This Election is "Special"

But aren't they all? I just returned from voting early in the Statewide Special Election. I'm leaving this weekend for Paris/Rome, so I won't be around on voting day. In case you live here and you're unaware, there are eleven touchscreen voting locations scattered throughout L.A. I went to the East LA County Regional Library, where there were six pollworkers with absolutely nothing to do. They were thrilled that I was there, and went over in detail the process for the Diebold touchscreen machines. I didn't have the heart to tell them I'd done this before. Anyway, they wanted me to tell all my friends to get out and vote early, too, so...here I am: get out and vote early. Failing that, please vote on November 8.

What did I miss?

7 airports + 4 countries + 31 hours = cold foolishness. My last leg back to LAX was first-class, though: that helped. I'm back in the loft in Little Tokyo/Skid Row and in need of clean clothes, good food, and hardcore sleep. Today I'll start uploading photos from my trip into a new gallery on Buzznet.

Leaving Roatan

Since Sunday I've been staying with some great friends at the Inn of Last Resort, Roatan Island, Honduras. If you like diving or just want to sample some island life, I can't recommend this place enough. Tomorrow I leave Roatan, stopping in El Salvador on my way back to Guatemala City for one more night. I've logged seven dives since I've been here, including my first wreck, my first cave & swim-throughs, and my first night dive -- during which I encountered some leech-like creature that attached itself to my forearm and started sucking my blood. I think it was a bloodworm, but the divemaster didn't sound convinced. (Note to self -- start using a full-length wetsuit that covers both arms and legs.) I've encountered a host of interesting creatures along the way, the names of which I won't bore you with here, but rest assured I've tried to catalogue most of them in my dive log. All this glory comes at a price, however: I've got multiple cuts and scrapes on my arms and legs, popped blisters on my toes, and the skin on the front of my shoulders is broken open from the chafing of my BCD. In addition, I've got sand flea bites that look like mosquito bites and mosquito bites that look like table tennis balls under my skin. I've got reef rash on my left elbow and right ankle. Throw in some sunburn and a parrot bite, and I've had a good week. Honestly, I feel GOOD. 100% better than last week's bout with food poisoning. In fact, my condition reminds me of a Hamlin Garland poem I memorized when I was a kid:

"Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf,
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheek will tan,
You'll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you'll walk like a man!"

I'll fly like a man all the way back to L.A. this weekend. A very itchy man.

Stan/Guatemala

I've gotten several IMs and emails in the past few days inquiring about my location and whether or not I was affected by the floods and rains spawned by Hurricane Stan. I'm okay. My Saturday flights were cancelled, but I did make it out. I'm currently on the West End of the island of Roatan in Honduras. I flew in today after getting 2.5 hours of sleep last night -- I had to be at the airport in Guate at 0400 this morning after my last day of work in 4 Grados Norte. I feel like I have jetlag and I'm still in the same timezone. But after flying from Guate to Tegucigalpa, then to San Pedro Sula, then on to La Ceiba, and finally to Roatan, I've arrived safe, which is more than I can say for many back in Guatemala. I have dozens of photos that I took in the town of Santiago de Atitlan, on the shores of the lake that Aldous Huxley described as "the most beautiful lake in the world". I'll upload them to my Buzznet gallery when I return to Los Angeles next weekend -- pictures of markets, churches, Tzutujil children playing in the street or selling bracelets to tourists, Mayan women balancing impossibly large baskets on their heads. As I look at them now in my camera, I wonder if the faces I see are still there, if they haven't been buried by mud and water. I'm sad and I'm a little sick. I'm taking three different antiparasitics/antibiotics, which the doctor prescribed for me after learning that two different protozoa have invaded my digestive tract. The color of my piss is so saturated that it's almost green. It's the color of a highlighter marker. It looks like a yellow laser beam shooting out of my dick. But I'm okay. Thanks for asking.

