), and which is rarely attempted now even under the label of "camp" in the modern gothic. 

 

the problem extends down to the level of the frame: a digitally enhanced shadow looks deep blue or dark grey in CG land, and thus, we have a mere representation of shadow in modern gothic horror. in these movies, there's no blackness on the physical film though which projected light may not pass - no true shadows, no night in which a troubled soul (or vampire for that matter)may hide. as a result, we have see-through noir. and the "darkness" of whatever character the director happens to be portraying is just as transparent as his CG shadows. 

 

this is sounding like a lament. it's more like a big shrug, since there have been good horror flicks recently. it's just that the best rarely rely on elaborate CGs for achieving a deep-in-the-body Sense of Fear or sincere stab at the gothic.

 

i never figured that the biggest laugh jag of my adult life would be during a game of peek-a-boo.

 

last night lisa and i were lying on one half of our queen sized futon while iko pulled himself to a standing position on the other, at which point, he'd let out out a huge peal of laughter as soon as his eyes cleared the futon and he could see us. he got himself so hysterical that we could hear him giggling to himself, out of sight, as he pulled himself up from the floor. irresistibly funny. his giddiness fed ours and vice versa until i thought my head would split along my smile and topple down my back.

 

i'm sooo glad i have a kid who likes to laugh.

 

 

lisa called me at work today with real worry in her voice. a UPS package had just arrived, addressed to me - a cooler from braun intertec corporation.  did i know what it was? hmm. it took me a freaked-out minute, but then i realized:

 

ahh...my soil sample kit...most excellent....

 

i'd learned a few weeks ago that our new house is located just southwest of the so-called "arsenic triangle" in minneapolis. a long-defunct grasshopper pesticide site from the fifties had been spewing arsenic all over the east phillips neighborhood for 40-some years, until the state finally capped it with asphalt. great. now people in south minneapolis are finding alarming levels of arsenic in their yards. we're just outside the state's declared danger zone, but as i am a paranoid and suspicious person when it comes to things like states declaring what constitutes a danger zone, and since there are two little boys growing up in our hippie duplex, i figured i'd better find out if our soil is safe for mud pies and tomato gardens.

 

the university's extension service doesn't test soil for arsenic, so i had to contact 10 different private labs before finding braun intertec, who, for 60 clams, will analyze the living hell out of my backyard.

 

if all goes well, i can avoid suing minnesota or the defunct pesticide company, and instead i can plough full-steam ahead on the organic garden and compost. mmmm...compost. keeping a giant bin of rotting organic matter is probably the main reason i wanted to buy a house, i tell you.

 

i know you'll be eager to hear how my compost mission unfolds.

 

 

 

 

feeling low down today. no wind in my sails. maybe it was too much wine at may day yesterday. maybe it's a general lack of sleep. or, it very well could be this, the story about US soldiers torturing iraqis, which crept into a couple nightmares over the weekend.

 

the army has relieved gen. janis karpinksi, the officer in charge of the prison where all those hideous pictures were taken. but gary myers, the civilian attorney for one of the soldiers accused of abusing iraqi POWs, says that culpability in the case extended far beyond his lone client:

 

 “I’m going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian contractor I can find into court,” he said (to the new yorker). “Do you really believe the Army relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance.”

 

 

 

 

it's early sunday morning, the sun is barely clearing the trees, and i just took a walk around powderhorn park to watch Heart of the Beast set up for today's may day ceremony. all the food vendors are setting up too and there's a hot, bubbly atmosphere, like teenagers getting ready for a date. may day! it's bright and blue, and commie street-puppetry is afoot! ohboyohboyohboy!

 

i need more coffee. last night, i stayed up late looking at the movies lisa took of isaiah on his first trip to the ocean. lisa and her sister went to carmel to visit their grandmother after dropping me off at the SF airport. "granny" lives three or four blocks from the beach and it's one of the prettiest places on earth. lisa took great movies. isaiah loved it all - the water, his great-grandmother's dog lucy (the best beach dog on the planet who circled in and out of the movie frame, too ocean-loopy to be kept in any single shot), and iko liked the sound of the waves - although he wasn't too sure about sand. lisa would plop him on a dune, and he'd lift his hands, palms heavenward, and twist his wrists daintily - the self-same gesture daddy makes when he's forced to look under the escort's hood, as a matter of fact. the look on iko's face as he contemplated sand on his hands was hilarious, like a bit actor in a b-horror movie: "oh my god, it's...it's ON MEEE!"

 

moving onward, my doctors have declared that i'm in the grips of a mango delirium. it's spring fever, i think, my body longing for something sweet and juicy, so i'm finding new applications for mangos. mangos and lacinato kale! mangos in a hot toddy (they soak up the bourbon and become slippery tongues of booze-soaked glory)! mango and avocado salad! that last one is for advanced fruit buyers only, i warn you, since you gotta cut both fruits while they're at the same texture, which requires a symphony of salad-ified coordination. but well worth the effort.

 

ok then. i'm too excited for may day to sit in front of this stinking monitor any longer. happy may day, you magnificent freaks! the days are getting longer, the shadows shorter, and unbridled wanton sex is in the air!

 

 

nick has a great may day article here. i mention it because writers and our "race to the bottom" mentality has been very much on my mind lately. as i've written in these pages before, the similarity between farming in today's economy and writing is shockingly similar. in short, both groups are forced to drive their own prices down below their cost of goods, and below a cost of living, in order to compete with one another.

 

the main difference between writers and farmers is that farmers understand these doomed economics and hate it. meanwhile, because of the glorious dream of "making it" as a writer outstrips all other considerations, writers are willing to take anything for their work. they're willing to do whatever it takes to see their words in print, endure "american idol" style humiliations in order to stay in the race.

 

nick calls for organinization. i agree, that's what it will take. but first, writers will have to view themselves and their work with a certain amount of dignity.

 

 

i swear, the smoking man and other x-filers at homeland security must lounge about in their star-chamber, imagining with unfettered, sadistic glee all the ways that terrorists might destroy america. consider, from every self-congratulatory, provincial rag in minnesota:

 

 

heads up, retail food workers: you're on the front line in the war against terror! "The U.S. food system—from farms to processing and distribution to retail food service—presents an array of vulnerable targets for terrorist attack."

 

now every scrub-faced, blue-eyed, over-educated, underpaid american in an apron and hair net can step up and fulfill his patriotic duty.

 

but best of all, we get our own industry code word: agro-security! (as in, "is north dakota agro-secure, special agent wombat?" "yes, commissar, i have personally agro-secured the facilities.")

 

meh. feh. gah. someone give tom ridge a homeland security blanket.