Joe Biden matters.

Apparently a record number of people watched the vice-presidential debates on Thursday, and I’m assuming most of them wanted to see if Sarah Palin would make it through alive (which of course she did).  Joe Biden, the democratic nominee, was somewhat lost in all the attention given to his opponent.

However, I think he’s quite important – and not only because surely anyone watching the debate who does not feel that Biden would make the more natural transition to the presidency should something happen to the candidates must have an ulterior motive – but because of his rousing answer to the question of whether, as Dick Cheney believes, the vice-president can act as “part of the legislative branch.”  Now, Palin said that she and McCain see a lot of “flexibility” inherent in the office, which amounted more or less to a “yes, we agree with Cheney.”  Biden, on the other hand, completely denounced the idea as flagrantly unconstitutional and an attempt to consolidate the “unitary executive” position by the Bush administration.

See what he’s doing?  He is literally claiming less power for his own position than either his opponent or the incumbent veep.  Not only is this rare, but it provides the strong distinction from the previous administration, which I think almost all of us would agree that we want.  Biden is important because he understands the government – not just as a Beltway insider, but as in “he is actually educated on the division of power in this country.”  And that’s an immensely good thing, if you ask me!

And on a somewhat tangential note, what is all this business bringing up Bill Ayers again?  The loss of Michigan seems to have sent the GOP into a tailspin of negativity …

O tempora, o mores!

I would like to illustrate, from my own life, the absolutely untenable relationship between wages and prices that is the norm in this beleaguered country.  The other day, at the Elite Grille on the Waco Traffic Circle (a place known to anyone who has driven through the town), I was charged for the ice in my bourbon.  The ICE.  One dollar for, as the receipt put it, “rocks.”  

They also charged me for the dessert that they had run out of, so I got that one stricken from the record.  But mind you, I’ve seen many other people complain about their restaurant experience, only to be showered with free food, gift certificates, Circiassian slave girls, and so on.  I, however, got nothing but a pedantic manager out to explain to me, as though I were the most pathetic of country simpletons, how there is more alcohol in the drinks that have ice.  Why do I have this sneaking suspicion that that isn’t actually true, but that rather this guy hasn’t even discovered displacement yet?  ”Look, sir.  You’ll see, it is manifestly obvious that when I add these obloids of frozen liquid to your potation, the booze line undergoes elevation.  So how could we remain in business in this land of Opportunity if we did not charge you for the utterly obvious increase in liquid in your cup?”

And of course, my salary remains the same even in a world that charges you to put some ice in your drink.  Oh, the sacrifices we make in these trying times: I may have to begin taking my bourbon neat (or just ordering scotch).  Bernacke and Paulson, where is your 700 billion?  Is there room in that figure to buy me some ice?

“Deliciae Baylorensis” …?

I want to register a complaint.  No, this isn’t going to be a complaining post.  This is no great moral umbrage on my part, just a failure to understand.  There is not, to my knowledge, a single building open 24 hours on Baylor’s extensive, Palladian, be-columned campus.  I know because the maintenance worker who closes up the SUB every night and I are almost on a first-name basis.  Or at least, he calls me “Chief.”  ”Closing time, Chief,” he’ll say in a jubilant voice, and while I want to remonstrate that he is denying me Wireless Internet, which has got to be on the Bill of Rights somewhere, he’s just so nice that I have to smile and wave goodnight, like it or not.  So the question is: how come my venerable undergraduate institution, with an endowment approximately the size of a good tip at P.F. Chang’s, was able to keep its student center open 24 hours, even in the bitterest, most lonely lacunae between terms?  And monstrous Baylor, with a budget that includes entries like “Bear Habitats,” “Artificial Bodies of Water,” and “Columns & Pediments,” can’t do it?  Seriously?

In other news, teaching college freshmen is both incredibly rewarding and tremendously exhausting.  I’d thought that I would be a nicely hard grader – not the sort who keeps you down in the mud with one be-tasseled foot while reciting a litany of your shortcomings, but just the kind who doesn’t flinch at issuing a couple D-minuses to shock everybody into “business time.”  Actually, though, just the concept of placing an objective value judgment on someone else’s thoughts (even the “thoughts” that one manages to gather at 4am the night before class, whilst still hung over from two nights ago) is proving terrifying.  Don’t let’s even mention the negative judgments.  But I’ll manage it somehow.  And I really, really like my students in general.  Sure, some of them are a pain.  But in a promising way.  I hope they all succeed; I really do.