9/11 en Antigua, Guatemala

Today is September 11, 2005. Four years ago today I was woken up by a phone call from my father in Northern Virginia, informing me that while the World Trade Center had fallen due to an airliner hijacking, he and my mom were both safe. They had taken a flight to Washington Dulles from San Francisco on Sunday night. Three years ago today I was working in London. Walking back to my flat near Hyde Park I passed through Grosvenor Square and took photos of the wreaths, flowers and letters respectfully placed at the feet of the FDR and Eisenhower statues. Then I passed through the armed guard security check-point to get into the Mews behind the barbed wire-shrouded American Embassy, where I lived. Today I´m in Antigua, the colonial capital of Guatemala. I´m in an internet cafe on the west side of el Parque Central. This morning I followed a parade of school children marching through town, playing their instruments and dancing. I also found the following letter in my hotmail inbox -- not because I voted for Bush, but because I´m on Moore´s mailing list.
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To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That's right. Horse shows.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America.

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world?

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show.

Yours,
Michael Moore

Katrina/Guatemala

The Red Cross can't accept my blood since last October I visited Chichén Itzá, a "malaria-risk" Mayan ruin in the Yucatan. My claret won't be clean (in theory) until 12 months from that date -- October 2005 is the earliest I can donate. However, since I'll be in Guatemala for the next few weeks, I imagine I'll have to wait another 12 months from now. I think anywhere outside Guatemala City, which I know I'll be venturing beyond, is tainted as well. WHA-temala? Yeah, it was a surprise for me, too. I've been back in the States for barely a week and I'm already off again. This time it's for work, but you better believe that I'll be mixing some pleasure in there, too.

I was going to write a long, boring blog about the government's lack of response to Katrina, but now I won't have time. However, I would like to share with you, dear reader, some of the things I've learned in the past week.

• Over the past four and a half years, the traditional and essential wall separating Church and State in this country has been turned into a shower curtain. Thanks to Bush and his medieval policies, much of the world now views American Christianity as a wacky cult. Pat Robertson is currently cashing in on the Hurricane disaster relief, due to FEMA's official sponsorship of his corrupt Christian charity. Think Robertson is a stand-up guy doing God's work? Stop being an idiot, he's not. Read Max Blumenthal's September 7 piece in The Nation to learn why.
  
  
• Bush Sr. had a policy that the U.S. shouldn't lose any more wetlands; Clinton also set tough policies on environmental protection for coastal wetlands. Bush Jr. repealed all those policies in favor of business interests, opening up 20 million acres for development. Read Molly Ivins's well-researched September 1 editorial from the Chicago Tribune to find out how much funding the Bush White House has cut from the Army Corps of Engineers budget and how much of the National Guard has been diverted to Iraq.
  
  
• Bush told Diane Sawyer that no one "anticipated the levees would breach". Bullshit. Read this Scientific American article from October 2001 which leads with, "A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city". Great graphic illustrations accompany detailed explanations of root causes and the only possible solution to the problem: rebuilding marshes to absorb high waters and reconnecting the barrier islands to protect the marshes.
  
  
• Joseph Hughes has made a pictorial timeline for August 29-30. See what Dubya was doing while Americans were dying. Click the shit-eating grin below to watch our leader playing with guitars and birthday cakes in Southern California and Arizona.
  
  
  
  
• I have to thank my Uncle Anthony in Hong Kong for bringing my attention to this, Keith Olbermann's scathing commentary on Michael Chertoff's idiocy. Click on the picture to play the QuickTime.
  
  
• Speaking of great commentary, I can't resist linking to The Daily Show's hilarious piece on the two Michaels (Chertoff and Brown), aptly entitled "Meet the F**ckers". Click the picture to play video. (Thanks go out to OneGoodMove for posting both these last ones.)
  

And so, dear reader, I leave you for Central America. Please take care of the U.S. for me while I'm gone -- because, you know, our leaders aren't very good at that sort of thing.

Double your money

Last week I returned from a trip to Burgundy. If you're interested in images, check out my France 2005 gallery on Buzznet. It was a fantastic trip – I only wish that I could roll around in my nostalgia unimpeded. My mind dwells on the southern U.S.

