holy crap

[rm]

Another one of those theoretically minor yet disturbing events in the new world:

Guy gets his bag searched boarding the ferry today. Person searching the bag tries to confiscate a book he has in it.

Read the post:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mephron/349969.html

Meanwhile:

"The New Freedom Initiative proposes to screen every American, including you, for mental illness. To this end, the president established a New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, to study the nation’s mental health delivery service and make a report. It’s interesting to note that many on the staff appointed to the Commission have served on the advisory boards of some of the nation’s largest drug companies."

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=830

Better mental health is a good thing, but I don't my government, or the pharmaceutical industry to be involved in the diagnosis process. I've spent the last 8 months doing media analysis on the pharmaceutical industry, and it scares the crap out of me.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

*nod* agreed.

Have you read through all the comments -- the one from the (I presume) Muslim woman about her problems flying really shocked me.

I've not been on a plane since pre-9/11, and I honestly feel like I'm facing a 20-hour flight to Australia that I won't even be able to bring a book on, because I'm so afraid that anything might be viewed the wrong way at this point.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

In a lot of ways, it's hard to gauge just how bad it is, because we don't hear much of anything, we hear about what seem like they might be isolated incidents (although I'm reminded of Penn or Teller's incident at an airport a couple of years ago, and then there's Mike Wallace's recent arrest in NYC by limo cops for being "threatening"), or we hear about the ongoing focus on people who get attention because they aren't cornbread, good Southern Baptist white people (such as the Muslim woman and lots of other folks). I think a lot of people think that this sort of thing doesn't apply to them or concern them, up until it happens, of course.

In a lot of ways, NYC is going to be a magnification of all of these issues, as I'm sure you're fairly well aware of since you live there. While some of the press reported on the quirks and oddities security-wise for the DNC, the RNC is going to be a petri-dish for a lot of things like this. If nothing else, I'm pretty the security apparatus that's been put in place has solidified the sort of paranoid powermongering my friend encountered, and I'm sure the effects, which may abate overtly once it's over, will probably continue to lurk in the background for a long time.

Can you tell I tend to think in complex sentences?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hehehe... I'm bad with the long sentences too.

I've always been one of those people that gets asked what I am racially/ethnically (which tends to mystify people that actually know me), sometimes especially when I present ID (the name adds a wrinkle to it), so all this crap makes me _insanely_ nervous.

It won't be bad near where I live, but it will be bad near where I work and audition, and quite frankly, I am entirely freaked out.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

I have the "advantage" of being a tall blonde-haired blue-eyed white boy? But the long hair and "unprofessional" dress sense (i.e., tshirts and jeans) would probably single myself out. Although people seem to always get the wrong idea when they realize my first name is "Christian," but at least it's an advantageous "wrong idea."

I do have to admit that I'd be pretty damn nervous, too, were I anywhere near there. There's going to be a lot of potential powderkegs just waiting to be set off - a lot of potential "wrong place, wrong time" things waiting to happen. I think it goes without saying that you should watch yourself more so the next month, at least.

[rm.livejournal.com]

OKay... I take that back about my neighborhood not being too bad during the convention -- apparently one of the protest activities planned for my neighborhood is a "Roman-style vomitorium symbolizing Republican gluttony".

Can someone please... _please_ make the world go back to normal?

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, doesn't that sound sedate. Certainly not sensational. No, not at all. And I'm sure it'll draw the appropriate and needed attention to the issues at hand.

My sister has half-joked (at least I think it was half a joke) that she thinks that the world was supposed to end in 2000 or so, but when it didn't, reality got confused and started cracking here and there, and it's only getting worse as it goes on. Some days...it certainly feels like it, eh?

All I can say is I'm glad I live in a fairly liberal college town in North Texas rather than a lot of the other places in the state, especially the smaller burghs. And I'm glad I'm not on the cleaning crews in NYC for those sorts of things.

[rm.livejournal.com]

There was a great piece in Paper Magazine several months ago supporting the theory that "we're all already dead".

The conjecture was that 9/11 was much worse than we realize, we all bit it, and we're now in some bizarre mirror-world purgatory.

It was one of the funniest things I've ever read, while also one of the creepiest.

Certainly, "well, we all are already dead" has become one of those random out of context phrases amongst my social circle.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

It's both amusing and troubling when the universe seems to demonstrate existential irony for our benefit. I thought things were going bizarre enough back when American Gladiators was around ("My...how...Roman..."), but the last few years have done a lot for upping the weirdness quotient. A lot of people, when 2000-2001 came around, were asking "Where's my $&^*! flying car?!", but I think we've only seen the cliched tip of the iceberg so far.