The result of all the time I’m allocating to grading and such is that I’m currently trying to write a paper that proves that Hemingway uses France and Spain as analogues to the spirits of Lent and Carnival, respectively, and that he simultaneously does not do so.  Ample attention is being given to the Confessional Mode in Literature, to Moral Cartography, and to Tipping Waiters.  Yeah … this one is definitely going to the ALL NEW WRITING CENTER GOONS.  Just wait until you have to edit my rough draft, newbies!

Okay, time to go to bed and wake up all too early for last-minute lesson-planning/Common Grounds therapy.  Au revoir!

A meme I bogarted from the bro.

SEVEN THINGS IN YOUR ROOM:

1. Books

2. A ratty mattress

3. A sound system

4. A screwdriver (the tool, more’s the pity)

5. A microwave

6. A kitchen (my apartment is just one room)

7. A many-headed hydra lamp

 

SEVEN THINGS YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:

1. Water

2. Coffee

3. Beer

4. Poetry

5. Classical music

6. Friends

7. Family

 

SEVEN THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:

1. Go to India

2. Live in a monastery and contemplate for a couple months

3. Move to a new city on pure impulse

4. Publish a book of poems

5. Publish a novel

6. Eat haggis

7. Sleep in a wilderness without a tent

 

SEVEN OTHER THINGS:

Do You:

1. Believe in God? Yes.

2. Had a dream come true?  Not so much; mine are horrendously surreal.  But if you see a disembodied hand walking itself down a handrail, you’ll know one did.

3. Read the newspaper?  I read Slate and the BBC online and I pick up a WSJ at school sometimes for token conservative bias. :p

4. Pray? Yes.

5. Have a job? Teacher of Record, Baylor U.

6. Go to church? Yes.

7. Wish on shooting stars? Sometimes I wish that the given asteroid will not land on me …

 

SEVEN THINGS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS:Have you…

1. Cried? No.

2. Had fun? Depends on how you define “fun.” :p

3. Been kissed? Negative, more’s the pity.

4. Felt stupid? I felt other people were stupid, if that counts …

5. Talked to an ex? Two.

6. Missed someone? Sure. 

7. Hugged someone? Yes.

 

 

TEN random things about me:

10. I can, and do, blink my eyes independently of one another.

09. I think the world “culvert” is the English langauge’s ugliest.

08. I frequently tap tunes with various body parts.

07.  Despite what you’re thinking, I actually don’t have Tourette’s.

06. I despise, with frenzied passion, any form of melted cheese.

05. I find skeletons endlessly amusing (thanks, Con-man)

04. I am the best driver on Baylor’s campus. 

03. I prefer slow movies to fast ones.

02. I am less interesting than you’d think upon first meeting me. 

01. I once won a 5k only because I was the only person in my age group to show up.

 

NINE ways to win my heart:

09. Be endlessly deep.

08. Listen to and/or play music with me.

07. Don’t force me to spend hours in awkward social situations.

06. Read my poetry and show me yours.

05. Read other people’s poetry and discuss it with me.

04. Love to travel.

03. Share your doubts.

02. Be capricious in anything except interpersonal relationships.

01. Share your faith with me and respect mine …

 

SEVEN ways to annoy me:

07. Talk through my class.

06. Block me from merging on the highway.

05. Pretend to know things that you don’t.

04. Pose as a critical cynic just because you think liking things is “unfashionable”

03. Criticize modern art/poetry/prose without understanding it

02. Use a platitude (especially about politics or religion)

01. Walk around in dressy locales whilst wearing sweaty athletic gear.

 

SIX things I believe in:

06. The idiocy of most people.

05. The dignity of most people.

04. The unmitigated brilliance of J.L. Borges

03. God.

02. The conviction that virtue is (and must be) its own reward.

01. The transience of pleasure.

 

FIVE things I’m afraid of:

05. Anyone driving a car (besides me)

04. Rejection.

03. Four more years of Republican rule

02. The dreadful allure of fascism

01. Disease

 

FOUR of my favorite items in my room:

04. Collected Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz

03. The Art of Fugue (arranged for saxophone quartet)

02. My MacBook

01. My rad old-school speakers

 

THREE things I do everyday

03. Stress out about teaching

02. Go to the coffee shop

01. Cogitate

 

TWO things I want to do right now:

02. Be done grading

01. Have more money

 

ONE person I want to see right now:

01. Anyone who will have a deep conversation with me.

Stop it.

