#OccupyCompassion

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

I went to the reinvigorated Occupy Oakland assembly tonight.

I left when two speakers in a row called the police fascists, and compared them to Neo-Nazis. I can understand the anger and outrage at their behavior, but this is not the approach. Attacking them with words is still violence.

We need to stop dehumanizing the police. They are humans. They are acting on the behalf of a corrupt system. But they are still humans. Convince them to stop acting on behalf of a corrupt system. This is within our power. But not when you treat them as tools, as inhuman.

Non-violence isn’t just about not using fists and guns. Violence isn’t confined to tear gas and bullets (regardless of what they are made of). Those are just the physical manifestations of violence.

Violence starts in the heart. It starts in fear and hate. People are afraid of what we are doing. We are breaking the system as they know it. That is terrifying. Many will fight us out of that fear.

Non-violence starts with compassion. Recognize that every person is human. They can be met.

Many speakers spoke of love and compassion. They spoke of the pain and anger. One woman told a story of how she was choking from asthma as the police watched. And as another person helped her she eventually got the words out “You just tear gassed a 17 year old with asthma.” Someone else urged love for the police because they are programmed by a system. People are not evil, they are trapped and indoctrinated. We need to fight for them. They need to be free, too.

You hurt us. You oppress us. But we fight for you, still.

Because that’s the message the 99% need to hear.

One speaker came up and said in the words of NWA, “Fuck the police.” I had no problem with what he was saying because he was talking about their actions. He was talking about their violence. Fuck the oppressors.

Fuck their violence.

The speaker who killed the mood riled up the crowd with an argument that the police are fascists. They are not the 99%. They might be economically, but their ideology makes them separate from us.

And to her, and everyone else who agrees, I say emphatically: “NO.”

The 99% is not a choice. You do not get indoctrinated out of it because you don’t get indoctrinated into it. The 99% is not friends who you get to choose. It is everyone who is oppressd. It is all of us. It is a family. And yes, there are members of this family who have been abused and twisted by the system. But it is the system that is the enemy. It is the system that dehumanizes them by putting them in uniform, behind masks. It is the system that reinforces the idea that all they face are criminals and enemies instead of fellow citizens.

You will never win this fight if you hate them and speak violence towards them. They are the 99%. It’s not 99% of liberals and progressives. It’s 99% of the entire country, if not the entire world. Single mothers, working parents, well off CEOs making $200,000 per year, racists, vegans, environmentalists, oil rig workers, city clerks, police, firemen, students, priests, shamans.

Yes, the police are the first weapons of the state. The military is the next weapon. You will not win against these weapons by using violence, whether it’s throwing bottles or dehumanizing them with words. The only way to win is to show them the ugliness of violence. Don’t give them justification for using violence.

Police are not fascists. They are not neo-nazis. They are humans. They have families. They have dreams. They have hope. They are “just doing a job.” And if you spit in their faces, they’ll do that job proudly. But if you stand defiant, with courage, and show them that you will not fight them and you will not stand down, then they will begin to realize that some paychecks are not worth earning.

Look upon the police with compassion. This movement is about oppression. Who is more oppressed than those imprisoned by an ideology that rewards them for attacking their fellow citizens? We have the power to free their minds. In doing so, they’ll join us. And then we’ll be completely free.

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DMV: the RPG

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

Ryan Macklin, from the internet, proposed a flash game design challenge. Here’s my 500 word (exactly) response. It hasn’t been playtested. I can’t speak to it being fun or even playable. Luckily, neither of those were listed as criteria.

Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Robert S. Donovan.

You are in one of several long lines at the DMV. Your fellow players are PCs in other lines. Or is it all the same line? It’s so confusing. You just want to get to the goddamn teller and get out of here.

You like to think you have enough patience for this shit. Let’s give it a number: 10.

The Line: The line is constantly going down. To form the line, take a hand-sized bag (under 2oz or 50g) of very small candies and pour them into a bowl. These candies might have Ms on them, or fruit flavored, or nuts, they just need be small and delicious. If you don’t have a bag of this size, pour out about 5-10 (6g) per player into a bowl. Delicious right? If you eat any outside of instruction, you lose 1 patience per instance. If you eat the last candy, lose 5.