While I was talking with my mom during a layover in Boston, my eye strayed to the TV set at the gate, tuned to CNN. I initially thought I was viewing footage from last December's tsunami, but Mom quickly filled me in. That was on Wednesday, August 31. I've spent the last four days in a high dudgeon. The more I learn about events that transpired post-Katrina, the more furious I become. More on that later. I'm through with feeling powerless to help, though. I just returned from Whole Foods Market, which doubled my donation to the Red Cross for Katrina victims. If you don't have one in your area, you can call the American Red Cross directly at 1-800-HELP-NOW or give through their website. They also accept donations of stock, airline miles, and even spare change via Coinstar machines.

Right now I'm off to give some blood, but I promise a rant later.

Things are different in France

This keyboard; for instqnce: I can hunt and peck for the correct keys but it takes me three times as long to type q simple sentence: So you must deal with the consequences qnd try to figure out whqt Iùm trying to say:

I am in Joigny; a très mignon (very cute) village in the northwest of Burgundy: The food/drink is stellar qnd the pace of life is slow: I am quartered with some gregarious qnd supergenial (very cool) friends in la Caisse d'Epargne; a hulking, century-old bank that is currently being renovated into a residence: we spend our hours eating; drinking; playing charades in the parlour; exploring the house (4 levels including a basement and a sub-basement-- I still havenùt seen every room); exploring the town, exploring the vineyards and surrounding countryside; and eqting qnd drinking even more: I am becoming familiqr with ordering both Kir and Pastis along with great beer and wine, and I'll be damned if I can ever remember having q better faux-filet (sirloin) than the one I savored last night in Auxerre:

You can expect to see scads of photos posted to my buzznet gallery (see left) upon my return to base camp L.A. at the start of Septeber:

Until then: The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful...

And the winner of the Best Religion Award goes to...

So we've been hearing all week about the American Gitmo guards who may or may not have flushed the Koran down the toilet as a means to break their Muslim prisoners. The latest is that the incident didn't occur, but the ICRC does attest to other abuses of the Muslim holy book. In response, violent anti-U.S. protests -- some resulting in multiple deaths -- have taken place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, even India. The Pentagon and the White House are blaming Newsweek for stirring up anti-American sentiment around the world. Nice try, guys. Foreign nationals in American military-run prisons have been beaten to death, physically tortured, sexually humiliated, and denied access to legal representation, without indictment or trial, for a few years now. The Bush administration has been wiping its ass with the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war. None of this is a secret, and Newsweek is not to blame for any of that. But that's not my point. My point is the overwrought reaction to the news. Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in several Islamic countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Excuse me, DEATH? Newsflash, radical Islamists: it's a BOOK. Relax, okay?

And I'm not restricting this diatrabe to Islam. Ousted Georgia Chief Justice Roy Moore's ten commandments monument went on a national tour recently after he was ordered to remove it from his Supreme Court building. Masses of people lined up all over America to caress the granite slab, weep, and express indignation that their holy monument cannot legally be displayed in a government building. Hello, idiotic Christians? It's a ROCK. And you're wrong, this country wasn't founded on Christianity, it was founded on the grand principle of separation of Church and State so that citizens could practice any religion they like, or no religion if they prefer. The reason "the pilgrims" sailed to Massachusetts in the first place was to escape the dictatorial Church of England. And now you seem to think it's a good idea to impose your Christian monuments, books, and teachings on the rest of us. Back off, okay?

You know who gets my vote for Least Offensive Religion? The Buddhists. In March 2001 the Taliban blew up a bunch of Buddha statues in Afghanistan because Mullah Mohammad Omar deemed "false idols" an offense to Islam. These weren't ordinary graven images, though. A couple of them were the tallest Buddha images in the world, carved out of the living rock of cliffs in Bamiyan province almost 2,000 years ago. These sculptures were a page of world history and a part of our human cultural heritage. Thailand, Japan, India, France, Germany, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, the US, the UN, and and a host of other countries all appealed to the Taliban to no avail. As the demolition was taking place, however, I heard a Buddhist monk being interviewed on NPR. He joked that Gautama Buddha must be laughing in heaven right now -- all this fuss over a pile of rock!

It would do all religious fanatics well to examine his mature perspective. Everything is transient: monuments, books, statues, yes -- even American flags. To desecrate a physical object is not to desecrate the idea behind it. If you think it is, then perhaps you should ask yourself why you invest so much importance in a strip of cloth, or a printed page, or a carved rock. Because that's all they are. They are no more holy than any other object in this world, and certainly much less important than real human compassion and understanding.