Pundits.  Stop using this verb.  ”To vet.”  As in, “he must be vetted thoroughly”; “the press has yet to vet him on this matter”; and so on.  I don’t think I’d heard this verb more than once a decade prior to 2008, when I’ve heard it maybe a hundred times.  This qualifies it as a Hyper-Trendy Verb, which is also classified as Something You Shouldn’t Use.

What about examine, investigate, check, or scrutinize?  Are those somehow obsolete?

However, if using “to vet” keeps you from saying horrid things like “we interfaced with the Tokyo people” or “the train will platform at 9 pm” or “the groom was gifted with a bottle of scotch,” well, then go ahead.  Verbs are so wonderful, though; please don’t mutilate them!

I know, I’m terrible/wonderful.

Terrible, because I don’t update.  Wonderful, for you, because you get a relief from being harassed about reading my writing.  Nobody likes to be made subject to self-congratulation!  But alas, your brief respite is quite over.

I’m at the PDX airport, staring out the window at the last distant ridge I’ll see until Christmas.  Speaking of Portland, would you like to know how God punishes His children when they complain to much about the weather He divinely permits?  By specially arranging for your supposed “relief vacation” site to experience a freak heat-wave and actually climb to about 10 degrees higher than the city you just left.  So watch it.  The thing is to shut up and learn something from your discomfort.  Since I haven’t learned that trick yet, the discomfort is rising.

And sue me (Suomi?) for incorrigibility if you will, but I’m thinking Finland for my next break.  Anyone?  While we still have polar ice caps?  :p  (Yes, I forced a bilingual pun into this paragraph.  Yes, I am a massive dork).

If anyone out there is not so riddled with ennui as to be still following the election, what do you think?  I’m starting to have trouble distinguishing between the two candidates, which honestly makes choosing less consequential AND less exciting at the same time.  It made sense for Barack and Hillary to have the same substance with different accidents … but Barack and John?  Weird.  Guys, the American public might actaully respond to a little distinctiveness, a little opinion.  To me, these candidates are like a guy trying to make his date pick her own surprise Valentine’s day venue.  Somehow he thinks the deferentiality will make her happy, but in fact it’s stupid, tactless, and spineless.  Cowboy up and pick the damn restaurant!

Overall, it just reinforces something that I’ve been realizing lately, to my surprise and horror: Bush’s ratings may be free-falling into the Abyss, but his doctrine is going to be the rule for a long time to come.  I want to cite the popularity of John McCain, whose chanting “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” should be proof enough that his foreign policy is at least as bad as that of the Bush Administration.  And then the absolute spinelessness of the Democrats in Congress, whose proceedings begin to resemble a BDSM encounter without a safe-word.

Activist courts a menace?  They may be our only hope on the human rights plane.  Boumidene is pretty much the only good human rights news I’ve heard in the last seven years.

Now, in better news, I’m about to begin teaching orientation tomorrow.  Not that orientation is, per se, very exciting.  But teaching rather is, I think.  So yes.  Any of you who are teachers and have tips, send them my way!

Okay, it’s just about time to board the plane … time to be squished into 11-inch seats for the next five hours!

(untitled #168)

Yes, I just can’t think of anything to call this post.  I wonder if this is true of the many abstract artists whose work gets titles like Contrast #231, and there literally are 230 other Contrast paintings beforehand.  I can’t quite get behind that; why not just call it “Dypsomaniac in a Confessional Booth” or “Trophy-Belt, Strung with Invertebrates”?  Hmm.

Okay, question du jour: are gas prices really going down, or did I have a minor stroke induced by Waco drivers?  My news reading has been a little less pervasive due to the damned lie about my apartment having internet (it doesn’t), but I thought this would make a headline.  I guess it’s not BAD enough.  And on the topic of petrol, how many of you honestly think we should be going to all lengths to reduce prices at the pump?  I’m speaking as a fairly frequent driver here, so I’m not just hectoring from the window of a Portland lightrail car.  I’m serious.  If oil companies see a decrease in demand and have to invest in alternatives to be profitable, not just nice, might that not be better for us all, if we take the long view?