No one cares what your name is or why you are here. Everyone in front of you is ignorant of your existence. Everyone behind you hates your existence.

Whoever showed up to the game first goes first. This probably means the host. If there are multiple hosts, use one of these suggested ways to determine who goes first: whichever host is sitting furthest right of the other host(s), whoever got their driver’s license first, whoever got up earliest today.

Your Turn:

1. Roll a d4. Take away this many candies. Enjoy the morsels. Yum.

2. Reduce your patience by 1. If you hit zero, you Blow a Fuse. Roll on the Blow a Fuse table. Otherwise roll on the Slow Ticking Clock table.

Slow Ticking Clock Table
1 – You say something rude under your breath. What do you say? Lose 1 patience.
2 – Tell no one in particular how you have better things to do. Lose 1 patience.
3 – You see an open teller! They leave their station. Loudly decry their incompetence. Lose 1 patience.
4-5 – You are so bored. Nothing happens. NOTHING.
6 – Someone does something rude to another PC. If they have 3 or more patience, they lose 1. If they have 2 or less, you gain 1 patience.
7 – An Non-PC in front of you leaves the line. Why? Gain 1 patience.
8 – Two Non-PCs get into a fight. About what? Gain 1 patience.

Blown Fuse Table
1 – You storm out silently. Eat 4 candies.
2 – You storm out insulting the employees. Eat 3 candies.
3 – You storm out insulting everyone. Eat 2 candies.
4 – You have a violent outburst and are escorted out. Eat 1 candy.
5 – You storm the counter. Describe this. Security removes you.
6 – You pull a concealed weapon. Police remove you.
7 – You pull a concealed army. The National Guard removes you.
8 – You manifest concealed supernatural abilities. Super SWAT removes you.

After your turn, play passes to the right.

The game ends with the last candy. The player with the highest patience left wins.

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The Bishop and the Vine

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

This was inspired by Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenge. No more than 100 words of flash fiction, using three of five randomly selected words.

When the bishop arrived, I sighed in relief. I preferred prison to death. He clicked his tongue and examined me hanging upside down against the tower. The ivy had held my leg for nearly an hour. My foot was turning purple from the constriction. I thought I would die here alone.

He pulled the lollipop from my fist. “We can’t afford one,” I blubbered. “My mother has the rot. She only has days to live.”

“I see,” he said, examining the seal on the sucker. “It’s such a tragedy to outlive your child.”

He casually walked away, ignoring my cries.

Posted in Flash Fiction, Stories | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Arrival in the City Auspicious

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

From the sky the land is green and red.

Rich green vegetation wanders over hills and vales of rich red soil.

Palm trees march single file next to roads. Hawai’i has only meager outposts compared to this display of might.

They stand watch over the farm towns and roads, and keep the peace.

 

My watch says, “Nine in the morning.”

My body says that it is closer to noon. Although in Dubai,

Where it just was,

It is only half past Seven.

And back home, where it was yesterday (another uncertain concept), my wife would be contemplating a late dinner.

My body has been awake for most of 36 hours, and the last 24 contained only the briefest of naps.

The sun is still low, although brighter and hotter.

The very idea that it is noon,

Is clearly wrong.

My body is awake, nonetheless. And bright. Like the airport, and

The green and red fields.

 

The airport is like an old man. He is awake and alert. He is weary not from sleep. His joints are worn. His shirt is stained.

His glasses are damp from heavy breath.

He is not like SFO, who is young and familiar and ready to grow.

He is not like Dubai, dressed in extravagance, eating rich foods, with an eye on the next hour to pray.

He only needs walls, so there are only walls. He only needs security, so there are only simple ropes to guide you through.

 

I am quickly greeted by a man from the hotel. He has a paper with my name and company, to ensure he is who he says he is.

He takes me to a man with a cab. He tells me of the many fine places to visit within a few hours drive.