And I'm sure that both Jesus and Mohammed would agree with Buddha on this point.

Redux: Travel, Old & New

My DNA kit has been received and its batch has been created. Which I think means that they've catalogued it in Houston but haven't yet mailed it to the University of Arizona for testing and analysis. AND I just found out that I'll be going to Paris and Rome in November with my family! *grinning from ear to ear*

***Searching through all the old shit stored in the overcrowded attic of my hotmail account, I sometimes come across noteworthy emails from my past, like the Saga of the Octopenis. I've decided to throw some of them up here because...well, because they make me feel nostalgic and they make me laugh; which is why I suppose I saved them in the first place. When I do this I preface the blog with the word "redux", and post the original date. ***

What follows is a letter that I sent out to friends and family on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 -- almost three years ago -- right before I moved to London to work on the 007 film. Sorry for the confusion, Tanya!

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POST COITUM OMNE ANIMAL TRISTIS EST

In other words, after an intense and eagerly anticipated moment, we often feel that we have missed something greater that remains just beyond our grasp. After spending a month exploring Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Kyoto, Kamakura, Tokyo, and Phuket, these past seven days in Los Angeles haven't seemed real in comparison. I feel like my senses are dulled. I feel as if I've awoken from a rapidly fading perfect dream; like I came within a stone's throw of enlightenment and then turned around and walked away.

Milan Kundera spoke of the body as a ship and the soul as its crew. Most of the time the soul stays below decks because the vicissitudes of life can be likened to a rough storm. But every once in a while, on a rare clear day, the crew charges up and streams over the decks, shouting and singing in jubilation, and waving at the sky. I feel like my crew has been above decks for the past month.

My perspective has been stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. I learned that I am as insignificant as a speck. I am a parasite within a parasite on the back of a blue-green moth slowly circling a warm light bulb. I saw a goat kneeling on its front legs, its forehead to the ground, outside of Wat Phra Thong; mangy stray dogs biting the fleas on their backs; elephants flicking bamboo poles with their trunks -- all this I saw on the side of the road. I have seen black dolphins rounding off the waves next to my speed boat as it bobbed in the spinach-emerald waters off Khai Nok Island. I saw naked children playing football and teenage girls in school uniforms playing badminton. I saw beautiful people with no money overflowing with joy and smiles. I saw a corpulent French tourist in a tiny speedo get seasick and regurgitate into the cerulean waters off Koh Phi Phi Le. While I rode on the prow of a boat in the sun, I saw flat-bottomed thunderheads rolling through the firmament off to the north, where the sky came down to meet the sea. I have heard imams calling faithful Muslims to prayer while I threw fortune blocks in a Buddhist Wat. I visited the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, where once-wild apes marred by humans can learn how to brachiate and survive in the forest once more. I have received a Thai massage while standing in front of the urinal in the bathroom of a bar in Phuket Town, wondering if this was normal protocol in Thai drinking establishments. I have seen sunsets worthy of Shakespearean sonnets. I helped four Thai men push a gas-drained car up the middle of a busy Phuket roadway at 11 o'clock at night -- or rather, they helped me. I have eaten durian and jackfruit, mangosteen and som tum; I lived on a diet of prawns, curry, tripe, octopus, raw chicken, squid, shark's fin and chicken feet. I caught a cold but ignored it.

I met people that I hope to remain friends with for the rest of my life. I visited places I hope to return to sometime in the near future. For now, I've posted a few photographs of my travels up on my website. Click to peruse Thailand, Japan, or Hong Kong:





In the last few days I've looked at my life here and seen nothing but a mesh of roots that grow too deep. I want to throw out my bed and sleep on the floor. I want to push my couch out the living room window. Its a good thing I'm moving to London in two days. It seems that there was once a golden lustre that surrounded my life in this city; a clear, pure aura pervading the beaches, bars, and hills. I can't see it anymore. Has it really disappeared or am I just suffering from post-vacation nostalgia? Perhaps the corona has moved on to Asia, along with the breathless crew of the ship of my body.