I’ve also begun to think, in the past couple of weeks, that the U.S. must be an incredibly conservative nation.  It boggles my mind how many conservative analysts think of America as some kind of post-Christian wasteland of leftist atheism.  Notice that both candidates have moved right since the general election race began?  That’s right.  A centrist, maverick Republican vs. a fairly liberal Democrat with a talent for cross-partisan work would seem like the ideal face-off after the hardline right-wing Bush administration, right?  But instead, McCain has moved closer and closer to Bush, retaining a token belief in global warming as a distinguishing feature, while Obama has thrown distinctive beliefs over the bulwarks like water from a sinking lifeboat in a hasty attempt to seem like a center-right Democrat.  I find this all very disappointing, not because I want the country to be leftist instead of conservative, but because I think we desperately need balance to keep a check on the torture, spy, and invade view of security that is currently so pervasive in our government … is it seriously just the hard left, and me, who wants something truly different, saner, and more humane?

As said by the immortal someecards.com, “the X-Files were a lot funnier when the government wasn’t actually spying on us.”

Resurfacing …

I know I’ve been bad, but it’s because of the harsh realities of moving, a class that meets every single day (and I present on poems just about every other day), and a severe case of climate blues (if whales had sweaty armpits that you could live in, and swam around in hot tubs, this is how it would feel to live there).  Sorry.

So, I saw two of the endless streams of comic-book films that have been vomited onto America by the Hollywood cartels, and actually neither one was very bad.  Not cinematic classics or anything, certainly not. But not pitiful or depressing, either.  

I meant to go see Batman: The Dark Knight on the day of its release, but Waco being Waco, and therefore not offering any other weekend diversion but seeing a movie, it was sold out.  So, since my student discount tickets are only five bucks, I took a gamble and watched Hellboy II: The Golden Army instead.  Now, most dudes my age would probably say that Pan’s Labyrinth is no Hellboy – but in reality, it’s the other way around.  The former was really designated an “art film” just because it was in Spanish, and was in fact a brilliantly imaginative fantasy.  Hellboy II is reassuringly filmed in English (with snatches of a made up language) and therefore not an art film.  It’s certainly a version of director Guillermo del Toro’s vision re-packaged to fit the uber-populist mold of the comic book, but mutatis mutandis, the films aren’t as far apart as you’d think.  In fact, the visuals are clearly derived from the same oddly precise imagination, and for once I felt a studio had not been wasting its money on digital technology.  These computers make some art, dammit, not just stupid trolls (though, obligatorily, those are certainly in evidence here).  It’s worth watching if only for the brilliantly realized tree-god, the scene where two characters get drunk together on cans of Tecate, and the rather Derridian implications for the marginalized life of the non-humans.

The Dark Knight, which I did manage to see last night, is a different story.  It’s a true post-9/11 “superhero” movie that barely deserves the title.  It is utterly jammed with moral dilemmas, over everything from warrantless wiretapping to the old game-theory question of whether it is better to collaborate or compete (or blow 500 people to smithereens).  While most superheroes end up vomiting American flags all over their simplistically cackling enemies whilst feasting on apple pie and repeating folk adages in cool voices, this “superhero” is depressed, convinced that he is actually a (sort of necessary) menace, and doesn’t really get that much screen time.  It’s amazing to remember how the first movie of this franchise was considered “dark” when it came out — it has nothing on this baby.  The problem of a convincing villain is brilliantly solved by the late Heath Ledger (and what a shame it is that this is his last role), who marries the spirit of the anarchists of Dostoevsky to that of al-Qaeda with the sort of sheer bravado rarely seen in big-budget films.  Astoundingly, his fate is really not sealed at the end — and considering how easily he breaks from prison in the middle of the film, we cannot imagine he stays incarcerated long.  And here I thought only Cormac McCarthy got away with that sort of thing.  In summation, this film left me rather depressed, but not at the state of American cinema (for once): instead, it vividly illustrates the extreme difficulty of fighting evil and chaos and terror while remaining pure, or even kind of dubiously decent.  Sobering thoughts for this time of war …

Other than that, I’ve mostly been eating and studying, which is what one does in Waco.  And I will try to post more often, especially when I get internet in my apartment.  To absolutely no one’s surprise, the promised AirBear connection does NOT reach to Jamestown #15.  So I’m left again, hefting my silly black bag all over creation looking for some wireless.  I hate it.