I am confused and lost in the names of these places.

I am in the car, and he waves me off, like the airport was his home and he has more guests to greet.

The driver takes me down roads, where the number of cars multiply.

And weave and swerve and honk and brake and dart and speed and turn. Brake. Honk. Speed. Honk. Swerve.

It is more like a metallic herd of sambhar deer fleeing from an unseen predator.

Move forward. Quickly. But, these beasts with bellies full of petrol are graceful and pass each other by inches without an awkward collision.

 

The drive takes over an hour. The driver of the sambhar I am in is named Ram. He uses his horn often, but gentle against his brethren.

He takes me down a highway that passes piles of rubble, dirt ditches, cement buildings bright with Sprite advertisements painted on them, cement buildings in ruins and occupied, garbage heaps, and brightly painted temples with an array of gods living on the roof, shining shopping centers, glittering offices, McDonald’s, and modest food stands.

He tells me of many fine places to visit within a few hours drive.

I am confused and lost in the names of these places.

Except one. I make a note in my head to visit the great palace of Mysore, the Ancient Capitol.

 

But first, the new Capitol, Bangalore awaits.

Ram glides through the tangled roads where the herd is much larger and louder. Great Nandi Trucks, Elephantine Busses, Spotted Deer Rickshaws, Peacock Motorbikes, and Egret Bicycles join the migration in droves. Ram’s horn warns them to keep their distance.

The City Auspicious rises from the green and red land, cracking it into rubble and spilling garbage.

This city stirred under plagues, sultans, and kings, and rises now to say:

I am here.

I have arrived.

This is my hour. Let us change the world.

And so, it changes.

Road Widening Protest Graffiti

Posted in India, Poems, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Long Day’s Flight

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

I’m not in India yet, but I’ve learned two interesting lessons already.

Lesson 1: One man refusing to take his seat because he’s not seated next to his wife can make a plane return to the terminal, hold up over 500 people, and cause dozens, if not hundreds, of them to miss their connecting flights.

Lesson 1a: If you are me, trying to get to Bengaluru, this can result in a free trip to Dubai! It’s only a 4 hour lay over, and I won’t be leaving the airport, but that’s probably about as much as I need to see.

Lesson 2: When you travel from the US to Europe, on June 21st (the longest day of the year), and pass over Greenland around midnight local time (you need to leave around 4pm PST to accomplish this) the sun will not completely set.

By the time does set for me, I’ll have had about 24 or 25 hours of the sun being up. That’s not something I expected being south of the Arctic circle and traveling easterly. If I had stayed in Germany (it was an option) it would have been over 28 hours, and that’s just counting my waking hours. The sun doesn’t set here until 9:30 pm.

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Looking Half-way Around the World

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

Next week, I’ll be leaving for India.

This is my first time leaving the US. The closest I’ve been to a Foreign country has been Hawai’i, for distance, or San Diego for proximity.

I got vaccinated last week (and came down with a terrible cold, probably related, that I’m suffering through now). All arrangements have been made. I have a list of things to pack. I got a new lens for the trip, so yes, there will be pictures – but probably none posted here until I get back (I still need to find a good WordPress gallery plug in. So, if you have tips, let me know.)

But you can look forward to some travel log posts. I’ve added a new category for it. I’m hoping to capture thoughts and reactions. I’ll be in Bangalore, which is more westernized than most places, but largely because of outsourcing, something that’s highly controversial here. I’m not sure how heavy my thoughts and observations will get, but I’m not heading over entirely eyes wide.

Since I will be there for work, I’ll mostly be in Bangalore. Hopefully, I’ll get some chances to take a weekend trip to some other locals. I know a good group of the coworkers I’ll be spending most of my time with, I’ve met them in person or virtually, so I’m looking forward for some good tours and visits to the city, as well.

I’m both excited and scared. This is a huge trip for longer than I’ve ever been away from my home, my wife, and anything familiar.

Check back here next week!

