this may be an obvious thing to say, but i wish this country was better. that’s in the context of wishing the whole human experiment was going much better.

i just finished two books – The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, and Survivor, by Octavia Butler. Both left me sort of amazed at human potential and disappointed with human reality. at some point i will write out reviews of both of them here. or not. they were awesome, go read them, that’s my review.

as i was finishing those books, the crazy world upped the ante a notch in gaza and in oakland. two days ago i saw the video footage of a man, Oscar Grant, being shot in the back while laying face down by a BART police officer (who’d become a father a day or two before) here in oakland. i also watched tons of video footage of the aftermath of airstrikes and now ground strikes in Gaza, on Arab news stations in Dearborn and pieces forward to me by friends. lots of death, wounds, blood.

a friend says she thinks the BART popo mistakenly believed he was using a taser gun. he hasn’t given any statement saying what happened, or why. with gaza, the israeli government says it is acting in self-defense. no one takes blame for the fact that they are acting like we’re in a global game of Lord of the Flies.

the thing i like about this moment in time is the resurgence of pirates, real live pirates. its like thumbing a nose at the world…y’all want to regress to the basest behavior possible? then we will have some swashbuckling, and some redistribution of goods. so there!