Dear U.S. of A …

Well, it’s your birthday again, the big 232.  Sorry I didn’t write earlier; I was at work.  Yeah, on the Fourth.  Nope, no extra holiday pay.  It kinda sucks.  

Anyway, I know how you worry all the time, so I’ll just say it right off: YES, I still love you.  Yes, I’ve not been the best guy — we’ve already been over the times I’ve said some mean things about you in front of my friends, the fling with Italy, a couple of one-night stands with Canada.  I’m not really sorry; after all, you’re getting awfully fat, and there’s a lot you could learn from Italy and Canada (and a lot they could learn from you – let’s be fair here).  But we’ve been over all of this. 

On the bright side, America, you do look amazing for your age, and listen, you’ve had the same government for all these centuries.  That’s more than we can say for just about anybody out there, friend or foe.  Your people are still freer than just about anybody, especially in the speech department, as the recent hate-speech trial of Mark Steyn has shown us (come on, Canada).  We’ll have to just overlook those couple of citizens (and a friendly software guy visiting from Canada) who happened to have the same names as terrorists and got stashed in secret prisons for a couple years.  Let’s face it, they aren’t typical.  But how many times do I have to tell you, just because someone’s named “Mohammad” or “Hussein” doesn’t mean he’s an Islamofascist Axis of Evil Mujahedeen?  Just like you keep saying everyone named “Britney” is a ditz.  You can’t say stuff like that, and I don’t care how many airheaded Britneys you know.  Got it?

You mentioned me giving you the “silent treatment” in your last letter, but I’m not going to apologize for that either.  I think I should’ve done it more, especially four years ago when you served up one of the worst electoral Catch-22s ever.  I still can’t believe I took the path of least resistance and voted for Bush.  Look where that’s gotten us.  Listen, I don’t want to have to give you the silent treatment again.  I liked Barack Hussein Obama quite a bit.  Is it you who’s forcing him to waffle on all his distinctives, or is that his own damn idea?  

Listen, 232 is old enough to hear a little tough love.  I don’t mean to be cruel.  I really only have two things to advise you on.  Number one: don’t be afraid to think outside the box a little.  Yeah, we might need to drill a little for some offshore oil, but seriously, we can get free of our addiction to Hummers and smoldering heaps of coal.  We can give tax breaks to green jobs, and to working people who need them most because their wages never keep up with these prices.  We don’t have to react the *exact* same way to every rogue state.  Sanctions, saber-rattling.  Saber-rattling, sanctions.  Maybe we could give a little more money to artists and universities and things that can help make everybody’s lives better, and a little less to corporate tax-breaks and all that supply-side hogwash.  Maybe we could think about offering paid maternity leave to all women, and health insurance to all children, kind of like every other G8 country, and, oh, you know, Pakistan.  Maybe not tomorrow.  But think about it.  If Norway beat us to the idea by a couple decades, it can’t be that horrendously difficult.

Here’s the second thing: please try to think way back to when you were little, and these States were just a huge crazy experiment, a kind of strange new blend of an Enlightenment utopia and the New Jerusalem, mixed in with a huge dose of common sense.  That’s what we’re supposed to be celebrating tonight, right?  Even if all the rednecks with the fireworks never read the Declaration of Independence, it’s still the point.  So think way back and tell me: what did patriotism mean back then?  Did it mean fighting in a war or having the biggest army?  Saying certain words and waving certain symbols?  (See this very thought-provoking article in Slate).  Or was it the idea of freedom from tyranny?  From things like taxes we have no say over, like getting soldiers billeted in our houses without compensation, like getting tangled up in French-and-Indian Wars that have nothing to do with us?  Wasn’t it something to do with a just government with checks and balances?  Weren’t you guys really terrified of the president, even forbidding us to call him (or her) “Your Excellency” because of that whole imperial tendency?  The whole idea of having a place where you can speak out and not have to worry about getting put on a “list” or having your mail opened or getting “disappeared” in the middle of the night by goons?  

The people you’ve put in charge of you for the past half-century, for the most part, think that patriotism is about having the biggest army, kicking some ass overseas, and storming hills.  Now, we’ve stormed some impressive hills in our history when we had to to do things like, oh, save the world from fascism.  But that’s what we have to do, not what we’re all about.  What we’re about is freedom: freedom to speak, assemble, bear arms, read, make love, live, pursue happiness.  Guantanamo and the Patriot Act notwithstanding, you’re doing a great job of that.  Just don’t let the other guys – the Machiavellians who want us to be all about threats and guns and torture and whatever else is “necessary” – win out, okay?  At least promise me that, and I don’t care if it’s the Republicans or the Democrats who win (see me sometime after work – I’ve got some great ideas for third or fourth parties).