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Creativitism: The Four Noble Truths of Creativity

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

Some of my categories and tags have made reference to creativity (e.g. Write Thought) as a practice akin to Buddhism. So, I thought, “Hey, why not lay it out explicitly as such?”

This is tongue in cheek, of course. But it’s not a joke.

This is about any creative practice. I thought about calling it Artivism, which plays nice with Artist. But I thought Creativism sounded better.

The Four Noble Truths of Creativity
1. Creativity means encountering blocks.
2. The origin of creative blocks is the fear of failure.
3. The cessation of blocks is attainable.
4. The path to the cessation of blocks.

1. Creativity means encountering blocks.
The act of creativity means that you will create bad things. Human nature is not perfect, so nothing you create will be perfect. You will sometimes create things that are wonderful. You will sometimes create things that are boring. Sometimes, they will suck. Everything you create will fall somewhere in this spectrum. Just as you can push past your worst works to reach something great, your moments of greatness will be followed by times where you think it is terrible or that goes no where.

2. The origin of creative blocks is the fear of failure.
The origin of creative blocks is attachment to the idea that you will not create greatness. All things are impermanent. Our deserts were once oceans. Our mountains were once rubble. The soil that now grows orchards of fruit trees was once inhospitable rock. And what was once verdant fields of vegetation, is now nothing but a sandy wasteland under leagues of salty water. Even the forces of the earth ebb and flow. Attachment to the idea that all creation must be good creates blocks to your own forces of creation.

3. The cessation of blocks is attainable.
The cessation of creative blocks can be attainted through a dispassionate approach to the quality of the work. This does not mean you must create without passion, far from it. But just as the destruction of volcanic eruptions and and scouring of forest fires cause pain and loss, they give way to rich soil where fresh life thrives. So to does risking failure and pain in creative works. Separate yourself from attachment to the end product. Doing so frees yourself from all worries and blocks and allows yourself to enter a flow of creation (Shall we call this state Wordvana?). Being in the flow means bring free from judgement and ideas of the proper way to do things, and giving over to the creative act.

4. The path to the cessation of blocks.
There is a path to the cessation of blocks. It is the middle way between constant concern over quality that stops you from creating at all (blocks), and senseless creation with no meaning (no care at all). That latter part is tricky, however its parallel with Buddhism, hedonism, is just as tricky. It’s about the balance of life, without getting caught up in material things or forsaking it all. A writer may write “I am a fish,” for a page a day for 20 years, but this is not like the practice of writing a page a day. Or one may write a novel sized stream of consciousness that is actually a series of random thoughts, but with no structure or editing it doesn’t make sense to anyone else. This is different than avant-garde, where rules are broken with practiced intent. Both extremes offer no progress. The path mediates the two extremes, applying forward raw creative force under a present, but not overbearing critical eye. The path hones your art without stagnating it.
I call it the Eightfold Path of Creativity. Look for it, next.

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You have a creative block. So what?

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

I only discovered this Mann’s song project through this video. Jonathan Mann has written a song a day since January 1st, 2009. He’s going to hit his 1,000th song later this year.

Below is a link to a kickstart project he has going. You might expect the video to talk about the project. And it does, but what I didn’t expect was that he’d talk about how he overcame his creative block to make the project happen. The first half of the video is almost all about that.

Give it a look.

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What if the national budget was your family budget?

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

Philip Greenspun did a great brain exercise to put the budget debate into understandable terms.

How can an individual voter make sense of quantities that are ordinarily written in scientific notation? I think the easiest way is to divide everything by 100,000,000 (10^8).

Let’s start with federal spending. The FY 2011 federal budget is approximately $3.82 trillion (3.82×10^12). Of that, approximately $2.17 trillion will be paid for by taxes collected and the remaining $1.65 trillion will be borrowed from our grandchildren. If we divide everything by 100 million, the numbers begin to make more sense.

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

I love this idea, but that comparison is not quite right.

We didn’t cut a premium cable bill, which is a complete luxury, we cut into a lot of spending that help our household thrive. Here’s what our family is actually cutting (taken from this Salon post).

