My perfect world, Part 1
“Hola Amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped atcha …” (10 points if you can name the quote)
Back in Santa Barbara getting ready for the wedding. House almost done. Training for Masters Worlds. Seems the 50 meter world record in my age group is a blistering 24.14. Yikes, so much for that idea. Be happy to get top 10.
Just read about Mr. Bush’s veto on stem cell research, and how he surrounded himself with kids who were born from invitro cells to make it seem like they wouldn’t be alive if not for this, his first (!) veto.
Not that the logic there makes any sense, since the bill wouldn’t have applied to any embryos that were slated for adoption. Hey, it’s all in the timing.
Bush is the worst president of my lifetime. And, I’d say, arguably the worst in history. I don’t know how any open-minded individual could support him given his hallacious record and obvious lack of intelligence. Then again, we live in a culture where books “for dummies” sell like hotcakes.
Here’s part of my perfect world:
People get tax credits for not having kids.
Sex education and birth control is readily available worldwide, and encouraged.
Developers in CA have to actually live in the “communities” they build. Maybe this will stop the 1000 people that move into this state EVERY DAY.
Open space is actually valued.
Architectural diversity is actually valued.
People notice that driving by block after block of Circuit City, Olive Garden, Applebee’s, and Barnes & Noble separated only by track home lots with tiny greenbelts is just plain bad for the soul.
People support independent businesses, even though they might pay a buck or two more. Especially bookstores.
Cigarettes get banned. Come one … name one good thing they do for the world. One.
Mid-30’s women driving alone talking on their cell phone in enormous SUV’s that their much older husband/boyfriend bought for them get penalized everytime they drift over a lane and/or ignore a motorcyclist. Three strikes and it’s back to the Jetta.
Adolescent males are actually teens. Unfortunately, most adolescent men I meet are in their mid to late 20’s. The Go Nowhere Club is in full force.
Americans actually cared about how many people’s lives are being ruined every day by our horrendously embarrassing foreign policy.
Americans actually travelled. I mean to another country. I mean not Club Med or a cruise. I mean where people around you don’t speak English.
The Americans I did run into overseas wouldn’t make me cringe with their ethnocentrism.
People cared about education and healthcare instead of some idiotic oxymoronic soundbyte like “global war on terror.” Please.
Jet skis would be seen as the monsters they are.
Anyone tossing their cigarette butt on the ground would actually get fined. And if they dropped it within a mile of the beach they would spontaneously combust. Seriously, if you’re that careless about the world we’re better off without you.
Our country would stop seeing things in terms of race. That might sound funny coming from someone who makes so much art about race, but like I always say, I’d love to live in a colorblind society. And as long as they’re mislabeling me and making me choose between their insufficient box choices, I’ll keep making my work.
Rich people actually paid more in taxes.
Poachers get shot on site without penalty. Especially elephant ones.
Restaurants stopped serving veal and shark fin soup.
Chinese people stopped telling me I don’t look Chinese.
Insecure people would stop taking potshots at those more successful than them and just start working on themselves.
Dogs get to be on any beach at any time.
And people gradually realized drinking cow milk is gross. Put it this way, would you drink milk from a cat? A beaver? A horse? But make it from a cow and we’re somehow okay with that.
Oh, and it got twice as hard to become a teacher but it paid twice as much.
There, that’s better.