And just in case you think I’m being a little harsh, listen: I’ll always love you to death.  I’m telling you this because of that, not for any other reason.  Hey, finish your cake.  You can work it off tomorrow riding your bike somewhere.  Hey, did I mention these gas prices are killing us?

Happy birthday!

Love,

Robert

Some actual good things about Europe.

It seems to me that Europe is getting a bad rap Stateside.  Oh, their populations are dying out.  Oh, they’re being taken over by Muslims.  Oh, they’re sissies who get their army provided by America.  Oh, the EU is … wait, why don’t we like the EU again?  I either forgot, or never knew in the first place.

I just have a couple of completely superficial observations to make, neither of which is an actual rebuttal of the above criticisms.  But first off, I just got done watching a movie with Juliette Binoche, whose work I always admire.  Now, Binoche is certainly beautiful enough for Hollywood standards, but she’s in her forties now, and I notice that she (and many other comparable actors, male and female) is not retouched or made up in European cinema, nor are these people relegated to sinister/aged/otherwise marginal roles.  This is even more the case for Daniel Auteuil.  Honestly, I don’t think he’s a bad looking guy at all, but can you even imagine an American film with him in top billing?  It’s no wonder he doesn’t work over here; he’d be cast as a villain with twenty lines, twelve of which would be sinister cackles.  And yet both are fantastic actors, capable of working in something like the daunting Michael Haneke’s Cache and also much lighter fare, such as Chocolat or The Valet.  

All of this is to say that the conditions for stardom seem to be much less superficial and destructive in Europe than in the States.  I even read somewhere that public intellectuals like Foucault were treated like stars in France.  That’s quite a tall order in a nation where Angelina Jolie serves the point of both Foucault and Gandhi, but still.  Perhaps we could start with the airbrushing cult.  Couldn’t a semi-intelligent magazine, like (say) Vanity Fair, run a series of photographs of someone who is beautiful, truly and unaided, but perhaps has (gasp) some crow’s feet untouched by Botox?

Here’s another bit.  Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) recently said, in opposition to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, that “nobody in their right mind” believe we can get half our power from wind and solar or “drive a fleet of golf carts” (from an article in Salon).  Are you absolutely positive, Senator?  Is ownership of an Escalade, a Durango, and a Hummer part of what makes us, essentially, Americans?

Well, probably, at least for now.  However, I have been seeing more Smart Cars on the roads, and with the current price-per-barrel of crude, I’m not surprised that the Smart is gathering steam.  I had to laugh when I read this review by Salon’s Machinist blog, especially the bits where people ask silly questions like “can it go on the highway?” or “does it run on gas?”  I’ve never been all that surprised by the Smart, since I saw absolute droves of them in Italy, Germany, and France during my semester abroad in 2005.  Obviously, the Smart isn’t for everyone — large families, construction contractors — but what would be wrong with it for single people, couples without children, etc.?  Well, one problem is that our infrastructure does in fact favor a fleet of aircraft-carrier-sized vessels.  Everything is so far apart in America that road trips require large gas tanks and plenty of storage space, and the trains and low-budget airlines that Europeans use for long-distance travel either don’t exist or are extremely difficult to get to.  The Smart car is built for city driving, but nobody lives in cities here.  Instead, our enlightened zoning laws have given us neighborhoods like mine, in which you can’t throw a rock without hitting any one of a host of identical Starubckses and banks, but have to drive twenty minutes to get to a CD shop, an independent coffee house, or the public transit station (and that’s without traffic, which is to say, never).

All of which is to say, we should abolish our zoning code and allow people to build things where they live.  New Urbanist communities are a step in the right direction, but as of yet, they’re all pristine yuppie havens in which the cheapest store is Banana Republic and the cheapest sandwich is $9.95.  In other words, most people are priced out of them.  We need to let these ideas get carried out to ordinary people if we want to see any sort of progress on the pollution/environmentalism issue.  Otherwise, people just can’t live without their monstrous oil-burning frigates.

Any thoughts?