Let’s set up your family. You and your spouse are the main bread winners. Your son is out of school, but lives in abject poverty. Your oldest daughter is out of school and able to help out with the bills. Your youngest is still in elementary school. (Some of this breaks down if you think about it too much – wait if I have a son do they live in the same house, if not does that mean they are in another country? – that’s going to miss the point, your household is the demographics of America)

And here’s what you’re cutting from your budget (keep in mind, for most of these, you are still spending money, this is just what you’re cutting):

  • Those renewable energy upgrades for your house -$9
  • Money you give to your son to help pay utility bills – $4
  • Accountant fees – $8 (which might mean you’ll get a smaller refund next year)
  • Repairs on your chimney and air conditioner to stop them from spitting out poisonous fumes – $17
  • Money to keep your son and his kids out of gangs and jail – $3.30
  • Money you give to poor cousins for food – $6 (you suspect they spend half of it to keep gang thugs from burning down their house, and at least one of them will die of starvation, but you are still giving them $480 a year so the rest will live)
  • Keeping toxins out of your air and water – $25
  • Fees you pay so your kids have a park to play in, and a place to take them fishing – $5
  • Fees to go to the beach – $3.50
  • Cost of gifts you give to neighbors to make sure no one steals your stuff – $9
  • Cost of your daughter’s astronomy kit – $3.79 (she was really into astronomy in the 60s)
  • Community college for your son so he can get a job better than fast food service – $20
  • And helping your son with his rent – $9
  • Ensuring your food isn’t going to poison you – $3 (you still spend $23, which is what you spent 2 years ago, and your family got food poisoning several times since then)
  • Flu shots – $8
  • Help you give to your son’s family to ensure he can get medicine and house his kids in his crappy apartment, and ensure his wife (who is pregnant with your grandchild) gets to see a doctor – $35
  • Help you give him to stay off drugs – $1
  • Money spent on your garden – $7
  • Keeping your documents safe – $2
  • Spent on your youngest’s science and math tutor to ensure she’s competitive when she graduates – $11
  • Spent on arts and crafts for the whole family – 12 cents.
  • Cutting that family rail pass so you could stop relying on the car – $14 (you will still need to spend $400 a year on your car [but probably won't])

    • You aren’t cutting your cable bill (in fact, they’re a client and are supposed to pay you) but you are going to stop paying $4 for mostly news and educational programming. Your family seems to like Jersey Shore more than Sesame Street anyway. They don’t really care for the news unless it’s about celebrities.

    It’s not just TV clients, you paid hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars to other clients, when they are supposed to be paying you. You paid $10 to just one bank (and they were involved in cutting your income severely in the past 4 years).

    You’re also ignoring your biggest expense.

    You live in a neighborhood of around 200 other households. You have some great neighbors around you (although you’re a little pissed at your neighbor to the south, and threaten to build a bigger fence) and plenty of cold relationships. But there are a couple you are fighting against (10 years ago one of their kids threw a rock, hitting one of your kids in the head and breaking a window, you’ve been trying to get them evicted ever since, you got another neighbor evicted already and he wasn’t really involved, and you’re not too happy with the new people that moved in). You are the wealthiest household in your neighborhood by far (even your deadbeat son gets by better than some of your neighbors, many of whom die of disease and starvation and their own fights).

    You spend a lot of money keeping your home safe and secure. Some of this is necessary. If you didn’t spend any your house would probably fall apart (like some of your neighbors’ constantly do). However, you spend $6,870. ALL of your other neighbors combined spend $17,000. In fact, you spend more than the next 40 richest neighbors combined. You could cut your security spending by half, heck even 1/3, down to $2,290 and still be spending double what any one else spends (and most importantly, double the neighbor you’re getting nervous about, they have a lot of kids and you have strong philosophical differences). Instead of doing that, you’re actually planning to spend $500 more, making it over $7,000.

    Cutting here you’d still be $12 grand in the hole, but that’s a better result than all the other cuts you planned on making.

    (Also your son figured out a way to grow weed and make some money from your daughter, you could have him pay you back, but instead you’ve just spent money on locks all over the house, which have done nothing except cause him to charge your daughter more so he can afford lock picks.)

    You can also make more money.

    Your income is based on a bunch of clients. You have clients from all income levels. Some of them are rich, some of them are poor. So you use a sliding scale. 50% of them can barely afford food and housing, you cut them a break and many pay you nothing, the rest just pennies. You know you can ask your wealthier clients for more. For the past 30 years you’ve built a reputation as never raising your prices, and you’ve lowered them to appease these clients. And they’ve said they are happier and will give you more business, but instead they’ve moved a lot of their business to your neighbors (particularly the one to the south and the other with a lot of kids). But you can easily raise your prices. You have the best house, and they aren’t going to abandon you. Sure, they’ll rant and rave and call you names in front of a lot of people, but they will pay it. And most of your family agrees that you are worth the higher price. If you ask for a small increase, 5% (cost of living, really) you’ll get $980 more. In the past, you charged much more, almost triple! That is probably too much, but times are tough and your clients have seen their incomes increase by much more than 10 times, so raising your rates isn’t a bad idea (you are arguably the best household in the world, right?). So you raise your rates (and to step aside from this extended analogy for a bit, instead of raising tax percentages, which would work too, I’m going to use this model of closing loopholes, deductions, exemptions, and credits, however since credits and exemptions are key to ensuring the working poor can get by, the true workable formula is probably a combination of this and increasing taxes on the top 10% of earners), and that will get you $12,000 more per year.

    And now you’re breaking even. When the economy turns around, you’ve got a surplus to spend on repaving the driveway and reseeding the lawn, because that’s all gone to hell.

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    “Geek and Gamer Girls” like to pander?

    Posted on March 27, 2011 by Eric Zimmerman

    Here’s what I’m talking about, but I’m only linking to it for context. If you want to avoid the link, it’s a video parody of “California Grrls” called “Geek & Gamer Girls” starring the women from the lightsaber lingerie fight video you might have seen last year. Appallingly, Seth Green is involved, and they somehow got the Star Wars blog involved. You can read up on it here.

    What the heck is this? Sarah Palin’s feminism? Pointing out how sexy women are is not empowering.

    The problem with this song isn’t that they’re just objectifying themselves for attention – that can be great fun to play with regardless of your gender. It’s that they’re just a pandering machine. The song is lazily written with low hanging fruit. And the whole concept is obviously just a marketing ploy. They say “Because like unicorns, geek girls are not supposed to exist!” Uh, welcome to jokes from 10 years ago. No one believes this. They also stole this idea from the poly-amorous community, which is just lazy. Lazy jokes may fly in WoW Trade Chat, but geek culture is about being clever.

    If you want to be a proud geek anything, flaunt your brain and your personality, not your body. That’s what being a geek is about. That’s why we are who we are. Our culture focuses on superficiality and extroversion, and we who focus on our brains and introspective pursuits get ostracized in middle and high school for it.

    Geeks come in all shapes and sizes. And the best thing about being a geek is we find everything interesting and worth getting worked up about, not just the mainstream limited views of what is the “right” thing to do or the “right” types of people that are pretty. We don’t care about the People magazine determination of what is pretty this week. We try to care more about what’s under the skin.

    Shame on your Star Wars Blog for promoting this pandering, sexist garbage.

    The way for us geeks to keep winning the culture war is to create an alternative to the superficial and extroverted mainstream. That’s not to say we can’t be superficial or extroverted, but if that’s your main shtick then you should reassess what you are trying to do. Are you really trying to be true to who you are, or are you trying to capitalize on what gets popularity in mainstream culture?

    We all know using sex to sell to geeks works (look at most video game cover art). But the problem is that we’re trying to get past that. We trying to create a geek culture where everyone is welcome, because that’s our credo. And to do that, we have to embrace what makes geek culture strong, not pander to the mainstream methods of success.

    To paraphrase a wise man: Is the mainstream more powerful? “No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.”

    Don’t embrace the dark side.

    Posted in Current Events, Musing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment